Moral Theory

An other-directed moral judgment is contrasted with a moral evaluation of one's own behavior; it is argued that having a capacity to make self-directed moral judgments is at the core of being within morality, while a lack of disposition on the part of a mature individual to judge others is indicative of the corresponding lack with regard to the self-directed evaluations. Our readiness to evaluate the behaviour of others measures the level of our commitment to a system of morality. Consistent nonjudgementalism subverts the interpersonal nature of moral values and points to a deeper issue – an unwillingness of a nonjudgementalist to apply moral categories to her own choices.

In "Locke, Hume and Moral Theory", Philippa Foot argues that John Locke and David Hume have made the same mistake concerning moral motivation: they believed that there is a dichotomy between knowing what is good and willing what is good. This paper sets out to analyze Foot's argument and provide an explanation to Foot's solution to the akratic problem.

This working paper originates in a seminar with research students of the Lincoln School of Management in Lincoln, England, on the topic of how we can develop competence in systemic research. The seminar was held to guide participants towards reflection on their personal notion of competence, both in research and in professional practice. With the present paper, the author hopes to offer some help to readers who seek orientation in formulating or advancing their dissertation project, or who wish to clarify their notion of professional competence. The author is grateful to the seminar participants for many stimulating discussions, and to the Lincoln School of Management's Centre for Systems Research for repeatedly offering him a Visiting Professorship that proved to be a stimulating and rewarding experience.

In this essay, I ask what the precise relation is between Laudato si’s theology and its claims about our individual and corporate responsibility for the environment and the plight of the poor. To do so, I first clarify the relationship between the theological claims and its account of moral norms, situating the text within the history of western ethical theory. I then turn to reconstruct the submerged theology of the encyclical, focusing on Pope Francis’s accounts of the techno-economic paradigm and the possibility of an “integral ecology” paradigm. I end by assessing the text in terms of the coherence and plausibility of its argument as an ethical and theological statement.


KEYWORDS: techno-economic paradigm, integral ecology, Laudato si’, moral theory, Catholic Social Thought, Catholic Social Teaching

If morality is a socially legitimate system of normative principles and rules for the positive regulation of human behavior, it is reasonable to recognize a very important difference between morality and moralism. Let's take "moralism" as a peculiar stance that leads people to falsely take their preferred system of duties as legitimate. This being so, an obvious conclusion is that moralism is dangerous, since it promotes behavior under the pretext of doing what is right and just beyond the rules that legitimately guide liberty and justice. Here I will argue for the distinction between morality and moralism in two parts. In the first, I will argue for the moral epistemological view that people can have true moral beliefs, including moral beliefs regarding duties. I will sustain a realist view on the matter against nihilism. After this metaethical preliminary, I will present an (albeit incomplete) argument on the moral distinction between morality and moralism. If we take moralism as the view that every action is either fulfillment or violation of a duty, the conclusion is that there is no modal difference between duties and privileges (or permissions). One consequence, then, is absolutism, that is the complete conflation between all moralistic duties and all other requirements to action we may consider reasonable. Following Judith Thomson, I will suggest that we should distinguish duties from "practical oughts". Other consequences are outside the scope and space of this paper, but it is pretty clear that we should prefer a stricter view on duties (coincident with the requirements of justice and positive law) and take "moralism" as a label for an equivocal and prejudicial view about our commitments and moral (not only reasonable) requirements to action.

Moral particularism is often conceived as the view that there are no moral principles.
However, its most fêted accounts focus almost exclusively on rules regarding actions
and their features. Such action-centred particularism, I argue, is compatible with
generalism at the level of character traits. The resulting view is a form of particularist
virtue ethics. This endorses directives of the form ‘be X’ but rejects any implication
that the relevant x-ness must therefore always count in favour of an action.

An other-directed moral judgement is contrasted with a moral evaluation of one's own behavior; it is argued that having a capacity to make self-directed moral judgments is at the core of being within morality, while a lack of disposition on the part of a mature individual to judge others is indicative of the corresponding lack with regard to the self-directed evaluations. Our readiness to evaluate the behaviour of others measures the level of our commitment to a system of morality. Consistent nonjudgementalism subverts the interpersonal nature of moral values and points to a deeper issue – an unwillingness of a nonjudgementalist to apply moral categories to her own choices.

Examines various arguments about whether and under what circumstances political violence can be justified and how they can be employed in thinking ethically about violence. It begins by looking at arguments about the justifiability of violence that draw on major ethical theories such as deontology, utilitarianism and consequentialism. It then discusses more specific considerations and arguments concerning obligations to obey the law, the relationship between violence and reason, and between violence and democracy, and whether our duties and obligations regarding the use of violence are universal in scope or are limited by national, religious, community and class affiliation. Finally, it makes some novel suggestions about the overall purpose and conduct of discussions about the justifiability of violence in political theory and philosophy.

Derek Parfit originally formulated the Repugnant Conclusion as follows: " For any possible population of at least ten billion people, all with a very high quality of life, there must be some much larger imaginable population whose existence, if other things are equal, would be better even though its members have lives that are barely worth living " (1984: 388). The blocks in Figure 1 represent two populations, A and Z. The width of each block shows the number of people in the corresponding population, the height shows their lifetime quality of life. All the people in Figure 1 enjoy positive welfare or, as we also could put it, have lives worth living (see well-being). People's welfare is much lower in Z than in A, but since there are many more people in Z, there is a greater quantity of welfare in Z as compared to A. Consequently, although the people in A lead very good lives and the people in Z have lives only barely worth living, Z is nevertheless better than A according to, for example, classical Utilitarianism (see utilitarianism). The Repugnant Conclusion highlights a problem in an area of ethics which has become known as population ethics. The last decades have witnessed an increasing philosophical interest in questions such as " Is it possible to make the world a better place by creating more people? " and " Is there a moral obligation to have children? " The main problem is to find an adequate theory about the moral value of states of affairs where the number of people, their welfare, and their identities may vary. Since, arguably, any reasonable moral theory has to take such aspects of possible states of affairs into account when determining the normative status of actions, the study of population ethics is of general import for moral theory (see also intergenerational ethics; population; potential persons). As the name indicates, Parfit finds the Repugnant Conclusion unacceptable, and most philosophers seem to agree. It has been surprisingly difficult, however, to find a theory that avoids it without implying other counterintuitive conclusions. Thus,

Emerging South Asian diasporic writers writing in English from Pakistan of the last half of the twentieth century are now regarded as pioneers of Pakistani Diaspora of English fiction. This Diaspora can be roughly divided into the pre and post 9/11 writers. English fiction by the writers prior to the beginning of this century had a dominant post-colonial perspective; an example of which can be seen in the writings of Bapsi Sidhwa, Hanif Kureishi, Sara Suleri and Nadeem Aslam’s earlier works, to name a few. The second generation of Post 9/11 writings comprises works of those writers who have written their works mostly in the new century. Their writings reflect a poignant bend in the post-colonial perspective. Homi K. Bhabha terms this appropriation of post-colonial view as “hybridity [which he defines] as new, neither the one nor the other [, something which is] struggling to free itself from a past ancestry, and which values the ‘pure’ over its threatening opposite, the ‘composite’. It replaces a temporal linearity with a spacial plurality” (Ashcroft B. G., 1989). It is this standpoint of post-colonial theory, the “spacial plurality” (Ashcroft B. G., 1989) that this paper explores, with regards to post 9/11 Pakistani diasporic diasporic novel; delimiting it to the first decade of this present millennium. Linking the concept of spacial plurality with the informed discursivity regarding the power structures of Foucaultean new historicism, this paper explores diasporic voices of Pakistani fiction written in English in the ever increasing milieu of post 9/11 novel. It inquires into the ways in which the effects of 9/11 have penetrated the writings of Pakistani writers of English fiction. This exploratory paper studies the significance of such works of post 9/11 Pakistani fictional writers as Mohsin Hamid, H. M. Naqvi, Kamila Shamsie and Ali Sethi and premises that these writers, in a very subtle way, are redefining South Asian Literature.
Keywords: South Asian fiction, Post 9/11 Diasporic novel, Hybridity, New Historicism,        Post-Colonial writings

This treatise deals with popular heroic archetypes. It differs from previous research, because by exploring narrative structures of (anti)heroic fiction, it shows that essential parallels exist in transgressive heroic myths in Japan and the West. This is important since in recent decades we register general decline of moral perfectionism in contemporary popular fiction at the expense of morally ambiguous but charismatic “transgressive heroes”. These characters are honorable and “culturally permitted” despite their antisocial inclinations, extralegal violence, or motivation by vendetta (e.g. Robin Hood versus Nezumi Kōzō, or Al Pacino in Godfather versus Kitano Takeshi in Brother). Various culture-specific heroic archetypes are analyzed (cowboy, samurai, yakuza, gangster, social bandit, a military hero) as they appear in popular mainstream narratives (predominantly film) of Japan, United States and Europe. I offer an interdisciplinary methodological framework. While scrutinizing the production/consumption patterns of transgressive heroes and their narratives, I conflate Japanese philology, media studies, and semiotics of film. Furthermore, this research represents a significant departure from the perspective of Friedrich Nietzsche (the dichotomy of Dionysian versus Apollonian ideal of conduct, and the notion of overman) in order to illuminate the fascination by heroes that are located beyond the conventional categories of good and evil. My analysis found that elements of transgression, disorder, and tragic heroism are inculcated into popular narratives in a “hegemonic” manner, i.e. via the transgressive hero. This facilitates social order and relaxes frustrations of everydayness by leaping beyond conventions that usually bind people in society.

KEYWORDS
hero theory, antihero, transgressive fiction, Japanese heroes, Western heroes, good versus evil

Published March 5 2015
http://ukcatalogue.oup.com/product/9780198713227.do

Contents:
Sophie Grace Chappell: Introduction (attached)
1: John Cottingham: Intuition and genealogy
2: James Lenman: Scepticism about Intuition
3: Mike Ridge and Sean McKeever: Obvious intuitions
4: Alan Thomas: Should generalism be our regulative ideal?
5: Sergio Tenenbaum: Moral faith and moral reason
6: Sarah McGrath: Forgetting the difference between right and wrong
7: Catherine Rowett: Factual mistakes, epistemological virtues and moral errors: a study in Augustine's Confessions
8: Tim Mulgan: Theory and intuition in a broken world
9:  Sophie Grace Chappell: Moral certainties
10: Simon Kirchin: Self-evidence, theory, and anti-theory
11: Edward Harcourt: Literature, moral education, and moral philosophy
Index

Democracy and civil rights are distorted and polarizing ideas that pit the rich against the poor, and should be abandoned in favor of an emphasis on the common good. To reach that conclusion I argue the US Constitution is and has always been designed to protect the wealth of the ruling class. All political associations or states have this as a central idea.

My argument rests on a unique jurisprudential principle, the Unity Thesis. The main school of legal theory, positivism (the science of law) is based on the idea law is always separate from morals. I argue the opposite, that law cannot be understood apart from the moral. There are fundamental legal things, such as consent, iustum bellum and the state, that have persisted since classical times in our legal regimes. However, the Enlightenment acted to refract those legal things into scientific parts and moral parts. All positivist (or scientific) legal concepts, such as the Enlightenment idea of a constitution, have to be reunited with their moral part(s) in order to be properly understood. The unified legal thing out of which constitutionalism emerged is the state, and it was refracted into the Hobbesian/Lockean individual, social contract theory, inalienable rights, implicit consent, popular sovereignty, slavery, the constitution, limited suffrage, the electoral college, and oligarchic control. The moral part of the US Constitution is democracy and civil rights; the legal part oligarchy. If we merge the various meanings back into the idea of the state (as a legal thing), then we see democracy/rights continue to enable civil discord by unbalanced focus on the Hobbesian individual, and that instead we should focus on the common good.

In the course of exploring some other implications of the Unity Thesis, I explain the origin or necessity for the development of ideology/critique. Once things were reduced by science into parts we lost sight of the wholes, but since it is natural to understand things as wholes we compensate. We recognize there is something false (ideology, the mask of the whole), but since wholes have been rendered invisible we explain only what we can see as dialectic, clothing it in disapproval (critique) but prohibited by naturalism from regaining the unity.

A moral theory T is esoteric if and only if T is true but there are some individuals who, by the lights of T itself, ought not embrace T, where to embrace T is to believe T and rely upon it in practical deliberation. Some philosophers hold that esotericism is a strong, perhaps even decisive, reason, to reject a moral theory. However, proponents of this objection have often supposed its force is obvious and have said little to articulate it. Here I canvass a number of construals of this objection to determine if any of these have force against esoteric consequentialism, the theory most often defended in an esoteric guise. I find a number of construals inadequate: that esoteric theories are conceptually incoherent; that they endorse immorality; that esoteric theories are unfair in subjecting agents to requirements of which they are not aware; that they fail to guide action; and that such theories violate evidential standards for the ethics of belief. Finally, I offer the best version of this objection, namely, that, in light of the strongly first-personal epistemology of benefit and burden, esoteric theories fail to justify the allocation of benefits and burdens to which moral agents would be subject under their theories. Because of the holistic nature of moral theory justification, this conclusion in turn implies that the entirety of a moral theory must be open to public scrutiny in order for the theory to be justified. I conclude by answering four objections to my account of the esotericism objection.

This chapter compares the general form and state of moral philosophy during the first half of the twentieth century (§1) to how it stands today (§3). These two overviews serve as the bread of a GEMA-filled sandwich. In §2 I accordingly consider Anscombe's criticisms of 'modern moral philosophy' from Sidgwick to Ross. Anyone in sympathy with the general line of her criticisms, I argue, must concede that the state of moral philosophy was in far better shape in the decades before she wrote her seminal 1958 paper than it has been ever since. Ironically, contemporary moral philosophy has become what it is partly due to Anscombe's own unintended role in influencing (i) the formation of 'virtue theory' as yet another position within normative ethics, and (ii) the fashioning of 'moral psychology' as an altogether distinct-and increasingly empirical-branch of moral philosophy.

This chapter deals with psychological egoism, act ethical egoism, moral self/other asymmetry and the prerogative to give one’s own good less weight than the good of others when one is deciding what to do, rule ethical egoism, rational egoism, agent-relative partiality, agent-neutral partiality, degrees of permissible partiality, impartiality in the application of rules, Bernard Gert’s account of impartial treatment, and agent-neutral impartiality in the justification of rules, including utilitarian, Golden Rule, and contractualist forms of impartial justification. The chapter closes by outlining the reasons that utilitarian and contractualist foundational impartiality might allow and even require forms of agent-relative partiality in day-to-day decision making.

My aim in this article is programmatic. I argue that understanding perceptual experience on the model of perceptual affordances allows us to acknowledge the centrality of embodiment to moral phenomenology, on the one hand, and to see more transparently the place of the emotions in the moral life, on the other. I suggest some means by which moral perception, construed as the perception of moral affordances, might be cultivated.

During my forty-five years of research, I have published 55 volumes of varying scope in the fields of social theory, legal theory, moral theory, and political science, and this magnum opus is a synthesis of those ideas. On a broad philosophical level, I follow primarily the ontological foundations of Nicolai Hartmann, while in the field of social theory I have integrated primarily the starting points of Niklas Luhmann and Pierre Bourdieu, which I have tried to flesh out through Neogramscian research on global power structures. I have also used this theoretical foundation in my analysis of law and politics, where, in addition to Luhmann, I have drawn on the major works of Rudolf von Jhering and, more recently, the analyses of Karl Larenz, Josef Esser, and the American Richard Posner as foundations of legal theory.

Daniel Defoe’s narratives have been discussed in a variety of ways. Walter Allen called Moll Flanders (1722)
“a sociological novel dealing with the making of a criminal” (Watt 1993, 42). Ian Watt, on the other hand, calls it “a
characteristic product of modern individualism in assuming that she owes it to herself to achieve the highest social and
economic rewards” (Watt 94). Elsewhere, he categorizes her as an “economic individual” (Watt 1993, 94). She is also
discussed as a “social climber” (Gonzalez 2002, 169) and as an embodiment of “the explosion in the literary
representation of criminals during the early eighteenth century, and particularly during the 1720s” (Gonzalez 2002,
167). Moll Flanders has also been discussed as a character pursuing untrodden lands of the newly discovered America
(Vania 1998). The connotations of the word Moll have also been explored in some studies. This study assimilates the
peculiarities of narration as sought and experimented by Defoe through the single character of Moll Flanders. As a
result, in the genre of 18th century fiction, it adds an impetus to criticism provided on this genre by one of the pioneering
books, Rise of the Novel (1957) by Ian Watt. The following study is not only an endeavor to explore Ian Watt’s critique,
but it also explores the peculiarities and distinct features regarding this novel’s polyphonic aspects. The genre of novel
was at its infancy in the beginning of the eighteenth century and this study brings out the polyphony in the narrative as
expressed by Defoe. It further probes as to where this narrative leads, especially for the reader or the receiver; what
inferences are to be drawn from it in the contemporary world; how to recapitulate the course of one’s life; and whether
to capitulate or not the precious jewels of our lives. It also analyzes different choices one has to make and explores the
reasons why it is a terrible thing to live in fear. This study, therefore, traces the polyphonic or dialogical text and
discusses the final contemplation as to whether it was societal pressures or inner demons of the character of Moll
Flanders that surged in the peculiar narrative.

I defend a theory of the way in which death is a harm to the person who dies that (i) fits into a larger, unified account of harm (so that death is not a special kind of harm but is harmful in the same way that any harmful event is harmful); and (ii) includes an account of the time of death’s harmfulness, one that avoids the implications that death is a timeless harm and that people have levels of welfare at times at which they do not exist.

Anselm’s understanding of God has several important features.  First, God is the unity of attributes which we grasp and understand partially but not entirely, and about which we can come to a more adequate understanding through right use of our reason.  Second, some of those attributes, e.g. goodness, justice, are ones we typically think of as moral attributes.  Third, the ultimate standards, origins, and even full intelligibility of morality reside in the triune God, and one handle Anselm’s work offers for our understanding this is the polysemic, complex, and reflexive notion of rectitudo.  By better understanding rectitudo we in fact better understand God.

But, “understanding rectitudo” can be regarded in several ways.  An inadequate way of understanding it would simply produce some theory or formula without following its implications out further, and without connecting it with actual concrete moral life.  Anselm’s works provide both a framework and some content for more adequate understanding of rectitudo. Specifically, his works allow understanding what it means for a given human being to concretely will (including to act, think, speak, and feel) rightly, as they should, in determinate situations. I highlight three particularly relevant features of Anselm’s thought: will as determinate affectiones; the interplay between grace and the will; the mediateness of our knowledge and relation to God through moral life.

Philosophy courses are now regularly under fire from educators, administrators, politicians, and financially overextended students and parents demanding shorter and more economically fruitful college degree programs in a climate of economic austerity. Yet, perhaps in the face of a number of high-profile ethical violations in the business and professional world, many of these groups have been calling for more, and more effective, pre- and professional ethics education. This paradoxical call for more ethics and less philosophy is finding unlikely support from a number of academic philosophers who argue that traditional forms of ethics education, which emphasize reflection on abstract normative theories and principles, ought to be replaced with more practical ethics courses that emphasize real-world moral training and which focus on shaping character and behavioral dispositions. I examine this trend toward practical ethics education and argue that it wrongly decouples rationality and moral motivation, threatens to erode a crucial distinction between ethics and policy, and contributes to widespread misunderstanding of the nature of ethics.

My previous paper argued for the logical superiority of agnosticism without negating the logical validity of theism and atheism. This conclusion led to the point that theistic religions, though valid, aren't necessary. This conclusion in turn raises a crucial question: if we don't believe in God and theistic religion, then what will be the basis of our morality? Where do we get the sense of right and wrong from? Since ages, theistic religions like Christianity and Islam have been the source and guardian of what is right and what is wrong. The followers of these and other such religions have this deeply rooted concept of sin and virtue, a religion based sense of morality that whatever is forbidden by religion is wrong and whatever is encouraged is virtuous (when I use the word 'religion' in this paper, I mean theistic religion(s), not non-theistic religions like Jainism and Buddhism). So if religion goes out of this role, what replaces it? This paper would present the 'Platinum Rule of Ethics' (PRE) as an answer to this question, discuss its scope, lay down its benefits, and then respond to various objections that could be raised against it. We'll also look at the potentially problematic areas which could pose a challenge to the PRE, before we summarize and conclude.

The DIY-CRISPR kit was introduced in 2016 by The ODIN company. This kit which includes materials and instructions required to make specific alterations to the bacterial genome at home is a product of the Do-It-Yourself biology movement. The DIYbio movement is a worldwide phenomenon in which amateurs, students, hobbyists, scientists, artists and designers are engaged in activities relating to biology and biological materials outside of scientific institutions. By addressing the question: Can DIY-CRISPR kit enrich the ethical deliberation and evaluation of CRISPR technology by stimulating imagination? If so how? in this thesis, I discern the value of the kit within the context of CRISPR related participatory technology assessments. Clustered regularly interspaced short palindromic repeats(CRISPR), referred to as CRISPR-Cas9, is a genome-editing tool that has been gaining the attention of scientists and ethicists around the globe over the past few years as it allows making site-specific modifications to genomes of organisms in a precise and inexpensive manner. Based on an analysis of the ethical concerns raised in relation to the desirability of CRISPR, I argue that the quality of current ethical discussion on CRISPR is poor and less imaginative due to the lack of weight given to soft impacts in comparison to hard impacts. Activities under the DIYbio movement, especially bioart, according to few authors have the potential to evoke imagination and thereby, raise ethical questions that are beyond the usual risk-benefit concerns. Based on the theories in moral philosophy which hold that moral reasoning is imaginative, I formulate a set of questions that act as an evaluative criterion for assessing the imaginative potential of the kit and its use.

This article contends that the language of dissident movements should be analyzed through the lenses of two modes of moral reasoning in order to evaluate the potential success of those movements. These two modes are characterized as the differences between Moralität and Sittlichkeit, Moralität as a type of moral reasoning based in universal principles, Sittlichkeit based in local manners and customs. Both types of reasoning can be observed in most dissident movements, and this article argues that dissident movements will not be successful without a certain balance of both types of moral reasoning infused in the processes of engaging citizens, mobilizing action, justifying strategy, and ensuring representation. This article explores several historical discourses, including anti-communist dissidents in Eastern Europe, Gandhi, and Aung San Suu Kyi. These cases demonstrate both the differences in these two modes of moral reasoning, and the various successful ways they can be used together as discourses of dissent. Conclusions are drawn for the sake of application to global dissident movements more generally.

Abstract. This commentary on Martin Eger's “A Tale of Two Controversies” focuses on three criticisms: first, the shifting status of the claims of creationism in the article; second, new developments in moral philosophy which run counter to Eger's discussion; and third, the inadequate treatment of pedagogical and curricular principles.

The aim of this chapter is to raise for discussion some philosophical and ethical considerations that should be useful for scholars engaged in the bioarchaeology of care. Keeping within this scope, the author discusses the following questions regarding the early development of the field within the last decades: What were the main reactions in the archaeological literature to discussion of past caregiving? What beliefs and values were the first objections to inferences of care based on? Are the beliefs and values informing the recently developed bioarchaeology of care model of analysis sufficiently robust to overcome past criticism? As moral beliefs, goals and values may sometimes be kept buried under the ground of explicit arguments which shape the academic discussion in the field, it is the job of the philosopher both to analyse such arguments and to excavate the presuppositions on which they are founded. From a social perspective, this is of importance, as philosophical and ethical beliefs underlying the work of archaeologists in the field may influence the way they position themselves with regard to the development of new narratives and theoretical models in the bioarchaeology of care.

We cannot have a moral duty and, at the same time and circumstances, also a legal privilege. Nevertheless this conjunction is acceptable to philosophers that believe in the deontological dualism between Morality and Law. But this dualism is untenable, firstly because no one can have duties against themselves, and secondly because we cannot have a claim against other that has a privilege of doing otherwise; after all, people have claims of not being forced to do or not do something, except lawfully. A very different issue concerns the reasons for not doing what we have otherwise a legal duty to do. However, accepting that we sometimes have stronger reasons for disobeying does not imply a deontological dualism. We can have exceptional reasons to refuse legal commands, and we can have also eventual reasons for not accomplishing what is in fact a legal duty. I will call this a sensible legalist approach to reasons for action.