Presently philosophers, social theorists, educationists and legal scholars are busy with issues of contemporary importance such as affirmative actions, animal’s rights, capital punishment, cloning, euthanasia, immigration, pornography, privacy in civil society, values in nature, human rights, cultural values and world hunger etc. Since ancient time ethics is one of the most important part of philosophical speculations and human development. The development of morality comes under three stages viz. intrinsic morality, customary morality and reflective morality. Intrinsic (...) class='Hi'>morality has traditionally been thought to lie at the heart of ethics and this is the first stage of morality where the objective is to be moral is to lead one’s life according its basic needs. Customary morality is the second stage of morality, where customs of a particular group and tribe rule the life of the man living in this group and morals based on the customs and traditions of society. Members of the group are motivated to sacrifice their lives to save the culture and norms of the particular group or tribe. In the last reflective morality, man started thinking himself and started to do reflection on their life and contributed to the development of the nation or society where he/she lives. Here he/she is independent to think and follow the best for his life. Reflective morals are those that are based on what you believe to be right and not others. The ideas related to the development of art, values, human rights and quality education etc., all are because of man’s reflection. Reflective morality is the best stage of development of morality in human society. In this paper an attempt is made to draw an outline of development of morality in human life and its application of morality in public and personal life. (shrink)

Public discourse is often caustic and conflict-filled. This trend seems to be particularly evident when the content of such discourse is around moral issues (broadly defined) and when the discourse occurs on social media. Several explanatory mechanisms for such conflict have been explored in recent psychological and social-science literatures. The present work sought to examine a potentially novel explanatory mechanism defined in philosophical literature: Moral Grandstanding. According to philosophical accounts, Moral Grandstanding is the use of moral talk to seek (...) social status. For the present work, we conducted six studies, using two undergraduate samples (Study 1, N = 361; Study 2, N = 356); a sample matched to U.S. norms for age, gender, race, income, Census region (Study 3, N = 1,063); a YouGov sample matched to U.S. demographic norms (Study 4, N = 2,000); and a brief, one-month longitudinal study of Mechanical Turk workers in the U.S. (Study 5, Baseline N = 499, follow-up n = 296), and a large, one-week YouGov sample matched to U.S. demographic norms (Baseline N = 2,519, follow-up n = 1,776). Across studies, we found initial support for the validity of Moral Grandstanding as a construct. Specifically, moral grandstanding motivation was associated with status-seeking personality traits, as well as greater political and moral conflict in daily life. (shrink)

In the first wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers in some countries were forced to make distressing triaging decisions about which individual patients should receive potentially life-saving treatment. Much of the ethical discussion prompted by the pandemic has concerned which moral principles should ground our response to these individual triage questions. In this paper we aim to broaden the scope of this discussion by considering the ethics of broader structural allocation decisions raised by the COVID-19 pandemic. More specifically, (...) we consider how nations ought to distribute a scarce life-saving resource across healthcare regions in a public health emergency, particularly in view of regional differences in projected need and existing capacity. We call this the regional triage question. Using the case study of ventilators in the COVID-19 pandemic, we show how the moral frameworks that we might adopt in response to individual triage decisions do not translate straightforwardly to this regional-level triage question. Having outlined what we take to be a plausible egalitarian approach to the regional triage question, we go on to propose a novel way of operationalising the ‘save the most lives’ principle in this context. We claim that the latter principle ought to take some precedence in the regional triage question, but also note important limitations to the extent of the influence that it should have in regional allocation decisions. (shrink)

A leading classical utilitarian, John Stuart Mill is an unlikely contributor to the public reason tradition in political philosophy. To hold that social rules or political institutions are justified by their contribution to overall happiness is to deny that they are justified by their being the object of consensus or convergence among all those holding qualified moral or political viewpoints. In this chapter, I explore the surprising ways in which Mill nevertheless works to accommodate the problems and insights of (...) the public reason tradition, and the extent to which he makes arguments that can help those working within that tradition. Mill’s utilitarian theory incorporates the claim that the demands of social life require a publicly accepted set of normative expectations to govern judgments about when one has met one’s obligations and, relatedly, about the appropriateness of blame or punishment. (shrink)

It may be tempting for breastfeeding advocates to respond to challenges to breastfeeding older children or breastfeeding in public by pointing out the nutritional or developmental benefits of breastfeeding or by noting that breastfeeding is often extremely discreet. Such responses may concede more than they should: by focusing on rebutting the empirical claim, breastfeeding supporters may end up implicitly accepting two presuppositions about breastfeeding: first, the presupposition that breastfeeding requires justification in terms of health or developmental benefits to the (...) child; second, the presupposition that breastfeeding in public is only acceptable if assumed standards of discretion are met. -/- This paper aims to use the methods of analytic philosophy to: (a) show how, if left unchallenged, these implicit assumptions can become part of the pragmatic presuppositions of the conversation, so that the discussion proceeds taking their acceptance for granted; (b) argue that we can expect these presuppositions to have negative effects on all mothers, no matter how they feed their babies, and on the tenor of public discussion of infant feeding; (c) reconstruct the reasoning that might underlie these presuppositions and show that this reasoning is mistaken; (d) show that recognising breastfeeding as a family way of life and a loving interaction between parent and child gives rise to a moral right to breastfeed in public without social sanction, whether one is able to breastfeed discreetly or not. (shrink)

The book intends to interpret how different religions articulate their territories and manage the relationship with other religions, understanding systems and multiple everyday spaces, in a dynamic that is not only a component of contemporary reality, but is central to living it. The underlying thesis is that religion is the great geopolitical issue of our time, but an interpretation is only possible in terms of religious plurality and how ideas, symbolism, subjectivities and practices are incorporated in the daily life (...) of those who share the religious times and spaces, producing territorial identities and imaginary concrete cartographies as world projects. The volume has articles that focus on the religious space being gestated, expanded, contracted, celebrated or represented as a foundation for common life, as well as inter-religious conflicts arising in a world of diverse and differential coexistence. It is not a debate about classical geopolitics, but how geopolitical relations cross cultural-religious experience. (shrink)

When reflecting on human need as a moral-political category, it is natural to include some intersubjective conditions. Surely, children need to be socialized, adults need to be recognized, and the poor need to be given certain resources. I point out that there are two different respects in which such intersubjective factors could be considered needs. On the one hand, they might be needed roughly for their own sake, that is, for exemplifying relational values such as caring for others and sharing (...) a way of life with them. On the other hand, those intersubjective conditions might be needed for the realization of intrinsic values distinct from them, such as autonomy, biological health, or the absence of pain. After spelling out this intrinsic/relational way of valuing intersubjectivity, I provide reason to take seriously the characteristically African idea that we need others in our lives largely because certain ways of relating are valuable as ends and not merely as means to intrinsic goods. I also argue that acknowledging that we need others for such relational considerations would affect public policy in revealing and plausible ways, specifically with respect to poverty, employment, education, and the fourth industrial revolution. (shrink)

Ethics is an attempt to guide human conduct and it is also an attempt to help man in leading good life by applying moral principles. Ethics refers to well based standards of right and wrong that prescribe what humans ought to do, usually in terms of rights, obligations, benefits to society, fairness, or specific virtues. Ethics is related to issues of propriety, rightness and wrongness. What is right is ethical and what is wrong is unethical. Value is an important (...) conception in ethical discussion. Values relate to the norms of a culture, but they are more global and abstract than norms. In certain cultures norms reflect the values of respect and support of friends and family. Different cultures reflect different values. Over the last three decades, traditional-age college students have shown an increased interest in personal well-being and a decreased interest in the welfare of others. Recently, the department of personnel and training has decided to change the pattern of the Civil Services Examination by stressing more on general studies and aptitude skills. A notification has been issued is this regard. From this year the Civil Services (Mains) will also have a separate paper on “ethics, integrity and aptitude”. The notification for the 2013 exam said the “paper (on ethics, integrity and aptitude) will include questions to test the candidate’s attitude and approach to issues relating to integrity, probity in public life and his problem-solving approach to various issues and conflicts in dealing with society”. There are six major sections (i) Ethics and Human Interfaith, (ii) Attitude, (iii) Emotional Intelligence, (iv) Contributions of Moral thinkers and philosophers of India and World, (v) Public/Civil Service Values and Ethics in Public Administration and (vi) Probity in Governance. In this paper an attempt is made to describe the values needed in public service sector and ethical principles might use in public administration and related to the V section of this syllabus. (shrink)

Colombian literature of the nineteenth century captures the emerging process of the new nation and shows the ethical changes needed for the formation of a new country. By using the Colombian novel and poetry produced in the nineteenth-century, this paper will show how these are unfolded in practical effects of the works, drawing on the authors’ desire to influence with their work the ethical and political progress of the country, their society and the life of citizens, and to contribute (...) to the foundation of the modern state in Colombia through a citizen ethics proposed in the texts. Additionally, this paper stresses the literary effort of reappraising the national moral and political situation, of confronting this with the past and, accordingly, of assessing the current situation. -/- La literatura colombiana del siglo XIX captura el proceso de la emergente nación e indica los cambios éticos necesarios para la conformación de un nuevo país. Recurriendo a la novela y la poesía colombiana del siglo XIX, se evidenciará cómo se despliega en estas efectos prácticos de las obras, bajo el anhelo del autor de incidir con sus letras en el progreso ético y político del país, la sociedad y la vida de los ciudadanos, con la fundación del Estado Moderno en Colombia a través de una ética ciudadana propuesta en los textos. Igualmente, se resalta el empeño literario de revaluar la situación moral y política nacional, confrontarla respecto al pasado y evaluar la actualidad conforme a ella. (shrink)

Michael H. Mitias argues that friendship is a central moral value constituting an integral part of the good life and therefore deserving a prominent place in ethical theory. He consequently calls upon ethicists to make immediate and decisive adjustments toward accommodating what he regards as a neglected organic relationship between friendship and morality. This is not a fanciful amendment to our standard conception of morality but a radical proposal grounded in a unifying vision to recapture the right (...) way of doing ethics. While the assessment is compelling, and the plea well-placed, neither has been fully understood in the scholarly reception of Mitias. This paper clarifies both. What sets it apart from other reactions to Mitias is a holistic approach drawing on literary considerations as well as philosophical ones. The combined aim is to demonstrate that Mitias is not seeking simply to restore friendship to its rightful place in normative ethical theory, which is indeed the full extent of his formal mission, but that he is seeking to do so specifically within virtue ethics. This interpretation rests on a broad engagement with Mitias’s publications beyond the recent treatise often taken understandably yet erroneously to be his only work on the subject. (shrink)

From the earliest times, American ethics, the rules for the moral \& intellectual life of the West, used to be founded upon the two principles of self-reliance and good neighborliness. Here we consider the underlying functions of neural brain circuits, organic structures that have evolved adaptively by Darwinian rules subject to selection pressure. In the left brain resides our self-reliant private Ego, making plans, launching initiatives. Your public Ego dwells in the right brain, looking around, meeting with your (...) friendly neighbor. A main component is our bilateral interior cosmos, providing us with all the detailed information about our environment as well as the universe at large. (shrink)

In ‘Public Reason and Prenatal Moral Status’ (2015), Jeremy Williams argues that the ideal of Rawlsian public reason commits its devotees to the radically permissive view that abortion ought to be available with little or no qualification throughout pregnancy. This is because the only (allegedly) political value that favours protection of the foetus for its own sake—the value of ‘respect for human life’—turns out not to be a political value at all, and so its invocation in support (...) of considerations bearing upon the permissibility of abortion is beyond public reason’s remit. Thus, it will scarcely if ever be legitimate to restrict women’s equality and bodily autonomy for the sake of the foetus, even at full term. In this paper, I argue that Williams fails to establish that Rawlsian reasonable citizens must endorse the radically permissive stance vis-à-vis abortion. Citizens can, I claim, reasonably accord the value of respect for human life weight, and indeed converge on the claim that it outweighs other salient political values, during later stages of gestation. Nevertheless, Williams’s argument gets something right in that it reveals why the value of respect for human life is inadmissible at the bar of public reason in early stages of pregnancy. But then, far from throwing Rawlsian public reason into disrepute, Williams’s argument actually (albeit inadvertently) provides arguably more compelling grounds than any hitherto rallied for endorsing Rawls’s much maligned claim that opposition to the duly qualified right to abortion in the first trimester of pregnancy is ‘unreasonable’. (shrink)

The main purpose of this article is to tackle the problem of living together – as dignified human beings – in a certain territory in the field of social philosophy, on the theoretical grounding ensured by some remarkable exponents of the Austrian School − and by means of the praxeologic method. Because political tools diminish the human nature not only of those who use them, but also of those who undergo their effects, people can live a life worthy of (...) a human being only as members of some autarchic or self-governing communities. As a spontaneous order, every autarchic community is inherently democratic, inasmuch as it makes possible free involvement, peaceful coordination, free expression and the free reproduction of ideas. The members of autarchic communities are moral individuals who avoid aggression, practice self-control, seek a dynamical efficiency and establish a democratic public discourse. (shrink)

In Naked, Krista K. Thomason offers a multi-faceted account of shame, covering its nature as an emotion, its positive and negative roles in moral life, its association with violence, and its provocation through invitations to shame, public shaming, and stigmatization. Along the way, she reflects on a range of examples drawn from literature, memoirs, journalism, and her own imagination. She also considers alternative views at length, draws a wealth of important distinctions, and articulates many of the most intuitive (...) objections to her own view in order to defend it more thoroughly. As such, the book’s subtitle, The Dark Side of Shame and Moral Life, undersells its scope and ambition. This is an exploration not just of shame’s dark side but a kaleidoscopic appreciation of both the nature and the (dis)value of shame and shaming. Somewhat undercutting this breadth, Thomason relies heavily on Kantian intuitions about equal respect and recognition for persons and their dignity; in several key arguments, she tells us to disregard predictable and systematic consequences of emotions, practices, and institutions so that we can better focus on their constitutive or internal aspects. Of course, every philosopher inevitably brings theoretical commitments to bear when writing about moral psychology, but non-Kantian readers should be forewarned that — despite the fact that Thomason says that she does “not assume any particular moral theory” — her ethical conclusions about shaming and stigmatizing are likely to be plausible only to those who are already snugly tied into a web of “Kantian commitments” (p. 9). (shrink)

Moralization is a social-psychological process through which morally neutral issues take on moral significance. Often linked to health and disease, moralization may sometimes lead to good outcomes; yet moralization is often detrimental to individuals and to society as a whole. It is therefore important to be able to identify when moralization is inappropriate. In this paper, we offer a systematic normative approach to the evaluation of moralization. We introduce and develop the concept of ‘mismoralization’, which is when moralization is metaethically (...) unjustified. In order to identify mismoralization, we argue that one must engage in metaethical analysis of moralization processes while paying close attention to the relevant facts. We briefly discuss one historical example and two contemporary cases related to COVID-19 that we contend to have been mismoralized in public health. We propose a remedy of de-moralization that begins by identifying mismoralization and that proceeds by neutralizing inapt moral content. De-moralization calls for epistemic and moral humility. It should lead us to pull away from our tendency to moralize—as individuals and as social groups—whenever and wherever moralization is unjustified. (shrink)

A distinctive position in contemporary political philosophy is occupied by those who defend the principle of public justification. This principle states that the moral or political rules that govern our common life must be in some sense justifiable to all reasonable citizens. In this article, I evaluate Gerald Gaus’s defence of this principle, which holds that it is presupposed by our moral reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation. He argues, echoing P.F. Strawson in ‘Freedom and Resentment’, that these (...) attitudes are so deep a part of us that we are unable to rationally reject them. I examine and reject this defence of the principle. Considering the nature of our commitment to the moral reactive attitudes, I argue that those attitudes need not be grounded in a commitment to public justification. The availability of alternative grounds for these attitudes shows, contra Gaus, that we can rationally reject the principle of public justification while maintaining a wholehearted commitment to the reactive attitudes. (shrink)

This book is a collection of all the papers and the essay published in the special issue “Philosophy and Meaning in Life Vol.3,” Journal of Philosophy of Life, Vol.11, No.1, 2021, pp.1-154. We held the Third International Conference on Philosophy and Meaning in Life online at the University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK, on July 21–23, 2020. This conference was co-hosted by the Birmingham Centre for Philosophy of Religion, and the Waseda Institute of Life and Death Studies. (...) We accepted about 50 presentations from around the world. Professor Lisa Bortolotti and I gave keynote lectures. After the conference, we called for papers for publication from the speakers, and we accepted seven papers and an essay for the special issue of the Journal of Philosophy of Life. We would like to give special thanks to the anonymous referees who kindly reviewed the submitted manuscripts. The accepted papers deal with a variety of topics, such as the subjective/objective debate, narrative meaning, Simone de Beauvoir, and Alain Badiou, and they are all discussed from the perspective of the philosophy of meaning in life. (shrink)

What is so striking about Breaking Bad is how centrally impairment and disability feature in the lives of the characters of this series. It is unusual for a television series to cast characters with visible or invisible impairments. On the rare occasions that television shows do have characters with impairments, these characters serve no purpose other than to contribute to their ‘Otherness.’ Breaking Bad not only centralizes impairment, but impairment drives and sustains the story lines. I use three interrelated themes (...) from Disability Scholarship to analyze Breaking Bad. The first theme, Bodily Control, is that good bodies are controlled bodies and that uncontrolled, messy bodies are frightening, bad bodies. Indeed, the messiness of impairment and disability is so bad, that impaired and disabled individuals are excluded or shut out or excluded from many areas of public life. The second theme, Normalcy, is that the effect of hiding away impairment, of attempting to conceal disability, is that society becomes defined by, and structured around, the concept of normalcy. Normalcy, being normal, attaining and maintaining normalcy, is the preoccupation of most in society. To fail to be normal, or to fall from what is considered to be normal, is a source of tremendous anxiety for most people. These two themes, Bodily Control and Normalcy are conceptually connected: impairment, disease and dying are so feared because they are socially invisible and, therefore unknown and unknowable. They are the undiscussable taboos. The third theme, Bodily Realism, is that having a realistic view of the body, which would at minimum require accepting the fact that human bodies are fragile things, prone to disease and accident and are ultimately destined to die, makes one more at ease in the world, and able to live better lives and live as a better person. Indeed, so the argument goes, our lives would be richer, more rewarding—emotionally and morally—if we cared less about normalcy because of a dread of abnormalcy, but instead learned to accept if not positively value the physical variability of human existence. (shrink)

This article proposes that, in line with moral-cosmopolitan theorists, affluent nations have an obligation, founded in justice and not merely altruism or beneficence, to share the responsibility of the burden of public health implementation in low-income contexts. The current Ebola epidemic highlights the fact that countries with under-developed health systems and limited resources cannot cope with a significant and sudden health threat. The link between burden of disease, adverse factors in the social environment and poverty is well established and (...) confirmed by the 2008 World Health Organization (WHO)’s Social Determinants of Health Commission report. Well-resourced nations generally consider that they have some humanitarian obligation to assist where possible, but this obligation is limited. The following questions are considered: Is reliance on the principle of beneficence to address the global disparities in the social determinants of health and life expectancy at birth good enough? Do well-resourced nations have some obligation from justice, which is stronger than from beneficence, and which cannot be as easily cast aside or diminished, to address these issues? In a globalised world, shaped by centuries of historical injustice and where first-world economies are now so intertwined and reliant on third-world labour, beneficence is not a strong enough principle on which to base an obligation to achieve the WHO vision of ‘health equity through action on the social determinants of health’. (shrink)

In the Vocation of Man, Fichte makes the striking claim that life is eternal, rational, our true being, and the final cause of nature in general and of death in particular. How can we make sense of this claim? I argue that the public lectures that compose the Vocation are a popular expression of Fichte’s pre-existing commitment to what I call immortalism, the view that life is the unconditioned condition of intelligibility. Casting the I as an absolutely (...) self-active or living power enables his philosophical account of both the intelligibility of objects and of what it means to die. This explains his characterization of the Wissenschaftslehre as a system in which ‘all is act, movement, and life’. In Sect. 1, I explain the context of Jacobi’s use of ‘caput mortuum’ as a term for the thing in itself. In Sects. 2 and 3, I reconstruct two immortalist arguments from Fichte’s Jena period. The first is that the I’s self-activity rules out the existence of the thing in itself and thereby vanquishes ‘death’s head’. The second is that, insofar as the I charges us with the moral perfection of nature, it is the final cause of our entire life, including its end. This is to say that the I puts our every moment into question, even our last. In Sect. 4, I use these immortalist arguments to interpret the striking claim from the Vocation. (shrink)

This paper introduces Richard Rorty’s notion of the liberal ironist and his vision of a liberal utopia and explores the implications of these for philosophical questions concerning morality, as well as morality in general. Rorty’s assertions of the contingency of language, society and self are explored. Under the contingency of language, the figure of the ironist is defined, and Rorty’s conception of vocabularies is discussed. Under the contingency of society, Rorty’s definition of liberalism, his opposition of literary culture (...) to materialist and metaphysical culture, and his notions concerning utopian politics are discussed. Under the contingency of self, Rorty’s critique of Kantian and his appropriations of Deweyan and Freudian conceptions of morality are presented. Other key factors discussed are Rorty’s theory of the separation of the private and public spheres of life and his ideas concerning cruelty and human solidarity. In this way, a critical analysis of Rorty’s proposed balance between private, ironic doubt and public, liberal social hope is presented and assessed in terms of its merit as a system of thought suited to the needs of post-metaphysical, liberal societies. (shrink)

Sentencing outcomes turn on moral and evaluative determinations. For example, a finding of “irreparable corruption” is generally a precondition for juvenile life without parole. A finding that the “aggravating factors outweigh the mitigating factors” determines whether a defendant receives the death penalty. Should such moral determinations that expose defendants to extraordinary penalties be subject to a standard of proof? A broad range of federal and state courts have purported to decide this issue “in the abstract and without reference to (...) our sentencing case law,” as the Supreme Court recently put it. Kansas v. Carr, 577 U.S. 108, 119 (2016). According to these courts, “it would mean nothing” to ask whether the defendant “deserves mercy beyond a reasonable doubt” or “more-likely-than-not deserves it” because moral questions are not “factual.” Instead, moral determinations are highly subjective “value calls” to which concepts of doubt and certainty do not intelligibly apply. -/- Implicit in these rulings is a controversial view of the nature of moral judgment. This Article traces the contours of the view and argues that it is out of step with the way the broader public thinks about morality and fails to address the issues defendants have raised. Courts should avoid wading into such controversial waters for two reasons. First, the judiciary has historically maintained neutrality on issues of significant public concern. Second, even if moral determinations are not factual, applying a standard of proof to at least some moral decisions at sentencing would change the outcome of the sentencer’s deliberations, and improve the legitimacy of the legal system. For the reasonableness of doubt depends on context; and moral questions—"are you certain the defendant deserves death?”—make salient the stakes relative to which a person should decide what to believe about ordinary empirical matters. On the resulting view, reasonable doubt in the final moral analysis is not just intelligible, but essential for correcting a bias in the structure of the bifurcated criminal trial that systematically disadvantages defendants: the tendency for de-contextualized "factual findings” in the guilt phase to control outcomes at sentencing. (shrink)

"Naked" is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in shame and its role in morality. The book is particularly timely given how common public shaming has become in online settings. Krista K. Thomason argues that, even though shame is a negative emotion with potentially damaging consequences, its dark side is outweighed by its moral benefits insofar as shame is constitutive of desirable moral commitments. According to the author, being liable to shame is constitutive of respecting other people’s points (...) of view, acknowledging others’ moral standing, and accepting that our identities are not only set by what we think of ourselves, but also by factors outside of our control that include our personal histories and other people’s opinions of us. (shrink)

Traditional arguments for privacy in public suggest that intentionally public activities, such as political speech, do not deserve privacy protection. In this article, I develop a new argument for the view that surveillance of intentionally public activities should be limited to protect the specific good that this context provides, namely democratic legitimacy. Combining insights from Helen Nissenbaum’s contextualism and Jürgen Habermas’s theory of the public sphere, I argue that strategic surveillance of the public sphere can (...) undermine the capacity of citizens to freely deliberate in public and therefore conflicts with democratic self-determination. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that the practice of civil disagreement has robust epistemic benefits and that these benefits enable meaningful forms of reconciliation—across worldview lines and amid the challenging information environment of our age. I then engage two broad groups of objections: either that civil disagreement opposes, rather than promotes, clarity, or else that it does little to help it. If successful, my account gives us reason to include civil disagreement among what Mill calls “the real morality of (...) public discussion,” a fact that should stir us to take more seriously the decline of civility in contemporary life. (shrink)

It is normal to think that philosophers’ first dedication is to the truth. Publishers and writers consider ideas and papers according to criteria such as originality, eloquence, interestingness, soundness, and plausibility. I suggest that moral consequence should play a greater role in our choices to publish when serious harm is at stake. One’s credence in a particular idea should be weighed against the potential consequences of the publication of one’s ideas both if one turns out to be right and if (...) one turns out to be wrong. This activist approach to philosophical writing combines moral concern with epistemic humility. (shrink)

The existence of deep moral disagreement is used in support of views ranging from moral relativism to the impossibility of moral expertise. This is done despite the fact that it is not at all clear whether deep moral disagreements actually occur, as the usually given examples are never of real life situations, but of some generalized debates on controversial issues. The paper will try to remedy this, as any strength of arguments appealing to deep moral disagreement is partly depended (...) on the fact the disagreement exists. This will be done by showing that some real life conflicts that are intractable, i.e. notoriously difficult to resolve, share some important features with deep moral disagreement. The article also deals with the objection that the mere conceptual possibility renders illustrations of actually happening deep moral disagreements unnecessary. The problem with such objection is that it depends on theoretical assumptions (i.e. denial of moral realism) that are not uncontroversial. Instead, the article claims we need not only suppose deep moral disagreements exist because they actually occur when some intractable conflicts occur. Thus, in so far as to the deep moral disagreement’s existence, the arguments appealing to it are safe. But as intractable conflicts can be resolved, by seeing deep moral disagreements as constitutive part of them, we might have to consider whether deep moral disagreements are resolvable too. A brief suggestion of how that might look like is given in the end of the paper. (shrink)

Pro-life advocates commonly argue that fetuses have the moral status of persons, and an accompanying right to life, a view most pro-choice advocates deny. A difficulty for this pro-life position has been Judith Jarvis Thomson’s violinist analogy, in which she argues that even if the fetus is a person, abortion is often permissible because a pregnant woman is not obliged to continue to offer her body as life support. Here, we outline the moral theories underlying (...) class='Hi'>public health ethics, and examine the COVID-19 pandemic as an example of public health considerations overriding individual rights. We argue that if fetuses are regarded as persons, then abortion is of such prevalence in society that it also constitutes a significant public health crisis. We show that on public health considerations, we are justified in overriding individual rights to bodily autonomy by prohibiting abortion. We conclude that in a society that values public health, abortion can only be tolerated if fetuses are not regarded as persons. (shrink)

Rather than to focus upon a particular ‘right to life’, we should consider what rights there are pertaining to our lives and to our living. There are different sorts. There are, for instance, rights that constitute absences of particular duties and rights that correspond to the duties of other agents or agencies. There are also natural and non-natural rights and duties. Different people in different contexts can have different moral duties and different moral rights including rights to life. (...) The question of the moral rights there are to and pertaining to life is considered with reference to James Griffin’s account of human rights. Also considered is the question of who or what can be a bearer of them. (shrink)

In this paper I critically explore the possibility that the hope for engaging in democratic discourse and coalition-building across deep— potentially irreconcilable— moral, religious divisions in current U.S. public life depends less upon further calls for “more tolerance,” and instead in thinking creatively and transformatively about how to democratize and constructively utilize conflict and intolerance. Is it possible to distinguish between constructive and destructive forms of intolerance? If so, what are the prospects for re-orienting analysis of democratic practices (...) and processes so that what typically appear as forms of simple intolerance (and thus, as candidates for marginalization or exclusion from political processes) might be reconceived and re-directed for the purposes of constructively transforming those practices and processes? Further, what would an analytical framework that aimed to distinguish and cultivate “healthy conflict” in contrast to degenerative or destructive conflict look like? How would such an approach facilitate efforts on the ground to recognize, understand and transform religiously-motivated conflict? I pose answers to these questions by bringing strands from the “religion in public life” debates that have unfolded over recent decades among ethicists and political philosophers into conversation with conflict transformation literature in peace studies. Bridging these resources will help to re-conceptualize basic assumptions about tolerance and conflict as a pivotal first step in constructively transforming conflicts motivated by, or identified with, moral commitments and religious identities. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence and robotics is pervasive in daily life and set to expand to new levels potentially replacing human decision-making and action. Self-driving cars, home and healthcare robots, and autonomous weapons are some examples. A distinction appears to be emerging between potentially benevolent civilian uses of the technology (eg unmanned aerial vehicles delivering medicines), and potentially malevolent military uses (eg lethal autonomous weapons killing human com- batants). Machine-mediated human interaction challenges the philosophical basis of human existence and ethical conduct. (...) Aside from technical challenges of ensuring ethical conduct in artificial intelligence and robotics, there are moral questions about the desirability of replacing human functions and the human mind with such technology. How will artificial intelligence and robotics engage in moral reasoning in order to act ethically? Is there a need for a new set of moral rules? What happens to human interaction when it is mediated by technology? Should such technology be used to end human life? Who bears responsibility for wrongdoing or harmful conduct by artificial intelligence and robotics? -/- Whilst Kant may be familiar to international lawyers for setting restraints on the use of force and rules for perpetual peace, his foundational work on ethics provides an inclusive moral philosophy for assessing ethical conduct of individuals and states and, thus, is relevant to discussions on the use and development of artificial intelligence and robotics. His philosophy is inclusive because it incorporates justifications for morals and legitimate responses to immoral conduct, and applies to all human agents irrespective of whether they are wrongdoers, unlawful combatants, or unjust enemies. Humans are at the centre of rational thinking, action, and norm-creation so that the rationale for restraints on methods and means of warfare, for example, is based on preserving human dignity as well as ensuring conditions for perpetual peace among states. Unlike utilitarian arguments which favour use of autonomous weapons on the basis of cost-benefit reasoning or the potential to save lives, Kantian ethics establish non-consequentialist and deontological rules which are good in themselves to follow and not dependent on expediency or achieving a greater public good. -/- Kantian ethics make two distinct contributions to the debate. First, they provide a human-centric ethical framework whereby human exist- ence and capacity are at the centre of a norm-creating moral philosophy guiding our understanding of moral conduct. Second, the ultimate aim of Kantian ethics is practical philosophy that is relevant and applicable to achieving moral conduct. -/- I will seek to address the moral questions outlined above by exploring how core elements of Kantian ethics relate to use of artificial intelli- gence and robotics in the civilian and military spheres. Section 2 sets out and examines core elements of Kantian ethics: the categorical imperative; autonomy of the will; rational beings and rational thinking capacity; and human dignity and humanity as an end in itself. Sections 3-7 consider how these core elements apply to artificial intelligence and robotics with discussion of fully autonomous and human-machine rule-generating approaches; types of moral reasoning; the difference be- tween ‘human will’ and ‘machine will’; and respecting human dignity. (shrink)

The spread of liberal individualism to the family is often portrayed as deeply inimical to the welfare of children and young people. In this view, the family is the bastion of the private and the antithesis of the contractual, rights-oriented model that underpins public life. This chapter examines that proposition critically.

This article considers two related and fundamental issues about morality in a virtual world. The first is whether the anonymity that is a feature of virtual worlds can shed light upon whether people are moral when they can act with impunity. The second issue is whether there are any moral obligations in a virtual world and if so what they might be. -/- Our reasons for being good are fundamental to understanding what it is that makes us moral or (...) indeed whether any of us truly are moral. Plato grapples with this problem in book two of The Republic where Socrates is challenged by his brothers Adeimantus and Glaucon. They argue that people are moral only because of the costs to them of being immoral; the external constraints of morality. -/- Glaucon asks us to imagine a magical ring that enables its wearers to become invisible and capable of acting anonymously. The ring is in some respects analogous to the possibilities created by online virtual worlds such as Second Life, so the dialogue is our entry point into considering morality within these worlds. These worlds are three dimensional user created environments where people control avatars and live virtual lives. As well as being an important social phenomenon, virtual worlds and what people chose to do in them can shed light on what people will do when they can act without fear of normal sanction. -/- This paper begins by explaining the traditional challenge to morality posed by Plato, relating this to conduct in virtual worlds. Then the paper will consider the following skeptical objection. A precondition of all moral requirements is the ability to act. There are no moral requirements in virtual worlds because they are virtual and it is impossible to act in a virtual world. Because avatars do not have real bodies and the persons controlling avatars are not truly embodied, it is impossible for people to truly act in a virtual world. We will show that it is possible to perform some actions and suggest a number of moral requirements that might plausibly be thought to result. Because avatars cannot feel physical pain or pleasure these moral requirements are interestingly different from those of real life. Hume’s arguments for why we should be moral apply to virtual worlds and we conclude by considering how this explains why morality exists in these environments. (shrink)

US citizens perceive their society to be one of the most diverse and religiously tolerant in the world today. Yet seemingly intractable religious intolerance and moral conflict abound throughout contemporary US public life - from abortion law battles, same-sex marriage, post-9/11 Islamophobia, public school curriculum controversies, to moral and religious dimensions of the Black Lives Matter and Occupy Wall Street movements, and Tea Party populism. Healthy Conflict in Contemporary American Society develops an approach to democratic discourse and (...) coalition-building across deep moral and religious divisions. Drawing on conflict transformation in peace studies, recent American pragmatist thought, and models of agonistic democracy, Jason Springs argues that, in circumstances riven with conflict between strong religious identities and deep moral and political commitments, productive engagement may depend on thinking creatively about how to constructively utilize conflict and intolerance. The result is an approach oriented by the recognition of conflict as a constituent and life-giving feature of social and political relationships. (shrink)

The object of the study is to introduce an innovative approach to the long-lasting theoretical discussion about the meaning and extent of political liberty in a modern democratic society. The suggested way to explain why the democratic political order as such might give rise to considerable challenges for political liberty introduces the classical virtue of courage as a possible key explanatory factor underlying the major tensions that emerge between democracy and liberty. Such approach provides some new insights into the debate (...) about the origins, limits, and political perspectives of modern democracies. The analysis starts by conceptualizing modern democracy as a political form which expresses a specific ethical idea about the natural equality of people. Generally, it means that egalitarianism is the founding idea and moral purpose of a democratic political system, which tends to develop into a modern type of representative government and civil society. The second part of our analysis emphasizes the fact that liberty is by nature a political fact achieved only by practical participation of an individual in public life, and which cannot be reduced to formal, legal, economic or moral categories. Liberty, being a principle of public action, requires the capacity of a person to risk his personal wealth and safety for the sake of the common good. The third part of the analysis explains the crucial importance of the virtue of courage to the whole political life, as it is an ethical idea which aims at building such a character of a person that is capable and motivated to live an active public life. It is the virtue of courage that makes an individual morally fit and eager to practice liberty, as well as ready to defend it against any acts of despotism. Finally, the analysis assesses the diminishing role of courage due to the egalitarian public order of a democracy, resulting in adverse effects on liberty. The conclusions of the article highlight several points which are noted below. In a democratic society, courage loses its status as a virtue; thus, individuals become less capable and less motivated to live an active public life. Democracy rests on the principle that implies establishing and protecting the equality of its citizens, while the virtue of courage expresses an implicit distaste for egalitarianism and encourages people to strive for an ethically superior status than that of all the rest, i.e. it makes a clear hierarchical distinction between cowards, conformists, and heroes. That’s why democracy banishes courage from its equality favoring public life, depriving it of its ethical status. The decline of this virtue makes the practice of liberty more complicated as individuals lose interest in risking their private wealth and safety for the sake of the common good. The diminishing capacity and interest of citizens in democracy to live an active public life, while giving preference to social equality which requires no personal effort, is a major problem for political liberty. As people become indifferent to the pursuit of the common good, liberty becomes inactive, and the political community becomes less immune to various manifestations of despotism. (shrink)

Public shaming plays an important role in upholding valuable social norms. But, under what conditions, if any, is it morally justifiable? Our aim in this paper is systemically to investigate the morality of public shaming, so as to provide an answer to this neglected question. We develop an overarching framework for assessing the justifiability of this practice, which shows that, while shaming can sometimes be morally justifiable, it very often is not. In turn, our framework highlights several (...) reasons to be concerned about the increasingly widespread phenomenon of online public shaming. (shrink)

During the coronavirus pandemic, communities have faced shortages of important healthcare resources such as COVID-19 vaccines, medical staff, ICU beds and ventilators. Public health officials in the U.S. have had to make decisions about two major issues: which infected patients should be treated first (triage), and which people who are at risk of infection should be inoculated first (vaccine distribution). Following Beauchamp and Childress’s principlism, adopted guidelines have tended to value both whole lives (survival to discharge) and life-years (...) (survival for years past discharge). This process of collective moral reasoning has revealed our common commitment to both Kantian and utilitarian principles. For Kant, respecting people’s rights entails that we ought to value whole lives equally. Therefore we ought to allocate resources so as to maximise the number of patients who survive to discharge. By contrast, the principle of utility has us maximise life-years so that people can satisfy more of their considered preferences. Although people are treated impartially in the utilitarian calculus, it does not recognise their equal worth. Subjecting Kantian ethics and utilitarianism to the process of reflective equilibrium lends support to the idea that we need a pluralistic approach that would accommodate our moral intuitions regarding both the equal value of whole lives and the additive value of life-years. (shrink)

In this article, I present a new interpretation of the pro-life view on the status of early human embryos. In my understanding, this position is based not on presumptions about the ontological status of embryos and their developmental capabilities but on the specific criteria of rational decisions under uncertainty and on a cautious response to the ambiguous status of embryos. This view, which uses the decision theory model of moral reasoning, promises to reconcile the uncertainty about the ontological status (...) of embryos with the certainty about normative obligations. I will demonstrate that my interpretation of the pro-life view, although seeming to be stronger than the standard one, has limited scope and cannot be used to limit destructive research on human embryos. (shrink)

In this paper I trace the arc of Kant’s critical stance on the belief in God, beginning with the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and culminating in the final chapter of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). I argue that toward the end of his life, Kant changed his views on two important topics. First, despite his stinging criticism of it in the Critique of Pure Reason, by the time of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant seems to endorse the physico-theological (...) argument. Second, some time around the publication of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant seems to move away from the argument for the practical postulates. (shrink)

I seek to answer the question of whether publicly funded higher education ought to aim intrinsically to promote certain kinds of ‘‘blue-sky’’ knowledge, knowledge that is unlikely to result in ‘‘tangible’’ or ‘‘concrete’’ social benefits such as health, wealth and liberty. I approach this question in light of an African moral theory, which contrasts with dominant Western philosophies and has not yet been applied to pedagogical issues. According to this communitarian theory, grounded on salient sub-Saharan beliefs and practices, actions are (...) right insofar as they respect relationships in which people both share a way of life, or identify with one another, and care for others’ quality of life, or are in solidarity with each other. I argue that while considerations of identity and solidarity each provide some reason for a state university to pursue blue-sky knowledge as a final end, they do not provide conclusive reason for it to do so. I abstain from drawing any further conclusion about whether this provides reason to reject the Afro-communitarian moral theory or the intuition that blue-sky knowledge is a proper final end of public higher education. I do point out, however, that the dominant Western moral theories on the face of it do no better than the African one at accounting for this intuition. (shrink)

What is the ethical basis for democracy? What reasons do we have to go along with democratic decisions even when we disagree with them? When can we justly ignore democratic decisions? These three questions are intimately connected: understanding what is ultimately important about democracy helps us to understand the authority of democratic decisions over our personal views, and the limits of such authority. Thomas Christiano’s ambitious new book, The Constitution of Equality, aims to provide such an understanding through a discussion (...) of all three questions. Briefly put, in Christiano’s view, public equality is the moral foundation of both democracy and liberal rights, and it serves to explain the authority of democracy as well as its limits. The book aims first of all to ground the principle of public equality in a number of principles related to the nature of personhood, dignity, well-being and formal considerations of justice, on the one hand, and in the need for publicity for social justice, on the other (Chaps. 1 and 2). The book then aims to show how both democracy and basic liberal rights are grounded in the principle of public equality, which tells us that in the establishment of law and policy we must treat persons as equals in ways that they can see are treating them as equals (Chaps. 3 and 4). The account clarifies the nature and roles of adversarial politics and public deliberation in political life (Chap. 5). Finally, the book argues that democratic decisions have authority over personal views and that violations of democratic and liberal rights are beyond the legitimate authority of democracy, and that the creation of persistent minorities in a democratic society, and the failure to ensure a basic minimum for all persons weaken the legitimate authority of democracy (Chaps. 6 and 7). I shall begin by addressing Christiano’s view on the basis of equality, and then shall focus mainly on the central argument for public equality, democracy and its.. (shrink)

Ethic, from the Greek word ethos, means the basic requirements and basis for living. It means knowing the correctness, balance and harmony between what is and what should be. Specifically, Ethics is a branch of philosophy that seeks to analyze and explain existing ideas about their usefulness for public judgment. Agriculture is one of the most important human activities, and it seems very necessary to observe its ethical aspects. These aspects include humans (as a component), animals, environment, society, economy (...) and politics. The most important ethical issue is the production, consumption and preparation of food in the presence of the hungry, and the healthiness of food is also a very important ethical issue. In functional integration, agriculture is considered as a complex production system with social values and ecological relationships, where the functional integration of the system can be nurtured or disturbed by human activities. Based on this, the responsibility of future generations and current generations requires us to preserve the natural resources of life and avoid irreversible changes with foreseeable consequences. Therefore, the ethical view is a holistic view and is not just a set of methods; But an attitude that is not only limited to production and considers the whole system and man as part of the direction, and the understanding of sustainable agriculture is also the same attitude in the realization of moral goals. One of the ways to increase agricultural production is weed management, in which compliance with ethical aspects is essential. which is discussed in this article. (shrink)

The focus of this article is the global and European experience of the reception, assimilation, and social application of the Bible, reproduced in the works of a number of prominent Kyiv Theological Academy (KTA) representatives from the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. The analysis specifically covers the works of professors Stefan Solskyi, Kharysym Orda, Nikolai Drozdov, Afanasii Bulgakov, Mykola Makkaveiskyi, Vasylii Pevnytskyi, Arsenii Tsarevskyi, Volodymyr Rybinskyi, Dmytro Bohdashevskyi, and Aleksandr Glagolev. The author uses the metaphor of (...) the Biblical world to describe the historically developed spiritual and cultural component of the European world, for which the Bible played the role of a normative and symbolic core. Affiliation with the Biblical world — as a way of broad social application of the Bible and assimilation of the norms and public behaviors sanctioned by this text — was and still is a stable symbolic marker as well as a cultural and ideological factor of integration with European civilization. The historical panorama of the reception of Biblical knowledge and the inculturation of Biblical morality by Christianized nations, reproduced in the writings of Kyiv academics, is presented as a field of centuries-old intercultural contacts and active inter-confessional interaction, and as an important ideological and moral factor of the socio-political integration and development of civil society. The issues addressed by Biblical studies in Europe and the rest of the world and considerations and solutions prompted by these issues proved to be fruitful for both the academic research and public practices in which academics of the Kyiv Theological Academy were engaged. The past and modern foreign experience related to the inculturation of the Bible was interpreted by the Kyiv researchers in the local context, more specifically, in the modernization attempts of the 19th and early 20th centuries. Therefore, the reflection of European and worldwide experience, though not fully implemented, was productive and was a potential factor that could have contributed to the European modernization of Kyiv cultural and religious life of the time and its integration into the global Biblical World. (shrink)

According to an editor of The Economist, the world produced, in the years since World War II, seven times more goods than throughout all history. This is well appreciated by lay people, but has hardly affected social scientists. They do not have the conceptual apparatus for understanding accelerated material-technical change and its meaning for people's personal lives, for their ways of relating to them-selves and to the outside world. Of course, a great deal of speculation about emerging life forms (...) in industrialised societies exists and social scientists with a futuristic bend have projected their diverse visions upon public debates, ranging from thc Efficient Hedonism of "post-industrialist' society a la Daniel Bell to the “Responsible Convivialism” of 'post-materialist" critics such as Fritz Schumacher. Competing images of the coming "services society" or "self-service society" share a central concern: the ongoing relation between tile spheres of large organisations and personal lifestyles, between salaried work arid private consumption. They also share a eel-tau' implausibility: few people recognize themselves in either projection. And they sham ubiquitous reference to "technology", without accounting for it in real terms. A good diagnostic of what is actually happening seems to me to be Jonathan Gershuny, who sees a drift toward a particular type of self-service economy: a quite radical shift in the mode of provision of social services, as he calls it, based on new kinds of consumer technologies. Industrialization used to be partial, but is becoming total fast. This process obviously has many facets, the one I am interested in here is the intrusion of modern technology into spheres of life which in the past have been relatively little dependent on it. (shrink)

What is it about a person's becoming an adult that makes it generally inappropriate to treat that person paternalistically any longer? The Standard View holds that a mere difference in age or stage of life cannot in itself be morally relevant, but only matters insofar as it is correlated with the development of capacities for mature practical reasoning. This paper defends the contrary view: two people can have all the same general psychological attributes and yet the mere fact that (...) one person is at the beginning of a life and another in the middle of one can justify treating the younger person more paternalistically than the older one. Recognising the moral relevance of age, moreover, is crucial if one is to accommodate both the liberal moral ideal of respect for autonomy and our demanding educational aims, given that these otherwise come into conflict with one another. (shrink)

In the recent past, especially in the last quarter of 20th century, there have been drastic changes which have taken place. People all over the world, started feeling the pinch of “rate of change” in emerging contemporary society. It has influenced all the aspects of human life. It also influenced the ancient conception of philosophy that it seeks to understand the mysteries of existence and reality. It was also influenced by present scientific development which raised philosophical speculations towards linguistic (...) analysis, mental content and later on cognitive science studies. It is true that philosophy tries to discover the nature of truth and knowledge and to find what is of basic value and importance in life. It also examines the relationships between humanity and nature and between the individual and society. Philosophy arises out of wonder, curiosity, and the desire to know and understand. Philosophy is thus a form of inquiry--a process of analysis, criticism, interpretation, and speculation. It is contributing in the process of human development since ancient times. The process of human development begins with the conceptions and continues throughout life. It takes as many different courses as every human being develops in a unique way, embedded in the context of his or her environment. In the light of above assumptions, we are going to study the role of philosophy and values in public affairs and how philosophy shaping the human life with its continuous progress. (shrink)

Intellectual history still quite commonly distinguishes between the episode we know as the Scientific Revolution, and its successor era, the Enlightenment, in terms of the calculatory and quantifying zeal of the former—the age of mechanics—and the rather scientifically lackadaisical mood of the latter, more concerned with freedom, public space and aesthetics. It is possible to challenge this distinction in a variety of ways, but the approach I examine here, in which the focus on an emerging scientific field or cluster (...) of disciplines—the ‘life sciences’, particularly natural history, medicine, and physiology —is, not Romantically anti-scientific, but resolutely anti-mathematical. Diderot bluntly states, in his Thoughts on the interpretation of nature, that “We are on the verge of a great revolution in the sciences. Given the taste people seem to have for morals, belles-lettres, the history of nature and experimental physics, I dare say that before a hundred years, there will not be more than three great geometricians remaining in Europe. The science will stop short where the Bernoullis, the Eulers, the Maupertuis, the Clairauts, the Fontaines and the D’Alemberts will have left it.... We will not go beyond.” Similarly, Buffon in the first discourse of his Histoire naturelle speaks of the “over-reliance on mathematical sciences,” given that mathematical truths are merely “definitional” and “demonstrative,” and thereby “abstract, intellectual and arbitrary.” Earlier in the Thoughts, Diderot judges “the thing of the mathematician” to have “as little existence in nature as that of the gambler.” Significantly, this attitude—taken by great scientists who also translated Newton or wrote careful papers on probability theory, as well as by others such as Mandeville—participates in the effort to conceptualize what we might call a new ontology for the emerging life sciences, very different from both the ‘iatromechanism’ and the ‘animism’ of earlier generations, which either failed to account for specifically living, goal-directed features of organisms, or accounted for them in supernaturalistic terms by appealing to an ‘anima’ as explanatory principle. Anti-mathematicism here is then a key component of a naturalistic, open-ended project to give a successful reductionist model of explanation in ‘natural history’, a model which is no more vitalist than it is materialist—but which is fairly far removed from early modern mechanism. (shrink)

This chapter addresses a question of onlooker morality. It asks whether it is wrong to be publicly happy, or to engage in certain sorts of leisure, when (as was the case during the pandemic) we are aware that many members of our community are sick and dying.