After decades of vigorous debate, many contemporary philosophers in the Kantian tradition continue to believe, or at least hope, that morality can be given a firm grounding by showing that rational agents cannot consistently reject moral requirements. In the present paper, I do not take a stand on the possibility of bringing out the alleged inconsistency. Instead I argue that, even if a successful argument could be given for this inconsistency, this would not provide an adequate answer to “the normative (...) question” (i.e., “why should I be moral?”). My defense of this claim emerges from a defense of a claim about Kant, namely, that he did not attempt to answer the normative question in this way. After carefully articulating Kant’s answer to the normative question, I argue that his answer to this question contains a lesson about why we should not embrace the approach that is popular among many contemporary Kantians. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that it is wrong to conduct any experiment on a nonhuman which we would regard as immoral were it to be conducted on a human, because such experimentation violates the basic moral rights of sentient beings. After distinguishing the rights approach from the utilitarian approach, I delineate basic concepts. I then raise the classic “argument from marginal cases” against those who support experimentation on nonhumans but not on humans. After next replying to six important objections (...) against that argument, I contend that moral agents are logically required to accord basic moral rights to every sentient being. I conclude by providing criteria for distinguishing ethical from unethical experimentation. (shrink)

The moral foundations of the free society are not epitomized by democratic decisions about costs and benefits, as Michael Novak recently argued in The American Vision: An Essay on the Future of Democratic Capitalism. Nor is equality of opportunity, insured through government measures that prohibit private discrimination, a component of the liberty that characterizes the free society, as Milton and Rose Friedman recently argued in their Free To Choose. Rather, it is the theory of rights — which is the theory (...) of private property, broadly understood — that underpins and epitomizes the free society, justifying the capitalist economic order in the process. For that theory describes our basic moral and legal relationships, and shows as well that capitalism, unlike socialism, is a fundamentally moral system. (shrink)

Should conflicts among human rights be dealt with by including general principles for priority setting at some prominent place in the practice of human rights? This essay argues that neither setting prominent and principled priorities nor a case-by-case approach are likely to be defensible as general solutions. The main reasons concern how best to realize all human rights for all. Conflicts among human rights are more defensibly addressed by checking whether the conflict has been correctly diagnosed: Do human rights as (...) a whole get due priority? Have feasibility considerations inherent in human rights been considered, and the possibility of bringing in additional dutybearers? If a conflict among human rights is genuine, formal principles for priority setting are of some help. Sometimes, it is clear that these should be “upgraded” to substantive principles and sometimes that they should not. Many cases, however, are as yet unclear and will need further investigation. (shrink)

The article explores the fundamental difference between two aspects of justice: international and global. It is then argued that for the sake of global justice, the difference can be overcome by taking a closer look at the basic human right of self-preservation in relation to moral agency, human well-being and social/distributive justice at both global and national levels. In an endeavour to attain global justice, the article defends an absolute moral right to a human minimum.

Ethical reasoning as an action (praxis) as opposed to a knowing (epistemology) strategy is not always effective in guilding ethical, stopping or turning around unethical organizational behavior. In contrast, nonviolent forcing strategies can be very effective, but also destructive. If reasoning is an idealistic thesis and forcing is its pragmatic, material antithesis, then do we need a synthesis action (praxis) strategy such as problem solving negotiating? There are also limitations with negotiating.

For both philosophers and managers, reasoning with ourselves and others can be used both as (1) a way of knowing what is ethical and (2) a way of acting to help ourselves, others and organizations behave ethically. However, for many of us, knowing is frequently not the same as acting. Four areas are addressed: (1) thirteen limitations of ethical reasoning as an action strategy; (2) how a better understanding of these limitations can strengthen ethical reasoning as an action strategy; (3) (...) how an understanding of these limitations can serve as a conceptual foundation for exploring other ethical action strategies; and, (4) implications for experiential learning and teaching. (shrink)

Harsanyi defends utilitarianism by means of an axiomatic proof and by what he calls the 'equiprobability model'. Both justifications of utilitarianism aim to show that utilitarian ethics can be derived from Bayesian rationality and some weak moral constraints on the reasoning of rational agents. I argue that, from the perspective of Bayesian agents, one of these constraints, the impersonality constraint, is not weak at all if its meaning is made precise, and that generally, it even contradicts individual rational agency. Without (...) the impersonality constraint, Harsanyi's two justifications of utilitarianism on the grounds of Bayesian rationality fail. As an alternative, I develop a contractarian framework that is compatible with individual rational agency and Harsanyi's central assumptions, and that allows the derivation of moral conclusions on the grounds of Bayesian rationality. The developed framework offers a novel justification of contractarian ethics and may best be described as a combined version of Harsanyi's equiprobability model and Rawls's original position. (shrink)

When subordinates ask their managers for help with their personal problems, it creates moral dilemmas for their managers. Managers are contractually obliged to maintain equivalent relations between their subordinates and that is compromised when one subordinate makes this kind of request. By applying deontological principles to this dilemma, additional options are revealed, and the moral duties managers owe their subordinates in these situations are clarified.

Using practical formalism a deontological ethical analysis of peer relations in organizations is developed. This analysis is composed of two types of duties derived from Kant's Categorical Imperative: negative duties to refrain from the use of peers and positive duties to provide help and assistance. The conditions under which these duties pertain are specified through the development of examples and conceptual distinctions. A number of implications are then discussed.

In this paper I defend a theory of welfare rights for nonhuman animals. I do this by demonstrating that a well-established framework for protecting the interests of farm animals, the ‘Five Freedoms of Animal Welfare’, is already functioning just as a set of rights. To support this claim I adopt a common approach to detecting evidence for deontological reasoning and look at the structural features of rights. I first consider Hohfeld’s system of legal rights and consider whether the Five Freedoms (...) may be understood as liberties or claim rights, before making a more successful comparison with side constraints and an interest theory of rights as understood by Nozick and Raz. I also respond to a likely objection that it is not possible to have some welfare rights without a right to freedom from exploitation. The argument therefore contributes to breaking down the stubborn division between ‘animal welfare’ and ‘animal rights’. (shrink)

Psychiatrists are frequently called upon to make assessments of the rationality or irrationality of persons for a variety of medical-legal purposes. A key category is that of evaluations of a patient's capacity to grant informed consent for a medical procedure. A diagnosis of mental illness is neither a necessary nor a sufficient condition for a finding of incompetence. The notion of competency to grant consent, which is a mixed psychiatric-legal concept, shares some features with philosophical conceptions of rationality, but differs (...) from them in a number of important respects. This article describes the actual practice of psychiatrists when making such judgments, along with the standards of competency they employ. A comparison is made between those notions of competency and predominant philosophical conceptions of rationality. (shrink)

Three thousand belligerents, mostly belonging to the military arm of Hamas, stormed Southern Israel on October 7th, 2023. Along with 3,000 rockets fired at Israel from Gaza, these belligerents inva...

From virtue ethics and interactionist perspectives, we hypothesized that personal justice norms (distributive and procedural justice norms) were shaped directly and multiplicatively by ethical dispositions (equity sensitivity and need for structure) and ethical climates (egoistic, benevolent, and principle climates). We collected multisource data from 123 companies in Hong Kong, with personal factors assessed by participants’ self-reports and contextual factors by aggregations of their peers. In general, LISREL analyses with latent product variables supported the direct and multiplicative relationships. Our findings could (...) lay the groundwork for justice research from a morality perspective in future. (shrink)

The concept of people’s memory maintains the finiteness of time and capacity. However, with the advancement in technology, the amount of storage memory a person can use has increased dramatically. Given that digital traces can hardly be erased or forgotten, individuals have begun to express their desire to be forgotten in the digital world, and governments and academia are considering methods to fulfill such wishes. Capturing the difficulties in terms of a cultural lag between technological advancements and regulations on individuals’ (...) data privacy needs, we identify six motives for individuals wishing to be forgotten online and investigate its expected effects on online content generation through a qualitative content analysis of 222 responses from open-ended surveys in Korea. Our findings provide implications for the literature on individual privacy and the right to be forgotten employing the cultural lag, as well as, elaborate further on the relationship between being forgotten online and the legitimacy of such requests of individuals. Additionally, implications for data providers, data controllers/processors, and governments to address this lag and build a balanced system of personal information are provided. (shrink)

Companies increasingly offer their employees the opportunity to participate in voluntary Workplace Health Promotion programmes. Although such programmes have come into focus through national and regional regulation throughout much of the Western world, their ethical implications remain largely unexamined. This article maps the territory of the ethical issues that have arisen in relation to voluntary health promotion in the workplace against the background of asymmetric relationships between employers and employees. It addresses questions of autonomy and voluntariness, discrimination and distributive justice, (...) as well as privacy and responsibility. Following this analysis, we highlight the inadequacy of currently established ethical frameworks to sufficiently cover all aspects of workplace health promotion. Thus, we recommend the consideration of principles from all such frameworks in combination, in a joint reflection of an Ethics of Workplace Health Promotion. (shrink)

If there is something (P) that every possible agent is committed to value, and certain actions or attitudes either enhance or diminish P, then normative claims about a range of intentional actions can be objectively and non-trivially evaluated. I argue that the degree of existence as an agent depends on the consistency of reflexive-relating with other individuals of the agent-kind: the ontological thesis. I then show that in intending to act on a reason, every agent is rationally committed to value (...) ‘above all else’ being an agent, what consists in exercising the capacity to act and having the freedom to discriminate between more or less valuable actions: the transcendental thesis. Since the degree of possession of this personal but non-contingent good depends on relating to other agents in a special way, certain actions and attitudes may be objectively right or wrong for all agents. (shrink)

In this paper, I make an attempt to look for a thin and general concept of law that, as far as possible, should be neutral to the more substantial views of legal moralism and legal positivism, so that it is acceptable from both points of view. With this aim in view, I shall begin with a few remarks on concept formation and name a list of necessary requirements on an appropriate concept of law. On this basis, I intend to discuss (...) a number of contemporary legal theories in view to their respective interpretations of the concept of law. Finally, I want to propose a definition of law that not only satisfies the requirements of the concept of law, but is also general enough to be compatible with both camps of legal thinking. (shrink)

The corporate responsibility (CR) discussion has so far been rather fragmented as academics tackle it from their own areas of expertise, which guarantees in-depth analyses, but leaves room for broader syntheses. This research is a synthetic, interdisciplinary exercise: it integrates philosophical, psychological and managerial perspectives of corporate responsibility into a more holistic CR-model for the benefit of academics, companies and their interest groups. CR usually comprises three areas: environmental, social and economic responsibilities. In all these areas there should be a (...) match between corporate values, discourses and actions. The aim of this multidisciplinary research is to build a CR-model by integrating (1) utilitarian/egoistic, duty/rights/justice and virtue ethical corporate values with (2) increased consciousness of psychological defences in corporate discourses, in order to achieve (3) responsible environmental, social and economic corporate actions. The resulting CR-model can be tested in companies and executed through corporate strategic and operational management. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that cases of radical selftransformation (cases in which an agent willfully changes a foundational element of their motivational structure) constitute an important philosophical puzzle. Though our inclination to hold people responsible for such changes suggests that we regard radical transformation as (in some sense) self-determined, it is difficult to conceive how a transformation that extends to the heart of an agent’s practical life can be attributed to the agent at all. While I contend that the (...) best way to solve this puzzle is to deny that radical transformations are in fact self-determined, many maintain the opposite. The defense of my thesis involves showing how the conditions that must be met in order to coherently attribute transformation to an agent are not satisfied in cases of radical transformation. Radical transformation is, thus, something that happens to an agent, not something that is done by her. (shrink)

Most people believe some moral propositions are true. Most people would say that they know that rape is wrong, torturing people is wrong, and so on. But despite decades of intense epistemological study, philosophers cannot even provide a rudimentary sketch of moral knowledge. In my view, the fact that we have very strong epistemic confidence in some fundamental moral propositions and the fact that it is extremely difficult for us to provide even the basics of an account of moral knowledge (...) gives us an important clue. Both of these facts stem from the very nature of moral knowledge. In this paper I provide an intuitionist account of moral knowledge. I try to remove misunderstanding and add to our understanding of the contemporary account of self-evident moral propositions. For a theory of moral knowledge to be acceptable it must explain both the moral knowledge we have and why it is so very difficult for us to explain. My theory meets both requirements. (shrink)

To determine whether fish welfare matters morally, we need to know what characteristics or capacities beings need to have in order to be morally considerable, and whether fish have such characteristics. In this paper I discuss a group of theories, Kantian practical reasoning theories, in which agency (or practical rationality) is traditionally thought to be a necessary condition for moral considerability. An individual must have quite sophisticated capacities to be a (moral) agent in such theories: she must be able to (...) act on rational principles. It seems unlikely that nonhuman animals such as fish have such capacities. I argue, however, that on the basis of certain Kantian arguments, moral agents have reason to accept duties to nonrational animals if they are agents in a much less demanding sense: if they are motivated to pursue the objects of their desires. If fish have this capacity, their welfare matters morally. (shrink)

In this discussion note, I aim to reconstruct and assess Korsgaard's recent attempt to extend her regress argument. I begin, in section 1, with a brief recapitulation of the regress argument. Then, in section 2, I turn to the extension. I argue that the extension does not work because Korsgaard cannot rule out the possibility--a possibility for which there is both empirical evidence and argumentative pressure coming directly from the original regress--that we value animality in ourselves qua animality of rational (...) beings. (shrink)

The question of the moral status of AI and the extent to which that status ought to be recognised by societal institutions is one that has not yet received a satisfactory answer from lawyers. This paper seeks to provide a solution to the problem by defending a moral foundation for the recognition of legal personhood for AI, requiring the status to be granted should a threshold criterion be reached. The threshold proposed will be bare, noumenal agency in the Kantian sense. (...) Agency has been identified by Alan Gewirth as the source of the rights claims of our own species and, at risk of contradiction, is a foundation that must be expanded to all agents or else we contradict the foundation of our own rights. This is something that ought to be recognised through the granting of legal personhood to all noumenal agents by any system that requires such personhood for the enforcement of rights, or else the rule restricting legal personhood cannot be seen as a valid legal norm. Having laid out the case, the paper will move on to defend this natural law conception against the narrower definition of legal personhood proposed by Bryson et al. with regards to AI. It will argue that bare agency is a sufficient, though not necessary, criterion for the ascription of legal personhood in any system that sees the status as necessary for the ascription of legal rights. The paper will conclude by analysing the proposals currently making their way through the legislatures of the UK and European Union. They will be assessed for their compatibility with the claim that a functioning legal system necessarily must recognise the legal personhood of all noumenal agents regardless of their origins, and whether they are future-proofed for the possibility that AI may meet this threshold. (shrink)

The dispute between Kantians and Humeans over whether practical reason can justify moral reasons for all agents is often characterized as a debate over whether reasons are hypothetical or categorical. Instead, this debate must be understood in terms of the distinction between agent-neutral and agent-relative reasons. This paper considers Alan Gewirth’s Reason and Morality as a case study of a Kantian justification of morality focused on deriving categorical reasons from hypothetical reasons. The case study demonstrates first, the possibility of categorical (...) agent-relative reasons, and second, that inattention to this possibility has caused considerable confusion in the debate between Kantians and Humeans. (shrink)

Internalists about reasons generally insist that if a putative reason, R, is to count as a genuine normative reason for a particular agent to do something, then R must make a rational connection to some desire or interest of the agent in question. If internalism is true, but moral reasons purport to apply to agents independently of the particular desires, interests, and commitments they have, then we may be forced to conclude that moral reasons are incoherent. Richard Joyce (2001) develops (...) an argument along these lines. Against this view, I argue that we can make sense of moral reasons as reasons that apply to, and are capable of motivating, agents independently of their prior interests and desires. More specifically, I argue that moral agents, in virtue of their capacities for empathy and shared intentionality, are sensitive to reasons that do not directly link up with their pre-existing ends. In particular, they are sensitive to, and hence can be motivated by, reasons grounded in the desires, projects, commitments, concerns, and interests of others. Moral reasons are a subset of this class of reasons to which moral agents are sensitive. Thus, moral agents can be motivated by moral reasons, even where such reasons fail to link up to their own pre-existing ends. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungIn this article, I defend a version of moral constitutivism that is based on a theory of goods. It is inspired by ancient philosophy both in claiming that action theory should be formulated in teleological terms and in the idea that a sound theory of goods should be a eudaemonist one. Additionally I argue that morality can be understood on the basis of such an approach.

What do the living owe those who come after them? It is a question nonsensical to some and unanswerable to others, yet tantalizing in its persistence especially among environmentalists. This article makes a new start on the topic of intergenerational justice by bringing together human rights and environmental justice arguments in a novel way that lays the groundwork for a theory of intergenerational environmental justice based in the human rights to clean air, water, and soil. Three issues foundational to such (...) a theory are explored here. First is the broad question of whether justice is applicable to future (or past) generations in any real sense, or do such issues fall under the rubric of superogation. Second, can environmental goods properly be contained in a theory of distributive justice at all, since, superficially at least, they seem different in kind than the usual objects of justice? I will discuss them as “emergent” goods in fact central to contemporary justice distributions. Third, what is the relationship of justice to rights, and how can environmental human rights be included in justice distributions? (shrink)

This paper argues that an educated being logically does not have to be a human. Philosophers analyzing the concept of education have reached a consensual notion of the matter; but in applying that idea, they have barely discussed whether or not human beings are the only entities that may be educated. Using their notion as the core of a heuristic conception of education, this paper attempts to show that in some contexts it might make sense to predicate education of certain (...) non-human entities. In addition, the paper examines the place of beliefs, reflective intelligence, practical thinking, and feelings in education. It concludes by discussing its implications for educational theory and practice and for the connections between the educated being and personhood and the right to education. (shrink)

The purpose of the present paper is: (1) to outline a conceptual framework useful for the analysis of ethical issues raised by goal-directed activities, (2) to apply this framework to nanoscale research, (3) identify some of the main challenges in the evaluation of such research, and (4) exemplify what is needed for a positive answer to the question “How can nanoscale research improve the quality of life?” A basic idea of the paper is that nanoscale research can improve the conditions (...) and quality of life of large groups in society, provided that: (a) this research is directed at certain generally accepted goals, (b) at least some of the opportunities are exploited for the good of mankind, (c) the key obstacles on the road are eliminated, reduced or circumvented, and (d) this is done in ethically acceptable ways. (shrink)

Graham Haydon; Collective Moral Philosophy and Education for Pluralism, Journal of Philosophy of Education, Volume 20, Issue 1, 30 May 2006, Pages 97–106, https.

Professional engineering societies which are based in the United States, such as the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME, now ASME International) are recognizing that their codes of ethics must apply to engineers working throughout the world. An examination of the ethical code of the ASME International shows that its provisions pose many problems of application, especially in societies outside the United States. In applying the codes effectively in the international environment, two principal issues must be addressed. First, some Culture (...) Transcending Guidelines must be identified and justified. Nine such guidelines are identified. Second, some methods for applying the codes to particular situations must be identified. Three such methods are specification, balancing, and finding a creative middle way. (shrink)

I explore the usefulness of Martha Nussbaum's capabilities approach in regard to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD). The CRPD aims at empowering people with disabilities by granting them a number of civil and political, but also economic, social and cultural rights. Implementing the CRPD will clearly be politically challenging and also very expensive for states. Thus, questions might arise as to whether the requirements set in the CRPD can be justified from an ethical perspective. (...) I will first investigate if Nussbaum's capabilities approach provides support for the rights claimed in the CRPD. Second, I will investigate to what extent Nussbaum's capabilities approach is a useful tool to set priorities among rights in the course of the implementation of the convention. This is an urgent question because seen realistically, it will not be possible to realize all rights at once and thus some rights need to receive greater priority than others. I will argue that the capabilities approach can be regarded as supporting the rights specified in the CRPD, but that it proves unable to guide the implementation process due to an insufficient grounding of the capabilities. Employing the capabilities approach thus leads to only limited results. (shrink)

An influential strand in recent action-theory employs constitutivist arguments in order to present accounts of individual agency and practical identity. I argue for an extension of this framework into the interpersonal realm, and suggest using it to reassess issues in jurisprudence. A legal system is an instantiation of the solution to the inescapable tasks of self-constituting action and identity-formation in the presence of other agents. Law's validity and normativity can be enlightened when the constitutivist approach considers the external prerequisites of (...) individuals' self-conceptions qua agents. More specifically, this argumentative strategy allows a reassessment of Fuller's “internal morality of law.” Whereas, pace Fuller, morally substantive conclusions cannot be derived from formal criteria of legality, there are unconditional normative requirements that constrain law. (shrink)

Taking Catholic sexual ethics and liberal feminist ethics as points of departure, this essay argues that both frameworks are ill-prepared to deal with the moral problems raised by sex trafficking: while Catholic sexual ethics is grounded in a normative understanding of sexuality, liberal feminist ethics argues for women's sexual autonomy, resting upon freedom of action and consent. From a perspective that attends both to the phenomenological interpretation of embodied selves and the Kantian normative interpretation of dignity, it becomes possible to (...) critique both the Catholic and the liberal feminist frameworks of ethics. I argue that Catholic sexual ethics requires a reconceptualization as social ethics in order to meet the challenges of our present time, but that the shift is possible without giving up the moral imperatives of both Catholic and feminist ethics to protect human dignity and women's rights. (shrink)

Rationality and reasonableness are often sharply distinguished from one another and are even held to be in conflict. On this construal, rationality consists in means-end calculation of the most efficient means to one's ends (which are usually taken to be self-interested), while reasonableness consists in equitableness whereby one respects the rights of other persons as well as oneself. To deal with this conflict, it is noted that both rationality and reasonableness are based on reason, which is analyzed as the power (...) of attaining truth, and especially necessary truth. It is then shown that, by the rationality involved in reason, the moral principle of reasonableness, the Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC), has a stringently rational justification in that to deny or violate it is to incur self-contradiction. Objections are considered bearing on relevance and motivation. It is concluded that, where reasonableness and egoistic rationality conflict, the former is rationally superior. (shrink)

This article addresses the theoretical difficulty of justifying the use of penal coercion in circumstances of marked, unjustified social inequality. The intuitive belief behind the text is that in such a context—that of an indecent State—justifying penal coercion becomes very problematic, particularly when directed against the most disfavored members of society.

This article will provide an illustration of Max Weber’s theory of rationalization with a specific impetus on its interdependency with the development of capitalism. Following Horkheimer, I shall critically draw on Weber to outline a theory of human freedom, showing that rationalization not only implies economic and social liberation but entails a totalizing tendency that invades all spheres of socio-political life including people’s mental infrastructure. This mental colonization can be framed as a process of substituting value rationality with instrumental rationality. (...) I will claim that this substitution can be understood as an impediment for human freedom. Following contemporary theories of action, I will show the centrality of value orientation for understanding human freedom. Therefore, I propose a critical theory of freedom that centers value rational action as realization of freedom and can be understood as emancipative. (shrink)

Developing themes in the work of Thomas Hill, I argue that servility is an underappreciated but pervasive reason for moral transgression. Recognizing servility as a basic cause of immorality obliges us to reconsider questions about the rationality of morality. Traditional answers to the problem of the immoralist, which tend to be stated in terms of enlightened self-interest, fail to properly engage the problems posed by 'servile immorality.' In response to these problems, I develop a Humean version of a traditionally Kantian (...) strategy for substantiating the rationality of morality: (i.e.) agents' conceptions of themselves commit them to accepting morality's authority. Servile behavior implies cognitive dissonance, which can restructure or dissolve those particular desires, beliefs, and projects that constitute agents' most highly valued contingent conceptions of themselves. I conclude that agents have reason to abstain from servility even on a parsimonious Humean account of practical reasons. (shrink)

We can distinguish two kinds of moral universalization tests for practical principles. One requires that the universal practice of the principle, i.e., universal conformity to it by all agents in a given world, satisfies some condition. The other requires that conformity to the principle by any possible agent, in any situation and at any time, satisfies some condition. We can call these universal practice and universal applicability tests respectively. The logical distinction between these tests is rarely appreciated, and many philosophers (...) systematically confuse them with each other. In practice, UP tests are more frequently used to defend deontological norms, while UA tests are used to defend consequentialist norms. Both conceptual argument and practical examples of their applications will show that UA tests are decisively superior to UP tests for grounding moral norms, casting greater doubt upon deontological theories which rely upon the latter unless they can reformulate their arguments using some version of a UA test. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal Jonathan Pugh critiques the idea of intermediate ‘moral respect’ which some say is owed to embryos. This concept is inherent within the ‘principle of proportionality’, the principle that destructive research on embryos is permissable only if the research serves an important purpose. Pugh poses two specific questions to proponents of the idea of intermediate moral respect. This article argues that while the questions posed by Pugh are certainly pertinent to the debate, the hypothetical (...) responses he suggests to these questions do not quite get to the core of what is troublesome about the concept. The article suggests alternative responses to Pugh's questions in order to focus attention on more fundamental problems facing the idea of intermediate moral respect, while also pointing to how the intermediate moral respect proponent might best develop these responses. It goes on to argue that these hypothetical responses fail to answer convincingly the questions posed. More specifically, this article challenges two possible justifications for the distinct idea of intermediate moral respect, namely the argument from potentiality and an argument from the proportionality of fundamental moral status. The article also raises a dilemma inherent in the application of the principle of proportionality to cases involving beings to which intermediate moral respect is owed even where it is allowed, ex hypothesi, that both the category of intermediate moral respect and the general proportionality reasoning underpinning the principle of proportionality are basically cogent. This article thus develops and adds to the challenge laid down by Pugh to proponents of the idea of intermediate moral respect. (shrink)

: Care theorists have made significant gains over the past twenty-five years in establishing caring as a viable moral and political concept. Nonetheless, the concept of caring remains underdeveloped as a basis for a moral and political philosophy, and there is no fully developed account of our moral obligation to care. This article advances thinking about caring by developing a definition of caring and a theory of obligation to care sufficient to ground a general moral and political philosophy.

Care theorists have made significant gains over the past twenty-five years in establishing caring as a viable moral and political concept. Nonetheless, the concept of caring remains underdeveloped as a basis for a moral and political philosophy, and there is no fully developed account of our moral obligation to care. This article advances thinking about caring by developing a definition of caring and a theory of obligation to care sufficient to ground a general moral and political philosophy.