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We imagine a minimal context where a programmer A serves as the provider of a program X for a user B. A survey is given of plausible promises and accusations in connection with the delivery and deployment of X. When X is used, various problems may arise. The focus of the paper is on the role of accusations which may plausibly arise in various scenarios. We discuss different accusation patterns that may occur outside informatics and see whether such patterns may appear in the context of programming as well.

Questions of sustainability will be of crucial importance for the twenty-first century. But do we have to think about questions of responsibilities regarding future people in terms of human rights? And if duties regarding sustainability fall outside the scope of human rights, what would this imply for the moral and political importance of human rights in general? This article investigates conceptually how we should see the relationship between human rights and long-term global ecological challenges. We will discuss how a human rights approach to questions of sustainability would be different from other approaches and what would be required to see those ecological challenges as human rights questions. We will discuss the possibilities for conceptualizing the relationship between human rights and sustainability. And we will briefly draw some conclusions in terms of topics for further debate.

Dit stuk bespreekt de ‘vluchtelingencrisis’ in het licht van het concept ‘menselijke waardigheid’ – het basisprincipe van het mensenrechtenregime. Mensen ‘verkrijgen’ waardigheid niet pas als ze op Europese grond zijn. Maar als dat zo is, hebben wij ook verdergaande verplichtingen jegens mensen buiten Europa die ons politieke handelen zouden moeten leiden.

This chapter discusses the foundations of a future-oriented rights-based approach. It sketches some questions regarding the political dimension of the topic. The chapter also discusses the ethical significance of risk and uncertainty, and outlines how those questions are related to issues of more general cultural and philosophical significance. Respect for the basic rights of people requires likewise that we ensure that future people are able to live an autonomous life and that current people are able to decide themselves about basic aspects of their life. Hence, there is a duty to implement democratic institutions worldwide for future generations to inherit. The chapter concludes with some methodological issues regarding the appropriate form of an ethical debate, and attempts to outline what an appropriate attitude towards an 'ethics of the future' might be. It is impossible to do justice to the problem without discussing quite fundamental questions of our understanding of politics, history and the place of human beings in the world.

This chapter investigates how human dignity might be understood as a normative concept for the regulation of technologies. First, various distinctions that are relevant for the way human dignity can be understood are discussed. It is argued that it is particularly important that we should see human dignity as a concept that ascribes a specific status that forms the basis of the human rights regimes. Second, the author’s own approach, inspired by Kant and Gewirth, is presented, it being proposed that we should see the concrete content of human dignity as the protection of the authority of human beings to govern their own lives. Third, various consequences for the evaluation of technologies are discussed. In a context of major global and ecological challenges, together with the replacement of human action by automation, the role of human dignity becomes one of guiding the development of a technology-responsive human rights regime.

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Human beings orient themselves in the world via judgments; factual, moral, prudential, aesthetic, and all kinds of mixed judgments. Particularly for normative orientation in complex and contested contexts of action, it can be challenging to form judgments. This paper explores what one can reasonably expect from a theory of the power of judgment from a Kantian approach to ethics. We reconstruct practical (prudential and moral) judgments on basis of the self-reflexive capacities of human beings, and argue that for the subject to see himself as committed to prudential goods it is necessarily implied that he understands himself as committed to moral judgment. However, to understand the normativity of understanding oneself as a being with practical commitments at all, the aesthetic judgment is introduced: the power of judgment in its pure form of selfreflexivity. We claim that aesthetic reflection and judgment is conditional on the possibility for human beings to enter the space of reasons, and therewith for practical self-understanding as such. The paper concludes with a preliminary sketch of different conceptual possibilities in fleshing out the role of the power of judgment in its aesthetic employment in developing mixed judgments.

The recent student and staff protests in Amsterdam and at other Dutch universities have brought to light fundamental disagreements about the future of the Dutch university. Many students and staff members of Dutch universities have argued that the level of democratic decisionmaking about central policy issues in universities should be increased. But what can democracy mean in the context of the contemporary university system? In this contribution we will first briefly sketch the public role of the university. Then we will put forward our main claim, that the Dutch university currently suffers from a triple democratic deficit: in the relation between society and the university, in the relation between university administration and the academic community, and in the relation between the academic community and society. We can only make progress by considering these three problems of democratic legitimation in their mutual relations.

The ethical discussion around PGD opened a discussion about the use of human embryos and foetuses in the context of abortion and genetic diagnosis. The first point of discussion is the moral status of human embryos and foetuses. The article argues for a moral protection of the human embryo as a potential person. But at the same time is the moral status of the embryo a different one than the moral protection we owe against persons. But the ethical discussion is not only concerned with the question of the moral status. It is as well relevant which moral goods are part of the moral evaluation. While in the question round abortion the right and interests of the pregnant woman are in conflict with the protection of the embryo the situation is different in the case of PGD where the embryo is created in order to control his genetic design. The moral evaluation can insofar not refer to the right of the pregnant woman on her own body but must refer to specific objective characteristics of the embryo in order to legitimate the decision about the selection. For the ethical evaluation that difference is morally from significant importance.

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This paper is written from a perspective that is sympathetic to the basic idea of the capability approach. Our aim is to compare Martha Nussbaum’s capability theory of justice with Alan Gewirth’s moral theory, on two points: the selection and the justification of a list of central capabilities. On both counts, we contend that Nussbaum’s theory suffers from flaws that Gewirth’s theory may help to remedy. First, we argue that her notion of a (dignified) human life cannot fulfill the role of a normative criterion that Nussbaum wants it to play in selecting capabilities for her list. Second, we question whether Nussbaum’s method of justification is adequate, discussing both her earlier self-validating argumentative strategy and her more recent adherence to the device of an overlapping consensus. We conclude that both strategies fail to provide the capabilities theory with the firm foundation it requires. Next, we turn to Gewirth’s normative theory and discuss how it can repair these flaws. We show how his theory starts from a fundamental moral principle according to which all agents have rights to the protection of the necessary preconditions of their agency. Gewirth’s justification of this principle is then presented, using a version of a transcendental argument. Finally, we explicitly compare Nussbaum and Gewirth and briefly demonstrate what it would mean for Nussbaum to incorporate Gewirthian elements into her capabilities theory of justice.

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