Artificial Intelligence (AI) is increasingly adopted in society, creating numerous opportunities but at the same time posing ethical challenges. Many of these are familiar, such as issues of fairness, responsibility and privacy, but are presented in a new and challenging guise due to our limited ability to steer and predict the outputs of AI systems. This chapter first introduces these ethical challenges, stressing that overviews of values are a good starting point but frequently fail to suffice due to the context (...) sensitivity of ethical challenges. Frequently, additional (ethical) values emerge for specific applications, as e.g. challenges with fraud detection are very different from those around language technologies. Second, methods to tackle these challenges are discussed. Main ethical theories (virtue ethics, consequentialism, and deontology) are shown to provide a starting point, but often lack the details needed for actionable AI Ethics. Instead, mid-level philosophical theories coupled to design-approaches such as Design for Values, together with interdisciplinary working methods, offer the best way forwards. The chapter aims to show how these approaches can lead to an ethics of AI that is actionable and that can be proactively integrated in the design of AI systems. (shrink)

This article aims to provide an a priori argument—termed the Flourishment Argument, for the veracity of the Christian conception of the Abrahamic religion that centres on God’s action of sending a divine and atoning prophet into the world. This specific informal argument will be presented through the formulation of a set of a priori reasons for why God would seek to interact with the world—developed in light of the work of Richard Swinburne, John Finnis, Linda Zagzebski and Alexander Pruss—which, in (...) combination, will provide individuals with grounds for believing in the veracity of these important Christian teachings. (shrink)

In this paper, we embark on the complicated discussion about the nature of vice in Virtue Ethics through a twofold approach: first, by taking seriously the claim that virtues (and certain flavours of vices) are genuinely dispositional features possessed by agents, and secondly, by employing a pluralistic attitude borrowed from Battaly’s pluralism (2008). Through these lenses, we identify three varieties of viciousness: incontinence, indifference, and malevolence. The upshot is that the notion of vice is not as categorically homogeneous as that (...) of virtue: some states of viciousness consist in interference of present virtuous dispositions, or mimicking of absent vicious ones, whereas others can be considered genuine dispositions themselves. Furthermore, this set-up can provide an interesting, albeit highly idealized story as to how, through the interference in one’s environment, one gets acquainted with vice in various degrees. Finally, this approach can be illuminating vis-à-vis Virtue Ethics in general; e.g. we can employ it to discuss more productively Johnston’s (2003) objection to Hursthouse’s (1999) account of moral conduct. Finally, this approach can be illuminating vis-a-vis Virtue Ethics in general; e.g. we can employ it to discuss more productively Johnston’s (2003) objection to Hursthouse’s (1999) account of moral conduct. (shrink)

The paper takes as its starting point John Rawls’s claim that the social bases of self-respect is perhaps the most important primary good the distribution of which is governed by his principles of justice. There has been some debate about this claim in the literature and this debate has included important clarifications regarding the concept(s) involved. However, I think this discussion hasn’t gone deep enough and this – relative – lack of depth has or at least might have important implications (...) for our theory of distributive justice. To show this, I begin with Rawls’s admittedly sketchy remarks about the significance of self-respect in his theory. After this I briefly describe the debate that followed: what emerges here is a distinction between two kinds of self-respect. While I think this distinction is in good order, I also think and subsequently argue, building on the work of Robin Dillon and Anna Bortolan, that it only scratches the surface of the complex phenomenon of self-respect. In particular, as these authors show, the self-respect complex is, in fact, a multi-layered phenomenon and the distinction as used misses its fundamental level: basal self-respect (Dillon) or self-esteem (Bortolan). In the finishing part of the paper I discuss these two proposals to show that Bortolan’s version is the better one. All this then has clear relevance for the adjoining debate in political philosophy: all those who want to give an important role to self-respect in their theory of justice have potentially focused on the wrong target so far. This, I conclude, might well give rise to a new feminist critique of liberal egalitarian justice. (shrink)

This article addresses the following meta-ethical question: do moral values have a special position among other values? According to Robert Adams, moral values do have a special position and are of overriding importance. I argue that the "overridingness" thesis is inconsistent with Adams’s value theory that only God has value in himself and all other things are valuable to the extent that they resemble God. I consider some possible ways of integrating the overridingness thesis that are latent in Adams’s work (...) and argue that none succeeds. My main contribution is to propose a solution to the inconsistency in Adams’s theory. I argue that a theological account of beauty gives us reason to reject the overridingness thesis. Morality overrides some other concerns, but not all other concerns. (shrink)

Pandeism is the belief that God chose to wholly become our Universe, imposing principles at this Becoming that have fostered the lawful evolution of multifarious structures, including life and consciousness. This article describes and defends a particular form of pandeism: living God pandeism (LGP). On LGP, our Universe inherits all of God's unsurpassable attributes—reality, unity, consciousness, knowledge, intelligence, and effectiveness—and includes as much reality, conscious and unconscious, as is possible consistent with retaining those attributes. God and the Universe, together “God-and-Universe,” (...) is also eternal into the future and the past. The article derives testable hypotheses from these claims and shows that the evidence to date confirms some of these while falsifying none. Theism cannot be tested in the same way. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the process of self-transformation through which a person comes to embody the ideal of her religion’s vision of the divine, as far as that ideal is expressible in a human life. The paper is concerned with the self as the subject of religious commitments, traits, religious aspirations and religiously inspired ideals. The self-transformative journey that people are invited to undertake poses a number of philosophical and practical difficulties; the paper explores some of these difficulties, concentrating on (...) those that arise in connection with the notion of potential future selves. This paper suggests that imaginative reflection upon exemplary individuals provides one way through these difficulties, for these individuals can show us what it looks like when someone achieves, or draws close to, the ideal. (shrink)

In this chapter, we address the roles that exemplars might play in a comprehensive response to epistemic injustice. Fricker defines epistemic injustices as harms people suffer specifically in their capacity as (potential) knowers. We focus on testimonial epistemic injustice, which occurs when someone’s assertoric speech acts are systematically met with either too little or too much credence by a biased audience. Fricker recommends a virtue­theoretic response: people who do not suffer from biases should try to maintain their disposition towards naive (...) testimonial justice, and those who find themselves already biased should cultivate corrective testimonial justice by systematically adjusting their credence in testimony up or down depending on whether they are hearing from someone whom they may be biased against or in favor of. We doubt that the prominent admiration­emulation model of exemplarism will be much use in this connection, so we propose two ways of learning from negative exemplars to better conduct one’s epistemic affairs. In the admiration­emulation model, both the identification of what a virtue is and the cultivation of virtues identified thusly proceed through the admiration of virtuous exemplars. We show that this model has serious flaws and argue for two alternatives: the envy­agonism model and the ambivalence­avoidance model. (shrink)

Agent-based virtue ethical theories must deal with the problem of right action: if an action is right just in case it expresses a virtuous motive, then how can an agent perform the right action but for the wrong reason, or from a vicious motive? Some recent agent-based accounts purport to answer this challenge and two other related problems. Here I assess these accounts and show them to be inadequate answers to the problem of right action. Overall, it is shown that (...) the most recent and promising attempts at squaring agent-based virtue ethics with commonsense morality are flawed, and so, the case for agent-basing in general that much dimmer. (shrink)

Virtue ethics is currently one of three major approaches in normative ethics. It may, initially, be identified as the one that emphasizes the virtues, or moral character, in contrast to the approach that emphasizes duties or rules (deontology) or that emphasizes the consequences of actions (consequentialism). Suppose it is obvious that someone in need should be helped. A utilitarian will point to the fact that the consequences of doing so will maximize well-being, a deontologist to the fact that, in doing (...) so the agent will be acting in accordance with a moral rule such as “Do unto others as you would be done by” and a virtue ethicist to the fact that helping the person would be charitable or benevolent. (shrink)

The Euthyphro objection is often perceived, rightly or wrongly, as the king objection to theistic meta-ethics. This paper proposes a response that hasn’t been much explored within the contemporary literature, based on the metaphysics of dispositions and natural law theory. The paper will first contend that there is a parallel between ways theists conceptualise God’s role in creating laws of nature and the ways God creates goods. Drawing upon these parallels I propose a possible response to the dilemma, where this (...) response parallels the dispositionalist response as to how God creates laws of nature. I do this by first explicating a natural law theory of goodness, then suggesting how the ontology of dispositions can be used in a novel way to account for goods, and finally by explaining how all this relates to the dilemma. I conclude the paper by posing some objections to myself and providing some replies. (shrink)

Democracy is usually contrasted with the concept of dictatorship, and is defined as a type of government in which power flows from the citizens to the leaders of government, who are selected through free elections. This article argues, that if the concept of democracy is generalized to be universally applicable, then the concept of hypothetical gods’ right to rule results in dictatorship. Whereas the concepts of dictator and tyrant originally had a more positive meaning, those meanings have changed. However, the (...) concept of the gods in the philosophical debate has avoided a similar redefinition in light of democracy, despite the fact, that it involves the same negation of modern fundamental rights. The basic democratic idea posits that all of its members have a full and equal status. If this status is generalized to be universally applicable, then it follows that humankind likewise are not second and first class among hypothetical gods. The existence or nonexistence of the gods is here defined as the secondary question, whereas the principal acceptance of hypothetical gods’ right to rule in a democratic context with respect to concepts of freedom is defined as the primary question. The position of heroical apatheism is argued as an alternative to positions such as theism, atheism, and agnosticism. These positions only concern themselves with the ontological or epistemological question of whether the gods exist, whereas heroical apatheism concerns itself with the primary component missing so far, namely democratic rights and dignity. This is a discussion that I consider as having been overlooked in modern philosophical discussions. (shrink)

: In this paper I attempt to defuse a set of epistemic worries commonly raised against ideal observer theories. The worries arise because of the omniscience often attributed to ideal observers – how can we, as finite humans, ever have access to the moral judgements or reactions of omniscient beings? I argue that many of the same concerns arise with respect to other moral theories (and that these concerns do not in fact reveal genuine flaws in any of these theories), (...) and further, that we can and often do have knowledge of the reactions of ideal observers (according to standard, prominent theories in the domain of epistemology). (shrink)

The article begins with Jonathan Dancy’s attempt to refute the Humean Theory of Motivation. It first spells out Dancy’s argument for his alternative position, the view he labels ‘Pure Cognitivism’, according to which what motivate are always beliefs, never desires. The article next argues that Dancy’s argument for his position is flawed. On the one hand, it is not true that desire always comes with motivation in the agent; on the other, even if this was the case, it would still (...) not follow that desire is identical with the state of being motivated. When this negative work is done, the article turns to some positive, albeit admittedly tentative remarks about what sort of cognitivist theory of motivation one should endorse. The aim at this point is not to present a brand new theory, but rather to sketch an alternative that stems from what Dancy himself says and is in line with many of his endorsed commitments in other areas. In this way, by moving beyond Pure Cognitivism, the paper sketches a different, but still ‘Dancyesque’ theory of motivation. (shrink)

Many claims about conceptual matters are often represented as, or inferred from, claims about the meaning, reference, or mastery, of words. But sometimes this has led to treating conceptual analysis as though it were nothing but linguistic analysis. We canvass the most promising justifications for moving from linguistic premises to substantive conclusions. We show that these justifications fail and argue against current practice (in metaethics and elsewhere), which confuses an investigation of a word’s meaning, reference, or competence conditions with an (...) analysis of some concept or property associated with that word. (shrink)

To support her divine motivation theory of the good, which seeks to ground ethics in motives and emphasize the attractiveness of morality over against the compulsion of morality, Linda Zagzebski has proposed an original account of obligations which grounds them in motives. I argue that her account renders obligations objectionably person-relative and that the most promising way to avoid my criticism is to embrace something quite close to a divine command theory of obligation. This requires her to combine her desired (...) emphasis on the imitation of God with a contrasting emphasis on submission to God. I conclude that her divine motivation theory of the good, if it is to have an adequate account of obligation, is dependent on a divine will or divine command theory of obligation. (shrink)

My question in this paper concerns what eudaimonist virtue ethics (EVE) might have to say about what makes right actions right. This is obviously an important question if we want to know what (if anything) distinguishes EVE from various forms of consequentialism and deontology in ethical theorizing. The answer most commonly given is that according to EVE, an action is right if and only if it is what a virtuous person would do in the circumstances. However, understood as a claim (...) about what makes particular actions right, this is not especially plausible. What makes a virtuous person’s actions right must reasonably be a matter of the feature, or features, which she, via her practical wisdom, appreciates as ethically relevant in the circumstances, and not the fact that someone such as herself would perform those actions. I argue that EVE instead should be understood as a more radical alternative in ethical philosophy, an alternative that relies on the background assumption that no general account or criterion for what makes right actions right is available to us: right action is simply too complex to be captured in a ‘finite and manageable set of…moral principles’ (McKeever and Ridge, Principled ethics, Oxford University Press, 2006 , p. 139). This does not rule out the possibility that there might be some generalizations about how we should act which hold true without exception. Perhaps there are some things which we must never do, as well as some features of the world which always carry normative weight (even though their exact weight may vary from one context to another). Still, these things are arguably few and far between, and what we must do to ensure that we reliably recognize what is right in particular situations is to acquire practical wisdom. Nothing short of that could do the job. (shrink)

The Euthyphro Dilemma is named after a particular exchange between Socrates and Euthyphro in Plato‟s dialogue Euthyphro. In a famous passage, Socrates asks, “Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?” (Plato 1981: 10a), and proceeds to advance arguments which clearly favor the first of these two options (see PLATO). The primary interest in the Euthyphro Dilemma over the years, however, has primarily concerned the relationship between (...) God and morality in the monotheistic religious tradition, where God is taken to be omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent, having created the universe initially and still actively involved in it today. But as we will see at the end of this entry, there has also been a recent surge of interest in a version of the Dilemma which applies to so-called response-dependent accounts of normative properties in meta-ethics. (shrink)

The perceptual model of emotions maintains that emotions involve, or are at least analogous to, perceptions of value. On this account, emotions purport to tell us about the evaluative realm, in much the same way that sensory perceptions inform us about the sensible world. An important development of this position, prominent in recent work by Peter Goldie amongst others, concerns the essential role that virtuous habits of attention play in enabling us to gain perceptual and evaluative knowledge. I think that (...) there are good reasons to be sceptical about this picture of virtue. In this essay I set out these reasons, and explain the consequences this scepticism has for our understanding of the relation between virtue, emotion, and attention. In particular, I argue that our primary capacity for recognizing value is in fact a non-emotional capacity. (shrink)

Abstract: In this essay I outline a radical kind of virtue theory I call exemplarism, which is foundational in structure but which is grounded in exemplars of moral goodness, direct reference to which anchors all the moral concepts in the theory. I compare several different kinds of moral theory by the way they relate the concepts of the good, a right act, and a virtue. In the theory I propose, these concepts, along with the concepts of a duty and of (...) a good life, are defined by reference to exemplars, identified directly through the emotion of admiration, not through a description. It is an advantage of the theory that what makes a good person good is not given a priori but is determined by empirical investigation. The same point applies to what good persons do and what states of affairs they aim at. The theory gives an important place to empirical investigation and narratives about exemplars analogous to the scientific investigation of natural kinds in the theory of direct reference. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In virtually every corner of ethics—including discussions of value, practical reasoning, moral psychology, and justice—it is common for theorists to suggest that our actions, attitudes, or emotions should be proportional to the degree of value present in the objects or events to which they are responding. I argue that there is a fundamental problem with these approaches: they overlook the character of the agent and what it adds to the equation. I show that a commitment to proportionality is at (...) odds with both ordinary and admirable instances of love, ambition, and forgiveness. To make room for disproportional attitudes and actions, I introduce a novel account of virtue and its relation to value. (shrink)

This paper explores artificial intelligence (AI) ethics from an Islamic perspective at a critical time for AI ethical norm-setting. It advocates for a pluralist approach to ethical AI benchmarking. As rapid advancements in AI technologies pose challenges surrounding autonomy, privacy, fairness, and transparency, the prevailing ethical discourse has been predominantly Western or Eurocentric. To address this imbalance, this paper delves into the Islamic ethical traditions to develop a framework that contributes to the global debate on optimal norm setting for designing (...) and using AI technologies.The paper outlines Islamic parameters for ethical values and moral actions in the context of AI's ethical uncertainties. It emphasizes the significance of both textual and non-textual Islamic sources in addressing these uncertainties while placing a strong emphasis on the notion of "good" or "maṣlaḥa" as a normative guide for AI's ethical evaluation. Defining maṣlaḥa as an ethical state of affairs in harmony with divine will, the paper highlights the coexistence of two interpretations of maṣlaḥa: welfarist/utility-based and duty-based. Islamic jurisprudence allows for arguments supporting ethical choices that prioritize building the technical infrastructure for AI to maximize utility. Conversely, it also supports choices that reject consequential utility calculations as the sole measure of value in determining ethical responses to AI advancements. (shrink)

According to Arti Dhand, it can be argued that all Indian ethics have been primarily virtue ethics. Many have indeed jumped on the virtue bandwagon, providing prima facie interpretations of Hindu, Jain, and Buddhist canons in virtue terms. Others have expressed firm skepticism, claiming that virtues are not proven to be grounded in the nature of things and that, ultimately, the appeal to virtue might just well be a mere façon de parler. In this paper, we aim to advance the (...) discussion of Indian virtue ethics. Our intent is not to provide a catch-all interpretation of the different Indian schools. Our goal is, more modestly, to offer a theory of virtues in Indian philosophies, as a framework for theorists and interpreters who see these diverse traditions as amenable to systematic virtue analysis. Our theory grounds virtues in the reality of genuine moral dispositions and in a system of beliefs where morality is understood as transformative in nature. (shrink)

We examine whether Thomsonian constitutivism, a metaethical view that analyses value in terms of ‘goodness-fixing kinds,’ i.e. kinds that themselves set the standards for being a good instance of the respective kind, offers a satisfactory explanation of value change and disagreement. While value disagreement has long been considered an important explanandum, we introduce value change as a closely related but distinct phenomenon of metaethical interest. We argue that constitutivism fails to explain both phenomena because of its commitment to goodness-fixing kinds. (...) Constitutivism explains away disagreement and at best explains the emergence of new values, not genuine change. Therefore, Thomsonian constitutivism is not a good fix for realist problems with explaining value disagreement, and value change. (shrink)

Expressivism is supposed to have an advantage over moral realism, in that it can explain why it is a conceptual truth that the moral supervenes on the natural, even though the natural does not entail the moral. I develop an analogy between expressivism and a version of theistic moral realism, and argue that this version of theistic moral realism shares any advantage that expressivism might have. It may be that the alleged advantage that expressivism has over moral realism is overstated. (...) Nevertheless, possible analogies between expressivism and theistic moral realism have received very little attention in the past, and are worth considering for their own sake. (shrink)

If one answers the question ‘What is G-ness?’ with a biconditional of the form ‘x is G iff x is F,’ one can ask whether x is G because it is F, or whether x is F because it is G. This question, known as The Euthyphro Question, invites one to choose between one of two options which are presented as mutually exclusive and jointly exhaustive: either x is G because it is F, or x is F because it is (...) G but not both. Each answer has its attractions and difficulties. The _Euthyphro Problem_ is the problem of choosing one rather than the other. This paper argues that holism in the theory of reasons — a view developed by Jonathan Dancy in a different context and for a different purpose — provides a novel and elegant solution to this age-old problem. (shrink)

A generic grounding claim is a grounding claim that isn’t about any particular entity or fact. For example, consider the claim: an act is right in virtue of maximizing happiness. One natural idea is that generic grounding claims state mere regularities of ground. So if an act is right in virtue of maximizing happiness, then every possible right act is right in virtue of maximizing happiness. The generic claim generalizes over particular grounding relations. In this essay, I argue that this (...) simple story is wrong. Generic grounding claims are not merely quantificational; rather, they express real definitions, where real definitions are (in part) claims about essence. My view has two major upshots: ('i') it makes better sense of debates where generic grounding claims are at issue (like debates about moral laws); ('ii') it clarifies the distinction between reductive and non-reductive metaphysical theories. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop an account of Nietzschean exemplarism. Drawing on my previous work, I argue that an agent’s instincts and other drives constitute her psychological type. In this framework, a drive counts as a virtue to the extent that it is well-calibrated with the rest of the agent’s psychic economy and meets with sentiments of approbation from the agent’s community. Different virtues are fitting for different types, and different types elicit different discrete emotions in people with fine-tuned affective (...) sensitivity, making Nietzsche’s exemplarism doubly pluralistic. Exemplars show us how a type is expressed in different social and cultural contexts. Some live up to the full potential of their type, while others are stymied and demonstrate how pernicious influences can wreck a person’s psychology. While some exemplars inspire admiration that leads to emulation, others elicit a range of other emotions, such as envy, contempt, and disgust. If this is right, then Nietzschean exemplarism offers a richer, more evaluatively and motivationally nuanced moral psychology than the monochrome admire-and-emulate model currently popular. (shrink)

Aristotle and others suggest that a single virtue – ‘good temper’ – pertains specifically to anger. I argue that if good temper is a single virtue, it is constituted by aspects of a combination of other virtues. I present three categories of anger-relevant virtues – those that dispose one to anger; those that delay, mitigate, and qualify anger; and those required for effortful anger control – and show how virtues in each category make distinct contributions to good temper. In addition (...) to clarifying the relationship between anger and the virtues, my analysis has theoretical implications for virtue individuation more generally, and practical implications for character cultivation. (shrink)

The paper presents some historical (Plato, Aristotle, Plotin, Augustine, Boethius, Aquinas) and main contemporary topics about different accounts of goodness of God understood as ontological goodness, perfection and as ethical goodness - impeccability and benevolence. The arguments for goodness of God are presented, mainly from stance of Thomas Aquinas classical theism as well as arguments against compatibility of essential goodness and omnipotence (N. Pike) and being an moral agent. The article draws perspective of different philosophical issues connected with goodness of (...) God, like a problem of evil, the Euthyphro dilemma, divine command ethics and divine motivation theory. (shrink)

Divine law theories of metaethics claim that moral rightness is grounded in God’s commands, wishes and so forth. Expressivist theories, by contrast, claim that to call something morally right is to express our own attitudes, not to report on God’s. Ostensibly, such views are incompatible. However, we shall argue that a rapprochement is possible and beneficial to both sides. Expressivists need to explain the difference between reporting and expressing an attitude, and to address the Frege-Geach problem. Divine law theorists need (...) to get past the Euthyphro dilemma, and to avoid moral externalism. This paper shows how a combined theory helps us to achieve this. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: References Further reading.

Traditional theism says that the goodness of everything comes from God. Moreover, the goodness of something intrinsically valuable can only come from what has it. Many conclude from these two claims that no creatures have intrinsic value if traditional theism is true. I argue that the exemplarist theory of the divine ideas gives the theist a way out. According to exemplarism, God creates everything according to ideas that are about himself, and so everything resembles God. Since God is wholly good (...) in every way, and since ethical supervenience is true, it follows that creatures have intrinsic value. (shrink)

Divine Motivation theory is an ethical theory with a theological foundation, attempting to explain the relation between religion and morality in the context of Christian theology with emphasizing on neo-Aristotelian and motivation-based ethics. This theory that is presented by Linda Zagzebski, provides a new form of virtue ethics that God's motives, especially that of love, are foundations of moral life and these motivational states are considered ontologically and explanatorily the basis for all moral properties and values. This theory uses five (...) steps to advance its destination. In the first step, this theory proves the personhood of God. In the second step, it argues that God has perfect virtues and motives. In the third step, it shows that God's motive in the Creation is motive of love that is the central and fundamental divine motive. In the fourth step, it discusses the doctrine of imitatio Dei and focuses on the problems of this doctrine. In the last step, it attempts to link this doctrine to the doctrine of the incarnation to resolve its problems. (shrink)

آنچه ما «استدلال انتفاء» می‌خوانیم دومین استدلال از سه استدلالی است که خواجه نصیرالدین طوسی، در کتاب تأثیرگذار تجرید الاعتقاد، بر حسن و قبح عقلی اقامه کرده است. بر پایۀ این استدلال، نفی حسن و قبح عقلی مستلزم نفی حسن و قبح شرعی است. نتیجۀ مورد نظر خواجه و مقدمات استدلال، به دلیل وجود جهات متفاوت معناشناختی، هستی‌شناختی و معرفت‌شناختی، قابلیت تفسیرهای متعدد دارد. صورت‌بندی منطقی معقول‌ترین خوانش استدلال، که آن را خوانش شکاکانه نامیده‌ایم، نشان می‌دهد که نتیجۀ آن انکار (...) حسن و قبحِ شرعیِ معرفت‌شناختی است، که البته مشکلات همین تقریر نیز آن را در ردّ نظریۀ حسن و قبح شرعی معرفت‌شناختی ناتوان ساخته است. از جمله این اشکالات می‌توان این موارد اشاره کرد: خبری دانستن طریق شرع برای اعلام حسن و قبح افعال، ابهام در مفهوم امکان به‌کاررفته در استدلال، استفاده از مقدمات غیربدیهی غیرمستدل، و خلط میان وقوع دروغ‌گویی و امکان دروغ‌گویی در غیر قابل اعتماد دانستن دیگری در اِخبار خود. روشن است که این مقاله در پی دفاع از حسن و قبح شرعی یا ردّ حسن و قبح عقلی نیست و ادعای آن صرفاً ناتمام بودن استدلال انتفاء بر حسن و قبح عقلی است. (shrink)

I defend the principle that a person is blameworthy for her action only if that action was morally wrong. But what should we say about an agent who does the right thing based on bad motives? I present three types of cases that have these features. In each, I argue, the agent is not culpable for her action; however, she violates the norm of moral responsibility, and thus acts in a morally irresponsible way. This analysis, I show, has several virtues. (...) It also has important theoretical ramifications: it allows for a more nuanced approach to moral luck and paves the way for an unexplored line of defense in favor of a particular norm of moral responsibility. (shrink)

This paper argues that many leading ethical theories are incomplete, in that they fail to account for both right and wrong. It also argues that some leading ethical theories are inconsistent, in that they allow that an act can be both right and wrong. The paper also considers responses on behalf of the target theories.

This paper begins with the oft-repeated claim that having faith involves trust in God. Taking this platitude seriously requires at least two philosophical tasks. First, one must address the relevant notion of “trust” guiding the platitude. I offer a sketch of epistemic trust: arguing that epistemic trust involves several components: acceptance, communication, dependence, and confidence. The first duo concerns the epistemic element of epistemic trust and the second part delimit the fiducial aspect to epistemic trust. Second, one must also examine (...) what differentiates faith qua trust. I argue that we should not distinguish faith from trust merely by believing religious propositions but by the attitudes they express. In particular, the attitude of faith is more deeply entrenched and central to one’s noetic structure than trust simpliciter. The paper ends by arguing that the account proposed insofar as it accommodates and explains certain “faith desiderata”. We can thus give content to the “faith is a kind of trust” platitude with a model of trust on hand while showing how that model confirms and explains important features of faith. (shrink)

Ethical challenges to certain aspects of research on human subjects are not uncommon; examples include challenges to first-in-human trials (Chapman in J Clin Res Bioethics 2(4):1–8, 2011), certain placebo controlled trials (Anderson in J Med Philos 31:65–81, 2006; Anderson and Kimmelman in Kennedy Inst Ethics J 20(1):75–98, 2010) and “sham” surgery (Macklin in N Engl J Med 341:992–996, 1999). To date, however, there are few challenges to research when the subjects are competent and the research is more than minimal risk (...) with no promise of direct benefit. The principal reason given for allowing research that is more than minimal risk without benefit is that we should respect the autonomy of competent subjects. I argue that though the moral intuitions informing respect for autonomy are sound, there is another set of intuitions regarding what we take to be just treatment of another when one agent knowingly causes or allows suffering on another agent. I argue that concerns generated by commutative justice serve as limitations on permissible research. I highlight our intuitions informing this notion of justice by appealing to work done on theodicy; what counts as a morally sufficient reason for God to allow suffering in humans is applicable also to the researcher-subject relationship. I conclude that all human subjects who are exposed to more than minimal risk research should enjoy the same actual protections (e.g., subpart D) as those given subjects who cannot consent. (shrink)

On the assumption that theistic religious commitment takes place in the face of evidential ambiguity, the question arises under what conditions it is permissible to make a doxastic venture beyond one’s evidence in favour of a religious proposition. In this paper I explore the implications for orthodox theistic commitment of adopting, in answer to that question, a modest, moral coherentist, fideism. This extended Jamesian fideism crucially requires positive ethical evaluation of both the motivation and content of religious doxastic ventures. I (...) suggest that, even though the existence of horrendous evil does not resolve evidential ambiguity in favour of atheism, there are reasonable value commitments that would preclude those who hold them from satisfying extended Jamesian fideist conditions for committing themselves to classical theism. I then begin a discussion of a possible revisionary theistic alternative (in the Christian tradition) which – one might hope – may meet those conditions. An earlier, shorter, version of this paper was delivered as a keynote address at the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God. (shrink)

We have controversial intuitions about the rightness of retributive punishment, keeping promises for its own sake, and pushing the heavy man off of the bridge in the footbridge trolley case. How do these intuitions relate to ethical theories? Should ethical theories aim to fit with and explain them? Or are only uncontroversial intuitions relevant to explanatory ethical theorising? I argue against several views that we might hold about the relationship between controversial intuitions and ethical theories. I then propose and defend (...) the view that ethical theories should only aim to fit with and explain the intuitions that almost all people (who minimally understand the relevant issues) share. I argue that this view has interesting and important implications for ethical theorising and theorising about justice and equality. (shrink)

The author of Hebrews writes that Jesus Christ was “tempted as we are, yet without sin”. Many Christians take the sinlessness of Jesus to imply that he was perfectly virtuous. Yet, susceptibility to the experience of at least some temptations, plausibly including those Jesus experienced, seems incompatible with the possession of perfect virtue. In an attempt to resolve this tension, I argue here that there are good reasons for believing that Jesus, while perfectly sinless, was not fully virtuous at the (...) time of his temptations, but that he grew in virtue through overcoming temptation. If this is right, then Jesus Christ is an exemplar of character formation who is able to “sympathize with our weaknesses” in an important way that Christians have largely overlooked. (shrink)

I argue that Linda Zagzebski's proposed solution to the Meno Problem faces serious challenges. The Meno Problem, roughly, is how to explain the value that knowledge, as such, has over mere true belief. Her proposed solution is that believings—when thought of more like actions—can have value in virtue of their motivations. This meshes nicely with her theory that knowledge is, essentially, virtuously motivated true belief. Her solution fails because it entails that, necessarily, all knowledge is motivated in a way that (...) resembles the motivation of actions. Crucially, Zagzebski says the value derived from motivation comes from certain laudable feelings—like love of truth (she is explicit that love is a feeling). But there are possible cases of knowledge—probably some of which are actual—in which subjects do not or cannot experience these feelings. (shrink)

This paper presents a feminist intervention into debates concerning the relation between human subjects and a divine ideal. I turn to what Irigarayan feminists challenge as a masculine conception of ‘the God’s eye view’ of reality. This ideal functions not only in philosophy of religion, but in ethics, politics, epistemology and philosophy of science: it is given various names from ‘the competent judge’ to the ‘the ideal observer’ (IO) whose view is either from nowhere or everywhere. The question is whether, (...) as Taliaferro contends, my own philosophical argument inevitably appeals to the impartiality and omni-attributes of the IO. This paper was delivered during the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God. (shrink)

ABSTRACT In this commentary, I delve into areas in which I agree as well as disagree with Glen Pettigrove’s interesting ideas. I am very much in agreement with his views about the limited use of the proportionality principle in attempting to explain what virtue adds to value. The main portion of his essay, however, lies in his treatment of three approaches purporting to explain how virtue adds to value: Hurka’s recursive theory; what Pettigrove calls the ‘response-dependent’ view; and his own (...) account, which he calls the ‘modus operandi’ view. Though I agree with his criticisms of the recursive theory, I express concerns about his treatment of the response-dependent view, as well as about Pettigrove’s own modus operandi account. (shrink)