Moral Theory

ABSTRACT
The thought that considers philosophy and culture as two alternative
poles assumes a universal morality which is independent
from cultural differences. This paper investigates applicability of
moral theories disregarding cultural issues and ‘universal’ principles.
Social sciences may help investigating the compatibility
between theoretical approaches and cultural facts. The concept
of autonomy may be a contentious issue between cultures and
this may affect applicability of an approach. An investigation of
the perspective of Turkey may provide information as an example
of cultural setting. Applicability of a theoretical framework depends
on an interpretation which takes into consideration the
cultural conditions. One universal standard will be far from being
applicable.
Keywords: Cross-cultural ethics, moral theories, moral principles,
social sciences, Turkey
ÖZ
Kültür ve felsefeyi iki alternatif kutup olarak değerlendiren görüş,
kültürel farklılıklardan bağımsız evrensel bir ahlakın varlığını
kabul eder. Bu çalışma kültürel konuları göz ardı eden ahlak teorilerinin
ve “evrensel” prensiplerin uygulanabilirliğini sorgulamaktadır.
Sosyal bilimler, teorik yaklaşımlarla kültürel gerçekler
arasındaki uyumluluğu soruşturmaya yardım edebilir. Özerklik
kavramı kültürler arasında ihtilaflı bir konudur ve bu konu ortak
bir etik yaklaşımın uygulanabilirliğini etkileyebilir. Türkiye perspektifinin
incelenmesi, bir kültürel ortam örneği olarak bilgi verebilir.
Teorik bir çerçevenin uygulanabilirliği kültürel şartları göz
önüne alan bir yoruma bağlıdır. Tek bir “evrensel” standart uygulanabilirlikten
uzak olacaktır.
Anahtar kelimeler: Kültürlerarası etik, ahlak teorileri, ahlak prensipleri,
sosyal bilimler, Türkiye

This is chapter 11 of “A Buddha Land in This World” (Punctum, 2022). It proposes a coherentist approach to epistemic justification applied to ethics. In other words, it argues that we are justified to accept moral beliefs (as true) if those beliefs are shared by virtually everyone. It is argued that nearly everyone agrees that the right (or wrong) X are the X that have the right (or wrong) kind of expected consequences, which raises three questions: (1) What kinds of things are X? (2) What exactly are expected consequences? (3) What are the right or wrong expected consequences. (Answering these questions is the aim of chapters 14, 12, and 13, respectively.)
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949

Contribution to a work on Aurel Kolnai's The War Against the West edited by Wolfgang Bialas. Also published in German as Der Krieg gegen den Westen und Kolnais moralische und politische Theorie nach dem Krieg. I discuss the connections between the moral-theoretical and moral psychological themes of WATW and the papers he published in later years as a member of the philosophy departments of Laval University and Bedford College, London.

Moral relativism is an attractive position, but also one that it is difficult to formulate. In this paper, we propose an alternative way of formulating moral relativ-ism that locates the relativity of morality in the property that makes moral claims true. Such an approach, we believe, has significant advantages over other possible ways of formulating moral relativism. We conclude by considering a few problems such a position might face. Moral relativism is an attractive position, but also one that it is difficult to formulate. In this paper, we propose an alternative way of formulating moral relativism that locates the relativity of morality in the property that makes moral claims true. Such an approach, we believe, has significant advantages over other possible ways of formulating moral relativism. We conclude by considering a few problems such a position might face. 1

INTRODUCTION 551 I. THREE STAGES IN DWORKIN’S THEORY OF INTERPRETATION 553 A. Hard Cases: Fit and Justification 553 B. Law’s Empire: Law as Integrity 554 C. Justice for Hedgehogs: The Unity of Interpretation 557 II. WHAT IS INTERPRETATION? 558 A. The Structure of Dworkin’s Theory 558 B. Is the Unity-of-Interpretation Thesis True? 560 III. THE PATH NOT TAKEN: THE INTERPRETATION-CONSTRUCTION DISTINCTION 567 A. Alternative Dworkin 567 B. The Interpretation-Construction Distinction 568 C. Interpretation: An Account of Semantic Availability 569 D. Construction: Alternative Dworkinian Accounts 572 CONCLUSION: FROM CONSTRUCTIVE INTERPRETATION TO CONSTRUCTIVISM 577

In this paper I explain some of the negative reasons for being an ethical anti-theorist that arise from the problematic nature of the systematising theorist's enterprise. About any version of systematic moral theory, I ask three questions: "What counts as success?", "Who is it about?", and "Who is it for?" I take these questions in order. The third will require more discussion than the first two.

Much of the scholarly attention on commitments in international relations(IR) has remained narrowly framed, focusing on how states and other actors make strictly
strategic calculations to comply with international norms and/or treaties. The trouble with this rationalist approach is that it oversimplifies the moral basis of commitments. This
article offers a deeper analysis of this moral basis as well as the positive ethical values that help to direct and shape the content of the moral commitments of agents in IR. The article
argues that the ethical values of sincerity, empathy and sacrifice play a dynamic yet understudied
meta-level role in helping one to interpret and explain the transformative dimensions of moral commitments in IR. The article first develops a meta-level theoretical approach to commitment in international theory and then applies this approach to two particular emergent discourses in international politics: the responsibility to protect and
moral criminal accountability.

Moral evaluations occur quickly following heuristic-like intuitive processes without effortful deliberation. There are several competing explanations for this. The ADC-model predicts that moral judgment consists in concurrent evaluations of three different intuitive components: the character of a person (Agent-component, A); their actions (Deed-component, D); and the consequences brought about in the situation (Consequences-component, C). Thereby, it explains the intuitive appeal of precepts from three dominant moral theories (virtue ethics, deontology, and consequentialism), and flexible yet stable nature of moral judgment. Insistence on single-component explanations has led to many centuries of debate as to which moral precepts and theories best describe (or should guide) moral evaluation. This study consists of two large-scale experiments and provides a first empirical investigation of predictions yielded by the ADC model. We use vignettes describing different moral situations in...

La noción de desobediencia civil en Rawls sigue gozando de una buena salud, sobre todo en las democracias liberales, por lo que su estudio y análisis cobra especial importancia cuando la insertamos en un contexto de avanzada digitalización y de crisis sanitaria mundial.

Moral subjectivism is commonly associated with out-of-favour theories like, e.g., Alfred Ayer’s emotivism or John Mackie’s error theory. This paper approaches the field against the background of the attitudinal character of morality and religion. The possibility of a brand of moral subjectivism is established which is common to Ayer’s and Mackie’s theories in name only but seems to have considerable merits. The perspec- tive from action theory and the philosophy of mind suggests that the problem of moral obligation, central to moral philosophy, is more convincingly dealt with by subjectivism than by its rivals: In contrast to realism or even relativism (with which subjectivism often gets confused), subjectivism can help to explain the peculiarities of obligation without forcing us to disregard the parallel problem in the field of religion. This finding calls into question the rationale for, as well as the success of, central assumptions in ontology and semantics which the realist so freely hands out in order to make his point: If religious facts and the truth-aptness of religious judgements will not explain religious obligation, moral facts and the truth-aptness of moral judgements will not help the moral realist either. So, unless we do not wish to simply cast the problem of moral obligation aside, in future, moral subjectivism must be seriously considered as a worthwhile position in its own right.

My session discusses the concept, experiences, and advantages of a model developed and used from 2010-2011 at Fayetteville State University, partnering philosophers (subject matter experts) and business educators, with the goal of demonstrably improving student learning in business programs.

The original purpose of EBEP was to assist the School or Business and Economics in improving their Case Task and Rubric used to assess student learning in Ethical Theories and Application for their specialized AACSB Accreditation.

Qualified and committed philosophy professors cross disciplinary divides to “teach the teachers of the students,” assisting Business faculty in developing higher levels of competence and confidence in teaching Ethics content, with developing and distinguishing assessments of student learning in Ethics (knowledge, application, and moral development), improving pedagogy, reviewing and developing resources.

An institution adopting this model infuses Ethics into the curriculum, fosters interdisciplinary collaboration, and incurs no additional costs. Wider implications for various other disciplines will be discussed,because similar interdepartmental and interdisciplinary collaboration can -- and arguably, should -- be carried out between subject matter experts in core skill areas and practitioners/educators in other disciplines

This is chapter 13 of “A Buddha Land in This World” (Punctum, 2022). It argues that there is no universal, intrinsic good, but that there are two universal, intrinsic evils: death and suffering.
The complete book is available here: https://www.academia.edu/76418949

Some contributions to the current literature on conscience objection in healthcare posit the notion that the requirement to refer patients to a non-objecting provider is a morally questionable undertaking in need of explanation. The issue is that providing a referral renders those who conscientiously object to being involved in a particular intervention complicit in its provision. This essay seeks to engage with such claims and argues that referrals can be construed in terms of what Harman calls morally permissible moral mistakes. I go on to suggest that one might frame the (in)actions of those who exercise the right of non-participation generated by the claim to conscientiously object in similar terms; they can also be considered morally permissible moral mistakes. Finally, and given that the arguments already advanced involve simultaneously looking at the same issue from competing ethical perspectives, I offer some brief remarks that support viewing conscientious objection as an ethicopolitical device.

It is commonly supposed that, in opposition to Hume's moral sentimentalism, Thomas Reid defends a version of moral realism. This paper argues that Reid's texts do not bear out this contention, and that Reid's moral philosophy is more satisfactorily interpreted as an interesting version of rationalism.

Over the past few decades-with the emergence of disciplines such as cognitive psychology and neuroscience-and with the development of digital technologies which stress both computational and affective issues (Berthoz, Massumi, Blackman, Angerer, Braidotti), philosophy has had to wonder anew about the emotions: are they on the side of 'potentia', of the subjective active strength or on the side of the passivity that risk to be manipulated by 'potestas'? It is still possible to think such distinction or, rather, the emotions in digital are a plot of both? The ethical issue in digital technology is about the autonomy of the subject, its awareness, and the productivity of passions in organized socially interactions and in what I call 'digital governmentality'. The research on the transformation of contemporary subjectivity in the human-digital technology interaction has been developed in recent years by many scholars who produced different theoretical outcomes. One can recognize two 'maxi' critical approaches: the 'computational' one, aimed at the analysis of algorithms and data network, which produces manipu-lable and controllable information about subjects (It can be also recalled the philosophical approach to the 'ontology in artificial intelligence'), and the 'psychic' one, which stresses the problem of subjects' awareness of their connection and involvement (that is cognitive and affective-also 'productive') with technology. The two conceptual frames, however, have numerous points of contact and indefinite boundaries, so it is helpful to recognize the proposed scheme only for a first orientation on the debate about the 'technological subjectivity'. Philosophical concepts are extremely useful, but sometimes seem lacking in some articles and books a

(This is a draft of chapter 5 of the forthcoming book, "Inhuman Acts: What Happens When Deeds Are Divorced from Doers." I am grateful to the Catholic University of America Press for permission to share this draft. Please do not cite it in academic work, but await the forthcoming book.) Abstract: When we eliminate knowledge and will as criteria for judging acts, I argue that we are left with only the objective outcomes of acts as criteria, something Judith Thomson’s own examples (and those of others) make clear. However, the implications of this fact, when it is consistently applied to the real world rather than artificial scenarios, show that objective theorizing is unworkable. After arguing against this possibility, I consider and reject two objections to my critique. In addition, one of the reasons outcomes cannot provide moral criteria for permissibility is that achieving objectivity in the real world requires observation, which is impossible in the case of “future facts,” and thus “objective” scenarios, an important basis of much of "objective" moral theory, cannot, in principle, provide moral lessons for our world.

Do we really need to posit a deep structure in the brain to explain the phenomenon of language formation, a structure which amounts to nothing less than a brain-based metalanguage which all natural languages are dependent on to actually do the job languages must do?

Frege and Russell made language central to philosophy in the twentieth century and Ludwig Wittgenstein made ordinary language the core of our interest.  In the 1950s, Noam Chomsky came on the scene with a radical new take that partook of old ideas. Picking up from 17th and 18th century thinkers, particularly the rationalist tradition but also the early empiricists, Chomsky argued that language was too complex to occur naturally, that it could not possibly be merely learned by us as children. Rather, he posited, there must be a deep, inherent set of rules encoded in our brains by evolution, rules which enable language to grow in us the same way the human embryo grows arms and legs, the infant matures, the child passes through puberty, etc. Language, on his view, has to be inherent or it cannot occur at all. The older empiricist tradition must have gotten this wrong while Kant and his supporters had it right: There must be a structure to experience which arises in the brain itself and which is built in, not learned by trial and error by the organism. In place of a tabula rasa, Chomsky proposed a deep grammatical structure (a system of naturally occurring rules) which is beyond our capacity to access. In this article I explore and take issue with this notion that only an innate deep conceptual structure can explain the occurrence of natural languages in human beings.

The nurse's moral competences in the management of situations which present ethical implications are less investigated in literature than other ethical problems related to clinical nursing. Phenomenology affirms that emotional warmth is the first fundamental attitude as well as the premise of any ethical reasoning. Nevertheless, it is not clear how and when this could be confirmed in situations where the effect of emotions on the nurse's decisional process is undiscovered. To explore the processes through which situations of moral distress are determined for the nurses involved in nursing situations, a phenomenological-hermeneutic analysis of a nurse's report of an experience lived by her as a moral distress situation has been conducted. Nursing emerges as a relational doctrine that requires the nurse to have different degrees of personal involvement, the integration between logical-formal thinking and narrative thinking, the perception of the salience of the given situation also through the interpretation and management of one's own emotions, and the capacity to undergo a process of co-construction of shared meanings that the others might consider adequate for the resolution of her problem. Moral action requires the nurse to think constantly about the important things that are happening in a nursing situation. Commitment towards practical situations is directed to training in order to promote the nurse's reflective ability towards finding salience in nursing situations, but it is also directed to the management of nursing assistance and human resources for the initial impact that this reflexive ability has on patients' and their families' lives and on their need to be heard and assisted. The only case analysed does not allow generalizations. Further research is needed to investigate how feelings generated by emotional acceptance influence ethical decision making and moral distress in nursing situations.

This book is an investigation into the descriptive task of moral philosophy. Nora Hämäläinen explores the challenge of providing rich and accurate pictures of the moral conditions, values, virtues, and norms under which people live and have lived, along with relevant knowledge about the human animal and human nature. While modern moral philosophy has focused its energies on normative and metaethical theory, the task of describing, uncovering, and inquiring into moral frameworks and moral practices has mainly been left to social scientists and historians.  Nora Hämäläinen argues that this division of labour has detrimental consequences for moral philosophy and that a reorientation toward descriptive work is needed in moral philosophy. She traces resources for a descriptive philosophical ethics in the work of four prominent philosophers of the twentieth century: John Dewey, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Michel Foucault, and Charles Taylor, while also calling on thinkers inspired by them.

Abstract: The legal realists charged that not only did law not serve substantive justice, it was in fact a sham: a theatrical rationalisation to obscure, justify, and deploy power. However the realists also pointed that this sham justice could be turned around: the same methods that served injustice could be used for radical reform! This article and its accompanying program explores the realists' thesis with a view to looking beyond the law to understand what driving forces actually lead courts to reach their outcomes. As such it addresses the law not within ...

... I argue that the source of the problem lies not in the difficulty of formulating an adequate distributive principle, but instead in the very idea of cre-ating public ... Predicting Genetic Disability retrospective, contemporary, and prospective perspectives on health's disruptions and ...

Frank Jackson, Michael Smith, and Philip Pettit (henceforth the Canberrans, as they once worked together in Canberra in Australia) contend in their 2000 paper that an argument from supervenience deals a fatal blow to shapeless moral particularism (or SMP for short), the view that the moral is shapeless with respect to the natural. A decade has passed since the Canberrans advanced their highly influential supervenience argument. Yet, there has not been any compelling counter-argument against it, as far as I can see. My aim in this paper is to fill in this void and defend SMP against the Canberrans’ supervenience argument. Such being the case, I will firstly re-construct the Canberrans’ supervenience argument in detail and push it as far as it can go. In fact, I will defend it against a number of existing objections respectively from Garfield, Dancy, and McDowell. Next, I will argue, however, that the supervenience argument, despite its initial plausibility, has one major pitfall: it hinges on an overly permissive conception of ‘shape’ such that it does not generate the right kind of moral principles the shapeless moral particularists are concerned to refute. I thus conclude that the seemingly scathing supervenience argument turns out to be toothless against SMP. Although this would not prove SMP to be right, for it might attract criticisms from other fronts, yet, until they come up, SMP, contrary to prevalent (mis)conceptions, remains a live option.