Abstract Do the central aims of epistemology, like those of moral philosophy, require that we designate some important place for those concepts located between the thin-normative and the non-normative? Put another way, does epistemology need "thick" evaluative concepts and with what do they contrast? There are inveterate traditions in analytic epistemology which, having legitimized a certain way of viewing the nature and scope of epistemology's subject matter, give this question a negative verdict; further, they have carried with them a tacit (...) commitment to what we argue to be an epistemic analogue of the reductionistic centralist thesis which Bernard Williams, in our view, successfully repudiates in ethics. In this essay, we challenge the epistemic analogue of the traditional but mistaken thesis. In offering an alternative to it which provides a comfortable home for the epistemic normativity which attends thick evaluative concepts, we align ourselves with what has been recently called the Value Turn in epistemology. From this perspective, we defend that, contrary to tradition, as influenced by centralist assumptions, epistemology does need thick evaluative concepts. Further, the sort of theories that will be able to give thick evaluative concepts an irreducible role in both belief and agent evaluation are adequately social epistemologies. What loosely refer to as second-wave of virtue epistemology is the widespread interest to provide a comfortable home for the role of thick normativity, as it is connected both with epistemic evaluation, and guidance. We recognize that, in breaking from centralism, there is a worry that a resulting anti-centralist theory will be reductionistic in the other direction, making the thick primary. We contend however that second-wave virtue epistemologies take different sources of social and epistemic value into account; they seek the 'right thickness' to ride with conception of epistemology and a field which due in part to virtue theory's resurgence, is today normative, diverse and expansive than was the traditional set of problems from which it emerged. (shrink)

The term compassion fatigue has come to be applied to a disengagement or lack of empathy on the part of care-giving professionals. Empathy and emotional investment have been seen as potentially costing the caregiver and putting them at risk. Compassion fatigue has been equated with burnout, secondary traumatic stress disorder, vicarious traumatization, secondary victimization or co-victimization, compassion stress, emotional contagion, and counter-transference. The results of a Canadian qualitative research project on nurses? experience of compassion fatigue are presented. Nurses, self-identified as (...) having compassion fatigue, described a change in their practice by which they began to shield and distance themselves from the suffering of patients and families. Time to help patients and families cope with suffering seemed unavailable, and many felt they were running on empty and, ultimately, impotent as nurses. Feelings of irritability, anger, and negativity arose, though participants described denying or ignoring these emotions as a way to try to survive their work day. Difficulties with work carried over into the nurses? personal lives, affecting their relationships with family and friends. Such experiences invariably called into question the participants? identity, causing them to reflect on the kind of nurse they were. The participants? compassion fatigue created a sense of hopelessness regarding positive change, although some nurses described strategies that seemed to help alleviate their compassion fatigue. (shrink)

This paper aims to investigate Allan Gibbard’s norm-expressivist account of normativity. In particular, the aim is to see whether Gibbard’s theory is able to account for the normativity of reason-claims. For this purpose, I first describe how I come to targeting Gibbard’s theory by setting out the main tenets of quasi-realism cum expressivism. After this, I provide a detailed interpretation of the relevant parts of Gibbard’s theory. I argue that the best reading of his account is the one that takes (...) normativity to be carried by a controlled, coherent, comprehensive set of norms. Finally, I present a potential obstacle to Gibbard’s approach: the regress problem. The idea is to examine the structure of the non-cognitive state expressed and find it inadequate due to the possibility of an infinite regress in the justification of the norms whose acceptance it contains. I then end the paper with some concluding remarks. (shrink)

This essay defends a three-dimensional response-model theory of recognition of persons, and discusses the related phenomenon of recognition of reasons, values and principles. The theory is three-dimensional in endorsing recognition of the equality of persons and two kinds of relevant differences: merits and special relationships. It defends a ‘response-model’ which holds that adequacy of recognition of persons is a matter of adequate responsiveness to situation-specific reasons and requirements. This three-dimen- sional response-model is compared to Peter Jones’s view, which draws the (...) distinction between status and merit recognition, and mediated and unmediated recognition. The essay discusses a number of questions related to how recognition of situation-specific reasons, and more general values and principles, is related to recognition of persons. The three- dimensional response-model of recognition of persons is in principle compatible with a constructivist view, which holds that the validity of values and principles is dependent on acknowledgement or endorsement. But even if one is a realist on that issue and thinks of validity as independent of acknowledgement, acknowledging relevant values, reasons and principles is a hugely important precondition of actual interpersonal recognition. The essay analyses these connections. (shrink)

Are aesthetic judgements cognitive, belief-like states or non-cognitive, desire-like states? There have been a number of attempts in recent years to evaluate the plausibility of a non-cognitivist theory of aesthetic judgements. These attempts borrow heavily from non-cognitivism in metaethics. One argument that is used to support metaethical non-cognitivism is the argument from Motivational Judgement Internalism. It is claimed that accepting this view, together with a plausible theory of motivation, pushes us towards accepting non-cognitivism. A tempting option, then, for those wishing (...) to defend aesthetic non-cognitivism, would be to appeal to a similar argument. However, both Caj Strandberg and Walter Sinnott-Armstong have argued that Internalism is a less plausible claim to make about aesthetic judgements than about moral judgements by raising objections against aesthetic internalism. In this paper, I will argue that both of these objections can be raised against internalism about moral judgements as well. As a result, internalism is no less plausible a claim to make about aesthetic judgements than about moral judgements. I will then show how a theory of internalism about normative judgements in general is capable of avoiding both of these objections. (shrink)

This paper discusses the philosophical doctrine of moral luck, as described by Bernard Williams in his book of the same name. It first describes Williams' account and then uses the case of Michael Stone, a convicted murderer with a long history of mental disorder, and mental health practitioners’ interventions in his case, to test and debate Williams’ views. It examines four major areas of these, including the classical notion of moral luck, retroactive judgement, agent regret and justifiable and unjustifiable decision‐making. (...) It concludes that, in view of what has been said, whilst Williams’ views are applicable and appropriate to many areas of the Stone case, ‘traditional’ moral views on rights, obligations and principles cannot be entirely laid aside in evaluating this. (shrink)

: The underdetermination argument establishes that scientists may use political values to guide inquiry, without providing criteria for distinguishing legitimate from illegitimate guidance. This paper supplies such criteria. Analysis of the confused arguments against value-laden science reveals the fundamental criterion of illegitimate guidance: when value judgments operate to drive inquiry to a predetermined conclusion. A case study of feminist research on divorce reveals numerous legitimate ways that values can guide science without violating this standard.

Error theories about practical deontic judgements claim that no substantive practical deontic judgement is true. Practical deontic judgements are practical in the sense that they concern actions, and they are deontic in the sense that they are about reasons, rightness, wrongness, and obligations. This paper assumes the truth of an error theory about practical deontic judgements in order to examine its ramifications. I defend three contentions. The first is that, if so-called fitting-attitude analyses of value fail, the truth of some (...) substantive evaluative judgements would not be threatened by the fact that no substantive practical deontic judgment is true. Secondly, in light of the truth of these evaluative judgements, the best thing we could do is to continue to make practical deontic judgements despite the truth of an error theory about practical deontic judgements. My third contention is that, if some evaluative judgements are unaffected by an error theory about practical deontic judgements, then such an error theory will eventually lead us to some version of consequentialism. (shrink)

Among the defining characteristics of moral cosmopolitanism are the convictions that personal relations, membership in social or political organizations like local communities or nation-states are insignificant for agents when determining their scope of moral concern. The moral scope is unlimited and the moral duties reach globally. Following up observations made by Onora O’Neill and others, it is argued that Singer’s model needs a complementary tool to allocate duties.That tool can be found by supplementing the agent centered perspective of the model (...) with a regard for the social and institutional circles encompassing right holders. Instead of focusing on the duty holder, I suggest that the cosmopolitan’s “ultimate unit of moral concern” – here, the claimholder is regarded central.Thus, Singer’s cosmological model is kept, but in a rights-based methodological approach for allocating duties. Methodologically, what needs to be investigated is whether the scope of legitimate moral claims expands from the agent for the same reasons that the circle of moral concern expands from Singer’s agent. (shrink)

I investigate the consequences of Nietzsche's perspectivism for notions of truth and objectivity, and show how the metaphor of visual perspective motivates an epistemology that avoids self-referential difficulties. Perspectivism's claim that every view is only one view, applied to itself, is often supposed to preclude the perspectivist's ability to offer reasons for her epistemology. Nietzsche's arguments for perspectivism depend on “internal reasons”, which have force not only in their own perspective, but also within the standards of alternative perspectives. Internal reasons (...) allow a perspectivist argument against dogmatism without presupposing aperspectival criteria for theory choice. Nietzsche also offers “internal” conceptions of truth and objectivity which reduce them to a matter of meeting our epistemic standards. This view has pluralistic implications, which conflict with common sense, but it is nevertheless consistent and plausible. Nietzsche's position is similar to Putnam's recent internalism, and this is due to their common Kantian heritage. (shrink)

In this paper, I aim to critically examine a set of assumptions that pervades human resource management and HR practices. I shall argue that they experience a remarkable ethics deficit, explain why this is so, and explore how the UN Global Compact labor principles may help taking ethics seriously in HRM. This paper contributes to the understanding and critical examination of the undisclosed beliefs underlying theory and practice in human resource management and to the examination of how the UN Global (...) Compact’s ideal of “decent work” may offer some promising avenues for the development of ethics in HRM. (shrink)

Virtue ethics has been challenged on empirical grounds by philosophical interpreters of situationist social psychology. Challenges are necessarily challenges to something or other, so it’s only possible to understand the situationist challenge to virtue ethics if we have an antecedent grasp on virtue ethics itself. To this end, I first identify the non-negotiable “hard core” of virtue ethics with the conjunction of nine claims, arguing that virtue ethics does make substantive empirical assumptions about human conduct. Next, I rearticulate the situationist (...) challenge in light of these nine claims. I then turn to a discussion of specifications of several responses typically made by defenders of virtue ethics against the situationist challenge, arguing that most of them either are unsound or give up one of the elements in the hard core. A few, however, survive this criticism, and so I conclude by suggesting ways in which the situationist challenge might be not so much resisted as co-opted. Situational influences can be used to help people simulate virtue, a phenomenon I call factitious virtue. (shrink)

This article addresses the question whether we can know on the basis of folk intuitions that we have character traits. I answer in the negative, arguing that on any of the primary theories of knowledge, our intuitions about traits do not amount to knowledge. For instance, because we would attribute traits to one another regardless of whether we actually possessed such metaphysically robust dispositions, Nozickian sensitivity theory disqualifies our intuitions about traits from being knowledge. Yet we do think we know (...) that we have traits, so I am advancing an error theory, which means that I owe an account of why we fall into error. Why do we feel so comfortable navigating the language of traits if we lack knowledge of them? To answer this question, I refer to a slew of heuristics and biases. Some, like the fundamental attribution error, the false consensus effect, and the power of construal, pertain directly to trait attributions. Others are more general cognitive heuristics and biases whose relevance to trait attributions requires explanation and can be classed under the headings of input heuristics and biases and processing heuristics and biases. Input heuristics and biases include selection bias, availability bias, availability cascade, and anchoring. Processing heuristics and biases include disregard of base rates, disregard of regression to the mean, and confirmation bias. (shrink)

In this paper, I explore the problems of cultivating a critical attitude in pedagogy given problems with accounts grounded in critical social theory, rational liberalism and pragmatic esthetic theory. I offer instead an alternative account of criticism for education in open, pluralistic, liberal, democratic societies called 'pedagogy of difference' that is grounded in the diversity liberalism of Isaiah Berlin and the dialogical philosophy of Martin Buber. In our current condition in which there is no agreement as to the proper criteria (...) for assessing attitudes and actions, for a critical attitude to gain a foothold one must learn to evaluate proposed beliefs and behaviour-based standards within a particular tradition as well as those drawn from another viewpoint. To know oneself, one must engage others who are different. But to engage others in a meaningful way one must be immersed in a tradition to which one is heir or with which one chooses to affiliate. (shrink)

The term ‘speciesism’ was once coined to name discrimination against nonhuman animals as well as the bias that such discrimination expresses. It has sparked a debate on criteria for being morally considerable and the relative significance of human and nonhuman animals’ interests. Many defenses of the preferential consideration of humans have come with a denial of the normative meaning of the term ‘speciesism’ itself. In fact, defenders of the moral relevance of species membership and their critics alike have often used (...) ‘speciesism’ as a merely descriptive technical term for classifying positions in normative ethics. This paper argues that this terminological choice severely impoverishes our ethical vocabulary and moral conceptual scheme. It obscures the considerable common ground among theorists with differing views on the relevance of various properties for moral consideration. It is often overlooked that even most defenders of the preferential treatment of one’s fellow species members have good reason to hold on to the normative notion that ‘speciesism’ was originally meant to be. Two distinct types of concepts are involved when differential treatment along species lines is addressed in a normative and a descriptive way, respectively. The term ‘speciesism’ should be reserved for the normative concept and kept apart from the descriptive term ‘speciescentrism.’ Attempts to redefine speciesism as something that is not wrong by definition are shown to be epistemically and morally harmful for the same reasons attempts to redefine racism and sexism in this way are. (shrink)

Paradoxically, the practical necessity of love seems to combine the personal character of psychological necessity with the inescapable and authoritative quality of moral necessity. Traditionally, philosophers have avoided this paradox by treating love as an amalgam of impersonal evaluative judgments and affective responses. On my account, love participates in a different form of practical necessity, one characterized by a non-moral yet normative type of expectation. This expectation is best understood as a kind of second-personal address that does not support derivative (...) third-personal demands. It is revealed when we react with hurt feelings instead of resentment upon its disappointment. (shrink)

'Theory' is one of the most important words in the lexicon of contemporary sociology. Yet, their ubiquity notwithstanding, it is quite unclear what sociologists mean by the words 'theory,' 'theoretical,' and 'theorize.' I argue that confusions about the meaning of 'theory' have brought about undesirable consequences, including conceptual muddles and even downright miscommunication. In this paper I tackle two questions: what does 'theory' mean in the sociological language?; and what ought 'theory' to mean in the sociological language? I proceed in (...) five stages. First, I explain why one should ask a semantic question about 'theory.' Second, I lexicographically identify seven different senses of the word, which I distinguish by means of subscripts. Third, I show some difficulties that the current lack of semantic clarity has led sociology to. Fourth, I articulate the question, 'what ought "theory" to mean?,' which I dub the 'semantic predicament', and I consider what one can learn about it from the theory literature. Fifth, I recommend a 'semantic therapy' for sociology, and advance two arguments about SP: the principle of practical reason--SP is to a large extent a political issue, which should be addressed with the help of political mechanisms; and the principle of ontological and epistemological pluralism--the solution to SP should not be too ontologically and epistemologically demanding. (shrink)

Sociologists often ask why particular groups of people have the moral views that they do. I argue that sociology’s empirical research on morality relies, implicitly or explicitly, on unsophisticated and even obsolete ethical theories, and thus is based on inadequate conceptions of the ontology, epistemology, and semantics of morality. In this article I address the two main problems in the sociology of morality: (1) the problem of moral truth, and (2) the problem of value freedom. I identify two ideal–typical approaches. (...) While the Weberian paradigm rejects the concept of moral truth, the Durkheimian paradigm accepts it. By contrast, I argue that sociology should be metaphysically agnostic, yet in practice it should proceed as though there were no moral truths. The Weberians claim that the sociology of morality can and should be value free; the Durkheimians claim that it cannot and it should not. My argument is that, while it is true that factual statements presuppose value judgments, it does not follow that sociologists are moral philosophers in disguise. Finally, I contend that in order for sociology to improve its understanding of morality, better conceptual, epistemological, and methodological foundations are needed. (shrink)

While many scholars agree that the ‘‘separation thesis’’ (Freeman in Bus Ethics Quart 4(4):409–421, 1994)—that business issues and ethical issues can be neatly compartmentalized—is harmful to business ethics scholarship and practice, they also conclude that eliminating it is either inadvisable because of the usefulness of the positive/ normative distinction, or actually impossible. Based on an exploration of the fact/value dichotomy and the pragmatist and virtue theoretic responses to it, we develop an approach to eliminating the separation thesis that integrates ‘‘business’’ (...) with ‘‘ethics’’ while still permitting a positive/ normative distinction, which we call ‘‘ethics from observation.’’. (shrink)

Moral and theoretical deficiencies of the main foundation strategies in social and political systems (Social Engineering, Foundationalism and Invisible Hand theories) are explained by the necessity of a synthesis of different kinds of rationality, i.e., goal-rationality, norm-rationality and rightness and weighing rationality. The anthropological basis of the theory is a distinction between homo finalis and homo socialis. At the institutional level, this conception leads to a synthesis of the rule of law and the welfare state. At the political level, this (...) implies a retonsideration of the principles of democracy and political planning. (shrink)

Any value statement belongs to a certain value code shared, to a certain degree, by a number of people. Is the value code itself relative or not? To solve this problem, one must assume that universal value statements and principles always have a prima‐facie character. Prima‐facie value propositions not only claim universality but can also be understood as universally valid in the following sense. First, their validity does not depend on an individual's free preferences. Second, although they are culture‐bound, there (...) is something all cultures must have in common. But such prima‐facie propositions do not logically imply a moral judgement in any particular case. They are merely a starting point of an evaluation procedure, i.e., of weighing and balancing, nothing more. On the other hand, the final (contextual, all things considered) evaluations are necessarily relative to a certain culture and, indeed, to individual preferences. When claiming universality of values, people see the first side of the problem. When endorsing relativism, they see only the second side. (shrink)

: Animal ethics has presented convincing arguments for the individual value of animals. Animals are not only valuable instrumentally or indirectly, but in themselves. Less has been written about interest conflicts between humans and other animals, and the use of animals in practice. The motive of this paper is to analyze different approaches to interest conflicts. It concentrates on six models, which are the rights model, the interest model, the mental complexity model, the special relations model, the multi-criteria model, and (...) the contextual model. Of these, the contextual model is the strongest, and carries clear consequences for the practical use of animals. (shrink)

Why did such highly abstract ideas as truth, knowledge, or justice become so important to us? What was the point of coming to think in these terms? This book presents a philosophical method designed to answer such questions: the method of pragmatic genealogy. Pragmatic genealogies are partly fictional, partly historical narratives exploring what might have driven us to develop certain ideas in order to discover what these do for us. The book uncovers an under-appreciated tradition of pragmatic genealogy which cuts (...) across the analytic-continental divide, running from the state-of-nature stories of David Hume and the early genealogies of Friedrich Nietzsche to recent work in analytic philosophy by Edward Craig, Bernard Williams, and Miranda Fricker. However, these genealogies combine fictionalizing and historicizing in ways that even philosophers sympathetic to the use of state-of-nature fictions or real history have found puzzling. To make sense of why both fictionalizing and historicizing are called for, the book offers a systematic account of pragmatic genealogies as dynamic models serving to reverse-engineer the points of ideas in relation not only to near-universal human needs, but also to socio-historically situated needs. This allows the method to offer us explanation without reduction and to help us understand what led our ideas to shed the traces of their practical origins. Far from being normatively inert, moreover, pragmatic genealogy can affect the space of reasons, guiding attempts to improve our conceptual repertoire by helping us determine whether and when our ideas are worth having. (shrink)

Physicalism is the thesis that everything is physical, or as contemporary philosophers sometimes put it, that everything supervenes on, or is necessitated by, the physical. The thesis is usually intended as a metaphysical thesis, parallel to the thesis attributed to the ancient Greek philosopher Thales, that everything is water, or the idealism of the 18th Century philosopher Berkeley, that everything is mental. The general idea is that the nature of the actual world (i.e. the universe and everything in it) conforms (...) to a certain condition, the condition of being physical. Of course, physicalists don't deny that the world might contain many items that at first glance don't seem physical — items of a biological, or psychological, or moral, or social nature. But they insist nevertheless that at the end of the day such items are either physical or supervene on the physical. (shrink)

This chapter outlines a new disentangling strategy for moral epistemology. It builds on the fundamental distinction between value-neutrality and value-independence as two separate aspects of methodological austerity introduced by Matthew Kramer. This type of conceptual analysis is then applied to two major challenges in moral epistemology: globalised scepticism and debate fragmentation. Both challenges arise from collapsing the fact/value dichotomy. They can be addressed by comprehensive disentangling that runs along both dimensions – value neutrality vs. value non-neutrality and value independence vs. (...) value dependence. The success of this strategy rests on two factors. The first is broadening the scope of disentangling to include theoretical-explanatory values on a par with distinctly ethical values. The second is differentiating between wider and narrower conceptualisations of what value neutrality requires with respect to contested matters. The objective is to pre-empt unjust theorising, a distinctive form of epistemic injustice that derives from the exclusive methodological focus on ethical evaluations at the expense of epistemic ones. When these methodological conditions are fulfilled, opponents should gain the confidence to treat each other as fellow inquirers engaged in the same project, that of reducing the scope of unhelpful disagreements. (shrink)

There seems to be a large gulf between percepts and concepts. In particular, con- cepts seem to be capable of representing things that percepts cannot. We can conceive of things that would be impossible to perceive. (The converse may also seem true, but I will leave that to one side.) In one respect, this is trivially right. We can conceive of things that we cannot encounter, such as unicorns. We cannot literally perceive unicorns, even if we occasionally.

This paper presents a comparative evaluation of constructivist and error theoretic accounts of moral claims. It is argued that constructivism has distinct advantages over error theory.

When we look back upon people in past societies, such as slaveholders and colonialists, we judge their actions to have been morally atrocious. Yet we should give some thought to how the future will judge us. Here I argue that future people are likely to regard our behavior as no better than that of the past. If these future people are to be believed, then we are morally hopeless; we have little chance of working out the moral truth for ourselves. (...) I argue that we ought to resist this conclusion, and that our best means for doing so it to reject moral objectivity and accept instead a form of time-linked moral relativism. (shrink)

More than a century before Anscombe counseled us to jettison concepts such as that of the moral ought, or moral law, Schopenhauer mounted a vigorous attack on such prescriptive moral concepts, particularly as found in Kant. In this chapter I consider the four objections that constitute this attack. According to the first, Kant begs the question by merely assuming that ethics has a prescriptive or legislative-imperative form, when a purely descriptive-explanatory conception such as Schopenhauer’s also presents itself as a possibility. (...) According to the second, Kant’s purportedly philosophical ethics is in fact a theological ethics in disguise, because the moral ought and its prescriptive cousins presuppose a divine lawgiver. According to the third, Kant’s conceptions of the moral law as a law of freedom, and of moral imperatives as categorical or unconditioned, involve him in contradictions. Finally, Schopenhauer objects that there can be no such thing as a moral ought because a binding ought or law must be understood to operate through appeals to self-interest, which stands in opposition to morality. I contend that these last three objections are sound and that the fourth in particular succeeds in confuting the prescriptivist conception of morality. (shrink)

In the last two decades, blame has become a core topic in ethics, philosophical moral psychology and, more recently, epistemology. This chapter aims at clarifying the complex state of the debate and at making a suggestion for how we should proceed from here. The core idea is that accounts of blame are often motivated by very different background goals. One standard goal is to provide a unifying account of our everyday blame practices. The chapter argues that there is reason to (...) think that this goal is not achievable. Another goal is to provide the tools for solving or clarifying important social or philosophical problems. The chapter suggests that this is what theories of blame should focus on. (shrink)

Thus far, the recognition approach as described in the works of Axel Honneth has not systematically engaged with the problem of poverty. To fill this gap, the present contribution will focus on poverty conceived as social exclusion in the context of the European Union and probe its moral significance. It will show that this form of social exclusion is morally harmful and wrong from the perspective of the recognition approach. To justify this finding, social exclusion has to fulfil three conditions: (...) (i) it has to be experienced as harmful by the socially excluded, (ii) it has to meet certain objective criteria, and (iii) it has to violate normative claims embedded within society. (shrink)

Boghossian’s (2003) proposal to conditionalize concepts as a way to secure their legitimacy in disputable cases applies well, not just to pejoratives – on whose account Boghossian first proposed it – but also to thick ethical concepts. It actually has important advantages when dealing with some worries raised by the application of thick ethical terms, and the truth and facticity of corresponding statements. In this paper, I will try to show, however, that thick ethical concepts present a specific case, whose (...) analysis requires a somewhat different reconstruction from that which Boghossian offers. A proper account of thick ethical concepts should be able to explain how ‘evaluated’ and ‘evaluation’ are connected. (shrink)

Drawing on unpublished and published sources from 1926-1932, this chapter builds on John Dewey’s naturalistic pragmatic pluralism in ethical theory. A primary focus is “Three Independent Factors in Morals,” which analyzes good, duty, and virtue as distinct categories that in many cases express different experiential origins. The chapter suggests that a vital role for contemporary theorizing is to lay bare and analyze the sorts of conflicts that constantly underlie moral and political action. Instead of reinforcing moral fundamentalism via an outdated (...) quest for the central and basic source of normative justification, we should foster theories with a range of idioms and emphases which, while accommodating monistic insights, better inform decision-making by opening communication across diverse elements of moral and political life, placing these elements in a wider context in which norms gain practical traction in non-ideal conditions, and expanding prospects for social inquiry and convergence on policy and action. (shrink)

This book chapter is not available in ORA, but you may download, display, print and reproduce this chapter in unaltered form only for your personal, non-commercial use or use within your organization from the ANU E Press website.

In this chapter we first discuss the main principles of justice and note the standard objections to them, which we believe necessitate a hybrid approach. The hybrid account we defend is primarily based on the distributive principle of sufficientarianism, which we interpret as the idea that each country should have the means to provide a minimally decent quality of life for each of its citizens. We argue that sufficientarian considerations give good reason to think that what we call the ‘ability (...) to pay objection’ should be taken much more seriously in this debate. Following this, our account emphasises what we believe are the two most important moral desiderata in any attempt to distribute responsibility for dealing with climate change: the ability to mitigate the problem and the making of culpable contributions to the problem. After noting that our proposal includes enough detail to be a useful start for policy makers, we defend our account against some potential objections. (shrink)

Non-moral blame seems to be widespread and widely accepted in everyday life—tolerated at least, but often embraced. We blame athletes for poor performance, artists for bad or boring art, scientists for faulty research, and voters for flawed reasoning. This paper argues that non-moral blame is never justified—i.e. it’s never a morally permissible response to a non-moral failure. Having explained what blame is and how non-moral blame differs from moral blame, the paper presents the argument in four steps. First, it argues (...) that many (perhaps most) apparent cases of non-moral blame are actually cases of moral blame. Second, it argues that even if non-moral blame is pro tanto permissible—because its target is blameworthy for their substandard performance—it often (perhaps usually) fails to meet other permissibility conditions, such as fairness or standing. Third, it goes further and challenges the claim that non-moral blame is ever even pro tanto permissible. Finally, it considers a number of arguments in support of non-moral obligations and argues that none of them succeed. (shrink)

The development of the science of poverty has largely been driven by the need to define more precisely what poverty is, as well as to provide theoretical and empirical criteria for identifying those who suffer from it. This thesis focuses on a notable response to these and related questions: the conception and measure of poverty by the British sociologist Peter Townsend. Townsend defines poverty as relative deprivation caused by lack of resources. This conception, along with his corresponding cut-off measure, constitutes (...) some of the key components of his theory of poverty. The theory discusses what poverty is, its causes, and how it can be eradicated, and is detailed in Poverty in the United Kingdom: A Survey of Household Resources and Standards of Living (1979), his magnum opus. The primary aim of this thesis is to interpret the theory from Townsend’s adherence to the value-free ideal. He pursued this ideal in response to what he perceived as the pervasive and deleterious influence of moral and political values on measures, theories, and policies on poverty throughout its scientific and political history. I argue that to be free from such influence, Townsend aimed to be as guided by epistemic values as possible, which resulted in a systematic theory of poverty. -/- The thesis is structured as follows: In Chapter 1, I situate Townsend’s conception and measurement of poverty within the context of both the recent history of scientific poverty lines and the most important approaches to measuring the phenomenon. Chapter 2 discusses the systematic nature of the theory, including its role as a middle-range theory that bridges broad-range theories with empirical data. This connection is achieved through several elements: a conception of poverty; hypotheses and anthropological observations related to the elements of the conception; measures to test these hypotheses; an explanation of poverty; and reports on how the research was conducted. Furthermore, Townsend’s theory aligns with Bradburn et al.’s (2017) measurement theory, which asserts that a good measure must include a conception of the relevant phenomenon, a representation, and procedures to gather data. Additionally, all three components must be supported by arguments showing that they fit together properly. -/- In the remaining chapters, I present and discuss the main elements of the theory: his conception of poverty as relative deprivation caused by lack of resources, along with the related hypotheses and observations (Chapter 3); the representations of this conception and the procedures for data collection, processing, as well as ensuring their reliability (Chapter 4); and the explanation of poverty (Chapter 5). I conclude by presenting what Townsend considered the “policy prescriptions” of his theory. Despite its potential shortcomings, I also argue that Townsend’s theory fulfills an important epistemic value: fruitfulness. (shrink)

I classify emotions in the family of regret, remorse, and so on, in such a way that it is easy to see how there can be further emotions in this family, for which we happened not to have names in English. I describe some of these emotions.

David Hume is widely recognized as providing the most influential statement of the “compatibilist” position in the free will debate — the view that freedom and moral responsibility can be reconciled with (causal) determinism. The arguments that Hume advances on this subject are found primarily in the sections titled “Of liberty and necessity”, as first presented in A Treatise of Human Nature (2.3.1-2) and, later, in a slightly amended form, in the Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (sec. 8). Although there is (...) considerable overlap in content between these two statements of Hume's position, there are also some significant differences. This includes, for example, some substantial additions in the Enquiry discussion as it relates to problems of religion, such as predestination and divine foreknowledge. While these differences are certainly significant they should not be exaggerated. Hume's basic strategy and compatibilist commitments in both works remain the same in their essentials.. (shrink)