Does birth make a difference to the moral rights of the fetus/infant? Should it make a difference to its legal rights? Most contemporary philosophers believe that birth cannot make a difference to moral rights. If this is true, then it becomes difficult to justify either a moral or a legal distinction between late abortion and infanticide. I argue that the view that birth is irrelevant to moral rights rests upon two highly questionable assumptions about the theoretical foundations of moral rights. (...) If we reject these assumptions, then we are free to take account of the contrasting biological and social relationships that make even relatively late abortion morally different from infanticide. (shrink)

Educational courses and professional trainings in ethical leadership and decision making appear to be increasing globally. Many scholars and academicians view that ethics cannot be taught due to a lack of consensus, consistency, and global standardization of what is ethical. Often the leading resources and educational material are arguably grounded in values and norms, which may not be in harmony with the values and norms of target audiences in various international, and domestic settings where classrooms may have a global student (...) body. Varying demographics, backgrounds, and life experiences have a profound influence on what shapes someone’s view of right and wrong. Consequently, an ethical dilemma may form for the educator who is aware that the audience’s background, culture and norms may not support the ethical decisions outlined in the required teaching material.This article conceptualizes competency development as a means of teaching ethics in global classrooms. Developing competencies for teaching ethics involves acknowledging multiple perspectives, which allows deeper reflection upon an individual’s ethical values and enhances the ability to acknowledge an ethical issue first, then proceed through an optimizing process for resolve. (shrink)

I explore some new directions-suggested by feminism-for medical ethics and for philosophical ethics generally. Moral philosophers need to confront two issues. The first is deciding which moral issues merit attention. Questions which incorporate the perspectives of women need to be posed-e.g., about the unequal treatment of women in health care, about the roles of physician and nurse, and about relationship issues other than power struggles. "Crisis issues" currently dominate medical ethics, to the neglect of what I call "housekeeping issues." The (...) second issue is how philosophical moral debates are conducted, especially how ulterior motives influence our beliefs and arguments. Both what we select-and neglect-to study as well as the "games" we play may be sending a message as loud as the words we do speak on ethics. (shrink)

I explore some new directions—suggested by feminism—for medical ethics and for philosophical ethics generally. Moral philosophers need to confront two issues. The first is deciding which moral issues merit attention. Questions which incorporate the perspectives of women need to be posed—e. g., about the unequal treatment of women in health care, about the roles of physician and nurse, and about relationship issues other than power struggles. “Crisis issues” currently dominate medical ethics, to the neglect of what I call “housekeeping issues.” (...) The second issue is how philosophical moral debates are conducted, especially how ulterior motives influence our beliefs and arguments. Both what we select—and neglect—to study as well as the “games” we play may be sending a message as loud as the words we do speak on ethics. (shrink)

Most work addressing clinical workers' professional responsibilities concerns the norms of conduct within established professional–patient relationships, but such responsibilities may extend beyond the clinical context. We explore health workers' professional responsibilities in such “informal” encounters through the example of a doctor witnessing the misdiagnosis and mistreatment of a serious long-term condition in a television documentary, arguing that neither internalist approaches to professional responsibility nor externalist ones provide sufficiently clear guidance in such situations. We propose that a mix of both approaches, (...) emphasizing the noncomplacency and practical wisdom of virtue ethics, but grounding the normative authority of virtue in an external source, is able to engage with the health worker's responsibilities in such situations to the individual, the health care system, and the population at large. (shrink)

A clinical ethics fit for the Anthropocene—our current geological era in which human activity is the primary determinant of environmental change—needs to incorporate environmental ethics to be fit for clinical practice. Conservationist Aldo Leopold’s essay ‘The Land Ethic’ is probably the most widely-cited source in environmental philosophy; but Leopold’s work, and environmental ethics generally, has made little impression on clinical ethics. The Land Ethic holds that “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of (...) the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” I argue that a Land Ethic helps to re-frame problems in clinical ethics that more common philosophical approaches struggle to handle, and that it can be incorporated into clinical ethics without succumbing to “environmental fascism”. I motivate viewing problems in clinical ethics from the perspective of the ‘integrity of the biotic community’, then illustrate how this perspective can offer guidance where more commonly-invoked theories—such as consequentialism and Kantian-inspired approaches—struggle, using antimicrobial resistance in nosocomial infection as a case study. The Land Ethic equips us to understand human values as arising within and inseparable from a social-ecological context, and by treating communities as valuable in themselves rather than just through the aggregate welfare of their individual participants, we can avoid problems with the ‘repugnant conclusion’ and utility monster that plague utilitarian accounts. (shrink)

A traditional association of judgment with "reason" has drawn upon and reinforced an opposition between reason and emotion. This, in turn, has led to a restricted view of the nature of moral judgment and of the subject as moral agent. The alternative, I suggest, is to abandon the traditional categories and to develop a new theory of judgment. I argue that the theory of judgment developed by Justus Buchler constitutes a robust alternative which does not prejudice the case against emotion. (...) Drawing on this theory I then develop how to conceptualize the ways in which feeling and emotion can be (or be components of) moral judgments. (shrink)

In this article, an analysis was made of what’s new in the debate on the condition of the contemporary political community brought up by the discussion about the relationship between care and justice. The author introduces the category of care in philosophy and its understanding and with particular emphasis on the views of Virginia Held. He analyzes the importance of a relationship of care as the foundation for the proper functioning of the socio-political community and criticism of the idea of (...) a social contract undertaken by representatives of the ethics of care. Critically, he presents the consequences of the assumptions of the civic community accepted by Held. (shrink)

Work on representing women's voices in ethics has produced a vision of moral understanding profoundly subversive of the traditional philosophical conception of moral knowledge. I explicate this alternative moral "epistemology," identify how it challenges the prevailing view, and indicate some of its resources for a liberatory feminist critique of philosophical ethics.

Work on representing women's voices in ethics has produced a vision of moral understanding profoundly subversive of the traditional philosophical conception of moral knowledge. 1 explicate this alternative moral “epistemology,” identify how it challenges the prevailing view, and indicate some of its resources for a liberatory feminist critique of philosophical ethics.

Journalists covering the 2007 shootings at Virginia Tech aggravated the trauma felt by victims' families and survivors, raising ethical questions about the role of media at major news events in an Internet-enabled era of continuous coverage. Some journalists breached professional norms by knocking on doors at 6 a.m., claiming a hidden camera was a breast pump and bullying reluctant interviewees. Even conscientious journalists, however, exacerbated the ordeal through their overabundance. By forcing survivors to endure repetitious interviews and making mourners feel (...) they were being stalked, journalists demonstrated they must embrace press pools to minimize harm in the future. (shrink)

Feminist discussions of ethics in the Western philosophical tradition range from critiques of the substance of dominant moral theories to critiques of the very practice of "doing ethics" itself. I argue that these critiques really target a certain historically specific model of ethics and moral theory-a "theoretical-juridical" one. I outline an "expressive-collaborative" conception of morality and ethics that could be a politically self-conscious and reflexively critical alternative.

Moral distress has been the subject of extensive research and debate in the nursing ethics literature since the mid-1980s, but the concept has received comparatively little attention from those working outside of applied ethics. In this article, I defend a care ethical account of moral distress, according to which the phenomenon is the product of an agent’s inability to live up to one of her caring commitments. This account has a number of attractions. First, it places a greater emphasis on (...) the importance of the relationship between the caregiver and her cared-for than that found in previous accounts. Second, it does not make problematic assumptions about the correctness of a caregiver’s moral judgments, as has been claimed in relation to previous accounts of moral distress. Finally, my account allows for a clear conceptual distinction to be drawn between moral distress and other forms of negative moral emotion such as guilt and regret. Earlier accounts draw this distinction by appealing to the causal aetiology of moral distress, but as I show here, such appeals are ultimately unsuccessful unless they are made from an explicitly care ethical starting point. One of the implications of my account is that moral distress has the potential to occur in the context of any caregiving relationship. This claim is explored in the final section of the paper, in relation to student-teacher and parent-child caregiving. (shrink)

In this article we argue that ubuntu (human interdependence) is not some form of essentialist notion that unfolds in exactly the same way as some critics of ubuntu might want to suggest. Rather, we offer a philosophical position that (re)considers the situation of the self in relation to others. The article starts from the general issues at stake in the debate concerning particularity and universalist ethics. We then reconsider the general position of the ethics of care, and particularly how it (...) has recently been revisited by Michael Slote. Following this, ubuntu is characterised as a particular kind of ethic of care. With this in mind, what we shall put forward is an extension of Seyla Benhabib's (2006) view that the self and others should iteratively and hospitably engage in deliberation. Although we agree with Benhabib that iterations (as arguing over and over again and talking back) are worthwhile in themselves, considering ubuntu (‘a person becoming a person in relation with other persons’), we find Stanley Cavell's (1979) idea of ‘living with skepticism’—particularly, acknowledging humanity in the Other and oneself—as more apposite to extend the theoretical premises of ubuntu. Although the practice of ubuntu is lived out differently amongst Africa's people, we want to add to the diverse ways in which ubuntu can both disrupt and offer ways as to how challenges of human conflict and violence can possibly be resolved. The article finally addresses a couple of educational examples and argues that this approach, by being well-grounded in the life experience of learners, can critically assist the central role of education. (shrink)

The ethics of care and Confucian care ethics are both characterised by relations-based moral reasoning and decision-making. Acknowledging this similarity, this article compares and contrasts these two ethics, highlighting Western and Eastern moral concerns. One of the main differences between the two ethical theories is their different focus on vulnerability and inequality as factors in achieving equality in the ethics of care; another is the reciprocity, rather than equality, dimension in Confucian ethics. Both theories enshrine the view that the characteristics (...) of care offer scope for developing the capacity for judgement. However, a fundamental difference is revealed when considering that Confucian ethics emphasises care as a virtue in the cultivation of one's moral agency, whereas the ethics of care sees care as both a disposition and practice, and the caring relationship to be a primary means of moral evaluation. For the care ethicists, the practice of care embraces communicative morality, within fluid, dynamic interpersonal relationships - in sharp contrast to Confucian care practices, which are constructed within formal standards and fixed, role-based relationships. (shrink)

Since the mid‐1990s we have witnessed the rise of numerous constructive and positive activities aimed at developing or enhancing corporate responsibility and corporate citizenship as well as anti‐globalization and anticorporate activism. And, of course, in 2008, we witnessed the meltdown of financial markets and numerous financial institutions as well as some major companies teetering on the brink of collapse. What is actually needed to create the world that many people want to live in may in fact be a new relationship (...) between business and society, that is, new ways of looking at the corporation and its role in society, both in practice and in management education? We will argue that some initiatives, such as Corporation 2020, have already begun to explore these issues by taking a more holistic perspective on different purposes and roles of the corporation in the future. Management education, which has been severely criticized in the aftermath of the economic crisis, has an important role to play, but in a changed form. Implications for leadership and management education include the need to shift cognitive, moral, and emotional levels of development, renewed emphasis on balance both individually and socially, a less is more sensibility, a holistic systems perspective, and shifting the purpose of the firm to encompass not just shareholder needs, but also societal, stakeholder, and ecological needs and interests. In this article we explore some of the ways in which these attributes might be engendered in future leaders, at least in those management development and education programs interested in fostering a new wave of progressive leadership in management for the future. (shrink)

This essay explores the question Is Nel Noddings a visionary who sees past the constraints of contemporary education or is she, like Don Quixote, madly tilting at windmills in her description and defense of happiness as an educational aim?Viewing the educational aim of happiness as an ideal raises substantial challenges for the practicality of Noddings’s ideas.

The Ageing of societies is a unique historical development of mankind. Today, such ageing is recognized as a threat for developed societies. There is fear of increasing inequality in health and in access to health care. Apart from the costs of ageing and care, such fear creates intergenerational conflicts. This paper explores what values are at stake when a society ages. At issue here is the social position of the old citizens and the way in which they are regarded by (...) their fellow citizens. Findings indicate the need to contemplate the consequences of ageing for societies and to discuss the impact these have for the values dominating contemporary post-welfare states. European welfare states were based on a balanced combination of three values: freedom, equality, and solidarity. Because these values are misbalanced now, equal accessibility of care and conditions for social participation are disappearing. Therefore, we shall have to think about new ways in which our societies can reaffirm basic human values. (shrink)

This paper is in three parts. In Part One we briefly explain that an unsophisticated form of utilitarianism—economic rationalism (ER)—has become dominant in many health systems. Its proponents argue that one of ER’s most important effects is to increase consumer choice. However, evidence from New Zealand does not support this claim. Furthermore, the logic of ER requires the construction of systems which tend to restrict individual participation.In Part Two we argue that although some have advocated an ‘ethic of care’ in (...) an attempt to counteract ER’s utilitarianism, two decades of campaigning have had little influence on health policy. ER’s pro-care adversaries have failed to make an impact because they have not developed a taxonomy of care—they have not established a language compatible with, or as powerful as, ER’s.In Part Three, in an attempt to raise the conceptual and practical status of caring in contemporary health systems, we distinguish four different forms of care. In opposition to those who believe the ‘ethic of care’ can adequately direct health care practice, we demonstrate that care is a secondary notion. We show that in order for a carer to decide which form of care to adopt in different situations she requires a more powerful idea. We contend further that health care ought to be governed by a theory of health, and suggest that ‘the foundations theory of health’ should be adopted by planners searching for a more humane alternative to ER. We conclude that ER’s dominance can and must be challenged. However, only those arguments which offer detailed theoretical analyses of health care, as well as meticulously derived practical policies, have any chance of success. (shrink)

According to the ethics of care, practices of care are sources of moral knowledge that take human relatedness into account. However, caregivers may also find themselves in situations that demand sacrifices, even to the point where their own self is at stake. This may not only be cause for concern about the risks of caregivers, the result of an unequal distribution of power, but it may as well be a chance for affirmation of one’s identity, of self-attestation. As Ricoeur argues, (...) giving of the self or even giving one’s life may be the ultimate expression of one’s belonging, in friendship, devotion or loyalty. Ricoeur also considers the meaning of giving a gift, which to him does not lie in any return gift, but rather in the gift as offering, as generosity. Giving is first of all a risk, a sacrifice, with only the hope that it will be received. In this article I aim to extend his argument to the realm of caregiving, thereby supporting my claim that some sort of self-sacrifice is implied in the very act of caring for others. (shrink)

Care ethics emphasizes responsibility as a key element for caring practices. Responsibilities to care are taken by certain groups of people, making caring practices into moral and political practices in which responsibilities are assigned, assumed, or implicitly expected, as well as deflected. Despite this attention for social practices of distribution and its unequal result, making certain groups of people the recipient of more caring responsibilities than others, the passive aspect of a caring responsibility has been underexposed by care ethics. By (...) drawing upon the work of the French phenomenologist Jean-Luc Marion, a care ethical conceptualization of responsibility can by enriched, by scrutinizing how responsibility is literally a response to something else. This paper starts with a vignette of an everyday situation of professional care. After that the current body of care ethical literature on responsibility is presented, followed by Marion’s phenomenology of givenness, using his analysis of Caravaggio’s painting The Calling of St. Matthew and resulting in his redefinition of responsibility. In the next section we present a table in which we juxtapose four distinct paradigms of responsibility, which we will describe briefly. The final section consists of an exploration of the paradigms by an analysis of the vignette and results in a conclusion concerning what Marion’s view has to offer to care ethics with regard to responsibility. (shrink)

The relationship between love/care and justice was one of the key tensions from which care ethics originated; to this very day it is subject of debate between various streams of thought within care ethics. With some exceptions most approaches have in common the belief that care and justice are mutually exclusive concepts, or at least as so different that their application is situated on different levels. Hence, both are complementary, but distinct, so that there is no real interaction. This paper (...) aims to investigate whether, and if so, how, a deeper understanding of Ricoeur’s thoughts on this matter enriches the relationship between care and justice with respect to care ethics. This connection suggests itself from Ricoeur’s interpretation of the relationship as a dialectical one in which the logic of superabundance and the logic of equivalence meet. Care enables people to see the face and individuality of the one, ‘le chacun,’ within the anonymous structures of justice that tend to reduce all human beings to the anonymous each, ‘le on’; justice in its turn is the precondition for love to become incarnated and made real. What may this view—of care and justice standing in close connection, in which they correct and strengthen each other—add to the understanding of concrete practices of care? (shrink)

In this article, we explore the potential contribution of care ethics to the field of media ethics. In the first part of this article, we discuss the theoretical and philosophical background of the ethics of care. In the second part, we suggest some specific avenues for theoretical, critical, and practical applications of care ethics to the field of journalism and media ethics.

The prospective robots in healthcare intended to be included within the conclave of the nurse-patient relationship—what I refer to as care robots—require rigorous ethical reflection to ensure their design and introduction do not impede the promotion of values and the dignity of patients at such a vulnerable and sensitive time in their lives. The ethical evaluation of care robots requires insight into the values at stake in the healthcare tradition. What’s more, given the stage of their development and lack of (...) standards provided by the International Organization for Standardization to guide their development, ethics ought to be included into the design process of such robots. The manner in which this may be accomplished, as presented here, uses the blueprint of the Value-sensitive design approach as a means for creating a framework tailored to care contexts. Using care values as the foundational values to be integrated into a technology and using the elements in care, from the care ethics perspective, as the normative criteria, the resulting approach may be referred to as care centered value-sensitive design. The framework proposed here allows for the ethical evaluation of care robots both retrospectively and prospectively. By evaluating care robots in this way, we may ultimately ask what kind of care we, as a society, want to provide in the future. (shrink)

After her curriculum proposal is presented, Noddings' feminine ethics is submitted to a critique through an interpretation of her three books. Her distortion of Gilligan and Chodorow is explained. Indebtedness to male sources is noted. The over-emphasis upon good and upon first-person experience is criticised and traced to feminist rage, which is interpreted as the result of the oppression of women. Noddings' suppressed 'Kantianism' is explicated to maintain the dialectic between so-called male and female voices. Main strengths of her curriculum (...) proposal are interpreted more broadly than her perspective allows to indicate a promising return to normative, macro-theory of education. (shrink)

In the early twenty-first century, we stand on the threshold of welcoming robots into domains of human activity that will expand their presence in our lives dramatically. One provocative new frontier in robotics, motivated by a convergence of demographic, economic, cultural, and institutional pressures, is the development of “carebots”—robots intended to assist or replace human caregivers in the practice of caring for vulnerable persons such as the elderly, young, sick, or disabled. I argue here that existing philosophical reflections on the (...) ethical implications of carebots neglect a critical dimension of the issue: namely, the potential moral value of caregiving practices for caregivers. This value, I argue, gives rise to considerations that must be weighed alongside consideration of the likely impact of carebots on care recipients. Focusing on the goods internal to caring practices, I then examine the potential impact of carebots on caregivers by means of three complementary ethical approaches: virtue ethics, care ethics, and the capabilities approach. Each of these, I argue, sheds new light on the contexts in which carebots might deprive potential caregivers of important moral goods central to caring practices, as well as those contexts in which carebots might help caregivers sustain or even enrich those practices, and their attendant goods. (shrink)

The essay examines the impartialist view of justice as the first virtue of all relationships. I argue that in close associations where duties, obligations, and rights of persons are situationally contingent, abstract principles of justice fail to yield a unified moral perspective about what is fair. Solidarity and trust as moral emotions develop more complex moral competencies that go beyond what principles of justice alone require.

In this paper I argue that a global bioethicsis possible. Specifically, I present the viewthat there are within feminist approaches tobioethics some conceptual and methodologicaltools necessary to forge a bioethics thatembraces the health-related concerns of bothdeveloping and developed nations equally. Tosupport my argument I discuss some of thechallenges that have historically confrontedfeminists. If feminists accept the idea thatwomen are entirely the same, then feministspresent as fact the fiction of the essential``Woman.'' Not only does ``Woman'' not exist,``she'' obscures important racial, ethnic,cultural, (...) and class differences among women. However, if feminists stress women'sdifferences too much, feminists lose the powerto speak coherently and cogently about genderjustice, women's rights, and sexual equality ingeneral. Analyzing the ways in which the ideaof difference as well as the idea of samenesshave led feminists astray, I ask whether it ispossible to avoid the Scylla of absolutism(imperialism, colonialism, hegemony) on the onehand and the Charybdis of relativism(postmodernism, fragmentation, Balkanization)on the other. Finally, after reflecting uponthe work of Uma Narayan, Susan Muller Okin, andMartha Nussbaum, I conclude that there is a wayout of this ethical bind. By focusing onwomen's, children's, and men's common humanneeds, it is possible to lay thefoundation for a just and caring globalbioethics. (shrink)

If reason and emotion are taken as inseparable founda–tional components of human nature, then all knowledge must be characterized by both objective description and subjective, felt experience. If that is the case, then it is impossible for autonomy to be described in terms of rational knowledge, independent of affective response. Accordingly, autonomy and interdependence are mutually inclusive terms. Following the assumption that reason and emotion are integrally related in human understanding, morality can be explained by reference to both rational principles (...) and emotive, unreflected experience. Spinoza, Hume, and Vasu–bandhu provide three different but compatible views of moral development based on their views of the mutually informing effect of reason and emotion on motivation for action. In contrast to Kant, they describe the morally autonomous person as one who is directed by personal interests shaped by a consciousness of the context of emerging interrelated conditions. It is a context in which individual self–expression is a function of receptivity and responsiveness to the expression of others. (shrink)

Palliation is a relatively new concept that is used in connection with the integral care provided to those who are unable to recover from their illness. The specific meaning of the concept has not been clearly defined. This article explores the possibilities offered by a responsive approach to evaluation that can facilitate a reflexive dialogue on this ambiguous concept. In doing so it draws on a case study of a palliative care project in a Dutch health care authority. The article (...) begins with an overview of the characteristics of a responsive approach to evaluation and addresses interpretative, representational and practical dilemmas. It goes on to present a series of dialogues between health professionals, informal caregivers, patients and evaluators. These dialogues take the form of juxtaposed stories, transcribed conversations and interpretations. Finally, the learning experiences are summarised and the appropriateness of the responsive approach to evaluate palliative care is discussed. (shrink)

A virtue account is focused on the character of those who argue. It is frequently assumed, however, that virtues are not action guiding, since they describe how to be and so fail to give us specific actions to take in a sticky situation. In terms of argumentation, we might say that being a charitable arguer is virtuous, but knowing so provides no details about how to argue successfully. To close this gap, I develop a parallel with the thick-thin distinction from (...) ethics and use Hursthouse’s notion of “v-rules”. I also draw heavily from the work in argumentation by Daniel Cohen to develop Wayne Brockriede’s notion of arguing lovingly. But “argue lovingly” has a delicious ambiguity. For Brockriede it describes how we engage with others arguers. It can also mean, however, a loving attachment to knowledge, understanding, and truth. Applying the thick-thin distinction to argumentation in general and loving argumentation in particular shows that a virtue theoretic approach to argumentation is valuable for two reasons: it can provide one articulation of what it means to be a virtuous arguer and provide some insights into how to become one. (shrink)

The dominance of technological paradigms within psychiatry creates moral and ethical tensions over how to engage with the interpersonal narratives of those experiencing mental distress. This paper argues that such paradigms are poorly suited for fostering principled responses to human suffering, and proposes an alternative approach that considers a view of relationships based in feminist theories about the nature of caring. Four primary characteristics are presented which distinguish caring from technological paradigms: a concern with the particular nature of contexts, embodied (...) practice, the dialogical basis of caring and the existential basis of caring. From this we explore the role of the moral imagination and our ability, through narrative, to acknowledge, engage with and bear witness to the injustices that shape the lives of those who suffer. This, we argue, is at the heart of caring. Clinical implications are discussed, including an exposition of the importance of narrative in recovery from trauma and distress. Narrative Psychiatry, The Sanctuary Model of care, and Soteria, are outlined as examples of this type of practice. (shrink)

Nurses and other medical practitioners often experience moral distress: they feel an anguished sense of responsibility for what they take to be their own moral failures, even when those failures were unavoidable. However, in such cases other people do not tend to think it is right to hold them responsible. This is an interesting mismatch of reactions. It might seem that the mismatch should be remedied by assuring the practitioner that they are not responsible, but I argue that this denies (...) something important that the phenomenon of moral distress tells us. In fact, both the practitioners’ tendencies to hold themselves responsible and other people’s reluctance to hold the practitioners responsible get something right. The practitioners may be right that they are responsible in the sense of having failed to meet a binding moral requirement, even when the requirement was impossible to meet. This makes moral distress a fitting response because it correctly represents their own action as a wrongdoing. However, others may meanwhile be right that the practitioners are not responsible in the sense of being culpable and blameworthy. To blame others, or oneself, for certain failures, including those that are unavoidable, would be unfair. My claim depends on distinguishing between the fittingness and the fairness of holding someone (including oneself) responsible for moral failure. Having drawn the distinction, I suggest that moral distress should be addressed in a way that both recognizes it as a fitting response and avoids the unfairness of blame. (shrink)

The fact that humans have a special relationship to each other insofar as they belong in the same species is often taken to be a morally relevant difference between humans and other animals, one which justifies a greater moral status for all humans, regardless of their individual capacities. I give some reasons why this kind of relationship is not an appropriate ground for differential treatment of humans and nonhumans. I then argue that even if relationships do matter morally species membership (...) cannot justify a difference in moral status. This has important implications because it removes one barrier to giving animals greater moral status. (shrink)

The topic of cruelty features regularly in discussions concerning animals’ moral status. Further, condemnation of cruelty to animals is virtually unanimous. As Regan points out, ‘[i]t would be difficult to find anyone who is in favour of cruelty.’ What is to count as cruelty is therefore important. My aim here is to gain a clearer understanding of one aspect of our moral landscape: cruelty to animals. I will start by analyzing the concept of cruelty in section II. In section III (...) I will examine some implications of this analysis. I will present two arguments for why we should reassess whether modern farming practices are cruel. First, farming practices have changed and our understanding of the concept of cruelty needs to change with them. Second, our application of the concept of cruelty is inconsistent: we would consider many routine practices involving farm animals to be cruel if they involved pets. This inconsistency presents a dilemma: either extending farming practices to pets would not be cruel, or continuing our current farming practices is cruel. In section IV I consider some objections. (shrink)

It is commonly thought that neo-Hobbesian contractarianism cannot yield direct moral standing for marginal humans and animals. However, it has been argued that marginal humans and animals can have a form of direct moral standing under neo-Hobbesian contractarianism: secondary moral standing. I will argue that, even if such standing is direct, this account is unsatisfactory because it is counterintuitive and fragile.

: On the Aristotelian picture of virtue, moral virtue has at its core intellectual virtue. An interesting challenge for this orthodoxy is provided by the case of universal love and its associated virtues, such as the dispositions to exhibit grace, or to forgive, where appropriate. It is difficult to find a property in the object of such love, in virtue of which grace, for example, ought to be bestowed. Perhaps, then, love in general, including universal love, is not necessarily exhibited (...) for reasons. This is the view that, with the help of Heidegger's notion of a fundamental emotional attunement, I defend. The problem is to show how universal love, and its manifestation in the virtues of universal love, can then be seen as rational. Showing this is the task of the essay. (shrink)

ABSTRACTImmigrant origin children and youth are now, and will continue to be, a diverse and demographically important segment of all post-industrial nations’ populations. In order to realize their potential, receiving contexts will need to find effective ways to integrate them into the fabric of their society. Using an ethic of care approach, we must begin by taking a comprehensive perspective on integration, which incorporates both a risk and resilience framework and an ecological perspective. A number of practices have emerged that (...) have promise for positive implications for the schooling performance and educational integration of immigrant students These practices include 1 – short-term newcomer programs; 2 – specialized services for Students with Interrupted Formal Education; 3 – sustained services focused on new language development; 4 – services focused on heritage language development; 5 – providing explicit college pathway knowledge; 6 – summer and after-school academic enrichment programs; 7 – facilitating parental involvement ; and 8 – advisory groups, after-school academic supports, mentoring and health services, and postsecondary supports. Providing the kinds of ecologies of care outlined here will go a long way toward helping these children and youth thrive and become the kinds of contributing members to their new society that will serve our collective future well. (shrink)

Emotions are often portrayed as subjective judgments that pose a threat to rationality and morality, but there is a growing literature across many disciplines that emphasizes the centrality of emotion to moral reasoning. For engineers, however, being rational usually means sequestering emotions that might bias analyses—good reasoning is tied to quantitative data, math, and science. This paper brings a new pedagogical perspective that strengthens the case for incorporating emotions into engineering ethics. Building on the widely established success of active and (...) collaborative learning environments, in particular the problem-based learning (PBL) philosophy and methodology, the paper articulates new strategies for incorporating emotion into engineering ethics education. An ethics education pilot study is analyzed to explore how PBL can engage students’ emotions. Evidence suggests that PBL empowers students to cultivate value for engineering ethics and social responsibility, and in doing so, redefine the societal role of the engineer. Taking students’ emotions seriously in engineering ethics offers an effective strategy to meaningfully engage students in ethical learning. (shrink)

‘Introducing Noddings and the Symposium’ is an overview in three parts following an opening comment The three are these: Noddings’s biography highlighting personal background and professional accomplishments; papers overview pointing to key ideas and themes as well as philosophical, literary and metaphorical inspiration; and response comments that take up ideas from the symposium papers and Noddings’s text in brief reconsideration. These ideas are connection of care theory to Noddings’s happiness, recognition of an ethics in doing philosophy, conceptions of needs and (...) wants, and promotion of critical thinking especially in schools. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article posits an interpersonal ethical commitment to combat dangers to democracy in current times. Largely within an American context, two complementary pillars of ethics are presented. The first is from Nel Noddings and the ethics of care and the second developed primarily from Richard Rorty in a neo-pragmatist view. The contexts of present dangers, worldwide, especially in the USA, and then of this nation’s schooling, situate the ethics. A suggestion for teachers, students, and their schools as ‘citizen educators’ to (...) be active in their communities offers one road forward. (shrink)

The compelling ethical legacy of Clifford Christians's and his profound commitment to moral action is enriched by his engagement with universal proto-norms, values that order all human relationships and institutions and so bypass the divisiveness of appeals to individual rights, cultural practices, or national prerogatives. According to Christians, the primal sacredness of life establishes mutual respect as a basis for ethics and thus constitutes the premier proto-norm; our obligation to sustain one another defines human existence. Entailed by the sacredness of (...) life are other basic ethical values, such as truth, human dignity, and non-violence. This essay considers whether generating all ethics from such universals has downsides and whether the ethics derived from this “primordial generality” produces the maximal ethics required by a complex, modern world. (shrink)

The prevailing normative model of contemporary journalism, drawn primarily from a liberal enlightenment tradition emphasizing universal notions of rights, contributes to what many perceive as a crisis in contemporary journalism; at the least, Kantian models are too "thin" to provide an adequate ethical standard. We consider the extent to which an ethic of care, reconceived to address weaknesses identified in recent scholarly critiques, provides journalists with an alternative framework for moral decision making. We use the concept of unequal ethical pull (...) to rework caring and to promote caring for distant others because caring that remains at the personal level is inadequate as a moral value. We conclude by noting that public journalism and our retooled ethic of care share several important ideals. We suggest a program of mutually beneficial exploration, one that might help today's journalists cultivate the virtue of care as they work toward justice. (shrink)

Chenyang Li argues, in an article originally published in Hypatia, that the ethics of care and Confucian ethics constitute similar approaches to ethics. The present paper takes issue with this claim. It is more accurate to view Confucian ethics as a kind of virtue ethics, rather than as a kind of care ethics. In the process of criticizing Li's claim, the distinctiveness of care ethics is defended, against attempts to assimilate it to virtue ethics.