It seemed a good idea to open the first issue that is published after the failure of the Copenhagen Climate Conference with an article on the precautionary principle. This principle plays an increasingly important role in national and international environmental law and policy. However, it is still disputed. Stephen John discusses three objections to the principle: that the principle reflects an unwarranted mistrust of science, is too unspecific to guide policy, and that more specific versions are as likely to increase as to decrease environmental risks. He shows how these charges overlook two concerns which might motivate the precautionary principle: a worry about scientific purity, and a concern to distinguish environmental doings from allowings.

Armed humanitarian intervention is usually rejected by appeal to external factors: the rights and interests of the target state and its subjects, and of the international community more generally. According to Nenad Dobos, even if the external obstacles to relaxing the current standard were to give way, national responsibility would still preclude any further weakening of the presumption against humanitarian intervention. For internal reasons, the range of rights whose abuse justifies intervention cannot be expanded, the prudential constraints cannot be suspended, and punitive intervention cannot be admitted. In spite of all this, Dobos says, a government’s duty to honour the trust of its constituents does not restrict its freedom to defend the rights of foreigners any more than it is already restricted under the dominant view.

Noam Lemos’ article deals with the relation between the intrinsic value of a whole and the intrinsic value of its parts. Some philosophers favor some form of summation according to which, roughly, the intrinsic value of a whole is equal to the sum of the intrinsic value of its parts. Lemos considers two sorts of objections to summative theories of value. The first objection concerns ‘indeterminate’ value. The second concerns the importance of variety. He argues, first, that both objections pose serious problems for the summative approach, and, second, that if we accept certain plausible views about the value of variety, we should reject certain forms of argument concerning what sorts of states have intrinsic value.

In his book The Myth of Evil, Phillip Cole claims that the concept of evil divides normal people from inhuman, demonic and monstrous wrongdoers. Such monsters are found in fiction, Cole maintains, but not in reality. According to Luke Russell, it is plausible that a person is evil only if he is extremely and fixedly bad, but Cole is wrong to suppose that a person is evil only if he is thoroughly and innately bad. Even if we accept Cole’s claim that no actual person is thoroughly or innately bad, Russell says, it still seems very likely that some actual persons are evil, and hence that evil can be an explanatorily useful concept.

Currently, health professionals expect from medical ethicists that their recommendations, advices, and guidelines are sensitive to the specific nature of the context for which they have been developed. That is one of the reasons that medical ethicists increasingly strive to combine empirical research with normative ethical work. Some of them call this type of research ‘empirical ethics.’ Sebastian Schleidgen, Michael C. Jungert and Robert H. Bauer examine whether the allegation that this type of ethics does not respect the gap between ‘is’ and ‘ought’, and commits the naturalistic fallacy, is grounded. Their conclusion is that it is not guilty. They also distinguish and discuss three goals in the cooperation between social science and ethics.

Jonathan Smith analyses Walter Sinnott-Armstrong’s arguments against moral intuitionism. According to the latter, many of our moral beliefs are formed and held in dubious circumstances where we are, e.g., partial, or emotional in a way that clouds our judgement. Because of this, we cannot be justified in holding any moral beliefs simply on the basis of their seeming to us to be true. Smith’ conclusion is that Sinnott–Armstrong’s case against moral intuitionism is unpersuasive.

Many of us share Wittgenstein’s intuition that effort deserves moral credit. But many of us also feel the pull of the opposite intuition—that the ‘natural absence of a temptation’ deserves moral credit as well. Kelly Sorensen believes that we can consistently hold both of these intuitions. In the last article of this issue she explores and explains this pair of intuitions and the contour of our views on associated cases.