Morality and Rationality

There are many moral perspectives that have been taught and discussed throughout history, each with strong and weak points. My belief is that Immanuel Kant’s perspective of duty-based ethics is the most moral in light of strong ethical leadership.

Kant based his ethical theory on the belief that reason should be used to determine how people ought to act. He did not attempt to prescribe specific actions but instructed that reason should be used to determine how to behave.

The Categorical Imperative is supposed to provide a way for us to evaluate moral actions and to make ml judgments. It is not a command to perform specific actions -- it does not say, respect your elders". As commands or moral laws all persons must follow, regardless of their desires or extenuating circumstances. As morals, these imperatives are binding on everyone and imperatives are simply an ought. If the action is represented as goods in itself and therefore as necessary for a will which it accords with reason then that's a categorical imperative.

This paper focuses on one of the major criticisms made to Aristotle's virtue ethics, namely that it lacks explicit moral action guidance. The same criticism has been addressed to later developments of virtue ethics. There have been several attempts to overcome this objection and to demonstrate that modern theories of virtue ethics do provide principles of right action. In this paper, I discuss mainly two such major attempts: the exemplarist approach and the virtue rules approach. My aim is to examine whether, if applied to Aristotle’s virtue ethics, these two approaches can provide a convincing answer to the criticism that Aristotle’s ethics does not offer explicit moral action guidance .

Pour la plupart d’entre nous, il ne fait aucun doute que la vie humaine, de par sa complexité, peut mener à des dilemmes moraux insolubles (où il est impossible de remplir à la fois deux obligations morales d'égales forces). Du côté des philosophes, il s’en trouve plusieurs pour avancer des arguments en ce sens. Cependant, la question demeure controversée en raison d’apories auxquelles elle donne lieu.  Dans cet ouvrage, je fais valoir qu’aucune aporie ne tient en ce domaine et qu’il n’existe pas de dilemmes moraux insolubles. L’approche que je propose pour apporter une solution aux situations dilemmatiques est originale et déjoue les objections sérieuses qu’on peut soulever en cette matière. En cela, cet ouvrage contribue, je l'espère, à faire avancer le débat sur la question controversée des dilemmes moraux.

Plus précisément, mon approche consiste à faire valoir qu'un dilemme moral se réduit, non pas à une disjonction d'obligations d'égales forces (l'obligation de faire A ou l'obligation de faire B), mais plutôt à une obligation disjonctive (l'obligation de faire A ou de faire B). Autrement dit, ce qui est disjonctif dans un dilemme moral, ce ne sont pas les deux obligations qu'il est impossible de remplir en même temps, mais le contenu d'une seule obligation (l'obligation de faire A ou de faire B), c'est-à-dire les actions à poser (A ou B). D'où la résolution du dilemme moral : il n'y a qu'une seule obligation à remplir : faire A ou faire B. Aucune obligation morale n'est donc laissée de côté.

Ouvrage tiré de ma thèse de doctorat.

In English :
For many of us, there is no doubt that human life can lead to irresolvable moral dilemmas because of its complexity. Among philosophers, that is those who are dealing with ethical, epistemological, phenomenological, conceptual or any other issues, several of them are presenting arguments leaning towards the same conclusion.
However, if they are right, their view leads to a paradox : the irresolvability of moral dilemmas is logically incompatible with two intuitively plausible deontic principles, which are ‘ ought implies can ’ principle and agglomeration principle (where ‘ I ought to do A ’ and ‘ I ought to do B ’ together imply ‘ I ought to do A and B ’).
There seem to be three different ways to avoid this paradox : 1) to deny the irresolvability of moral dilemmas ; 2) to deny the ‘ ought implies can ’ principle ; 3) to deny the agglomeration principle. In other words, establishing the plausibility of both deontic principles would be sufficient in order to deny the irresolvability of moral dilemmas, while establishing the lack of plausibility of any one of these principles would be sufficient in order to uphold the irresolvability of moral dilemmas.
My purpose in this thesis is to stand against the irresolvability of moral dilemmas by arguing that establishing the plausibility of both deontic principles mentioned above is not sufficient to deny this irresolvability. In other words, it is possible to put forward an interpretation of these principles that is not contradictory with the irresolvability of moral dilemmas. In this case, we must go beyond the trilemma aforementioned if we want to deny the irresolvability of moral dilemmas.
In this thesis, I start by arguing in favor of the plausibility of both deontic principles at stake. I put forward an original argument for the ‘ ought implies can ’ principle. As for the agglomeration principle, my view consists in bringing forward the logical compatibility between this principle, the ‘ ought implies can ’ principle and the irresolvability of moral dilemmas.
Secondly I raise objections against arguments in favor of the irresolvability of moral dilemmas, and irrespective of the ‘ ought implies can ’ and agglomeration principles. In order to do so, I use a methodology that differs from the typical argumentation of those who deny the irresolvability of moral dilemmas : on the one hand, I do not resort to a normative theory in particular ; on the other hand, I put aside the most a priori specific to these opponents known as rationalists. As much as possible I will stay close to the premises related to the irresolvability of moral dilemmas’ advocates’ argumentation, many of whom related to moral experiences and contextual data, without leaning towards moral particularism.
Finally I defend that the solution to the puzzles raised by moral dilemmas brings in a disjunctive obligation, an answer already put forward by many philosophers. I analyze this issue by developing an original interpretation of the disjunctive obligation. On the basis of this, I refute several objections to this solution, especially those recently issued and still unanswered.

This article presents Hannah Arendt's novel conception of evil, arguing that what animates and undergirds this conception is an understanding of human agency, of what it means to be a person at all. The banality of evil that Arendt theorizes is exactly the failure to become a person in the first place—it is, in short, the evil of being a nobody. For Arendt, this evil becomes extreme when a mass of such nobodies becomes organized by totalitarianism. This article focuses on the connection between Arendt's understanding of personhood and her conception of evil, showing how Arendt falls into a Kantian tradition of prioritizing apperception— thinking—as central for human agency. In this way, the article shows that thinking—being a person—is central to Arendt's work, thereby prioritizing and making sense of her claim in _The Human Condition_ that one is never “more active” than when thinking.

Hobbes’s political philosophy starts from a number of premises that are supposed to be self-evident, supplemented by various observations from experience. These statements are examined critically and in their interrelatedness in order to find out to what extent Hobbes provides a convincing system of thought. The importance of the basis of man’s actions, his self-interest, is inquired, since it serves as the basis of his practical philosophy. After this, Hobbes’s views on ‘moral’ notions are expounded. As it turns out, Hobbes maintains a number of concepts that have such a connotation, but interprets these in a specific way. The article is concluded with a modest systematic reconstruction of Hobbes’s main thoughts in practical philosophy.

In this article I attempt to overcome extant obstacles in deriving fundamental, objective and logically deduced definitions of personhood and their rights, by introducing an a priori paradigm of beings and morality. I do so by drawing a distinction between entities that are sought as ends and entities that are sought as means to said ends. The former entities, I offer, are the essence of personhood and are considered precious by observers possessing a logical system of valuation. The latter entities - those sought only as a means to an end - I term 'materials.' Materials are sought for their conditional value: Important for achieving sought ends, they are not considered precious in and of themselves. A normative system for how this dichotomy of entities should interact is consequently derived and introduced. This paradigm has applicability for modern humanism and beyond. Assuming societal technological progression whereby human bodies and their surrounding infrastructures continue to evolve and integrate, the distinction between beings and their supporting materials, and a moral code for their interactions, will become ever more relevant.

I argue that eating meat is morally good and our duty when it is part of a practice that has benefited animals. The existence of domesticated animals depends on the practice of eating them, and the meat-eating practice benefits animals of that kind if they have good lives. The argument is not consequentialist but historical, and it does not apply to nondomesticated animals. I refine the argument and consider objections.

The paper explores theories of moral obligation from those of late scholastics such as Francisco Suarez and Gabriel Vasquez to those of Samuel Pufendorf and John Locke.  The theories of Pufendorf and Locke are contrasted.  Although these two theories appear similar, there is a profound difference between them.  In Pufendorf as in a scholastic such as Suarez, practical reason is seen as involving two distinct kinds of justificatory force or modes of justificatory support, recommendation and demand; and moral obligation is identified, not as a reason-giving property of actions, but as one of these justificatory forces, the force of demand, a force that directly binds the will.  Whereas in Locke there is only one justificatory force, that of recommendation; and moral obligation is no more than a reason-giving property, the property of being commanded by a punitive God, among the many that generate this force.  In Locke as in much subsequent English-language philosophy, moral obligation ceases to be a justificatory force that directly binds the will, and comes to be no more than a reason-giving property of the voluntary actions that the will causes and motivates.  The paper expresses doubts about whether this development has been a genuine conceptual advance, and explores the problems it raises.

Dans ce texte, je défends le principe déontique selon lequelle devoir implique pouvoir. Mon argumentation consiste principalement à réfuter les objections et les contre-exemples qu'on lui a apportés. Toutefois, à la fin, je propose un nouvel argument en faveur du principe. Je fais valoir que si on accepte la thèse métanormative selon laquelle il est faux que tout est permis, alors on peut en déduire que devoir implique pouvoir.
Ce texte est une version légèrement remaniée du chapitre 2 de mon ouvrage "Existe-t-il des dilemmes moraux insolubles?", Paris, L'Harmattan, 2011.

Prompted by the thesis that an organism’s umwelt possesses not just a descriptive dimension, but a normative one as well, some have sought to annex semiotics with ethics. Yet the pronouncements made in this vein have consisted mainly in rehearsing accepted moral intuitions, and have failed to concretely further our knowledge of why or how a creature comes to order objects in its environment in accordance with axiological charges of value or disvalue. For want of a more explicit account, theorists writing on the topic have relied almost exclusively on semiotic insights about perception originally designed as part of a sophisticated refutation of idealism. The end result, which has been a form of direct givenness, has thus been far from convincing. In an effort to bring substance to the right-headed suggestion that values are rooted in the biological and conform to species-specific requirements, we present a novel conception that strives to make explicit the elemental structure underlying umwelt normativity. Building and expanding on the seminal work of Ayn Rand in metaethics, we describe values as an intertwined lattice which takes a creature’s own embodied life as its ultimate standard; and endeavour to show how, from this, all subsequent valuations can in principle be determined.

In the second half of this essay, I discuss the Kantian conception of rationality which lies at the heart of the form of rationalist constructivism laid out in its first half. Along the way, I discuss some recent arguments for a version of this view due to Michael Smith and Julia Markovits. I then discuss some of the advantages of the resulting view - focusing on metaphysical, epistemological, and motivational questions.

When one deliberates one has reasons both for and against doing something.  Could the reasons for OBJECTIVELY outweigh the reasons against, in the sense that someone who thought otherwise would simply be wrong?  (This is not the same question as that of whether any of the competing reasons could be objectively valid in itself.)  Three seemingly relevant kinds of ethical theory are examined: virtue ethics, utilitarianism and moral absolutism.  It is suggested that the proponents of these have all so far failed to show that they can give compelling objective reasons for acting on certain reasons rather than others.  We so far lack any conception of what sort of second-order considerations could adjudicate between competing reasons.  This is not so much an ‘error theory’ in J. L. Mackie’s sense as an admission of ignorance.

Do we need God and religion to be moral? This paper supports the claim that we do need God and religion to be moral. The paper discusses Darwinian morality and rational ethical theories and criticizes them as not sufficient, rather lacking and even harmful, to become and remain moral. The paper also discusses why God and religion are needed to be moral and also addresses the issue of violence in the name of God and religion. The paper proposes a policy that God and religion must be taught to the society at various levels to adopt morality and develop individual and social morality. The research has been based on both analytical and statistical studies.

Determinism from the 1 st and 3 rd person perspective as well as the universal point of reference aee dealt with. This is to show the absence of free will in the last perspective and the illusion of it when seen from the first two perspectives. 'Free' choice is dealt with as well as the absence of free will and the consequences of determinism for law and court judgements are explored. So, what if any, is the place and the role of God in all this? Did s/he create determinism and the potential for or any semblance of choice and free will? Or is the existence of God, the fulfilling of prayer intentions and miracles impossible and redundant in a universe of determinism (laws of nature etc) or universal determinism?

In an earlier paper, 'Peter Geach on nonsense, confusion and sin' 1 , I suggested that what one can say in explanation of one's own actions suffers from a severe limitation: one can shed little light on the question why one acted on one's reasons for an action rather than on one's reasons against that action. In this paper I want to explore this suggestion further. One of my tasks will be to distinguish my question from three standard philosophical questions that have tended to overshadow it: the question of freewill and determinism; that of the relation between fact and value; and that of the possibility of weakness of will. On these I shall, on the whole, maintain a studied agnosticism.

There is stock argument against libertarianism: that the indeterminism it postulates makes human choice a matter of chance and this is no better as a basis for practical rationality and moral responsibility than the most rigid determinism.  I suggest that a similar problem arises on deterministic assumptions: although human choice is no longer a matter of mere chance, it remains arbitrary since whatever explains a person’s choice to act on the reasons for an action rather than those against, it is not a matter of reasons that were reasons FOR THAT PERSON.  The explanatory gap is closed in the wrong way for the impression of sheer arbitrariness to be cancelled.  I discuss (via a digression on F. H. Bradley) whether Davidson’s ‘anomalous monism’ would, if correct, necessitate any modification to this conclusion.  I also ask how the problem addressed in this paper relates to Galen Strawson’s rejection of the possibility of complete autonomy or self-determination.

In this address, Leslie Allan shares his early experiences and how they shape his humanist outlook today. He then outlines what he considers to be the three core principles underlying the humanist world view: reason and evidence, compassion and equality, and autonomy and dignity. Allan illustrates the application of these principles with historical and contemporary examples. He then draws upon each of these principles to draw out what it means to live a good life; a life of meaning and purpose.

The capacity to act in accordance with one’s morality (broadly construed) is constitutive of moral agency. This capacity can be undermined—in whole or in part—by for instance, hypnosis, addiction, or obsessive-compulsion. Another way this capacity can be undermined is through poor moral reasoning. Moral irrationality can frustrate one’s capacity to act in accordance with one’s morality and in turn, stunt one’s moral agency. In a similar respect, improving moral rationality can strengthen this capacity and enhance moral agency. The empirical research program on (non-moral) cognitive debiasing inspires developing techniques to improve our moral rational capacities—i.e., moral debiasing. Yet, moral debiasing presupposes moral biases—that is, systematic moral errors. So, what are moral errors exactly? The pertinent kind is subjective moral errors. Ultimately, A’s φ-ing is a subjective moral error insofar as φ-ing deviates from A’s genuine morality per instrumental subjective moral rationality (ISMR)—i.e., insofar as φ-ing frustrates A+’s morally-relevant ends, wherein A+ is a counterfactual idealization of A upon whom is bestowed those endowments that A considers authoritative under ordinary optimal conditions. The provision of an in-principle standard of subjective moral error lays important theoretical groundwork for future empirical inquiry into subjective moral debiasing.

Mit welchem Recht betrachten wir andere eigentlich als Personen im moralischen Sinne des Wortes, also als Subjekte, die zumindest für einige ihrer Handlungen verantwortlich sind – und dementsprechend moralisch beurteilt werden dürfen? Antwort: Erst die intersubjektive Erfahrung, d.h. die bewußte mentale Simulation unter dem Gesichtspunkt der metavolitionalen Struktur des Wunschsystems eines fremden Subjekts, rechtfertigt mich in der Annahme, daß es sich bei diesem Subjekt um eine Person im moralischen Sinne handelt.

Aquinas remarks with some regularity on persons afflicted with the condition amentia, which is variously and inconsistently interpreted (in translation) as “imbeciles,” “fools,” “madmen,” “lunatics,” “the demented,” or “the insane.” The amentes are persons who lack the use of reason in a profound and debilitating way; and, as I will show, the fact that we are sometimes found in this state informs Aquinas’s analysis of human nature and, in particular, Aquinas’s teaching on the good wrought by Christ for the members of his body. My purpose in this article is to explore what Aquinas has to say about the happiness of persons who are baptized and confirmed by the Church, and who have what neuropsychologists would describe as a profound cognitive impairment. The guiding question is this: Thinking with Aquinas, how do we account for the natural and supernatural happiness of those of us who lack the use of reason?

The discussion is divided into five parts. I begin (part I) by locating those who “lack the use of reason” within the theological infrastructure of Aquinas’s moral psychology and I identify the main problematic. With respect to that problematic, the principal conceptual resources provided by Aquinas are then outlined and two challenges are identified (part II). The first challenge is methodological, concerning the speculative import of the sacramental life of the Church. Francisco de Vitoria’s ‘Relectio de eo ad quod tenetur homo veniens ad usum rationis’ (1534) highlights for us (part III) a constellation of judgments relevant to interpreting Aquinas on these themes. The second challenge is to show the continuity between Aquinas’s account of the human being and his practical remarks on those who lack the use of reason. Specifically, given the various ways that, and degrees to which, the human being can lack the use of reason, I trace (part IV) Aquinas’s analysis of the power and operation of intellect, focusing on the intellectual acts which can be impaired and, concurrently, the intellectual acts which cannot be impaired in a living human being. I conclude (part V) with a description of the path of contemplative happiness that, on Aquinas’s terms, remains open for baptized persons who, like the amentes, suffer an involuntary alienation from bodily sense and who, thereby, utterly lack the use of reason.

It is a platitude that morality is normative, but a substantive and interesting question whether morality is normative in a robust and important way; and although it is often assumed that morality is indeed robustly normative, that view is by no means uncontroversial, and a compelling argument for it is conspicuously lacking. In this paper, I provide such an argument. I argue, based on plausible claims about the relationship between moral wrongs and moral criticizability, and the relationship between criticizability and normative reasons, that moral facts necessarily confer normative reasons upon moral agents.

Hume is often taken to be the father of “double Humeanism” about practical reason.  Double Humeanism combines together two views that are often attributed to Hume: a view about motivational psychology – often referred to as the Humean Theory of Motivation (HTM) – and a view about normative reasons for action – often called the Humean Theory of Practical Reasons (HTR). In this essay I argue that Hume accepted neither HTM nor HTR. But this does not rob Hume's views about these issues of contemporary interest. Rather, it allows us to see what was truly radical about these views - namely, a certain sort of skepticism about the normative authority of reason itself.

This commentary discusses various shortcomings in Chapman & Huffman's (2018) denial of differences between human beings and animals and the ethical consequences they think turn on this. Rationality is proposed as a candidate for such a difference, one that also has acceptable ethical consequences.

This paper is a bridge between my interest in the notion of philosophical nonsense and my interest in problems concerning ethics and action.  Geach sees an analogy between philosophical error and moral error, more specifically between the problem of understanding the state of mind of someone who is duped by philosophical nonsense and that of someone who ‘sins’.  In neither case does being confused oneself help one understand the confusion of others.  I argue that Geach gives us no good reason to believe that there is such a thing as philosophical nonsense and that, even if there is, there will be no real analogy between the states of mind in question.  For one thing, there is no obvious reason why there could not be ‘clear-headed sin’.  For another, one who ‘sins’ and one who does not often have the same sorts of difficulty understanding each other, whereas, if there is such a thing as philosophical nonsense, it is hard to see how there could be any such symmetry between one who is taken in by it and one who is not.

In this paper, I argue that moral agents do not necessarily have good reason to behave morally. This, because having good reasons is contingent upon persons themselves. I do so by defending internalism about reasons and show that it leads to the untenability of moral rationalism. That is, moral truths or principles are not intrinsically reason-giving. However, they can be reason-giving when linked to someone’s subjective motivational set. I conclude that, under normal circumstances, people do have reason to behave morally, but not necessarily so.

Dans le monde anglo-saxon, la philosophie s’interroge depuis plusieurs décennies sur les difficultés apparentes des psychopathes à former des jugements moraux. Ces recherches ont non seulement conduit à problématiser la responsabilité des criminels, mais ont également fourni un terrain psychologique et empirique aux débats opposant les théories du sens moral au rationalisme. Tout en prenant part aux discussions philosophiques, le présent article entend présenter une synthèse de ces travaux et suggérer leur intérêt pour les cliniciens.

In Chapter 2 of Escape from Leviathan, Jan Lester defends two hypotheses: that instrumental rationality requires agents to maximise the satisfaction of their wants and that all agents actually meet this requirement. In addition, he argues that all agents are self-interested (though not necessarily egoistic) and he offers an account of categorical moral desires which entails that no agent ever does what he genuinely feels to be morally wrong. I show that Lester’s two hypotheses are false because they cannot accommodate weakness of will, because they are inconsistent with agency, which requires free will, because ends, obligations and values cannot be reduced to desires, and because maximisation is often not possible. Further, Lester’s claim that agents are self-interested is vacuous, his attempted reduction of moral behaviour to want-satisfaction fails, and his contention, that agents always do what they genuinely think to be morally required, seems untenable. A defence of freedom that depends on homo economicus is far from promising.

O imperativo categórico é o princípio supremo de moralidade. Em um sentido essa afirmação pode ser considerada verdadeira, já que a teoria possui grande poder em explicar os critérios da intuição moral comum. Por outro lado, o sistema deixa muitos casos e situações sem um guiamento claro, e em outros ainda trava em paradoxos e soluções inaceitáveis, se seguirmos estritamente as recomendações de seu formulador. Será nesse estudo apresentado um sistema de aplicação do imperativo categórico que permite dar um tratamento a esses casos. Considerando os dois testes principais do imperativo (da universalização, e da humanidade como fim), será proposto o seguinte critério: a imoralidade típica é identificada pela falha simultânea nos testes; os casos moralmente conflituosos tem como característica a falha em uma formulação exclusivamente à outra.

Mackie’s claim that in general courage benefits its possessor seems inconsistent with his ‘error theory’ of value.  But how plausible is it in itself?  I suggest that his arguments for the claim fail in the same way as the arguments of those who more explicitly embrace ‘virtue ethics’ fail.  We do not know any way of objectively weighing risks against other considerations, of deciding whether something is ‘worth the risk’.  Since I have no PROOF that there could not be a way, I prefer to speak of ‘ignorance’ rather than ‘error’ here.