Stephen Maitzen argues that divine command metaethics must be mistaken because it is committed to the implausible assumption that the sentence ‘God is good’ is a tautology. In this article, I show that a charitable interpretation of R. M. Adams’ version of divine command metaethics is not committed to accept this assumption. I conclude that Maitzen’s objection merely manages to refute a strawman version of divine command metaethics.

This paper aims, firstly, to bridge debates on human rights and Transnational Corporations within practical philosophy and those within the business and human rights literature and, secondly, to determine the extent to which human rights duties can be assigned to TNCs. To justifiably assign human rights duties to TNCs, it is argued that these duties need to be grounded in moral theory. Through assessment of two approaches from practical philosophy, it is argued that positive duties cannot be assigned to TNCs (...) because their bindingness cannot be grounded in moral theory. A positive argument is introduced to interpret TNCs’ human rights duties as corresponding to virtues rather than rights. Though such duties are indeterminate regarding what constitutes adequate performance, they can be made more determinate through legal instruments outside of positive human rights law. An approach is introduced exemplifying how such approaches can achieve the end of TNCs compliance with human rights norms. (shrink)

The fear that business corporations have claimed unwarranted constitutional protections which have entrenched corporate power has produced a broad social movement demanding that constitutional rights be restricted to human beings and corporate personhood be abolished. We develop a critique of these proposals organized around the three salient rationales we identify in the accompanying narrative, which we argue reflect a narrow focus on large business corporations, a misunderstanding of the legal concept of personhood, and a failure to distinguish different kinds of (...) constitutional rights and the reasons for assigning them. Corporate personhood and corporate constitutional rights are not problematic per se once these notions are decoupled from biological, metaphysical, or moral considerations. The real challenge is that we need a principled way of thinking about the priority of human over corporate persons which does not reduce the efficacy of corporate institutions or harm liberal democracies. (shrink)

It is commonly assumed that to educate means to control or guide a person’s acting and development. On the other hand, it is often presupposed that the addressees of education must be seen as being endowed with free will. The question raised in this paper is whether these two assumptions are compatible. It might seem that if the learner is free in her will, she cannot be educated; however, if she is successfully educated, then it is doubtful whether she can (...) be seen as free. Inspired by the current philosophical debate on the compatibility of free will and determinism, this paper spells out two versions of this dilemma. The first version relies on the idea that to be free means being the causal source of one’s actions. The second formulation refers to the notion of freedom as the ability to act otherwise than the way one actually acts. The solution to the dilemma that is developed in this paper, however, uses a third concept of free will—to be free means being able to act on reasons. (shrink)

In response to challenges to moral philosophy presented by other disciplines and facing a diversity of approaches to the foundation and focus of morality, this paper argues for a pluralist meta-ethics that is methodologically hierarchical and guided by the principle of subsidiarity. Inspired by Deweyan pragmatism, this novel and original application of the subsidiarity principle and the related methodological proposal for a cascading meta-ethical architecture offer a “dirty” and instrumentalist understanding of meta-ethics that promises to work, not only in moral (...) philosophy but also in the (rest of the) real world, and that facilitates collaboration with other disciplines outside moral philosophy. (shrink)

A fundamental tension exists between Rawls's ideal Kantian conception of justice as fairness (JAF), which requires respecting people as ends, and his realistic non-Kantian consequentialist conception of a supreme emergency in a just war. By justifying the targeting of objectively innocent noncombatants during a supreme emergency exception, Rawls allows for treating them as means only. Hence, his appeal to a supreme emergency is insufficient to avoid this tension. First, since for him JAF is ideal but also practical, one might argue (...) that his fictional people in the original position must reflect on the justification for using force on behalf of JAF. And second, since Rawls justifies targeting objectively innocent people during a supreme emergency exemption, he justifies what one might conceive of as emergency terrorism. Emergency terrorism, however, treats people as means only. Therefore, Rawls's Kantian conception of JAF is in tension with his consequentialist justification of a supreme emergency in a just war and hence with emergency terrorism. (shrink)

En el presente artículo, el autor analiza el concepto de leyes prácticas propuesto por Kant en la Crítica de la razón práctica, poniendo énfasis en los antecendentes que este concepto tiene en la escuela del derecho natural moderno y en el giro que este concepto representa, ya que en él se hace patente el paso desde una ética de la obligación hacia una ética de la autonomía. Se analizan además las propiedades esenciales del concepto de leyes prácticas y los problemas (...) filosóficos que surgen a partir de él y se sitúa dicho concepto en el contexto general de la ética kantiana y de la filosofía moral. In this article the author analyzes the concept of "practical law" as developed by Kant in his Critique of Practical Reason. The author notes the roots of this concept in the modern school of natural law and states that this concept represents a shift from an ethic of obligation to an ethic of autonomy. In addition, the author analyzes the essential features of the "practical law" concept; the philosophical problems that arise from it, and the place of this concept in the landscape of Kantian ethics and moral philosophy. (shrink)

It’s widely accepted that normativity is not subject to truth values. The underlying reasoning is that truth values can only be predicated of descriptive statements; normative statements are prescriptive, not descriptive; thus truth value predicates cannot be assigned to normative statements. Hence, deonticity lacks logical semantics. This semantic monism has been challenged over the last decades from a series of perspectives that open the way for legal logics with imperative semantics. In the present paper I will go back to Kant (...) and review his understanding of practical judgments, presenting it as supported by a pluralistic semantics. From this perspective a norm of Law is a logical expression that includes as content a generic description of a possible behavior by a generality of juridical agents, and assigns to that content the assertion of its obligatory character, accompanied by a disincentive for non-compliance. From this perspective legal norms can be syntactically formalized and assigned appropriate semantic values in such terms that they can be incorporated into valid inferential schemes. The consequence is that we can put together legal logics that handle both the phenomenal and the deontic dimensions of legality. (shrink)

This paper investigates how an introductory philosophy course influences the moral and political development of undergraduate students in a Liberal Arts university in Central Asia. Within a context of rapid changes characteristic of transitional societies—reflected in the organization of higher education—philosophy provides students with the means to reason about moral and political values in a way that overcomes the old ideological tenets as well as contemporary reluctance to theoretical inquiry. Studying philosophy provides a remedy for deficiencies in both secondary and (...) higher education, by improving general reading and reasoning skills, that enable the development of moral reasoning. Furthermore, familiarity with major works of moral and political philosophy can help students comprehend the patterns of social change, as well as surmount the issue of unsatisfactory theoretical foundations for social science. (shrink)

The main topic of Rudiger Bittner's book 'Doing Things for Reasons' is action theory. We learn what it is to have reasons for action and how acting in response to reasons should be construed; we learn to what extent these reasons are elements of our mental life (and in particular that they aren't mental at all). Almost at the end of the book, however, in chap. 12, all of a sudden we learn something more. We receive an answer to the (...) very core question of anthropology: who we are, as men and women, and what is so special about us - or rather that there is nothing special about us. It is this last part of the book, easily overlooked, that I want to concentrate on in my contribution. (shrink)

Analytic moral philosophers have generally failed to engage in any substantial way with the cultural history of morality. This is a shame, because a genealogy of morals can help us accomplish two important tasks. First, a genealogy can form the basis of an epistemological project, one that seeks to establish the epistemic status of our beliefs or values. Second, a genealogy can provide us with functional understanding, since a history of our beliefs, values or institutions can reveal some inherent dynamic (...) or pattern which may be problematically obscured from our view. In this paper, I try to make good on these claims by offering a sketchy genealogy of emancipatory values, or values which call for the liberation of persons from systems of dominance and oppression. The real history of these values, I argue, is both epistemologically vindicatory and functionally enlightening. (shrink)

According to ethical objectivism, what a person should do depends on the facts, as opposed to their perspective on the facts. A long-standing challenge to this view is that it fails to accommodate the role that norms play in guiding a person’s action. Roughly, if the facts that determine what a person should do lie beyond their ken, they cannot inform a person’s deliberations. This paper explores two recent developments of this line of thought. Both focus on the epistemic counterpart (...) to ethical objectivism, according to which what a person should believe depends on the facts, as opposed to their perspective on the facts. The suggestion in each case is that epistemic objectivism faces a distinctive problem in accommodating guidance. Insofar as objectivism concerning the epistemic domain stands or falls with objectivism concerning the ethical domain, this is a problem for objectivism more generally. In this paper, I show that those arguments are not successful. The upshot is that the objectivist – whether ethical or epistemic – need not reject the idea that norms serve a guiding function. (shrink)

Virtue ethics has many times been suggested as a promising recipe for the construction of artificial moral agents due to its emphasis on moral character and learning. However, given the complex nature of the theory, hardly any work has de facto attempted to implement the core tenets of virtue ethics in moral machines. The main goal of this paper is to demonstrate how virtue ethics can be taken all the way from theory to machine implementation. To achieve this goal, we (...) critically explore the possibilities and challenges for virtue ethics from a computational perspective. Drawing on previous conceptual and technical work, we outline a version of artificial virtue based on moral functionalism, connectionist bottom–up learning, and eudaimonic reward. We then describe how core features of the outlined theory can be interpreted in terms of functionality, which in turn informs the design of components necessary for virtuous cognition. Finally, we present a comprehensive framework for the technical development of artificial virtuous agents and discuss how they can be implemented in moral environments. (shrink)

Recent advancements in artificial intelligence have fueled widespread academic discourse on the ethics of AI within and across a diverse set of disciplines. One notable subfield of AI ethics is machine ethics, which seeks to implement ethical considerations into AI systems. However, since different research efforts within machine ethics have discipline-specific concepts, practices, and goals, the resulting body of work is pestered with conflict and confusion as opposed to fruitful synergies. The aim of this paper is to explore ways to (...) alleviate these issues, both on a practical and theoretical level of analysis. First, we describe two approaches to machine ethics: the philosophical approach and the engineering approach and show how tensions between the two arise due to discipline specific practices and aims. Using the concept of disciplinary capture, we then discuss potential promises and pitfalls to cross-disciplinary collaboration. Drawing on recent work in philosophy of science, we finally describe how metacognitive scaffolds can be used to avoid epistemological obstacles and foster innovative collaboration in AI ethics in general and machine ethics in particular. (shrink)

Although the fictional domain exhibits a prima facie freedom from real-world moral constraints, certain fictive imaginings seem to deserve moral criticism. Capturing both intuitions, this paper argues for double-standard moralism, the view that fictive imaginings are subject to different moral standards than their real-world counterparts. I show how no account has, thus far, offered compelling reasons to warrant the moral appropriateness of this discrepancy. I maintain that the normative discontinuity between fiction and the actual world is moderate, as opposed to (...) one that leaves fictive engagements wholly exempt from moral evaluations. I propose a way of addressing the gamer’s dilemma that is compatible with a moderate kind of discontinuity. Finally, I contend that the audience is justified in adopting deviant moral attitudes in fictional situations because their consequences largely differ from those that analogous real-world events would have. (shrink)

The statement everyone wants to live a fulfilled and happy life may seem simple, self-evident, and even trivial at first glance. However, upon closer philosophical analysis, can we unequivocally assert that people are truly focused on well-being? Assuming they are, the question becomes: what guidelines should be followed and how should one behave in order to achieve true well-being and attain their goals? One popular viewpoint is that cultivating moral virtues and personal qualities is essential for a life of "true" (...) well-being, rather than mere pleasure. This perspective is not particularly original, as it was advocated quite clearly by Aristotle. However, we must ask: what guarantees that virtue will lead to well-being? Can we really ignore the common-sense doubt that virtue (and moral life), as Kant points out, may not be rewarded with any form of well-being or "happiness" in the broadest sense during our earthly existence? How might we address this doubt? If questions about the relationship between happiness and virtue have been asked since ancient times, why don't we have definitive answers yet? Perhaps there is something wrong with the questions themselves, as is often the case in philosophy. Views on this relationship have influenced the modification of theories that philosophers have put forth in order to provide satisfactory answers. One such theory is the renewed and modernized ethics of virtue, which places the greatest emphasis on building an individual's moral character, assuming that Aristotelian character virtues such as courage, honesty, generosity, prudence, self-control, and compassion will enable us to lead a happy and fulfilling life. "Virtues" refer to a wide range of "excellences" or activities that individuals can use to perfect themselves. For example, an ordinary person might accept that courage can make their life more fulfilling, but it's important to recognize that virtues cannot be acquired overnight. Furthermore, many people believe that virtues are innate qualities that one either possesses or lacks. In contrast, ethics of virtue provides guidance and instructions for developing virtues over extended periods of time, as well as for continuously "practicing" the development of moral characteristics that will make us better individuals. The central and most significant concept in ethics of virtue is the golden mean, which can be interpreted in various ways. Essentially, ethics of virtue offers a path to a life filled with pleasure, harmony, and virtuous action. However, this collection of essays, Virtues and Vices: Between Ethics and Epistemology, is not exclusively concerned with virtues or ethics. Knowledge, as well as the processes of belief formation and justification of those beliefs, are also essential to ethics of virtue. Going back to the systematic Greek philosopher and his teacher, we can emphasize that virtues and knowledge are inseparable. Without the epistemology of virtues, even a thematic collection like this one would be incomplete. The Epistemology of Virtue is a relatively new branch of philosophy that has emerged as a response to questions about the value-neutrality of science. For a long time, the separation of values and scientific inquiry has been viewed as the correct methodological approach. However, it is clear that every scientist is also a human being with their own virtues and flaws. It is naive to assume that a scientist can leave their values and moral qualities outside the laboratory and treat their colleagues in the team differently than they would treat other people in their everyday life. Taking this into account, we can notice that Epistemology of Virtue is a theory that examines the influence of virtues on the processes of acquiring knowledge. Epistemic virtues refer to qualities that enable individuals to acquire knowledge and make reliable judgments. These virtues include traits such as openness to diverse testimonies and arguments, critical thinking, a tendency to question one's own assumptions, and the ability to identify errors in one's own thought processes. Just like in virtue ethics, the Epistemology of Virtue raises the question of how we can cultivate the necessary virtues and how these virtues can have a positive impact on both individuals and society. The field also explores how epistemic virtues can be put into practice, such as in educational settings, scientific research, and various social activities. Finally, we turn to a topic that is often overlooked in philosophy - human flaws. While ethics typically views flaws as the opposite of virtues, requiring correction both individually and socially, the Epistemology of Virtue questions what happens when flaws occur in knowledge-related qualities. Do these flaws also need to be eliminated, or are they an inherent part of the process of acquiring knowledge and making judgments? At first glance, prejudices, stereotypes, dogmatism, conformism, closed-mindedness towards arguments and evidence, as well as uncritical acceptance of authority, can all hinder our ability to acquire knowledge. Epistemologists view these qualities as vices, rather than flaws like ethicists do. The Epistemology of Vices is the newest of the three branches of philosophy covered in this thematic collection, and it examines the ways in which false and untrue beliefs develop and persist in society. This area of study seeks to answer questions about how people form delusions and whether it is possible to overcome them. On the other hand, the Epistemology of Virtue is like the "older brother" that supervises these vices. It contributes to the investigation and overcoming of vices by developing virtues that enable individuals to more accurately assess the truthfulness of their beliefs. However, even though vices can have a destructive impact on knowledge acquisition, the question remains: are vices always detrimental in every context? Conversely, can virtues be detrimental? For example, does a virtue like solidarity sometimes hinder the efficient formation of true beliefs in time-sensitive situations such as finding a vaccine to combat a virus pandemic? Can vices be useful? Can stubbornness and uncooperativeness sometimes help a research team by allowing two sides to reach the same goal through different paths? Within this collection, some of these questions will receive answers, some of which may confirm existing impressions, while others may surprise readers. The thematic collection, Virtues and Vices: Between Ethics and Epistemology, consists of four interesting chapters and 21 papers that cover the selected topic through the prism of philosophical disciplines such as ethics, epistemology, the history of philosophy, philosophy of mind, political philosophy, and philosophy of science. In this introduction, we will not discuss the contents of the articles so as not to disrupt the intended integral approach to reading the collection. A significant feature of this collection is the continuity that extends from one paper to another, from topic to topic, and from problem to problem. Lastly, we would like to express our gratitude to the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Belgrade for their support in realizing this collection, as well as to our colleagues from the Department and Institute of Philosophy who have made this collection a relevant and significant achievement with their contributions. We are also thankful to the reviewers of the collection as a whole, as well as to the referees of individual articles, who have provided us with detailed comments and remarks that have made this collection clearer and more comprehensive. We owe a special thanks to our colleagues from Zagreb, Rijeka, and Maribor, whose exceptional papers have contributed to making this collection an unabashed international contribution to debates about the ethics and epistemology of virtues and vices. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), the German philosopher, is considered as the father of modern ethics and one of the great philosophers in the history of philosophy. He wanted to establish a firm foundation for moral philosophy. He contributed something new to modern ethics which was not attempted by earlier ethicists. He wanted to show by using reason that morality is based on a single supreme universal principle, which is binding to all rational beings. Precisely, Kant wanted to establish the first principle (...) of morality which neglects all consideration of self-interest and even particular human problems. In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant claimed that his intention is to seek out and establish the supreme principle of morality, and that supreme principle is the categorical imperative. He puts the supreme principle of morality or the categorical imperative in at least five ways. These are formula of universal law (FUL), formula of universal law (FLN), formula of humanity (FH), formula of humanity (FA), and formula of realm of ends (FRE). However, Kant affirms that there is one canonical and general formulation of the categorical imperative and it is the FUL. For him, the other formulas are not distinct ethical principles; rather they are the reformulations or variant formulations of the single categorical imperative. Kant put this position in his works, The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. So, in this paper, I will mainly concentrate on the fundamental doctrine of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. As I have tried to make clear before, Kant’s aim in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals is to search for and establish the supreme principle of morality (i.e., categorical imperative). He attempted to do this at the end of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. But, to me, the way he attempted to justify the categorical imperative is problematic. Thus, in this paper, I argue that Kant did not put the categorical imperative or morality on a solid ground. (shrink)

Suppose an agent has made a judgement of the form, 'all things considered, it would be better for me to do a rather than b (or any range of alternatives to doing a)' where a and b stand for particular actions. If she does not act upon her judgement in these circumstances would that be a failure of rationality on her part? In this paper I consider two different interpretations of all things considered judgements which give different answers to this (...) question, one suggested by Donald Davidson, the other by Paul Grice and Judith Baker. I argue that neither interpretation is adequate. However, a third interpretation that combines features of the Grice/Baker view with the Davidsonian view is possible. In the final section of the paper I defend this interpretation against two objections. (shrink)

Deliberation incompatibilism is the view that an agent being rational and deliberating about which of (mutually excluding) actions to perform, is incompatible with her believing that there exist prior conditions that render impossible the performance of either one of these actions. However, the main argument for this view, associated most prominently with Peter van Inwagen, appears to have been widely rejected by contemporary authors on free will. In this paper I argue first that a closer examination of van Inwagen's argument (...) shows that the standard objections are based on a misunderstanding of the notion of ‘deliberation’ presupposed in this argument. Second, I attempt to strengthen the case for deliberation incompatibilism by offering a different argument in its support. (shrink)

When it comes to social robotics (robots that engage human social responses via “eyes” and other facial features, voice-based natural-language interactions, and even evocative movements), ethicists, particularly in European and North American traditions, are divided over whether and why they might be morally considerable. Some argue that moral considerability is based on internal psychological states like consciousness and sentience, and debate about thresholds of such features sufficient for ethical consideration, a move sometimes criticized for being overly dualistic in its framing (...) of mind versus body. Others, meanwhile, focus on the effects of these robots on human beings, arguing that psychological impact alone can qualify an entity for moral status. What both sides overlook is the importance for ordinary moral reasoning of integrating questions about an entity’s “inner life,” and its psychological effect on us. Turning to accounts of relationships in virtue ethics, especially those of the Confucian tradition, we find a more nuanced theory that can provide complex guidance on the moral considerability of social robots, including ethical considerations about whether and how to question this to begin with. (shrink)

While artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly applied for decision-making processes, ethical decisions pose challenges for AI applications. Given that humans cannot always agree on the right thing to do, how would ethical decision-making by AI systems be perceived and how would responsibility be ascribed in human-AI collaboration? In this study, we investigate how the expert type (human vs. AI) and level of expert autonomy (adviser vs. decider) influence trust, perceived responsibility, and reliance. We find that participants consider humans to be (...) more morally trustworthy but less capable than their AI equivalent. This shows in participants’ reliance on AI: AI recommendations and decisions are accepted more often than the human expert’s. However, AI team experts are perceived to be less responsible than humans, while programmers and sellers of AI systems are deemed partially responsible instead. (shrink)

Are animals moral agents? In this article, a theologian and an anthropologist unite to bring the resources of each field to bear on this question. Alas, not all interdisciplinary conversations end harmoniously, and after much discussion the two authors find themselves in substantial disagreement over the answer. The article is therefore presented in two halves, one for each side of the argument. As well as presenting two different positions, our hope is that this article clarifies the different understandings of morality (...) in our respective fields and will help to offset confusion in interdisciplinary dialogue. In what follows, we each present our case. In the first section, Adam Willows argues that moral activity necessarily involves the use of reason, symbolic thought, and language and is on that basis an exclusively human affair. In the second, Marcus Baynes-Rock discusses his experience of relationality with other creatures; a relationality which, he argues, creates a shared understanding of obligations which are characteristically moral. (shrink)

Freedom can be seen as individual’s capacity to choose between alternatives. As such, it stands in a dialectical relationship to its environment that both imposes constraints on freedom and allows carrying it out. Yet if we see liberty as freedom’s social accommodation, how would freedom shape liberty, and how would liberty accommodate freedom? As a capacity for choice, freedom is formal. Negative liberty, or freedom from, protects this capacity yet does not give it content. To make freedom meaningful, its societal (...) accommodation has ensure that the choice can be carried out – in terms of accessing alternatives, understand them, and making informed choices. The paper, using the tools provided by the Hegelian philosophy and by information theory, explores the concept of liberty as an enabler of freedom and the role of knowledge in its enablement. This exploration leads us to specific positive rights that are necessary to make freedom meaningful. (shrink)

Are workers dominated? A recent suite of neo-republican and relational egalitarian philosophers think they are. Suppose they are right; that is, suppose that some workers are governed by an unjust and arbitrary power existing in labour relations, which persists even in the presence of the actual ability to exit. My question is this: does that give us reason to impose restrictions on firms? According to the so-called Efficiency Objection there are relevant trade-offs that need to be considered between the efficiency (...) of firms and the freedom of workers, and upon considering these trade-offs, we should reject workplace democracy. In this paper, I present a dilemma for the Efficiency Objection. I argue that either the Efficiency Objection is justified on moral grounds or non-moral grounds; if the Efficiency Objection is justified on moral grounds, then it fails because efficiency cannot be valued for its own sake (it is only instrumentally good); if the Efficiency Objection is justified on non-moral grounds, then it fails because of the respect that we owe to persons as persons; therefore, the Efficiency Objection fails. (shrink)

In philosophy of mind, zombies are imaginary creatures that are exact physical duplicates of conscious subjects but for whom there is no first-personal experience. Zombies are meant to show that physicalism—the theory that the universe is made up entirely out of physical components—is false. In this paper, I apply the zombie thought experiment to the realm of morality to assess whether moral agency is something independent from sentience. Algorithms, I argue, are a kind of functional moral zombie, such that thinking (...) about the latter can help us better understand and regulate the former. I contend that the main reason why algorithms can be neither autonomous nor accountable is that they lack sentience. Moral zombies and algorithms are incoherent as moral agents because they lack the necessary moral understanding to be morally responsible. To understand what it means to inflict pain on someone, it is necessary to have experiential knowledge of pain. At most, for an algorithm that feels nothing, ‘values’ will be items on a list, possibly prioritised in a certain way according to a number that represents weightiness. But entities that do not feel cannot value, and beings that do not value cannot act for moral reasons. (shrink)

Although the free-will reply to divine hiddenness is often associated with Kant, the argument typically presented in the literature is not the strongest Kantian response. Kant’s central claim is not that knowledge of God would preclude the possibility of transgression, but rather that it would preclude one’s viewing adherence to the moral law as a genuine sacrifice of self-interest. After explaining why the Kantian reply to hiddenness is superior to standard formulations, I argue that, despite Kant’s general skepticism about theodicy, (...) his insights pertaining to hiddenness also provide the foundation for a new theodicy that merits serious attention. (shrink)

The paper concentrates on two questions: first, the problem of how to introduce students to philosophical argument in a contextualised and pluralist manner; and, second, the question of what kind of texts such a pedagogy requires at its disposal. The two questions are of course intimately related, as the dominance of the single-aim present-centred approach brings with it a highly selective publication of the archive, in editions typically suited to the aims of rational reconstruction rather than historical investigation.

This paper suggests the democratic direction in which the right of freedom of expression should be conceived and applied. In the first two sections it suggests some counter-examples to, and diagnoses of, the libertarian and liberal conceptions of freedom of expression, taking Scanlon (1972) and Scanlon (1979), respectively, to be their chief proponents. The paper suggests that these conceptions cannot take into account clear examples, like fraudulent propaganda, which should not be legal. The democratic conception takes it to heart that (...) the pillars upon which the right of freedom of expression is founded are individual and collective autonomy, the right to know facts of public interest and information necessary for effective democratic control of government. The paper suggests that in a time when private powers seriously threaten these pillars, it is correct for the government to step in to provide the framework in which genuine discussion geared toward fulfilling the objectives of these pillars can take place. (shrink)

Some commentators have condemned Kant’s moral project from a feminist perspective based on Kant’s apparently dim view of women as being innately morally deficient. Here I will argue that although his remarks concerning women are unsettling at first glance, a more detailed and closer examination shows that Kant’s view of women is actually far more complex and less unsettling than that attributed to him by various feminist critics. My argument, then, undercuts the justification for the severe feminist critique of Kant’s (...) moral project. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the possibility of developing a Kantian account of the ethics of belief by deploying the tools provided by Kant's ethics. To do so, I reconstruct epistemic concepts and arguments on the model of their ethical counterparts, focusing on the notions of epistemic principle, epistemic maxim and epistemic universalizability test. On this basis, I suggest that there is an analogy between our position as moral agents and as cognizers: our actions and our thoughts are subject to (...) the same rational norm. (shrink)

Do famous athletes have special obligations to act virtuously? A number of philosophers have investigated this question by examining whether famous athletes are subject to special role model obligations (Wellman 2003; Feezel 2005; Spurgin 2012). In this paper we will take a different approach and give a positive response to this question by arguing for the position that sport and gaming celebrities are ‘ambassadors of the game’: moral agents whose vocations as rule-followers have unique implications for their non-lusory lives. According (...) to this idea, the actions of a game’s players and other stakeholders—especially the actions of its stars—directly affect the value of the game itself, a fact which generates additional moral reasons to behave in a virtuous manner. We will begin by explaining the three main positions one may take with respect to the question: moral exceptionalism, moral generalism, and moral exemplarism. We will argue that no convincing case for moral exemplarism has thus far been made, which gives us reason to look for new ways to defend this position. We then provide our own ‘ambassadors of the game’ account and argue that it gives us good reason to think that sport and game celebrities are subject to special obligations to act virtuously. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that Christ’s second love command implies not only that people’s volitions and actions be Christ-like, but also that their affective-motivational dispositions be Christ-like. More specifically, I argue that the command implies that people have aretaic obligations to strive to cultivate a merciful heart with the kind of affective depth described by St. Isaac of Syria in his 71st ascetical homily—i.e., one that is disposed to becoming inflamed, such that it is gripped by “strong and vehement (...) mercy.”. (shrink)

In a recent article Duncan Purves, Ryan Jenkins, and B. J. Strawser argue that in order for a decision in war to be just, or indeed the decision to resort to war to be just, it must be the case that the decision is made for the right reasons. Furthermore, they argue that this requirement holds regardless of how much good is produced by said action. In this essay I argue that their argument is flawed, in that it mistakes what (...) makes an agent morally good for what makes an act morally good. I argue that the main thrust of Purves et al.’s argument in fact undermines the conclusion they wish to draw, and that the reasons for one’s action do not make an in principle difference to the morality of actions in war. I further argue that this position undermines the traditional ad bellum just war constraint of right intention, and that the morality of actions in war is, at core, only concerned with outcomes. I conclude by clarifying that one’s reasons for action do in fact matter when deciding to enter war or kill in war, but only because one’s reasons significantly impact the way in which one acts. The purpose of this paper is to clear the theoretical space by showing why intentions/reasons do not in principle matter when assessing the morality of war (or killing), but this should not be taken as an argument that we should ignore intentions/reasons altogether. (shrink)

I propose a framework, derived from moral theory, for assessing the moral status of intelligent machines. Using this framework, I claim that some current and foreseeable intelligent machines have approximately as much moral status as plants, trees, and other environmental entities. This claim raises the question: what obligations could a moral agent (e.g., a normal adult human) have toward an intelligent machine? I propose that the threshold for any moral obligation should be the "functional morality" of Wallach and Allen [20], (...) while the upper limit of our obligations should not exceed the upper limit of our obligations toward plants, trees, and other environmental entities. (shrink)

Abstract In this paper I set the debate between Kant and Schiller in terms of the role that an ideal of life can play within an autonomist ethic. I begin by examining the critical role Schiller gives to emotions in tackling specific motivational concerns in Kant's ethics. In the Kantian response I offer to these criticisms, I emphasise the role of metaphysics for a proper understanding of Kant's position whilst allowing that with respect to moral psychology, Kant and Schiller are (...) in agreement about the importance of emotions in our moral lives. I conclude by returning to the themes broached in the introduction to consider the extent to which the teleological concerns that motivate Schiller can be addressed within Kant's autonomist ethics. (shrink)

Autonomy in bioethics is coming under sustained criticism from a variety of perspectives. The criticisms, which target personal or individual autonomy, are largely justified. Moral conceptions of autonomy, such as Kant’s, on the other hand, cannot simply be applied in bioethical situations without moralizing care provision and recipience. The discussion concludes with a proposal for re-thinking autonomy by focusing on what different agents count as reasons for choosing one rather than another course of action, thus recognising their involvement in the (...) decision process. (shrink)

Due to the domain characteristics of business ethics, a contractarian theory for business ethics will need to be essentially different from the contract model as it is applied to other domains. Much of the current criticism of contractarian business ethics (CBE) can be traced back to autonomy, one of its three boundary conditions. After explaining why autonomy is so important, this article considers the notion carefully vis à vis the contracting partners in the contractarian approaches in business ethics. Autonomy is (...) too demanding a condition for the realm of CBE. But a less stringent version of the contract may be possible, a version which uses the contract as a heuristic device, which merely requires moral responsibility. Furthermore, it is argued that views of (human) agency and the moral subject should be made explicit in such a theory. (shrink)

The philosophy of “ human dignity” remains a young, piecemeal endeavor with only a small, dedicated literature. And what dedicated literature exists makes for a rather slapdash mix of substantive and formal metatheory. Worse, ironically we seem compelled to treat this existing theory both charitably and casually. For how can we definitively assess any of it? Existing suggestions about the general features of dignity are necessarily contentious in virtue of being more or less blissfully uncritical of themselves. Because none of (...) the suggested features are conscientiously situated in their own right, their justification is taken to rest solely on whether each is borne out by some substantive account. But absent the sort of second-order considerations that would make for a proper metatheory, what can we do with their substantive suggestions? Of course, the concept of dignity has other forums. It figures prominently into insular analyses of either Kantian or Biblical ethics, and, to various degrees, an array of subsidiary fields of practical philosophy including human rights, bioethics, law, theories of respect, race theory, Judaic studies, feminism, care ethics, war, technology, and political philosophy. Each of these areas has an established literature. Each contributes interesting observations to the nature of dignity. But, again, ultimately, without a proper metatheory, it is unclear what to do with any of them. My goal is to remedy this, or at least reverse the trend. In doing so I will have in view one particular subfield, namely, the ever-pressing subject of human rights. (shrink)

Beginning from an analysis of moral obligation's form that I defend in The Second-Person Standpoint as what we are answerable for as beings with the necessary capacities to enter into relations of mutual accountability, I argue that this analysis has implications for moral obligation's substance. Given what it is to take responsibility for oneself and hold oneself answerable, I argue, it follows that if there are any moral obligations at all, then there must exist a basic pro tanto obligation not (...) to undermine one another's moral autonomy. (shrink)

Divine command theories come in several different forms but at their core all of these theories claim that certain moral statuses exist in virtue of the fact that God has commanded them to exist. Several authors argue that this core version of the DCT is vulnerable to an epistemological objection. According to this objection, DCT is deficient because certain groups of moral agents lack epistemic access to God’s commands. But there is confusion as to the precise nature and significance of (...) this objection, and critiques of its key premises. In this article, I try to clear up this confusion and address these critiques. I do so in three ways. First, I offer a simplified general version of the objection. Second, I address the leading criticisms of the premises of this objection, focusing in particular on the role of moral risk/uncertainty in our understanding of God’s commands. And third, I outline four possible interpretations of the argument, each with a differing degree of significance for the proponent of the DCT. (shrink)

In this paper I will address whether the restriction on the creation of human embryos solely for the purpose of research in which they will be used and destroyed in the creation of human stem cell lines is ethically justified. Of course, a cynical but perhaps accurate reading of the new Obama policy is that leaving this restriction in place was done for political, not ethical, reasons, in light of the apparent public opposition to creating embryos for use in this (...) research. But the issue of whether the restriction is ethically justified remains important, even if only for another day in the policy arena. (shrink)

Prevailing philosophies about parental and other caregiver responsibilities toward children tend to be protectionist, grounded in informed benevolence in a way that countenances rather than circumvents intrusive paternalism. And among the kinds of children an adult might be called upon to parent or otherwise care for, children with disabilities figure among those for whom the strongest and snuggest shielding is supposed be deployed. In this article, we examine whether this equation of securing well-being with sheltering by protective parents and other (...) care-givers should unreflectively be adopted for disabled children. We also consider why healthcare providers might reasonably be reluctant to yield to this principle, even if parents instinctively suppose that protectionism is the parenting policy that best serves their disabled child’s interest. We contend that caregivers owe children with disabilities at least as much, and possibly more, respect for self-governance than other children need. In spite of disabled children’s vulnerability and even in view of it, we argue that they should be accorded not only welfare rights to well-being but at least a modified version of liberty rights as well. Healthcare providers are especially favorably positioned to facilitate the latter response. The main components of respectful caregiving can come into conflict with one another, but we present some priorities that advise against adopting a protectionist account of parenting rights, or at least against accepting protectionist views that focus parenting narrowly on shaping ideas about the child’s welfare. In sum, caring for a disabled child, we argue, involves more than creating conditions that will afford her contentment and comfort over the course of life. (shrink)

Kantian moral theories must explain how their most basic moral values of dignity and autonomy should be interpreted and applied to human conditions. One place Kantians should look for inspiration is, surprisingly, the utilitarian tradition and its emphasis on generally accepted, informally enforced, publicly known moral rules of the sort that help us give assurances, coordinate our behavior, and overcome weak wills. Kantians have tended to ignore utilitarian discussions of such rules mostly because they regard basic moral principles as a (...) priori requirements that cannot be tailored to human foibles and limitations. I argue that Kantian moral theories should incorporate public moral rules as mid-level moral requirements for embodied and socially embedded human agents. I explain how certain specific moral judgments about how we ought to act are justified by public moral rules, which are themselves justified by more fundamental moral requirements. (shrink)

Kant offers the following argument for the formula of humanity (FH): Each rational agent necessarily conceives of her own rational nature as an end in itself and does so on the same grounds as every other rational agent, so all rational agents must conceive of one another's rational nature as an end in itself. As it stands, the argument appears to be question-begging and fallacious. Drawing on resources from the formula of universal law (FUL) and Kant's claims about the primacy (...) of duties to oneself, I propose a contractualist reconstruction of this puzzling line of reasoning. (shrink)

According to "the argument from discernment", sympathetic motivation is morally faulty, because it is morally undiscriminating. Sympathy can incline you to do the right thing, but it can also incline you to do the wrong thing. And if so, it is no better as a reason for doing something than any other morally arbitrary consideration. The only truly morally good form of motivation--because the only morally non-arbitrary one--involves treating an action's rightness as your reason for performing it. This paper attacks (...) the argument from discernment and argues against its conclusion. (shrink)