According to “debunking arguments,” our moral beliefs are explained by evolutionary and cultural processes that do not track objective, mind-independent moral truth. Therefore (the debunkers say) we ought to be skeptics about moral realism. Huemer counters that “moral progress”—the cross-cultural convergence on liberalism—cannot be explained by debunking arguments. According to him, the best explanation for this phenomenon is that people have come to recognize the objective correctness of liberalism. Although Huemer may be the first philosopher to make this explicit empirical (...) argument for moral realism, the idea that societies will eventually converge on the same moral beliefs is a notable theme in realist thinking. Antirealists, on the other hand, often point to seemingly intractable cross-cultural moral disagreement as evidence against realism (the “argument from disagreement”). This paper argues that the trend toward liberalism is susceptible to a debunking explanation, being driven by two related non-truth-tracking processes. First, large numbers of people gravitate to liberal values for reasons of self-interest. Second, as societies become more prosperous and advanced, they become more effective at suppressing violence, and they create conditions where people are more likely to empathize with others, which encourages liberalism. The latter process is not truth tracking (or so this paper argues) because empathy-based moral beliefs are themselves susceptible to an evolutionary debunking argument. Cross-cultural convergence on liberalism per se does not support either realism or antirealism. (shrink)

According to a simple form of consequentialism, we should base decisions on our judgments about their consequences for achieving our goals. Our goals give us reason to endorse consequentialism as a standard of decision making. Alternative standards invariably lead to consequences that are less good in this sense. Yet some people knowingly follow decision rules that violate consequentialism. For example, they prefer harmful omissions to less harmful acts, they favor the status quo over alternatives they would otherwise judge to be (...) belter, they provide third-party compensation on the basis of the cause of an injury rather than the benefit from the compensation, they ignore deterrent effects in decisions about punishment, and they resist coercive reforms they judge to be beneficial. I suggest that nonconsequentialist principles arise from overgeneralizing rules that are consistent with consequentialism in a limited set of cases. Commitment to such rules is detached from their original purposes. The existence of such nonconsequentialist decision biases has implications for philosophical and experimental methodology, the relation between psychology and public policy, and education. (shrink)

There is growing concern that a global economic system fueled predominately by financial incentives may not maximize human flourishing and social welfare externalities. If so, this presents a challenge of how to get economic actors to adopt a more virtuous motivational mindset. Relying on historical, psychological, and philosophical research, we show how such a mindset can be instilled. First, we demonstrate that historically, financial self-interest has never in fact been the only guiding motive behind free markets, but that markets themselves (...) are representations of our individual and collective moral identities. Building on this understanding, we review the research on how economic incentives crowd out virtue-oriented concerns. We then introduce the concept of moral self-awareness (MSA), an evolving mindset informed by reflection on moral identity, namely what one’s actions say about oneself given the impacts on others or society that one’s action may effect. MSA comprises three fundamental aspects of virtue-oriented reasoning: pride, shame, and guilt. Finally, we offer a four-stage model anchored in systems theory, yielding ever more refined motivating strategies for maximizing human flourishing and social welfare externalities. (shrink)

The evidential value of moral intuitions has been challenged by psychological work showing that the intuitions of ordinary people are affected by distorting factors. One reply to this challenge, the expertise defence, claims that training in philosophical thinking confers enhanced reliability on the intuitions of professional philosophers. This defence is often expressed through analogy: since we do not allow doubts about folk judgments in domains like mathematics or physics to undermine the plausibility of judgments by experts in these domains, we (...) also should not do so in philosophy. In this paper I clarify the logic of the analogy strategy, and defend it against recent challenges by Jesper Ryberg. The discussion exposes an interesting divide: while Ryberg’s challenges may weaken analogies between morality and domains like mathematics, they do not affect analogies to other domains, such as physics. I conclude that the expertise defence can be supported by analogical means, though care is required in selecting an appropriate analog. I discuss implications of this conclusion for the expertise defence debate and for study of the moral domain itself. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Employing utilitarian criteria, Jones and Felps, in “Shareholder Wealth Maximization and Social Welfare: A Utilitarian Critique” (Business Ethics Quarterly23[2]: 207–38), examined the sequential logic leading from shareholder wealth maximization to maximal social welfare and uncovered several serious empirical and conceptual shortcomings. After rendering shareholder wealth maximization seriously compromised as an objective for corporate operations, they provided a set of criteria regarding what a replacement corporate objective would look like, but do not offer a specific alternative. In this article, we draw (...) on neo-utilitarian thought to advance a refined version of normative stakeholder theory that we believe addresses a major remaining criticism of extant versions, their lack of specificity. More particularly, we provide a single-valued objective function for the corporation—stakeholder happiness enhancement—that would allow managers to make principled choices between/among policy options when stakeholder interests conflict. (shrink)

Moral emotions are evolved mechanisms that function in part to optimize social relationships. We discuss two moral emotions— disgust and the “cuteness response”—which modulate social-engagement motives in opposite directions, changing the degree to which the eliciting entity is imbued with mental states (i.e., mentalized). Disgust-inducing entities are hypo-mentalized (i.e., dehumanized); cute entities are hyper-mentalized (i.e., “humanized”). This view of cuteness—which challenges the prevailing view that cuteness is a releaser of parental instincts (Lorenz, 1950/1971)—explains (a) the broad range of affiliative behaviors (...) elicited by cuteness, (b) the marketing of cuteness to children (by toy makers and animators) to elicit play, and (c) the apparent ease and frequency with which cute things are anthropomorphized. (shrink)

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)

My question, which is central to the business of moral philosophy, is implicitly addressed by many philosophers, yet explicitly addressed by only a few. In this paper I address the question head-on, and propose a qualified affirmative answer.

The claim that ordinary ethical discourse is typically true and that ethical facts are typically knowable seems in tension with the claim that ordinary ethical discourse is about features of reality friendly to a scientific worldview. Cornell Realism attempts to dispel this tension by claiming that ordinary ethical discourse is, in fact, discourse about the same kinds of things that scientific discourse is about: natural properties. We offer two novel arguments in reply. First, we identify a key assumption that we (...) find unlikely to be true. Second, we identify two features of typical natural properties that ethical properties lack. We conclude that Cornell Realism falls short of dispelling the tension between ethical conservativism and ethical naturalism. (shrink)

Call the ethos understanding rightness in terms of spiritual purity and piety, and wrongness in terms of corruption and sacrilege, the “fetish ethic.” Jonathan Haidt and his colleagues suggest that this ethos is particularly salient to political conservatives and non-liberal cultures around the globe. In this essay, I point to numerous examples of moral fetishism in mainstream academic ethics. Once we see how deeply “infected” our ethical reasoning is by fetishistic intuitions, we can respond by 1) repudiating the fetishistic impulse, (...) by 2) “sublimating” our fetishism into liberal rationales, or by 3) accepting the fetishism on its own terms. Of these options, I argue that sublimating our fetishism is not advisable, and that embracing our ethical fetishism isn’t as obviously misguided as some suggest. (shrink)

Evolutionary accounts of the origin of human morality may be speculative to some extent, but they contain some very plausible claims, such as the claim that ethics evolved as a response to the demands of group living. Regarding the phenomenon of moral progress, it has been argued both that it is ruled out by an evolutionary approach, and that it can be explained by it. It has even been claimed that an evolutionary account has the potential to advance progress in (...) the moral domain. This paper explores the complex relationship between evolutionary explanations of morality and the possibility of moral progress. It seeks to answer the question as to what these explanations are able to tell us about the possibility of moral progress and the ways in which such progress can be achieved. It is argued that evolutionary explanations can inform moral education and other forms of moral enhancement, and that increased evolutionary knowledge figures among the changes in the circumstances of morality that can lead to moral progress. Evolutionary explanations can show us certain limits to the possibility for humans of progressing morally as well as certain enabling conditions. It is argued that both aspects – enhancement and changes in the circumstances – are equally important for the achievement of moral progress. This is illustrated by means of two examples of areas in which moral progress seems possible: our relationship towards the distant poor and our relationship towards non-human animals. (shrink)

In the present article, we argue that the constant pressure that leaders face may limit the willpower required to behave according to ethical norms and standards and may therefore lead to unethical behavior. Drawing upon the ego depletion and moral self-regulation literatures, we examined whether self-regulatory depletion that is contingent upon the moral identity of leaders may promote unethical leadership behavior. A laboratory experiment and a multisource field study revealed that regulatory resource depletion promotes unethical leader behaviors among leaders who (...) are low in moral identity. No such effect was found among leaders with a high moral identity. This study extends our knowledge on why organizational leaders do not always conform to organizational goals. Specifically, we argue that the hectic and fragmented workdays of leaders may increase the likelihood that they violate ethical norms. This highlights the necessity to carefully schedule tasks that may have ethical implications. Similarly, organizations should be aware that overloading their managers with work may increase the likelihood of their leaders transgressing ethical norms. (shrink)

Je défends dans ce texte une version particulière de la position que Sharon Street a appelée le «constructivisme humien». J’esquisserai pourquoi je considère que ce constructivisme est préférable à la fois au réalisme moral et au constructivisme kantien sur le plan de la compréhension du statut ontologique des valeurs. Après avoir accepté de reconnaître le rôle des pressions de l’évolution dans l’émergence de la moralité, le constructivisme humien doit toutefois préciser le rôle de l’intersubjectivité historique dans l’évolution subséquente de la (...) morale. J’expliquerai aussi pourquoi je considère que l’intégration d’un volet cohérentiste au constructivisme permet d’atténuer les craintes concernant le caractère potentiellement non-cognitiviste des théories contextualistes. Enfin, j’esquisserai pourquoi l’idée d’un «espace des raisons morales» indépendant, à certains égards, de l’esprit humain est compatible avec le constructivisme humien.I defend a version of what Sharon Street has dubbed “Humean constructivism.” I’ll first sketch out why I think that contextual constructivism provides us with a more plausible understanding of the ontological status of values than both Kantian constructivism and moral realism. In addition to its recognition of the role of evolutionary pressures in the emergence of human morality, contextual constructivism must now clarify the role of historical intersubjectivity in the subsequent development of morality. I will then claim that adding a coherentist module to Humean constructivism provides a satisfactory answer to those who fear that contextual metaethical theories can only be non-cognitivist. Finally, I will sketch out why I think that the notion of a mind-independent “space of moral reasons” is largely compatible with Humean constructivism. (shrink)

A notable feature of recent philosophical work on climate ethics is that it makes practically no reference to ‘traditional’ environmental philosophy. There is some irony in this, since environmental ethics arose as part of a broader movement within philosophy, starting in the 1960s, aimed at developing different fields of applied philosophy, in order to show how everyday practice could be enriched through philosophical reflection and analysis. The major goal of this paper is to explain why this branch of practical ethics (...) has, for the most part, failed the test of practicability when it comes to formulating a response to global climate change. The central problem is that debates in environmental philosophy became absorbed by a set of metaphysical questions about the nature of value. The result has been a field dominated by views that provide unsuitable foundations for the development of public policy. (shrink)

One reason for the widespread resistance to evolutionary accounts of the origins of humanity is the fear that they undermine morality: if morality is based on nothing more than evolved dispositions, it would be shown to be illusory, many people suspect. This view is shared by some philosophers who take their work on the evolutionary origins of morality to undermine moral realism. If they are right, we are faced with an unpalatable choice: to reject morality on scientific grounds, or to (...) reject our best- confirmed scientific explanation of our origins in order to save morality. Fortunately, as I show, we have no reason to accept the deflationary claims of some evolutionary ethicists: morality, as we ordinarily understand it, is fully compatible with evolution. (shrink)

Disability activists' redefinition of “disability” as a social, rather than a medical, problem attempts to reassign causality. We explicate the untenable implications of this approach and argue this definition is maleficent, unjust, and inconsistent. Thus, redefining disability as a socially caused phenomenon is, from a moral point of view, ill-advised.

This article analyzes the evolution of the land ethic re-presented by J. Baird Callicott over the last two decades under pressure from the charge of misanthropy and ecofascism. It also traces the development of Callicott?s own ethical system, and examines its most current phase both in itself and in relation to his other theoretical commitments, including his particular version of moral monism, and his communitarian critique of egalitarianism. It concludes that Callicott?s communitarianism is by itself insufficient to fund an adequate (...) environmental ethic, and that for the sake of self-consistency he should either discard his moral monism or else further revise his ethical system. (shrink)

Moral entrepreneurship is the fine art of recycling evil into good by taking advantage of situations given or constructed as crises. It should be seen as the ultimate generalisation of the entrepreneurial spirit, whose peculiar excesses have always sat uneasily with homo oeconomicus as the constrained utility maximiser, an image that itself has come to be universalised. A task of this essay is to reconcile the two images in terms of what by the end I call ‘superutilitarianism’, which draws on (...) the lore of both superheroes and utilitarianism. After briefly surveying the careers of three exemplars of the moral entrepreneur (Robert McNamara, George Soros and Jeffrey Sachs), I explore the motives of moral entrepreneurs in terms of their standing debt to society for having already caused unnecessary harm but which also now equips him with the skill set needed to do significant good. Such a mindset involves imagining oneself a vehicle of divine will, which would be a scary proposition had it not been long presumed by Christians touched by Calvin. In conclusion, I argue that moral entrepreneurship looks most palatable – and perhaps even attractive – if the world is ‘reversible’, in the sense that every crisis, however clumsily handled by the moral entrepreneur, causes people to distinguish more clearly the necessary from contingent features of their existence. This leads them to reconceptualise past damages as new opportunities to assert what really matters; hence, a ‘superutilitarian’ ethic that treats all suffering as less cost than investment in a greater sense of the good. (shrink)

ABSTRACTMany rich countries are witnessing the rise of xenophobic political parties. The opposition to immigration and global redistributive policies is high. How can we pursue global justice in such non-ideal circumstances? Whatever the way we want to pursue global justice, it seems that a change in the political ethos of citizens from rich countries will be necessary. They must come to internalize some genuine concern for foreigners and relativize national identities. Can education contribute to the promotion of such cosmopolitan ethos? (...) An overtly cosmopolitan educational agenda is not likely to be endorsed in these societies where national ties and national priority may be considered fully legitimate by the majority. Nevertheless, this paper argues, some more achievable educational aims may have desirable cosmopolitan spillover effects although it is not their primary purpose. Decentration, empathy, critical thinking, understanding of social reality and social mix can be defended as necessary for a better domestic society. Yet these aims also make the widespread development of a cosmopolitan ethos more likely. This paper thus considers the arguments that can be made for these educational aims and their potential effects on citizens’ attitudes towards foreigners. Then, it discusses a possible tension with another aspect of national civic education: national integration. (shrink)

We develop an account of societal democratization that synthesizes cultural sociology and deliberative democracy. Cultural sociologists emphasize the symbolic inclusion of marginalized groups into the civil sphere. Deliberative democrats stress growth in the deliberative capacity of society. We argue that democratization entails the co-evolution of culture and reason. The basis of co-evolution is the performative construction of an inclusive demos, which requires a deliberative background but is also a source of the moral emotions that motivate deliberation. Since moral emotions can (...) also sweep people up and make them do reckless things, they must in turn be redeemable in inclusive deliberation. This synthesis sharpens a normative position for the evaluation of episodes of inclusion, extends current accounts of the place of emotion in cultural sociology and deliberative democracy, and provides a frame for comparative analyses of democratization. We illustrate with an examination of the exclusion and inclusion of Indigenous Australians. (shrink)

The reception so far of Kitcher's Vaulting Ambition reminds me of the old saw about the difference between an optimist and a pessimist. Looking at the same glass of water, the former sees it as half full while the latter sees it as half empty. Some have seen Kitcher's book as a vindication of the possibility of an evolutionary science of human behavior; others have seen it as a devastating critique of the most influential efforts to date to construct such (...) a science. As in the joke about the water glass, both assessments have their point. Sociobiology is a research program, not a unified theory. What one can do is test particular hypotheses within this program and see whether they live up to reasonable standards of rigor and evidence. This is what Kitcher does, with great energy and care. (shrink)

Amarnath Amarasingham, ed., Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal. Leiden and Boston: Brill, 2010. xv + 253 pp. ISBN 978-9-0041-8557-9, hardback £81.00/€139.00/$190.00. Religion and the New Atheism: A Critical Appraisal brings together scholars from a variety of disciplines (religious studies, sociology of religion, sociology of science, philosophy and theology) in order to critically engage with so-called ‘new atheism’. The study is a collection of essays that not so much gives primacy to discrediting the limited scholarship of new atheist (...) literature (although there is plenty of powerful critique to be found in its pages) but demonstrates where we can place new atheism in relation to generally more informed and intellectually rigorous debates about religion and atheism. This review essay examines their powerful arguments and briefly introduces possible Bhaskarian, Hegelian and Darwinian-Marxian contributions to the case against new atheism. (shrink)

According to a simple form of consequentialism, we should base decision on our judgments about their consequences for achieving out goals. Our goals give us reason to endorse consequentialism as a standard of decision making. Alternative standards invariably lead to consequences that are less good in this sense. Yet some people knowingly follow decision rules that violate consequentialism. For example, they prefer harmful omissions to less harmful acts, they favor the status quo over alternatives they would otherwise judge to be (...) better, they provide third-party compensation on the basis of the cause of an injury rather than the benefit from the compensation, they ignore deterrent effects in decisions about punishment, and they resist coercive reforms they judge to be beneficial. I suggest that nonconsequentialist principles arise from overgeneralizing rules that are consistent with consequentialism in a limited set of cases. Commitment to such rules is detached from their original purposes. The existence of such nonconsequentialist decision biases has implications for philosophical and experimental methodology, the relation between psychology and public policy, and education. (shrink)

Se analizan las bases hermenéuticas de toda decisión ética. La normatividad moral exige una comprensión de las circunstancias, porque solo desde su intelección se puede realizar un buen juicio ético. Si, para Peter Singer, las herramientas para tal aprehensión son de tipo racional, Mauricio Beuchot las amplía por medio de la intuición y la sutileza. Se discute si las pretensiones argumentales de Singer se actualizan en sus obras. The article analyzes the hermeneutical bases of all ethical decisions. Moral norms require (...) an understanding of the circumstances, since good ethical judgments can only be made on that basis. While for Peter Singer, the tools for that understanding are rational, Mauricio Beuchot expands them through intuition and subtlety. The paper discusses whether Singer's claims are substantiated in his works. Neste artigo, analisam-se as bases hermenêuticas de toda decisão ética. A normatividade moral exige uma compreensão das circunstâncias, porque só a partir de seu entendimento se pode realizar um bom juízo ético. Se, para Peter Singer, as ferramentas para a apreensão são de tipo racional, Mauricio Beuchot as amplia por meio da intuição e da sutileza. Discute-se se as pretensões argumentais de Singer se atualizam em suas obras. (shrink)

In the chapter entitled ‘Philosophy and the Meaning of Life’ in Robert Nozick’s Philosophical Explanations there is an admonitory passage with many applications. ‘It is a puzzle,’ says Nozick, ‘how so many people, including intellectuals and academics devote enormous energy to work in which nothing of themselves or their important goals shines forth, not even in the way their work is presented. If they were struck down, their children upon growing up and examining their work would never know why they (...) had done it, would never know who it was that did it. They work that way and sometimes live that way, too’. (shrink)

This contribution has two main goals which might be labelled for convenience as a pars construens and pars denstruens reversing the usual order of these terms. The first aim is to offer an overview of the main tenets of the book, while the second aim is to raise some critical concerns while remaining sympathetic to the author’s overall project. With regard to the first point, I present the context of intellectual debate where Buchanan’s contribution fits comfortably: Darwin’s evolutionary theory, anthropology, (...) psychology, moral analysis etc. The target here is to show the internal complexity and different layers of analysis of the book. These initial reconstructions are, next, used to formulate some thoughts on what I consider possible problematic points in need of clarification. In particular, first, I hold that Buchanan presents too narrow oppositional views between intergroup relations whereupon the notion of “tribalism” is constructed. Such strong identitarian conception does not seem to depict adequately the sociological dynamics of intergroup relations. Second, I consider the terms in which it can be addressed the notion of the rise of the moral mind in evolutionary terms. The suggestion is to consider in a milder form the author’s key concept of a “Great Uncoupling” for the moral reason. (shrink)