The paper argues that applications of the principle that “ought” implies “can” (OIC) depend on normative considerations even if the link between “ought” and “can” is logical in nature. Thus, we should reject a common, “factualist” conception of OIC and endorse weak “normativism”. Even if we use OIC as the rule ““cannot” therefore “not ought””, applying OIC is not a mere matter of facts and logic, as factualists claim, but often draws on “proto-ideals” of moral agency.

Either we are in an elevated extinction rate event or in a mass extinction. Scientists disagree, and the matter cannot be resolved empirically until it is too late. We are the cause of the elevated extinction rate. What does this say about us, we who are Homo sapiens—the wise hominid? Beginning with the Renaissance and spreading during the 18th century, the normative notion of humanity has arisen to stand for what expresses our dignity as humans—specifically our thoughtfulness, in the double (...) sense of our capacity for reasoned choice and our capacity to enter sympathetically into the lives of others considering their good outside of the egotistical orbit of our own. Concurrent with this tradition has been a counter-current of critical thought viewing humans as self-defeating or self-destructive beings. This view reached great heights in the 20th century. Our causing an elevated extinction rate is largely unintentional and goes against our humanity in form as well as in content. Accordingly, it shows us to .. (shrink)

In their philosophical projects that address the concept of law, Immanuel Kant, Johann G. Fichte, and Georg W. F. Hegel all employ transcendental argumentation to demonstrate the sovereignty of community and the existence of power. They do this in the attempt to conceptually ground the idea of freedom and reconcile it with the notion of coercion within the framework of the idea of positive law. This article focuses solely on the Kantian project, since the approaches of Fichte and Hegel take (...) on a more speculative turn in addition to their transcendental form. (shrink)

Given that artificial moral agents—such as autonomous vehicles, lethal autonomous weapons, and automated financial trading systems—are now part of the socio-ethical equation, we should morally evaluate their behavior. How should artificial moral agents make decisions? Is one moral theory better suited than others for machine ethics? After briefly overviewing the dominant ethical approaches for building morality into machines, this paper discusses a recent proposal, put forward by Don Howard and Ioan Muntean (2016, 2017), for an artificial moral agent based on (...) virtue theory. While the virtuous artificial moral agent has various strengths, this paper argues that a rule-based utilitarian approach (in contrast to a strict act-utilitarian approach) is superior because it can capture the most important features of the virtue-theoretic approach while realizing additional significant benefits. Specifically, a 2-level utilitarian artificial moral agent incorporating both established moral rules and a utility calculator is especially well-suited for machine ethics. (shrink)

This essay contributes to our understanding of the relation between the philosophies of Hegel and Sellars. While most treatments of this relation have focused on metaphysics or epistemology, I focus on ethics, and in particular on the formulation of moral agency. I argue that Hegel and Sellars arrive at a similar metaphilosophical rejection of individual moral agency in favor of conceptions of moral agency as the outcome of social mediation. To demonstrate this, I trace how Hegel and Sellars offer parallel (...) resolutions of the ‘Kantian paradox’: the apparent problem that, in Kantian ethics, moral agents must both freely self-legislate the moral law unto themselves and stand in a dutiful relation to the moral law as a necessary function of practical reason. Drawing Hegel and Sellars together in this way casts new light on Sellars’s understudied ethical theory and further evidences the contemporary relevance of Hegel’s moral philosophy. (shrink)

Plato’s tripartite soul plays a central role in his account of justice in the Republic. It thus comes as a surprise to find him apparently abandoning this model at the end of the work, when he suggests that the soul, as immortal, must be simple. I propose a way of reconciling these claims, appealing to neglected features of the city-soul analogy and the argument for the soul’s division. The original true soul, I argue, is partitioned, but in a finer manner (...) than how we encounter it in our everyday lives. (shrink)

The state subvention and distribution of health care not only jeopardize the financial sustainability of the state, but also restrict without a conclusive rational basis the freedom of patients to decide how much health care and of what quality is worth what price. The dominant biopolitics of European health care supports a healthcare monopoly in the hands of the state and the medical profession, which health care should be opened to the patient’s authority to deal directly for better basic health (...) care. In a world where it is impossible for all to receive equal access to the best of basic health care, one must critically examine the plausible scope of the authority of the state to limit access to better basic health care. Classical distributive justice affords a basis for re-examining the current European ideology of equality, human dignity, and solidarity that supports healthcare systems with unsustainable egalitarian concerns. (shrink)

This paper is about an overlooked aspect—the cognitive or epistemic aspect—of the moral demand we place on one another to be treated well. We care not only how people act towards us and what they say of us, but also what they believe of us. That we can feel hurt by what others believe of us suggests both that beliefs can wrong and that there is something we epistemically owe to each other. This proposal, however, surprises many theorists who claim (...) it lacks both intuitive and theoretical support. This paper argues that the proposal has intuitive support and is not at odds with much contemporary theorizing about what we owe to each other. (shrink)

: This essay expresses ambivalence about the use of the term "evil" in analyses of terrorism in light of the association of the two in speeches intended to justify the United States' "war on terrorism." At the same time, the essay suggests that terrorism can be regarded as "evil" but only when considered among a multiplicity of "evils" comparable to it, for example: rape, war crimes, and repression.

What is cruelty? How and why does it matter? What do the legal rejection of cruelty and the requirements of mercy entail? This essay asks these questions of Lucius Seneca, who first articulated an agent-based conception of cruelty in the context of punishment. The hypothesis is submitted that the answers to these questions offered in Seneca's De clementia constitute one of the turning points in the evolution of practical reason in law. I conclude, however, by arguing that even the mainstream (...) punitive practices of contemporary western societies fail to meet the modest imperatives of the rejection of cruelty and the unconditionality of mercy propounded by Seneca. (shrink)

When a novel scientific theory conflicts with otherwise plausible moral assumptions, we do not treat that as evidence against the theory. We may scrutinize the empirical data more keenly and take extra care over its interpretation, but science is in some core sense immune to moral refutation. Can the same be said of philosophical theories (or the non-ethical, ‘metaphysical’ ones at least)? If a position in the philosophy of mind, for example, is discovered to have eye-widening moral import, does that (...) count against it at all? Actual responses by philosophers to the question of whether unanticipated moral consequences of metaphysical theories have evidential force are scattered, implicit, divergent, under-argued, and sometimes even self-undermining. The present discussion is, most immediately, an attempt to sort out the confusion. Beyond that, it exploits the new perspective this question gives us on a familiar topic: the relation of philosophy to science. (shrink)

This paper responds to Richard Joyce’s argument for a moral error theory. Joyce claims that our moral discourse purports to speak of something objective in that it presupposes the existence of non-institutional, categorical reasons for action. Given this, he argues that a proper vindication of our moral discourse would be one carried out from a point of view that is objective inasmuch as it is external to the ‘institution of morality’. And since our moral discourse cannot be vindi- cated from (...) that external point vantage point, it follows that that discourse is fundamentally flawed. My critique of Joyce’s argument goes to his appeal to an external point of view from which to assess the legitimacy of our moral discourse. I argue that our moral talk is intelligible only in the context of the understanding we inhabit as moral agents. Hence, the external vantage point that Joyce identifies is a point of view from which moral claims are deprived of the conditions in which they make sense. I therefore reject Joyce’s claim that our moral discourse is conceptually non-institutional: whilst morality is committed to categorical reasons, these reasons are ‘institutional’ insofar they are intelligible only from within the institution of morality. (shrink)

Stephen Darwall's The Second-Person Standpoint converges with Emmanuel Levinas's concern about the role of the second-person relationship in ethics. This paper contrasts their methodologies (regressive analysis of presuppositions versus phenomenology) to explain Darwall's narrower view of ethical experience in terms of expressed reactive attitudes. It delineates Darwall's overall justificatory strategy and the centrality of autonomy and reciprocity within it, in contrast to Levinas's emphasis on the experience of responsibility. Asymmetrical responsibility plays a more foundational role as a critical counterpoint to (...) 'mean-spirited' reciprocity than Darwall's laudable distinction between accountability and revenge, and responsibility even founds this distinction. The experience of being summoned to asymmetrical responsibility amplifies the meaning of 'authority', which is a presupposition for Darwall. Finally, asymmetrical responsibility helps develop decentred reasoning, invites risk beyond the boundaries of reciprocity at moments when autonomy appears endangered, reconciles respect and care at the experiential level, and presses to extend the scope of moral obligation. (shrink)

Our understanding of emotional labor, while conceptually and empirically substantial, is normatively impoverished: very little has been said or written expressly about its ethical dimensions or ramifications. Emotional labor refers to efforts undertaken by employees to make their private feelings and/or public emotion displays consistent with job and organizational requirements. We formally define emotional labor, briefly summarize research in organizational behavior and social psychology on the causes and consequences of emotional labor, and present a normative analysis of its moral limits (...) focused on conditional rights and duties of employers and employees. Our focus is on three points of conflict involving rights and duties as they apply to the performance of emotional labor: when employees’ and organizations’ rights conflict, when employees’ rights conflict with their duties, and when organizations’ rights conflict with their duties. We discuss implications for future inquiry as well as managerial practice. (shrink)

As the interest in the quality of work life grows, it becomes increasingly apparent that certain practices within this arena require critical scrutiny. This paper is an examination of one such area, performance appraisal (PA). We examine some of the main conceptual issues in PA, and we sketch some key, practical dilemmas that may arise in the use of PA. We conclude that one can morally justify the use of PA under certain condition, and we suggest possible solutions to key (...) ethical dilemmas that are faced by the manager and the employee. (shrink)

The 1992 incorporation of an article by referendum in the SwissConstitution mandating that the federal government issue regulations onthe use of genetic material that take into account the dignity ofnonhuman organism raises philosophical questions about how we shouldunderstand what is meant by ``the dignity of nonhuman animals,'' andabout what sort of moral demands arise from recognizing this dignitywith respect to their genetic engineering. The first step in determiningwhat is meant is to clarify the difference between dignity when appliedto humans and (...) when applied to nonhumans. Several conceptions of humandignity should be rejected in favor of a fourth conception: the rightnot to be degraded. This right implies that those who have it have thecognitive capacities that are prerequisite for self-respect. In the caseof nonhuman organisms that lack this capacity, respecting their dignityrequires the recognition that their inherent value, which is tied totheir abilities to pursue their own good, be respected. This value isnot absolute, as it is in the case of humans, so it does not prohibitbreeding manipulations that make organisms more useful to humans. But itdoes restrict morally how sentient animals can be used. In regard togenetic engineering, this conception requires that animals be allowedthe uninhibited development of species specific functions, a positionshared by Holland and Attfield, as opposed to the Original Purposeconception proposed by Fox and the Integrity of the Genetic Make-upposition proposed by Rolston. The inherent value conception of dignity,as here defended, is what is meant in the Swiss Constitution article. (shrink)

This paper defends the doctrine that moral requirements are categorical in nature. My point of departure is John McDowell’s 1978 essay, “Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?”, in which McDowell argues, against Philippa Foot, that moral reasons are not conditional upon agents’ desires and are, in a certain sense, inescapable. After expounding McDowell’s view, exploring his idea that moral requirements “silence” other considerations and discussing its particularist ethos, I address an objection that moral reasons, as McDowell conceives them, are fundamentally incomplete (...) in ways only a full-bloodedly Kantian appeal to pure practical reason can remedy. I conclude that the objection fails: ordinary moral reasons do not stand in need of a grounding in Reason. There is no prospect of deriving them from a supreme principle of morality or other canons of rationality. Ordinary reasons are sufficient in themselves, though their significance can be elucidated and illuminated by various strategies — some broadly Aristotelian, some drawing inspiration from Kant’s formula of humanity — in ways that can strengthen and vindicate them. Notwithstanding the failure of the objection, I conclude by reflecting on how Kantian insights can yet play a significant role in a McDowellian view of moral deliberation and moral education. (shrink)

In this article, we use the theory of Information Ethics to argue that deceased people have a prima facie moral right to privacy in the context of health data research, and that this should be reflected in regulation and guidelines. After death, people are no longer biological subjects but continue to exist as informational entities which can still be harmed/damaged. We find that while the instrumental value of recognising post-mortem privacy lies in the preservation of the social contract for health (...) research, its intrinsic value is grounded in respect for the dignity of the post-mortem informational entity. However, existing guidance on post-mortem data protection is available only in the context of genetic studies. In comparing the characteristics of genetic data and other health-related data, we identify two features of DNA often given as arguments for this genetic exceptionalism: relationality and embodiment. We use these concepts to show that at the appropriate Level of Abstraction, there is no morally relevant distinction between posthumous genetic and other health data. Thus, genetic data should not automatically receive special moral status after death. Instead we make a plea for ‘contextual exceptionalism’. Our analysis concludes by reflecting on a real-world case and providing suggestions for contextual factors that researchers and oversight bodies should take into account when designing and evaluating research projects with health data from deceased subjects. (shrink)

This paper examines Moran’s argument for the special authority of the first-person, which revolves around the Self/Other asymmetry and grounds dichotomies such as the practical vs. theoretical, activity vs. passivity, and justificatory vs. explanatory reasons. These dichotomies qualify the self-reflective person as an agent, interested in justifying her actions from a deliberative stance. The Other is pictured as a spectator interested in explaining action from a theoretical stance. The self-reflective knower has authority over her own mental states, while the Spectator (...) does not. I highlight the implications of this construal for a theory of action, and call attention onto some other interesting normative relations between the self-reflective agent and the Other that escape both the first-person and the third-person approach. My contention is that the authority of self-reflection (and of reason) is best understood as a relation of mutual recognition between self and others, hence from a second-person stance. (shrink)

On a reproché au modèle perceptuel de la connaissance morale d'être inadéquat en ce qu'il serait incapable d'expliquer le signe distinctif et fondamental de l'éthique, à savoir son caractère normatif. Je tente de montrer que la critique n'est pas pertinente, car le normatif n'a en réalité qu'une place dérivée en morale : l'éthique est d'abord une question de valeurs, entités dont il est tout à fait plausible de dire que nous les percevons. Pour justifier la place dérivée du normatif, je (...) m'appuie sur les études de Max Scheler et sur l'examen de certains traits de la psychologie morale, qui tendent à montrer que le normatif n'est qu'un cas particulier de l'axiologique, mettant en évidence les caractères de force des valeurs, de risques de transgression et de contrainte.The perceptual model of moral knowledge has been the target of criticisms: it could be unable to explain the basic character of ethics, namely its normative character. I try to show that this criticism is misguided: in fact normativity is not central but lateral to ethics. What matters in ethics first and foremost are values, and it is quite appropriate to say we perceive values. To justify the lateral character of normativity, I rely on some analysis of Max Scheler and turn to some traits of moral psychology. It suggests that the normativity is a province of the axiological, characterized by strength of values, risks of transgression and constraint. (shrink)

For some decades, the concept of human dignity has been widely discussed in bioethical literature. Some authors think that this concept is central to questions of respect for human beings, whereas others are very critical of it. It should be noted that, in these debates, dignity is one component of a long-lasting and widespread conceptual construct used to support a stance on the ethical question of the moral status of an action or being. This construct has been used from Modernity (...) onward to condemn slavery and torture as violations of human dignity. In spelling it out, we can come to a better understanding of what “dignity” means and become aware that there exists a quite useful place for this notion in our ethical thought, albeit a modest one. (shrink)

We argue that the mandatory moral bioenhancement of psychopaths is justified as a prescription of social morality. Moral bioenhancement is legitimate when it is justified on the basis of the reasons of the recipients. Psychopaths expect and prefer that the agents with whom they interact do not have certain psychopathic traits. Particularly, they have reasons to require the moral bioenhancement of psychopaths with whom they must cooperate. By adopting a public reason and a Kantian argument, we conclude that we can (...) justify to a psychopath being the recipient of mandatory moral bioenhancement because he has a reason to require the application of this prescription to other psychopaths. (shrink)

Road traffic injury and deaths (RTID) are an important public health problem in Kenya, primarily affecting uneducated and disenfranchised people from lower socioeconomic groups. Studies conducted by Kenyan experts from police reports and surveys have shown that pedestrian and driver behaviors are the most important proximal causes of crashes, signifying that the occurrence of crashes results directly from human action. However, behaviors and risk factors do not fully explain the magnitude of RTID neither does it account for socioeconomic gradient in (...) RTID. Instead, a social justice approach to RTID highlights the need for emphasizing distal causal factors. They allow us to understand how social inequities determine risk for RTID. Hence, designing policies that focus on behaviors will simply mask the underlying systemic causes of this growing phenomenon. To eradicate the RTID and address the gradient, a broader policy framework that includes the social dimension of injury, a strong political will to address the underlying causes of RTID and an effective partnership with stakeholders needs to be developed. (shrink)

In this open access book, Timothy Aylsworth and Clinton Castro draw on the deep well of Kantian ethics to argue that we have moral duties, both to ourselves and to others, to protect our autonomy from the threat posed by the problematic use of technology. The problematic use of technologies like smartphones threatens our autonomy in a variety of ways, and critics have only begun to appreciate the vast scope of this problem. In the last decade, we have seen a (...) flurry of books making “self-help” arguments about how we could live happier, more fulfilling lives if we were less addicted to our phones. But none of these authors see this issue as one involving a moral duty to protect our autonomy. (shrink)

The attention economy — the market where consumers’ attention is exchanged for goods and services — poses a variety of threats to individuals’ autonomy, which, at minimum, involves the ability to set and pursue ends for oneself. It has been argued that the threat wireless mobile devices pose to autonomy gives rise to a duty to oneself to be a digital minimalist, one whose interactions with digital technologies are intentional such that they do not conflict with their ends. In this (...) paper, we argue that there is a corresponding duty to others to be an attention ecologist, one who promotes digital minimalism in others. Although the moral reasons for being an attention ecologist are similar to those that motivate the duty to oneself, the arguments diverge in important ways. We explore the application of this duty in various domains where we have special obligations to promote autonomy in virtue of the different roles we play in the lives of others, such as parents and teachers. We also discuss the consequences of our arguments for employers, software developers, and policy makers. (shrink)

In this paper, I give an explanation and defense of Kant’s claim that we cannot comprehend how freedom is possible. I argue that this is a significant point that has been underappreciated in the secondary literature. My conclusion has a variety of implications both for Kant scholars and for those interested in Kantian ideas more generally. Most notably, if Kant is right that there are principled reasons why freedom is beyond our comprehension, then this would release his ethical views from (...) an undesirable explanatory burden. It would be a boon for Kantians if they could ground their lofty claims about the unique, elevated status of rational agency without committing to an implausible view of libertarian freedom. I also suggest that there are certain debates concerning moral motivation and transcendental idealism that might have to change in response to Kant’s claims about the incomprehensibility of freedom. (shrink)

In this article I formulate a skeptical argument against the possibility of adhering to the divine will in a non-accidental way. In particular, my focus in the article is on a widely embraced modal condition of accidentality, according to which non-accidentality has to do with a person manifesting dispositions that result in a given outcome in a modally robust way. The skeptical argument arises from two observations: first, various authors in the epistemology of religion have argued that it is often (...) not possible to reason reliably about religious matters, and second, non-accidentally adhering to a given norm is often associated with reasoning about the requirements of the norm in question in a reliable way. In addition to pointing out the existence of the argument, I outline strategies in which religious thinkers could reasonably challenge it by denying that reliable reasoning about the requirements of divine will is necessary for adhering to it in a non-accidental manner. Hence, I argue that the possibility of non-accidental adherence to the divine will does not depend solely on whether it is possible to reliably reason about what it requires one to do. (shrink)

Moral judgment commonly depends on intuition. It is also true, though less widely agreed, that ethical theory depends on it. The nature and epistemic status of intuition have long been concerns of philosophy, and, with the increasing importance of ethical intuitionism as a major position in ethics, they are receiving much philosophical attention. There is growing agreement that intuition conceived as a kind of seeming is essential for both the justification of moral judgment and the confirmation of ethical theories. This (...) paper describes several importantly different kinds of intuition, particularly the episodic kinds often called seemings. This is done partly by sketching numerous examples of intuition. Intuitive seemings and moral judgments based on them differ in content, basis, epistemic authority, and phenomenology. The paper explores these four dimensions of intuition and, in doing so, compares moral intuition with moral perception. The overall aim is to clarify moral phenomenology both descriptively and epistemologically and to support the view that intuitions are often discriminative responses to experience and have justificatory power analogous to the power of sense-perceptions. (shrink)

Some of the best journalism - investigative reporting in particular - results from personal feelings of wanting revenge, which can be an aspect of the ethical duty to promote justice. It may be either wanting revenge for a wrong against society or rather against journalism and freedom of speech and press. Using the Arizona Project as an example in which investigative reporters and editors responded to the murder of reporter Don Bolles, I suggest that journalists, adhering to the virtues of (...) their practice, can transform personal vengeance into public and professional good. Teachings of moral philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre offer the practicing journalist a means of doing this; and the Arizona Project offers today's journalists an excellent example of MacIntyrean practice. (shrink)

In capitalism human beings act as if they are mere animals. So we hear repeatedly in the history of modern philosophy. Indifference and Repetition examines how modern philosophy, largely coextensive with a particular boost in capitalism’s development, registers the reductive and regressive tendencies produced by capitalism’s effect on individuals and society. Ruda examines a problem that has invisibly been shaping the history of modern, especially rationalist philosophical thought, a problem of misunderstanding freedom. Thinkers like Descartes, Kant, Hegel, and Marx claim (...) that there are conceptions and interpretations of freedom that lead the subjects of these interpretations to no longer act and think freely. They are often unwillingly led into unfreedom. It is thus possible that even “freedom” enslaves. Modern philosophical rationalism, whose conceptual genealogy the books traces and unfolds, assigns a name to this peculiar form of domination by means of freedom: indifference. Indifference is a name for the assumption that freedom is something that human beings have: a given, a natural possession. When we think freedom is natural or a possession we lose freedom. Modern philosophy, Ruda shows, takes its shape through repeated attacks on freedom as indifference; it is the owl that begins its flight, so that the days of unfreedom will turn to dusk. (shrink)

This article argues that existing approaches to programming ethical AI fail to resolve a serious moral-semantic trilemma, generating interpretations of ethical requirements that are either too semantically strict, too semantically flexible, or overly unpredictable. This paper then illustrates the trilemma utilizing a recently proposed ‘general ethical dilemma analyzer,’ GenEth. Finally, it uses empirical evidence to argue that human beings resolve the semantic trilemma using general cognitive and motivational processes involving ‘mental time-travel,’ whereby we simulate different possible pasts and futures. I (...) demonstrate how mental time-travel psychology leads us to resolve the semantic trilemma through a six-step process of interpersonal negotiation and renegotiation, and then conclude by showing how comparative advantages in processing power would plausibly cause AI to use similar processes to solve the semantic trilemma more reliably than we do, leading AI to make better moral-semantic choices than humans do by our very own lights. (shrink)

This article argues that diverse theorists have reasons to theorize about fairness in nonideal conditions, including theorists who reject fairness in ideal theory. It then develops a new all-purpose model of ‘nonideal fairness.’ §1 argues that fairness is central to nonideal theory across diverse ideological and methodological frameworks. §2 then argues that ‘nonideal fairness’ is best modeled by a nonideal original position adaptable to different nonideal conditions and background normative frameworks (including anti-Rawlsian ones). §3 then argues that the parties to (...) the model have grounds to seek a variety of remedial social, legal, cultural, and economic ‘nonideal primary goods’ for combating injustice, as well as grounds to distribute these goods in an equitable and inclusive manner. Finally, I illustrate how the model indexes the nonideal primary goods it justifies to different nonideal contexts and background normative frameworks, illustrating why diverse theorists should find the model and its output principles attractive. (shrink)

The dominant theory of the evolution of moral cognition across a variety of fields is that moral cognition is a biological adaptation to foster social cooperation. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that moral cognition is likely an evolutionary exaptation: a form of cognition where neurobiological capacities selected for in our evolutionary history for a variety of different reasons—many unrelated to social cooperation—were put to a new, prosocial use after the fact through individual rationality, learning, and the development and transmission (...) of social norms. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the emerging behavioral neuroscience of moral cognition. It then outlines a novel theory of moral cognition that I have previously argued explains these findings better than alternatives. Finally, it shows how the evidence for this theory of moral cognition and human evolutionary history together suggest that moral cognition is likely not a biological adaptation. Instead, like reading sheet music or riding a bicycle, moral cognition is something that individuals learn to do—in this case, in response to sociocultural norms created in our ancestral history and passed down through the ages to enable cooperative living. (shrink)

This study examined correlations between moral value judgments on a 17-item Moral Intuition Survey (MIS), and participant scores on the Short-D3 “Dark Triad” Personality Inventory—a measure of three related “dark and socially destructive” personality traits: Machiavellianism, Narcissism, and Psychopathy. Five hundred sixty-seven participants (302 male, 257 female, 2 transgendered; median age 28) were recruited online through Amazon Mechanical Turk and Yale Experiment Month web advertisements. Different responses to MIS items were initially hypothesized to be “conservative” or “liberal” in line with (...) traditional public divides. Our demographic data confirmed all of these hypothesized categorizations. We then tested two broad, exploratory hypotheses: (H1) the hypothesis that there would be “many” significant correlations between conservative MIS judgments and the Dark Triad, and (H2) the hypothesis that there would be no significant correlations between liberal MIS judgments and Machiavellianism or Psychopathy, but “some” significant correlations between liberal MIS judgments and Narcissism. Because our hypotheses were exploratory and we ran a large number of statistical tests (62 total), we utilized a Bonferroni Correction to set a very high threshold for significance (p = .0008). Our results broadly supported our two hypotheses. We found eleven significant correlations between conservative MIS judgments and the Dark Triad—all at significance level of p < .00001—but no significant correlations between the Dark Triad and liberal MIS judgments. We believe that these results raise provocative moral questions about the personality bases of moral judgments. In particular, we propose that because the Short-D3 measures three “dark and antisocial” personality traits, our results raise some prima facie worries about the moral justification of some conservative moral judgments. (shrink)

The paper is devoted to the analysis of Kant’s approach to the ideas of universality and autonomy as the constitutive features of morality. The paper shows that Kant’s findings concerning these ideas were anticipated by the previous history of moral philosophy, mainly by the modern moral philosophers, who focused specifically on the elaboration of the philosophical concept of morality. Kant’s peculiar role was that, firstly, he conceptualized the ideas of universality and autonomy and formulated corresponding principles; secondly, Kant integrated both (...) principles into the concept of moral law and revealed the way by which the formula of universality and the formula of autonomy together with formula of humanity constitute the supreme principle of morality and essentially express the sense of morality itself. Kant believed that the reason for the failure of the previous attempts to explicate the supreme principle of morality was inability to understand that the moral agent is subject not only to universal but at the same time his own legislation. Thirdly, Kant, unlike his predecessors, in his examination of universality didn’t appeal to the human nature or nature of things. Fourthly, he underlined that the principle of universality and the principle of autonomy were not only interconnected but also shaped each other: the determination of will may be identified as a universal principle only if it is given through a moral agent’s rational will. And a moral agent may be identified as autonomous only if in his decisions and actions he is guided by principles that are universalizable. (shrink)

In this commentary, I critically discuss the respective views of Gert and Beauchamp–Childress on the nature of so-called common morality and its promise for enriching ethical reflection within the field of bioethics. Although I endorse Beauchamp and Childress’ shift from an emphasis on ethical theory as the source of moral norms to an emphasis on common morality, I question whether rouging up common morality to make it look like some sort of ultimate and universal foundation for morality, untouched by the (...) dialectics of time and reflective equilibrium, was an equally good move. As for Gert’s magisterial conception of common morality, I conclude that certain elements of his system are controversial at best and woefully inadequate at worst. He has a tendency to find in common morality what he himself put there, and his highly restricted conception of duties of assistance strikes this reader as ad hoc, inadequately defended, and unworthy of a project whose goal is to lessen the amount of misery in the world. (shrink)

There are many philosophical questions surrounding the notion of lying. Is it ever morally acceptable to lie? Can we acquire knowledge from people who might be lying to us? More fundamental, however, is the question of what, exactly, constitutes the concept of lying. According to one traditional definition, lying requires intending to deceive (Augustine. (1952). Lying (M. Muldowney, Trans.). In R. Deferrari (Ed.), Treatises on various subjects (pp. 53?120). New York, NY: Catholic University of America). More recently, Thomas Carson (2006. (...) The definition of lying. Nous, 40, 284?306) has suggested that lying requires warranting the truth of what you do not believe. This paper examines these two prominent definitions and some cases that seem to pose problems for them. Importantly, theorists working on this topic fundamentally disagree about whether these problem cases are genuine instances of lying and, thus, serve as counterexamples to the definitions on offer. To settle these disputes, we elicited judgments about the proposed counterexamples from ordinary language users unfettered by theoretical bias. The data suggest that everyday speakers of English count bald-faced lies and proviso lies as lies. Thus, we claim that a new definition is needed to capture common usage. Finally, we offer some suggestions for further research on this topic and about the moral implications of our investigation into the concept of lying. (shrink)

It has been claimed, by David Heyd, that in order for an act to count as supererogatory the agent performing the act must possess altruistic intentions (1982 p.115). This requirement, Heyd claims, allows us to make sense of the meritorious nature of acts of supererogation. In this paper I will investigate whether there is good reason to accept that this requirement is a necessary condition of supererogation. I will argue that such a reason can be found in cases where two (...) people act in the same way but with only the person who acted with altruistic intent counting as having performed an act of supererogation. In such cases Heyd’s intention requirement plays an important role in ruling out acts that intuitively are not supererogatory. Despite this, I will argue that we should reject Heyd’s requirement and replace it with a moral intention requirement. I will then investigate how to formulate this requirement and respond to two objections that might be raised against it. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that praiseworthiness should form part of the analysis of supererogation. I will argue that this view should be rejected. I will start by arguing that, at least on some views of the connection between moral value and praiseworthiness, it does not follow from the fact that acts of supererogation go beyond what is required by duty that they will always be praiseworthy to perform. I will then consider and dismiss what I will call the Argument from (...) Stipulation in favour of holding that acts of supererogation are always praiseworthy. Next, I will examine what I will call the Necessary Connection Argument, which posits a necessary connection between supererogation and praiseworthiness. I will argue that the intuitions used to motivate this argument are best explained by a debunking explanation. (shrink)

The article analyzes the concept of universality in Oleg Drobnitskii’s ethics. As opposed to most Soviet ethicists of the 1960s and early 1970s, Drobnitskii viewed this concept along the lines of the principle of universality presented in the moral theories of Immanuel Kant and Richard Hare. However, while they considered universality to be a feature of individual moral thinking in the forms of maxims, principles, and evaluations, Drobnitskii understood universality as the main feature of moral requirements and essentially external to (...) the moral agent, representing to her social relations and the ‘general laws of history.’ It was conceptually significant in Drobnitskii’s approach to universality that he analyzed it within the context of a more general concept of morality—as a mode of normative regulation of behavior. In this capacity, universality was presented as a characteristic of general appeal, or the general way in which a moral requirement is binding. The principle of equality is a normative correlate of universality understood in this way. Universality also characterizes judgments, whose moral adequacy is verified through the procedure of universalization. Regarding universality, Drobnitskii discussed important questions of the individualization of the universal moral requirement in the form of the moral agent’s personal task and the universality of class moral views. He tried to explain these differing, and not always interconnected, aspects of universality by appealing to certain ‘general laws of history,’ and thus offered a historicist basis of morality. This article shows that, despite this unprecedented analysis of the issue of universality, Drobnitskii did not achieve a systematic conclusion in his conceptualization of universality. Nevertheless, he was able to offer a number of significant insights, with the potential to aid our further comprehension of the phenomenon of universality and how it ought to be understood. (shrink)

The universality test is a significant reflective procedure, owing to which Kant’s categorical imperative is brought into proximity with moral practice and with an agent’s decisions made in particular circumstances and at the face of value collisions. The test is to be done in every single case by a moral agent her/himself and it aims to examine a selected maxim for its universality, that is to its congruity to universal and necessary moral law and hence to its moral dignity. This (...) issue has been broadly developed during the last century either within Kant studies, or in positive philosophical discussions, often sharply polemical. The paper represents some positions in those discussions. No matter how important the universality test in an agent’s moral decisions, so far universality signifies one of three embodiments of the categorical imperative, it would be wrong to consider the test the only criterion of moral dignity. This is true both within the Kantian conception of morality and more so beyond it. The paper proposes the Golden Rule as a critical correlation to the categorical imperative with its universality test. The rule also presupposes a kind of universalizability procedure. However, if the universality test set up by the categorical imperative is based on congruence of a maxim with the universal law, universalizability grounded on the Golden Rule consists in delocalization of intentions by taking into consideration the Other in her/his general and particular dispositions. (shrink)

This paper responds to the four critiques of my book Experiments in Ethics published in this issue. The main theme I take up is how we should understand the relation between psychology and philosophy. Young and Saxe believe that “bottom line” evaluative judgments don’t depend on facts. I argue for a different view, according to which our evaluative and non-evaluative judgments must cohere in a way that makes it rational, sometimes, to abandon even what looks like a basic evaluative judgment (...) because we have changed our minds about the facts. This leads me to qualify Tiberius’s claim that our moral judgments always derive, in part, from fundamental evaluative “justificatory stopping points,” arguing that even these can themselves be adjusted in the light of scientific understanding. Weinberg and Wang object to my use of Kant’s distinction between the perspective of the senses and the perspective of the understanding, because they identify it with a distinction between scientific and philosophical worlds. I argue that a distinction of perspectives isn’t a distinction between worlds and that, in any case, the distinction is not between science and ethics. Finally, in responding to Machery’s objections to a couple of my proposals, I return to the suggestion that a coherentist epistemology is required to deal with the relations between science and ethics. (shrink)

BackgroundResearchers conducting community-based participatory action research (CBPAR) in highly collectivistic and socioeconomically disadvantaged community settings in sub-Saharan Africa are confronted with the distinctive challenge of balancing universal ethical standards with local standards, where traditional customs or beliefs may conflict with regulatory requirements and ethical guidelines underlying the informed consent (IC) process. The unique ethnic, socioeconomic, and cultural diversities in these settings have important implications for the IC process, such as individual decisional autonomy, beneficence, confidentiality, and signing the IC document.Main textDrawing (...) on insights and field observations from conducting CBPARs across several rural, highly communal, low literate, and low-income communities in Ghana, we discuss some theoretical, ethico-cultural, and methodological challenges associated with applying the universal, Western individualistic cultural value-laden IC process in sub-Saharan Africa. By citing field situations, we discuss how local cultural customs and the socioeconomic adversities prevalent in these settings can influence (and disrupt) the information disclosure process, individual decisional authority for consent, and voluntariness. We review the theoretical assumptions of the Declaration of Helsinki’s statement on IC and discuss its limitations as an ultimate guide for the conduct of social science research in the highly communal African context. We argue that the IC process in these settings should include strategies directed at preventing deception and coercion, in addition to ensuring respect for individual autonomy. We urge Universities, research institutions, and institutional review boards in Africa to design and promote the use of context-appropriate ethical IC guidelines that take into consideration both the local customs and traditional practices of the people as well as the scientific principles underpinning the universal IC standards.ConclusionWe recommend that, rather than adopt a universal one-size-fits-all IC approach, researchers working in the rural, highly collectivistic, low literate, socioeconomically disadvantaged settings of sub-Saharan Africa should deeply consider the roles and influence of cultural values and traditional practices on the IC and the research process. We encourage researchers to collaborate with target communities and stakeholders in the design and implementation of context-appropriate IC to prevent ethics dumping and safeguard the integrity of the research process. (shrink)