Online research in philosophy

This paper offers several criticisms of the account of rightholding laid out in S. Matthew Liao’s recent paper “The Basis of Human Moral Status.” I argue that Liao’s account both does too much and too little: it grants rightholder status to those who may not deserve it, and it does not provide grounds for offering such status to those who arguably do deserve it. Given these troubling aspects of his approach, I encourage Liao to abandon his (...) “physical basis of moral agency” account of moral status and instead adopt a position closer to a traditional “speciesist” view. (shrink)

Suppose a fire broke out in a fertility clinic. One had time to save either a young girl, or a tray of ten human embryos. Would it be wrong to save the girl? According to Michael Sandel, the moral intuition is to save the girl; what is more, one ought to do so, and this demonstrates that human embryos do not possess full personhood, and hence deserve only limited respect and may be killed for medical research. We will argue, (...) however, that no relevant ethical implications can be drawn from the thought experiment. It demonstrates neither that one always ought to let the embryos die, nor does it allow for any general conclusion concerning the moral status of human embryos. (shrink)

Various debates in bioethics have been focused on whether non-persons, such as marginal humans or non-human animals, deserve respectful treatment. It has been argued that, where we cannot agree on whether these individuals have moral status, we might agree that they have symbolic value and ascribe to them moral value in virtue of their symbolic significance. In the paper I resist the suggestion that symbolic value is relevant to ethical disputes in which the respect for individuals with (...) no intrinsic moral value is in conflict with the interests of individuals with intrinsic moral value. I then turn to moral status and discuss the suitability of personhood as a criterion. There some desiderata for a criterion for moral status: it should be applicable on the basis of our current scientific knowledge; it should have a solid ethical justification; and it should be in line with some of our moral intuitions and social practices. Although it highlights an important connection between the possession of some psychological properties and eligibility for moral status, the criterion of personhood does not meet the desiderata above. I suggest that all intentional systems should be credited with moral status in virtue of having preferences and interests that are relevant to their well-being. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the idea of human dignity has a precise and philosophically relevant sense. Following recent works,we can find some important clues in the long history of the term.Traditionally, dignity conveys the idea of a high and honourable position in a hierarchical order, either in society or in nature. At first glance, nothing may seem more contrary to the contemporary conception of human dignity, especially in regard to human rights.However,an account of dignity as high rank provides (...) an illuminating perspective on the role it plays in the egalitarian discourse of human rights. In order to preserve that relational sense regarding human dignity, we can use the notion of moral status, towhich somemoral philosophers have paid attention in recent years.I explore the possibilities of the idea of moral status to better understand the idea of human dignity and its close relationship with human rights. (shrink)

In the contemporary debate on moral status, it is not uncommon to find philosophers who embrace the following basic moral principle: -/- The Principle of Full Moral Status: The degree to which an entity E possesses moral status is proportional to the degree to which E possesses morally relevant properties until a threshold degree of morally relevant properties possession is reached, whereupon the degree to which E possesses morally relevant properties may continue to (...) increase, but the degree to which E possesses moral status remains the same. -/- One philosopher who has contributed significantly to the contemporary debate on moral status and embraces the Principle of Full Moral Status is Mary Anne Warren. Warren holds not only that it is possible for some entities to possess full moral status, but that some entities actually do, e.g., normal adult human beings. I argue that two of Warren’s primary arguments for the Principle of Full Moral Status—the Argument from Pragmatism and the Argument from Explanatory Power—are significantly flawed. (shrink)

Gopal Sreenivasan’s “hybrid theory” states that a moral duty is directed toward an individual because her interests justify the assignment of control over the duty. An alternative “plain theory” states that the individual’s interests justify the duty itself. I argue that a strong moral status constraint explains Sreenivasan’s instrumentalization objection to a Razian plain theory but that his own model violates this constraint. I suggest how both approaches can be reformulated to satisfy the constraint, and I argue (...) that a reformulated plain theory can also avoid an insufficiency objection. The hybrid approach consequently has no clear advantage over the plain approach. (shrink)

Corporations are moral persons to the extent that they have rights and duties, but their moral personality is severely limited. As artificial persons, they lack the emotional make-up that allows natural persons to show virtues and vices. That fact, taken with the representative function of management, places significant limitations on what constitutes ethical behavior by management. A common misunderstanding of those limitations can lead ethical managers to behave unethically and can lead the public to have improper expectations of (...) corporations. (shrink)

This paper explores an ontological approach to the issue of whether corporations, like individuals, are morally responsible for their actions. More specifically, we investigate the identity of organizations relative to the individuals that compose them. Based on general systems theory, the traditional assumption is that social collectives are more complex, variable, and loosely coupled than individuals. This assumption rests on two premises. The first is a view of the individual as simple, stable, and tightly coupled (i.e., unitary). The second premise (...) is that the relationship between social collectives and their members is characterized by the complete inclusion of individuals in higher order systems.We examine the social science literature that bears on these premises and conclude that they are false. The differences between organizations and individuals in the magnitude of complexity or variability appear to be minimal or nonexistent. An implication of our analysis is that individuals and organizations are coterminous and, therefore, inseparable as moral agents. (shrink)

Machine generated contents note: -- Acknowledgements -- Introduction - The Problem of Moral Status -- PART I: MORAL ONTOLOGIES: FROM INDIVIDUAL TO RELATIONAL DOGMAS -- Individual Properties -- Appearance and Virtue -- Relations: Communitarian and Metaphysical -- Relations: Natural and Social -- Relations: Hybrid and Environmental -- Conclusion Part I: Diogenes's Challenge -- PART II: MORAL STATUS ASCRIPTION AND ITS CONDITIONS OF POSSIBILITY: A TRANSCENDENTAL ARGUMENT -- Words and Sentences: Forms of Language Use -- Societies (...) and Cultures (1): Forms of Living Together -- Societies and Cultures (2): Forms of Life -- Bodies and Things: Forms of Feeling and Making -- Spirits and Gods: Forms of Religion -- Fences, Walls, and Maps: Forms of Historical Space -- Moral Metamorphosis: Concluding the Transcendental Argument -- General Conclusion -- References -- Index. (shrink)

The paper has two parts. The first considers the debate about whether social entities should be regarded as obiects distinct from their members and concludes that we should let the answer to this question be determined by the theories that social science finds to have the most explanatory power. The second part argues that even if the theory with the most explanatory power regards social entities such as organizations as persons in their own right, we should not accord them citizenship (...) in the moral realm. Rather we should accept moral individualism, the thesis that only individual humans can have rights and duties.The moral status of corporations and other organizations is often thought to depend on their ontological status. In particular, it is thought to depend on whether they can be said to exist as distinct entities, and especially as persons distinct from the individuals who are their members. In this article Iargue that the two questions are actually independent of each other. No matter what the ontological status of organizations, they should not be accorded citizenship in the moral realm in their own right. (shrink)

When philosophers consider what moral status human beings have, they tend to find themselves either supporting the idea that not all human beings are rightholders or adopting what Peter Singer calls a 'speciesist' position, where speciesism is defined as morally favoring a particular species—in this case, human beings—over others without sufficient justification. In this paper, I develop what I call the 'genetic basis for moral agency' account of rightholding, and I propose that this account can allow all (...) human beings to be rightholders without being speciesist. While my aim is to set out this account clearly rather than to defend it, I explain how this account is different from a potentiality account and I argue that it is preferable to an actual moral agency account of human moral status. (shrink)

The dominant conceptions of moral status in the English-speaking literature are either holist or individualist, neither of which accounts well for widespread judgments that: animals and humans both have moral status that is of the same kind but different in degree; even a severely mentally incapacitated human being has a greater moral status than an animal with identical internal properties; and a newborn infant has a greater moral status than a mid-to-late stage (...) foetus. Holists accord no moral status to any of these beings, assigning it only to groups to which they belong, while individualists such as welfarists grant an equal moral status to humans and many animals, and Kantians accord no moral status either to animals or severely mentally incapacitated humans. I argue that an underexplored, modal-relational perspective does a better job of accounting for degrees of moral status. According to modal-relationalism, something has moral status insofar as it capable of having a certain causal or intensional connection with another being. I articulate a novel instance of modal-relationalism grounded in salient sub-Saharan moral views, roughly according to which the greater a being's capacity to be part of a communal relationship with us, the greater its moral status. I then demonstrate that this new, African-based theory entails and plausibly explains the above judgments, among others, in a unified way. (shrink)

The literature of bioethics suffers from two serious problems. (1) Most authors are unable to take seriously both the rights of the great apes and of severely disabled human infants. Rationalism—moral status rests on rational capacities—wrongly assigns a higher moral status to the great apes than to all severely disabled human infants with less rational capacities than the great apes. Anthropocentrism—moral status depends on membership in the human species—falsely grants all humans a higher (...) class='Hi'>moral status than the great apes. Animalism—moral status is dependent on the ability to suffer—mistakenly equates the moral status of humans and most animals. (2) The concept person is widely used for justificatory purposes, but it seems that it cannot play such a role. It seems that it is either redundant or unable to play any justificatory role. I argue that we can solve the second problem by understanding person as a thick evaluative concept. This then enables us to justify assigning a higher moral status to the great apes than to simple animals: the great apes are persons. To solve the first problem, I argue that certain severely disabled infants have a higher moral status than the great apes because they are dependent upon human relationships for their well-being. Only very limited abilities are required for such relationships, and the question who is capable of them must be based on thick evaluative concepts. Thus, it turns out that to make progress in bioethics we must assign thick evaluative concepts a central role. (shrink)

Should we conceive of corporations as entities to which moral responsibility can be attributed? This contribution presents what we will call a political account of corporate moral responsibility. We argue that in modern, liberal democratic societies, there is an underlying political need to attribute greater levels of moral responsibility to corporations. Corporate moral responsibility is essential to the maintenance of social coordination that both advances social welfare and protects citizens’ moral entitlements. This political (...) account posits a special capacity of self-governance that corporations can intelligibly be said to possess. Corporations can be said to be administrators of duty in that they can voluntarily incorporate moral principles into their decision-making processes about how to conduct business. This account supplements and partly transforms earlier pragmatic accounts of corporate moral responsibility by disentangling responsibility from its conventional linkages with accountability, blame and punishment. It thereby represents a distinctive way to defend corporate moral responsibility and shows how Kantian thinking can be helpful in disentangling the problems surrounding the concept. (shrink)

Should we conceive of corporations as entities to which moral responsibility can be attributed? This contribution presents what we will call a political account of corporate moral responsibility. We argue that in modern, liberal democratic societies, there is an underlying political need to attribute greater levels of moral responsibility to corporations. Corporate moral responsibility is essential to the maintenance of social coordination that both advances social welfare and protects citizens’ moral entitlements. This political (...) account posits a special capacity of self-governance that corporations can intelligibly be said to possess. Corporations can be said to be “administrators of duty” in that they can voluntarily incorporate moral principles into their decision-making processes about how to conduct business. This account supplements and partly transforms earlier pragmatic accounts of corporate moral responsibility by disentangling responsibility from its conventional linkages with accountability, blame and punishment. It thereby represents a distinctive way to defend corporate moral responsibility and shows how Kantian thinking can be helpful in disentangling the problems surrounding the concept. (shrink)

Christopher Grau argues that the genetic basis for moral agency account of rightholding is problematic because it fails to grant all human beings the moral status of rightholding; it grants the status of rightholding to entities that do not intuitively deserve such status; and it assumes that the genetic basis for moral agency has intrinsic/final value, but the genetic basis for moral agency only has instrumental value. Grau also argues that those who are (...) inclined to hold that all human beings are rightholders should reconsider speciesism. In this paper, I argue that Grau's objections do not undermine the genetic basis for moral agency account of rightholding, and I also offer criticisms of Grau's defense of speciesism. (shrink)

Many contemporary bioethicists claim that the possession of certain psychological properties is sufficient for having full moral status. I will call this thepsychological approach to full moral status. In this paper, I argue that there is a significant tension between the psychological approach and a widely held model of Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID, formerly Multiple Personality Disorder). According to this model, the individual personalities or alters that belong to someone with DID possess those properties that proponents (...) of the psychological approach claim suffice for full moral status. If this account of DID is true, then the psychological approach to full moral status seems to entail that the two standard therapies for treating DID might, on occasion, be seriously immoral, for they may well involve the (involuntary) elimination of an entity with full moral status. This result should give proponents of the psychological approach pause, for most people find the claim that current treatments of DID are ethically suspect highly counter-intuitive. (shrink)

The determination of individual moral status is a central factor in the ethical evaluation of controversial practices such as elective abortion, human embryo-destructive research, and the care of the severely disabled and those in persistent vegetative states. A review of recent work on Kant reveals the need for a careful examination of the content of Kant’s biological and psychological theories and their relation to his views about moral status. Such an examination, in conjunction with Kant’s practical-metaphysical (...) analysis of the origins of freedom, reveals Kant’s principled basis for his contention that all human beings possess moral status. (shrink)

According to the Doctrine of Doing and Allowing, it is more difficult to justify doing harm than it is to justify allowing harm. Enabling harm consists in withdrawing an obstacle that would, if left in place, prevent a pre-existing causal sequence from leading to foreseen harm. There has been a lively debate concerning the moral status of enabling harm. According to some (e.g. McMahan, Vihvelin and Tomkow), many cases of enabling harm are morally indistinguishable from doing harm. Others (...) (e.g. Foot, Hanser) support the Equivalence Hypothesis, according to which enabling harm is morally equivalent to allowing harm. Here I argue that there is every reason to embrace, and no reason to reject, the Equivalence Hypothesis. (shrink)

My contention is that virtue ethics offers an important critique of traditional philosophical conceptions of moral status as well as an alternative view of important moral issues held to depend on moral status. I argue that the scope of entities that deserve consideration depends on our conception of the demands of virtues like justice; which entities deserve consideration emerges from a moral view of a world shaped by that conception. The deepest disputes about (...) class='Hi'>moral status depend on conflicting conceptions of justice. I advocate a conception of the virtue of justice that can account for the cases that pose problems for the legalistic views of moral status and discuss what ideal moral debate looks like on this view. (shrink)

Studies of normal individuals reveal an asymmetry in the folk concept of intentional action: an action is more likely to be thought of as intentional when it is morally bad than when it is morally good. One interpretation of these results comes from the hypothesis that emotion plays a critical mediating role in the relationship between an action’s moral status and its intentional status. According to this hypothesis, the negative emotional response triggered by a morally bad action (...) drives the attribution of intent to the actor, or the judgment that the actor acted intentionally. We test this hypothesis by presenting cases of morally bad and morally good action to seven individuals with deficits in emotional processing resulting from damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC). If normal emotional processing is necessary for the observed asymmetry, then individuals with VMPC lesions should show no asymmetry. Our results provide no support for this hypothesis: like normal individuals, those with VMPC lesions showed the same asymmetry, tending to judge that an action was intentional when it was morally bad but not when it was morally good. Based on this finding, we suggest that normal emotional processing is not responsible for the observed asymmetry of intentional attributions and thus does not mediate the relationship between an action’s moral status and its intentional status. (shrink)

Some people contend that fetuses have moral status but less than that of paradigm persons. Many people hold views implying that sentient animals have moral status but less than that of persons. These positions suggest that moral status admits of degrees. Does it? To address this question, we must first clarify what it means to speak of degrees of moral status. The paper begins by clarifying the more basic concept of moral (...) status and presenting two models of degrees ofmoral status. It then sketches several significant considerations in favor of, and several against, the assertion of degrees of moral status. The paper concludes by drawing lessons from the discussion. (shrink)

Most theorists writing about animal ethics acknowledge that many types of animals are conscious and have interests, meaning that these animals have "an experiential welfare" (Regan 2001, p. 202), and that because of this some things have, or might have, an "effect on [their] good, welfare, or well-being" (DeGrazia 1996, p. 39).1,2 Most also acknowledge that, as a result of many animals' possession of interests, they have moral status; that "animals' interests have moral importance independently of human (...) interests" (DeGrazia 1996, p. 37).3 However, there is significant disagreement about how much animals' interests matter morally. Roughly, positions on this issue fall into one of two camps: equal moral .. (shrink)

This paper investigates whether moral status talk gets us anywhere in our search for answers to questions in the ethics of marginal cases. I consider the usefulness of moral status talk first on the assumption that an individual's possession of moral status is not a further fact about that individual, and then on the assumption that it is. Finally, I offer an expressivistic interpretation of moral status talk. In each case, I argue (...) that such talk conveys nothing that cannot be conveyed more clearly in other words. My conclusion is that we should stop using moral status and its cognates. (shrink)

Several authors have speculated that (1) the pharmaceutical, genetic or other technological enhancement of human mental capacities could result in the creation of beings with greater moral status than persons, and (2) the creation of such beings would harm ordinary, unenhanced humans, perhaps by reducing their immunity to permissible harm. These claims have been taken to ground moral objections to the unrestrained pursuit of human enhancement. In recent work, Allen Buchanan responds to these objections by questioning both (...) (1) and (2). I argue that Buchanan’s response fails. However, I then outline an alternative response. This response starts from the thought that, though moral status-increasing human enhancements might render ordinary, unenhanced humans less immune to permissible harm, they need not worsen the overall distribution of this immunity across beings. In the course of the argument I explore the relation between mental capacity and moral status and between moral status and immunity to permissible harm. (shrink)

The report of the President's Council on Bioethics, Human Cloning and Human Dignity, addresses the central ethical, political, and policy issue in human embryonic stem cell research: the moral status of extracorporeal human embryos. The Council members were in sharp disagreement on this issue and essentially failed to adequately engage and respectfully acknowledge each others' deepest moral concerns, despite their stated commitment to do so. This essay provides a detailed critique of the two extreme views on the (...) Council (i.e., embryos have full moral status or they have none at all) and then gives theoretical grounding for our judgment about the intermediate moral status of embryos. It also supplies an account of how to address profound moral disagreements in the public arena, especially by way of constructing a middle ground that deliberately pays sincere respect to the views of those with whom it has deep disagreements. (shrink)

The debate concerning corporate moral agency is normally conducted through philosophical arguments in articles which argue from only one point of view. This paper summarises both the arguments for and against corporate moral agency and concludes from this that the arguments in favour have more weight. The paper also addresses the way in which the law in the U.K. and the U.S.A. currently views this issue and shows how it is supportive of the concept of (...) class='Hi'>corporate moral agency. The paper concludes by considering the implications of the debate for business ethics in general, and stakeholder theory and virtue ethics in particular. (shrink)

Moral status is a vexing topic. Linked for so long to the unending debates about ensoulment and the morality of abortion, it has recently resurfaced in the embryonic stem cell controversy. In this new context, it should benefit from new insights originating in recent scientific advances. We believe that the recently observed capability of somatic cells to return to a pluripotential state (a capability we propose to name 'reversed potency') in a controlled manner requires us to modify the (...) traditional concept of moral status and to consider it as referring not only to intrinsic properties (like 'to possess reason' or 'to be a person'), but also to extrinsic or relational ones. (shrink)

Part One addresses the question whether the fact that some persons love something, worship it, or deeply care about it, can endow moral status on that thing. I argue that the answer is “no.” While some cases lend great plausibility to the view that love or worship can endow moral status, there are other cases in which love or worship clearly fails to endow moral status. Furthermore, there is no principled way to distinguish these (...) two types of cases, so we must conclude that love or worship never endow moral status. Part Two takes up the hard question of why we have to be careful of things that others love or worship, given that the things do not thereby have moral status. I argue that it is sometimes bad for those who love or worship the things if we mistreat them. I develop an account of when love and worship, and person projects more generally, succeed in expanding the scope of what counts as good or bad for the person engaged in the project. (shrink)

The question of corporate moral responsibility – whether corporate bodies can be held morally responsible for their actions – has been debated by a number of writers since the 1970s. This discussion is intended to add to that debate, and focuses for that purpose on our understanding of the organisation. Though the integrity of the organisation has been called into question by the postmodern view of organisations, that view does not necessarily rule out the attribution of (...) class='Hi'>corporate agency, any more than the postmodern view of the person rules out the attribution of individual agency. The postmodern view is opposed to a reifying, metaphysical view of corporate agency, but a semantic view of corporate agency would seem to sit more comfortably with it. A bigger problem for the idea of corporate moral responsibility arises from the fact that in Kantian terms organisations are not ends in themselves. In that sense they are not like persons, and this must limit their autonomy, and their responsibility. This aspect of organisations also limits their punishability. For these reasons corporate moral responsibility must be seen as more limited than the responsibility of persons. (shrink)

Researchers are increasingly interested in creating chimeras by transplanting human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) into animals early in development. One concern is that such research could confer upon an animal the moral status of a normal human adult but then impermissibly fail to accord it the protections it merits in virtue of its enhanced moral status. Understanding the public policy implications of this ethical conclusion, though, is complicated by the fact that claims about moral (...) class='Hi'>status cannot play an unfettered role in public policy. Arguments like those employed in the abortion debate for the conclusion that abortion should be legally permissible even if abortion is not morally permissible also support, to a more limited degree, a liberal policy on hESC research involving the creation of chimeras. (shrink)

Recent advances in reprogramming technology do not bypass the ethical challenge of embryo sacrifice. Induced pluripotent stem cell (iPS) research has been and almost certainly will continue to be conducted within the context of embryo sacrifice. If human embryos have moral status as human beings, then participation in iPS research renders one morally complicit in their destruction; if human embryos have moral status as mere precursors of human beings, then advocacy of iPS research policy that is (...) inhibited by embryo sacrifice concerns renders one morally complicit in avoidable harms to persons. Steps may be taken to address these complicity concerns, but in the final analysis there is no alternative to achieving clarity with respect to the moral status of the human embryo. (shrink)

: Experiments involving the transplantation of human stem cells and their derivatives into early fetal or embryonic nonhuman animals raise novel ethical issues due to their possible implications for enhancing the moral status of the chimeric individual. Although status-enhancing research is not necessarily objectionable from the perspective of the chimeric individual, there are grounds for objecting to it in the conditions in which it is likely to occur. Translating this ethical conclusion into a policy recommendation, however, is (...) complicated by the fact that substantial empirical and ethical uncertainties remain about which transplants, if any, would significantly enhance the chimeric individual's moral status. Considerations of moral status justify either an early-termination policy on chimeric embryos, or, in the absence of such a policy, restrictions on the introduction of pluripotent human stem cells into early-stage developing animals, pending the resolution of those uncertainties. (shrink)

The tragic crash of Air New Zealand's flight TE-901 into Mt. Erebus in Antarctica provides a fascinating case for the exploration of the notion of corporate moral responsibility. A principle of accountability that has Aristotelian roots and is significantly different from the usual strict intentional action principles is examined and defined. That principle maintains that a person can be held morally accountable for previous non-intentional behavior that has harmful effects if the person does not take corrective measures to (...) adjust his ways of behavior so as not to produce repetitions. This principle is then applied to the Mt. Erebus disaster. (shrink)

: Those who are morally opposed to abortion generally make several pivotal assumptions. This paper focuses on the assumption that we have full moral status throughout our existence. Coupled with the assumption that we come into existence at conception, the assumption about moral status entails that all human fetuses have full moral status, including a right to life. Is the assumption about moral status correct? In addressing this question, I respond to several (...) arguments advanced, in this journal and other venues, by Alfonso Gómez-Lobo. Gómez-Lobo's reasoning resolves into two basic arguments: (1) an appeal to the practical necessity of early moral protection and (2) an appeal to our kind membership and potentiality. I respond to these in turn before offering further reflections. (shrink)

: Common morality theory must confront apparent counterexamples from the history of morality, such as the widespread acceptance of slavery in prior eras, that suggest core norms have changed over time. A recent defense of common morality theory addresses this problem by drawing a distinction between the content of the norms of the common morality and the range of individuals to whom these norms apply. This distinction is successful in reconciling common morality theory with practices such as slavery, but only (...) at the cost of underscoring the limits of common morality theory, in particular its inability to resolve disputes about the moral status of entities. Given that many controversies in bioethics center on the disputed status of various entities, such as embryos and nonhuman animals, this is an important limitation. Nonetheless, common morality theory still can be a useful resource in diminishing moral conflict on issues that do not involve disputes over moral status. (shrink)

I analyze a well-known and moving passage from John Steinbeck''s novelThe Grapes of Wrath. This passage provides an excellent illustration of one of the central questions about corporate moral agency: Is corporate moral agency anything over and above the agency of individual human beings? The passage in question is a debate about whether or not the actions of a particular company are anything over and above the actions of individual human beings.

At the beginning of this essay I sketch a solution to the question of how we can predicate moral properties, such as moral excellence, to the corporation. This solution suggests that there are at least two necessary criteria for corporate moral excellence: (1) a moral corporate culture and (2) the moral autonomy of the individual within the corporate culture. I put forward guidelines for the development of both and argue for their necessary (...) interdependence. (shrink)

Certain cases of corporate action seem especially resistant to a shared moral evaluation. Conservatives may argue that if bad intentions cannot be demonstrated, corporations and their managers are not blame-worthy, while liberals may insist that the results of corporate actions were predictable and so somebody must be to blame. Against this background, the theory that sometimes a corporation's moral responsibility cannot be redistributed, even in principle, to the individuals involved, seems quite attractive.This doctrine of unredistributable (...) class='Hi'>corporate moral responsibility (UCMR) is, however, ultimately indefensible. I show this in several steps. After first locating UCMR in the context of the evolving debate about corporate moral agency, the paper reexamines cases cited in defense of UCMR and takes up the attempt to defend it by identifying corporate moral agency with corporate practices. A further section explores the claim that UCMR is a convention distinct from, yet compatible with, traditional natural notions of responsibility. The final section develops a notion of combined akratic agency to provide an alternate explanation, compatible with rejection of UCMR, of the phenomena which make the doctrine attractive. (shrink)

In this chapter, I review some of the background thinking concerning matters of moral status that I had developed in previous years and that I would now bring to the work of the Human Embryo Research Panel. Two ideas were at the forefront of my thinking. First, that biology usually offers not decisive "events" but only continuous processes of development. Second, in making status determinations we do not so much "identify" a point on a developmental continuum where (...) moral respect should be accorded as "choose" that point. These choices are "balancing decisions" in which the community of moral agents weighs its interests in protecting an entity against the burdens of doing so. After illustrating these two contentions, I consider some of the reasons why thinkers on the "right" and "left" of our bioethics debates have resisted or missed this basic insight. (shrink)

Mary Anne Warren explores a theoretical question which lies at the heart of practical ethics: what are the criteria for having moral status? In other words, what are the criteria for being an entity towards which people have moral obligations? Some philosophers maintain that there is one intrinsic property--for instance, life, sentience, humanity, or moral agency. Others believe that relational properties, such as belonging to a human community, are more important. In Part I of the book, (...) Warren argues that no single property can serve as the sole criterion for moral status; instead, life, sentience, moral agency, and social and biotic relationships are all relevant, each in a different way. She presents seven basic principles, each focusing on a property that can, in combination with others, legitimately affect an agent's moral obligations towards entities of a given type. In Part II, these principles are applied in an examination of three controversial ethical issues: voluntary euthanasia, abortion, and the moral status of animals. (shrink)

: The gene patenting debate, which proved to be a focal point for divergent moral concerns about recent developments in genome research and biotechnology, has revealed that the moral status of DNA is not clear. One of the arguments used to stop undesirable developments was that DNA possesses a unique status, which renders it unfit for patenting. This paper investigates the allegedly unique (moral) status of genetic material and the information it holds from different (...) perspectives. Several properties of DNA prove to be unique. We examine the relevance of these for patentability of genes and conclude that only the unique symbolic meaning of DNA is a relevant factor, which should be taken into account but weighed against other interests involved. (shrink)

Human embryonic stem cell research has generated considerable discussion and debate in bioethics. Bioethical discourse tends to focus on the moral status of the embryo as the central issue, however, and it is unclear how much this reflects broader community values and beliefs related to stem cell research. This paper presents the results of a study which aims to identify and classify the issues and arguments that have arisen in public discourse associated with one prominent policy (...) episode in the United States: the 2004 Californian Stem Cell Research and Cures Initiative (also known as Proposition 71). The findings show that public discourse about Proposition 71 is characterised by a broader range of issues than those usually addressed in scholarly publications and public policy documents. While attention to the moral status of the embryo is an important issue in stem cell research, making it the main focus of public discourse has a polarising effect. This also limits opportunities to identify shared values, understand how political alliances are forged, and develop social consensus. Implications for future research and policy are discussed. (shrink)

The phenomenon of twinning in early fetal development has become a popular source for doubt regarding the ascription of moral status to early embryos. In this paper, the possible moral basis for such a line of reasoning is critically analysed with sceptical results. Three different versions of the argument from twinning are considered, all of which are found to rest on confusions between the actual division of embryos involed in twinning and the property of early embryos to (...) be divisible, be based on highly questionable ethical assumptions, or to imply inconsistent claims regarding the moral importance of potentiality and/or the moral status of embryos. This is taken to expose a number of related inconsistencies in the moral basis of pro-life positions. In particular, ascribing moral significance to the property of being (in)divisible is found to be incompatible with the claim that human individuals possess unique values which could underpin an absolute moral ban on murder. (shrink)

I address three topics. First, I argue that the issue of corporate moral responsibility is an important one for business ethics.Second, I examine a core argument for the claim that the corporate organization is a separate moral agent and show it is based on anunnoticed but elementary mistake deriving from the fallacy of division. Third, I examine the assumptions collectivists make about whatit means to say that organizations act and that they act intentionally and show that (...) these assumptions are mistaken in their failure to understand the nature of intentional causality and of “as-if” intentionality. In exposing these mistakes I set out my own view in the form oftwo theses, the first of which states that individual members of an organization are always causally responsible for any corporate act,and the second of which states that attributions of intentions to corporations are always either descriptive or prescriptive attributionsof “as if” intentionality. (shrink)

Most philosophical discussion of the moral status of animals takes place within a context of traditional ethics. I argue that the conceptual apparatus of utilitarianism and rights theory is historically and logically tied to an individualistic, atomistic concept of society. The liberal-democratic tradition is thus an unsuitable framework for understanding, analyzing, and solving environmental problems, including themoral status of animals. Concepts such as stewardship or trusteeship are more appropriate for the development of an environmental ethic.

The academic debate over the propriety of attributing moral responsibility to corporations is decades old and ongoing. The conventional approach to this debate is to identify the sufficient conditions for moral agency and then attempt to determine whether corporations possess them. This article recommends abandoning the conventional approach in favor of an examination of the practical consequences of corporate moral responsibility. The article’s thesis is that such an examination reveals that attributing moral responsibility to corporations (...) is ethically acceptable only if it does not authorize the punishment of corporations as collective entities, and further, that this renders the debate over corporate moral responsibility virtually pointless. (shrink)

Assigning the appropriate moral status to different stages of human development is an urgent problem in bioethics. Many philosophers have attempted to assess developmental events using strict ontological principles to determine when a developing entity becomes essentially human. This approach is not consistent with recent findings in reproductive and stem cell biology, including the discovery of the plasticity of early embryonic development and the advent of induced pluripotent stem cells. Substance ontology should therefore not be used to determine (...) the moral status of the embryo. (shrink)

The stakeholder approach offers the opportunity to consider corporate responsibility in a wider sense than that afforded by the stockholder or shareholder approaches. Having said that, this article aims to show that this theory does not offer a normative corporate responsibility concept that can be our response to two basic questions. On the one hand, for what is the company morally responsible and, on the other hand, why is the corporation morally responsible in terms of conventional and post-conventional (...) perspectives? The reason why the stakeholder approach does not offer such a definition, as we shall see, is because the normative stakeholder approaches tend to confuse the social validity with the moral validity or legitimacy. It leads us to a conventional definition of corporate moral responsibility (CMR) that is not relevant to the pluralistic and global framework of our societies and economies. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate this intuition. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the set of problems regarding the HIV/AIDS crisis in the specific domain of corporate moral responsibility within a context of the Levinasian notion of proximity (infinite responsibility) and the Third. Against a totalitarian, homogeneous society, Levinas opens the way to a social pluralism, which has its sources in the disquiet provoked by the strangeness of the Other's face. Corporate responsibility, understood from this point of view, would not reduce institutional relations to an anonymous (...) world of neutrality. Corporate responsibility is unconditional in the sense that to be responsible is not a question of choice, but one of deep liberty, the liberty of taking the burden of the infinite responsibility for the Other customers, employees, the public at large and those who suffer in the world. This paper argues that it would then also mean that society (individuals, NGOs and governments) in accordance with the spirit of the Levinasian philosophy of infinite responsibility could exert pressure on corporations, such as pharmaceutical companies. Owing to their power, they could change their present responsibility policies to a more affirmative and engaged responsibility with regard to those who are ill and who suffer death or debilitation from HIV/AIDS and other prevalent diseases in the poorest parts of the world today. (shrink)

As the world population is growing and government directives tell us to consume more fatty acids, the demand for fish is increasing. Due to declines in wild fish populations, we have come to rely more and more on aquaculture. Despite rapid expansion of aquaculture, this sector is still in a relatively early developmental stage. This means that this sector can still be steered in a favorable direction, which requires discussion about sustainability. If we want to avoid similar problems to the (...) ones we have experienced with livestock farming, we need to generate knowledge of the biology, profitability, environmental aspects, consumer awareness, and product appreciation of particular fish species. However, the discussion about a sustainable aquaculture also raises the question how we should treat fish. This moral question is regularly addressed as a problem of applied ethics with a focus on tailoring ethical principles to practical questions. In this article we do not deny the importance of the practical accounts, but we start from the fundamental question whether and why fish matter in our moral deliberations, i.e., from the discussion on moral status. We elaborate the distinction between moral considerability and moral significance in order to show both the importance and the limitations of the discussion about moral status for practical problems in aquaculture. We illustrate these points with a case-study about the farming of a specific fish species, the African catfish. (shrink)

In the last three decades, the consideration of whether non-human animals should be ascribed any moral status, and if so in what way it ought to be ascribed to them, has become of central philosophical, political and economic importance. Thus, given thecontemporary significance of what may be called (jar simplicity’s sake) the “animal issue,” it is worthwhile to examine in what way Ancient Greek philosophy might contribute to our understanding of the issue and to our philosophical response to (...) it. With this in mind,in this essay I examine the issue of the moral status of animals from a “critical” Aristotelian perspective, on the basis of which I shall attempt: (§I) to show how, unlike the Cartesian view of animal nature, Aristotle’s conception of the non-moral status of animals stillinforms the prevailing contemporary view of the animal, and (§II) to establish that Aristotle’s failure to ascribe moral status to animals should be rejected (a) given his admission that animals are, by nature, capable of suffering while they are unable to engage in rational deliberation, and (b) given his understanding of the connection between moral blameworthiness, natural disposition, and various kinds of acts, particularly un-chosen and chosen willing acts. In this way, we shall show that although the prevailing contemporary view of the animal’s moral status represents a slightly more “elevated” view than Aristotle’s, insofar as (typically) we do not explicitly claim, as Aristotle did, that animals are due no moral consideration, by critically appropriating the relevant Aristotelian texts, we nonetheless findrich philosophical evidence that permits us to further elevate our conception of the moral status of animals such that we are prepared to grant them genuine moral significance, not just in theory but also in practice. (shrink)

The question of corporate moral responsibility – of whether it makes sense to hold an organisation corporately morally responsible for its actions,rather than holding responsible the individuals who contributed to that action – has been debated over a number of years in the business ethics literature. However, it has had little attention in the world of health care ethics. Health care in the United Kingdom(UK) is becoming an increasingly corporate responsibility, so the issue is increasingly relevant in (...) the health care context, and it is worth considering whether the specific nature of health care raises special questions around corporate moral responsibility. For instance, corporate responsibility has usually been considered in the context of private corporations, and the organisations of health care in the UK are mainly state bodies. However, there is enough similarity in relevant respects between state organisations and private corporations, for the question of corporate responsibility to be equally applicable. Also, health care is characterised by professions with their own systems of ethical regulation. However, this feature does not seriously diminish the importance of the corporate responsibility issue, and the importance of the latter is enhanced by recent developments. But there is one major area of difference. Health care, as an activity with an intrinsically moral goal, differs importantly from commercial activities that are essentially a moral, in that it narrows the range of opportunities for corporate wrongdoing, and also makes such organisations more difficult to punish. (shrink)

This article discusses what is involved in having full moral status, as opposed to a lesser degree of moral status and surveys different views of the grounds of moral status as well as the arguments for attributing a particular degree of moral status on the basis of those grounds.

Many discussions of the moral status of “mindless beings” such as the permanently comatose, the dead, trees, and human fetuses seem to take for granted the thesis that it is improper to appeal to emotions to establish the fundamental distinction between “persona” (beings capableof rights “in their own right”) and “things” (beings not capable of rights except in some fictional or iIlusory sense). Persons are persons, however we may feel about them.That thesis seems to be a major obstacle (...) to any nonutilitarian account of the personhood of mindless beings.I argue that the thesis of independence is true, if at aIl, only for one class of persons (“rational agents”). Beyond that class, our emotional response to a being can be relevant to its moral status. Acting on some consideration (or believing something in virtue of it) can be rational inthe “constitutive”, “regulative”, or “associative” sense. A consideration is a good reason if it is rational in any of these senses. The importance of this claim is shown by briefly examining Feinberg’s weIl-known argument that it is a conceptual truth that mindless beings are incapable ofrights. His argument assumes that our emotions cannot be rational in the appropriate sense and coIlapses without that assumption. (shrink)

The debate over corporate moral responsibility has become a fixture in business ethics research and teaching. Only rarely, however, does the sizable literature on that question consider whether the debate has important practical implications. This article examines that question from a corporate control perspective. After assuming corporate moral responsibility’s existence for purposes of argument, the article concludes that such responsibility makes a difference in cases where it is present but personal responsibility is absent. Then the (...) article tries to identify the forces that diminish personal responsibility when corporate responsibility exists. The most important such forces, it concludes, spring from the socialization processes people undergo when they enter groups. One example is the well-known phenomenon of groupthink, which can exculpate individuals by rendering them justifiably ignorant of foreseeable risks of harm. (shrink)

The notion that plants, as well as animals, have a moral status is examined both in general, and with respect to the status of particularly rare plants that may be deemed to be lacking in general instrumentality, such as the Joshua tree. The work of Passmore, Singer and Santos is adduced, and several lines of argument revolving around preservation, sentiency and attractiveness to humans are constructed.

Warren’s goal is to present a ‘multi-criterial’ account of moral status—she eschews any view that holds ‘X has moral status iff X has N’ (where ‘N’ might be life, or personhood, or sentience, for example). Moral status, she asserts, is a more complex affair: it comes in degrees and there are a variety of sufficient conditions. The first part of the book (roughly three quarters of it) is devoted to outlining some standard ‘uni-lateral’ accounts, (...) criticising them in so far as they purport to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for status, but selecting the plausible parts of each to come together later in the multi-criterial account. (shrink)

The conceptual model presented in this article argues that corporations exhibit specific behaviors that signal their true level of moral development. Accordingly, the authors identify five levels of moral development and discuss the dynamics that move corporations from one level to another. Examples of corporate behavior which are indicative of specific stages of moral development are offered.

The article offers a critical assessment of an article on “Corporate Legitimacy as Deliberation” by Guido Palazzo and Andreas Scherer in this journal. We share the concern about the precarious legitimacy of globally active corporations, infringing on the legitimacy of democracy at large. There is no quarrel with Palazzo/Scherer’s diagnosis, which focuses on the consequences of globalization and ensuing challenges for corporate social responsibilities. However, we disagree with the “solutions” offered by them. In a first step we refute (...) the idea of a legitimacy of morals, maintaining that morality is a premodern mode of creating legitimacy. Even worse, moral is becoming a dangerous commodity under conditions of fundamental global disagreements and antagonisms. We secondly refute the concept of the “politicized corporation”, maintaining that Palazzo/Scherer disregard the consequences of functional differentiation of modern societies and, in particular, disregard the wisdom of political restraint and constitutional guarantees for the autonomy of different spheres of society. Finally, we refute a seemingly romantic notion of deliberation, maintaining that deliberation and deliberative democracy is a worthy idea, which, however, has no place in the real world of globalized contexts. On the other hand, we also find enough common ground and common concern with Palazzo/Scherer to validate a fruitful discourse. (shrink)

Models of moral responsibility rely on foundational views about moral agency. Many scholars believe that only humans can be moral agents, and therefore business needs to create models that foster greater receptivity to others through ethical dialog. This view leads to a difficulty if no specific person is the sole causal agent for an act, or if something comes about through aggregated action in a corporate setting. An alternate approach suggests that corporations are moral agents (...) sufficiently like humans to be treated as persons, which leads to questions of intentionality and the organizational structure required to support the claim. In this article, I make an intermediate claim combining Goodpaster and Matthews' (60:132–141, 1982 ) view that a corporation may have a moral culture which affects subjective choices, with those of Painter-Morland (17(3):515–534, 2007 ) who points out that we should move from a model that posits discrete persons acting on each other to one where morality comes about through shared experience between agents who participate in each other’s lives. I argue that the discussion has been trapped in traditional dichotomies, and is better served by language that more accurately represents the dynamic interplay between organization and individual. I underwrite this claim by looking at recent changes in British and American legal approaches to corporate responsibility. These provide greater incentives for owners and business leaders to encourage employees to discuss the reflexive nature of legal and moral responsibility in business, facilitate workers to voice their moral concerns, and create structures and processes that allow those concerns to be heard. (shrink)

Much debate has occurred as to whether or not moral responsibility should be ascribed to corporate entities. The present study advances the theory that moral responsibility is a self-imposed or attributable aspect of corporate operations which extends beyond the parameters established by law.In this context, the corporation must consciously endeavor to discharge its moral responsibility to avoid, minimize, eliminate and compensate for the potential or actual harm which its operations cause. To achieve this objective, consideration (...) is given to the establishment of a Moral Audit Committee, an internal monitoring mechanism, with a proposed generic structure. The corporate Mission Statement and Code of Ethics play a vital role as well in building an institutional environment which supports this self-appraisal process. With this system in place, the ambit of a Moral Audit is then examined. This study concludes with a case analysis, which partly depicts the Moral Audit process. (shrink)

We can explain our intuitions about corporate takeover cases by appeal to Peter French's picture of the corporation as a moral person. He argues that corporations are persons in much the same sense as you and I, and are entitled to the same rights as humans. On this analysis, takeovers are murders, attempted murders, attempts to enslave, etc. I want to explore the consequences of this view for corporate takeovers. I shall argue that, though French can explain (...) why our moral intuitions seem to arise in response to some concern about the corporations themselves, his analysis commits us to the wrong intuitions in some cases. I shall then offer an account of these intuitions which focuses on the character of corporations. (shrink)

This book distinguishes itself from much of the polemical literature on these issues by offering the most judicious and well-balanced account yet available of animals' moral standing, and related questions concerning their minds and welfare. Transcending jejune debates focused on utilitarianism versus rights, the book offers a fresh methodological approach with specific and constructive conclusions about our treatment of animals. David DeGrazia provides the most thorough discussion yet of whether equal consideration should be extended to animals' interests, and examines (...) the issues of animal minds and animal well-being with an unparalleled combination of philosophical rigor and empirical documentation. His book is an important contribution to the field of animal ethics and will be read with special interest by all philosophers teaching such courses, as well as biologists, those professionally involved with animals, and general readers concerned about animal welfare. (shrink)

This paper concerns the normative status of coherence of desires, in the context of moral rationalism. I argue that 'desiderative coherence' is not tied to rationality, but is rather of pragmatic, instrumental, and sometimes moral value. This means that desire-based views cannot rely on coherence to support non-agent-relative accounts of moral reasons. For example, on Michael Smith's neo-rationalist view, you have 'normative reason' to do whatever your maximally coherent and fully informed self would want you to (...) do, whether you want to do it or not. For these reasons to be non-agent-relative, coherence would have to be grounded in rationality, but I argue that it is not. I analyze, and reject, various strategies for establishing a coherence-rationality connection, considering in detail a purported analogy between desires and a priori beliefs, with particular attention to the case of mathematics. (shrink)

The scientific, ethical, and policy issues raised by research involving the engraftment of human neural stem cells into the brains of nonhuman primates are explored by an interdisciplinary working group in this Policy Forum. The authors consider the possibility that this research might alter the cognitive capacities of recipient great apes and monkeys, with potential significance for their moral status.

Philosophy has long been concerned with ‘moral status’. Discussions about the moral status of children, however, seem often to promote confusion rather than clarity. Using the creation of ‘savior siblings’ as an example, this paper provides a philosophical critique of the moral status of children and the moral relevance of parenting and the role that formative experience, regret and relational autonomy play in parental decisions. We suggest that parents make moral decisions that (...) are guided by the moral significance they attach to children, to sick children and most importantly, to a specific sick child (theirs). This moral valorization is rarely made explicit and has generally been ignored by both philosophers and clinicians in previous critiques. Recognizing this, however, may transform not only the focus of bioethical discourse but also the policies and practices surrounding the care of children requiring bone marrow or cord blood transplantation by better understanding the values at stake behind parental decision making. (shrink)

The book contains contributions from thirteen distinguished moral and political philosophers on the subject of children. These are new essays and are devoted to a subject that until recently has not been extensively discussed by philosophers. Too often philosophers restrict themselves to the consideration only of the relations between adults. Yet the topic of children is an important one for moral and political philosophy. Recent years have seen an increased concern with the needs and interests of young people. (...) The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which accords a wide range of fundamental rights to children was adopted in 1989 and many states have subsequently ratified the Convention. -/- In this context it is timely and appropriate to ask various questions. If children do not have rights what exactly is their moral status? If they do have rights do they have all the rights that adults have? What rights if any do parents have over children and what is their justification? What duties do parents have towards their own children and towards others in society? How should we educate those who will be the future citizens and workers of our society? What values and what dispositions of character is it appropriate to instil in children? Is the family an obstacle to the realisation of full social justice? Can we in pursuit of justice contemplate the abolition of the family? The book covers the themes of children's rights, parental rights and duties, the family and justice, and civic education. (shrink)

The book contains contributions from thirteen distinguished moral and political philosophers on the subject of children. These are new essays and are devoted to a subject that until recently has not been extensively discussed by philosophers. Too often philosophers restrict themselves to the consideration only of the relations between adults. Yet the topic of children is an important one for moral and political philosophy. Recent years have seen an increased concern with the needs and interests of young people. (...) The United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child which accords a wide range of fundamental rights to children was adopted in 1989 and many states have subsequently ratified the Convention. -/- In this context it is timely and appropriate to ask various questions. If children do not have rights what exactly is their moral status? If they do have rights do they have all the rights that adults have? What rights if any do parents have over children and what is their justification? What duties do parents have towards their own children and towards others in society? How should we educate those who will be the future citizens and workers of our society? What values and what dispositions of character is it appropriate to instil in children? Is the family an obstacle to the realisation of full social justice? Can we in pursuit of justice contemplate the abolition of the family? The book covers the themes of children's rights, parental rights and duties, the family and justice, and civic education. (shrink)

When one addresses boycotts, the efforts of the Montgomery bus boycotts to end segregation likely come to mind. However, the moral merits of a boycott are not always so clearly determined and how a company reacts to a boycott can have long lasting repercussions for its public image. In this article, I will examine a number of boycotts including boycotts by the American Family Association of both Ford and Proctor & Gamble based on their advertising venue choices. In a (...) politically and morally charged atmosphere, it can be difficult for companies to determine where their moral obligations lie while at the same time being mindful of the bottom line. I suggest a number of guidelines to aid in corporate moral decision making when faced with a boycott. (shrink)

What is right in the corporation is not what is right in a man's home or in his church," a former vice-president of a large firm observes. "What is right in the corporation is what the guy above you wants from you." Such sentiments pervade American society, from corporate boardrooms to the basement of the White House. In Moral Mazes, Robert Jackall offers an eye-opening account of how corporate managers think the world works, and of how big (...) organizations shape moral consciousnss. Based on extensive interviews with managers at every level of two industrial firms and of a large public relations agency, Moral Mazes takes the reader inside the intricate world of the corporation. It is a world where hard work does not necessarily lead to success, but where sharp talk, self-promotion, powerful patrons, and sheer luck might; where intense competition is masked by cheerfully bland public faces; where intentions are cloaked and frankness is simply one of many guises; and where words are always provisional and accountability often depends on the ability to outrun mistakes. In this topsy-turvy world, managers must bring often unforgiving technology and always difficult people together to make money, an uncompromising task demanding continual compromises with conventional verities. Moral issues are translated into practical concerns and into issues of public relations. Sooner or later, managrs ask themselves: How does one act in such a world and maintain a sense of personal integrity? Moral Mazes is a brilliant, sometimes disturbing, often wildly funny study of corporate thinking, decision-making, and morality. It is an analytical work of great importance, one filled with compelling real life stories of the men and women charged with running the business of America. It is a book for anyone interested in how big organizations actually function, or who is concerned with the current moral malaise in our public life. (shrink)

How can one establish if a corporate code of ethics is ethical in terms of its content? One important first step might be the establishment of core universal moral values by which corporate codes of ethics can be ethically constructed and evaluated. Following a review of normative research on corporate codes of ethics, a set of universal moral values is generated by considering three sources: (1) corporate codes of ethics; (2) global codes of ethics; (...) and (3) the business ethics literature. Based on the convergence of the three sources of standards, six universal moral values for corporate codes of ethics are proposed including: (1) trustworthiness; (2) respect; (3) responsibility; (4) fairness; (5) caring; and (6) citizenship. Relying on the proposed set of universal moral values, implications are discussed as to what the content of corporate codes of ethics should consist of. The paper concludes with its limitations. (shrink)

This paper examines whether or not senior corporate executives are morally responsible for disasters which result from corporate activities. The discussion is limited to the case in which the information needed to prevent the disaster is present within the corporation, but fails to reach senior executives. The failure of information to reach executives is usually a result of negative information blockage, a phenomenon caused by the differing roles of constraints and goals within corporations. Executives should be held professionally (...) responsible not only for trying to prevent negative information blockage, but for succeeding. It is concluded that executives are professionally responsible for fulfilling their moral obligation to prevent disasters. (shrink)

Book Information The Moral and Political Status of Children. The Moral and Political Status of Children David Archard , Colin M. Macleod , eds. , Oxford and New York : Oxford University Press , 2002 , viii + 296 , US$60 (cloth). Edited by David Archard; , Colin M. Macleod; , eds.. Oxford University Press. Oxford and New York. Pp. viii + 296. US$60 (cloth).

In this article we discuss what are the implications for improving the design of corporate ethics programs, if we focus on the moral motivation accounts offered by main ethical theories. Virtue ethics, deontological ethics and utilitarianism offer different criteria of judgment to face moral dilemmas: Aristotle's virtues of character, Kant's categorical imperative, and Mill's greatest happiness principle are, respectively, their criteria to answer the question "What is the right thing to do?" We look at ethical theories from (...) a different perspective: the question we ask is "Why should I do the right thing?" In other words, we deal with the problem of moral motivation, and we examine the different rationale the main ethical theories provide. We then point out the relation between moral motivation and the concept of rationality in the different approaches - is acting morally seen as an expression of rational behavior? Our analysis of moral motivation provides a useful framework to improve the understanding of the relationships between formal and informal elements of corporate ethics programs, emphasizing the importance of the latter, often overlooked in compliance-focused programs. We conclude by suggesting that the concept of moral imagination can provide a unifying approach to enhance the effectiveness of corporate ethics programs, by providing an intangible asset that supports the implementation of their formal components into management decision making. (shrink)

There is a clear tendency in contemporary political/legal thought to limit agency to individual agents, thereby denying the existence and relevance of collective moral agency in general, and corporate agency in particular. This tendency is ultimately rooted in two particular forms of individualism – methodological and fictive (abstract) – which have their source in the Enlightenment. Furthermore, the dominant notion of moral agency owes a lot to Kant whose moral/legal philosophy is grounded exclusively on abstract reason (...) and personal autonomy, to the detriment of a due recognition of the socio-historical grounds of moral social conduct.I shall argue that an adequate theory of responsibility is needed, which does not only take into account individual responsibility, but also collective and corporate responsibility, capable of taking into consideration society and its problems. Furthermore, corporations are consciously and carefully structured organisations with different levels of management and have clearly defined aims and objectives, a central feature upon which I shall be focussing in this paper. (shrink)

This article examines the relation between policies concerning Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and philosophical moral theories. The objective is to determine which moral theories form the basis for CSR policies. Are they based on ethical egoism, libertarianism, utilitarianism or some kind of common-sense morality? In order to address this issue, I conducted an empirical investigation examining the relation between moral theories and CSR policies, in companies engaged in CSR. Based on the empirical data I collected, I (...) start by suggesting some normative arguments used by the respondents. Secondly, I suggest that these moral arguments implicitly rely on some specific moral principles, which I characterise. Thirdly, on the basis of these moral principles, I suggest the moral theories upon which the CSR policies are built. Previous empirical studies examining the relation between philosophical moral theories and the ethical content of business activities have mainly concentrated on the ethical decision-making of managers. Some of the most prominent investigations in that regard propose that managers mainly act in accordance with utilitarian moral theory (Fritzsche, D. J. and H. Becker: 1984 , Academy of Management Journal 27 (1), 166–175; Premeaux, S. and W. Mony: 1993 , Journal of Business Ethics 12 , 349–357; Premeaux, S.: 2004 , Journal of Business Ethics 52 , 269–278). I conclude that CSR policies are not based on utilitarian thinking, but instead, on some kind of common-sense morality. The ethical foundation of companies engaged in CSR, thus, does not mirror the ethical foundation of managers. (shrink)

This article begins with an explanation of how moral development for organizations has parallels to Kohlberg's categorization of the levels of individual moral development. Then the levels of organizational moral development are integrated into the literature on corporate social performance by relating them to different stakeholder orientations. Finally, the authors propose a model of organizational moral development that emphasizes the role of top management in creating organizational processes that shape the organizational and institutional components of (...) corporate social performance. This article represents one approach to linking the distinct streams of business ethics and business-and-society research into a more complete understanding of how managers and firms address complex ethical and social issues. (shrink)

This paper examines voluntary corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting as a form of moral discourse. It explores how alternative stakeholder perspectives lead to differing perceptions of the process and content of responsible reporting. We contrast traditional stakeholder theory, which views stakeholders as external parties having a social contract with corporations, with an emerging perspective, which views interaction among corporations and constituents as relational in nature. This moves the stakeholder from an external entity to one that is integral to (...) corporate activity. We explore how these alternative stakeholder perspectives give rise to different normative demands for stakeholder engagement, managerial processes, and communication. We discuss models of CSR reporting and accountability: EMAS, the ISO 14000 series, SA8000, AA1000, the Global Reporting Initiative, and the Copenhagen Charter. We explore how these models relate to the stakeholder philosophies and find that they are largely consistent with the traditional atomistic view but fall far short of the demands for moral engagement prescribed by a relational stakeholder perspective. Adopting a relational view requires stakeholder engagement not only in prescribing reporting requirements, but also in discourse relating to core aspects of the corporation such as mission, values, and management systems. Habermas’ theory of communicative action provides guidelines for engaging stakeholders in this moral discourse. (shrink)

Bottom lines and codes provide a corporation with guidelines for dealing with the inside and outside world. Bottom lines have the oldest papers through Frederic Taylor's Scientific Management, dated beginning 20th century. Codes came into existence in its midst with the emerging sustainability agenda, referring both to technical detail and human judgement. Corporate codes present themselves as a policy document with collective rules handed down by way of a top-down approach. Since an effective code is dependent on the motivation (...) of individual employees, this article proposes the additional view of a bottom-up approach. By sharing values in concrete work employees become co-owners of the code. Top-down and bottom-up approaches thus emerge in a complementary relationship. A relevant organisational context would be a parallel structure of action and reflection, thus facilitating balanced thinking in the sustainability domain and contributing to an 'ethical calibre' or 'moral standard' of a corporation. (shrink)

Ethical guidelines for multinational corporations are included in several international accords adopted during the past four decades. These guidelines attempt to influence the practices of multinational enterprises in such areas as employment relations, consumer protection, environmental pollution, political participation, and basic human rights. Their moral authority rests upon the competing principles of national sovereignty, social equity, market integrity, and human rights. Both deontological principles and experience-based value systems undergird and justify the primacy of human rights as the fundamental (...) class='Hi'>moral authority of these transnational and transcultural compacts. Although difficulties and obstacles abound in gaining operational acceptance of such codes of conduct, it is possible to argue that their guidelines betoken the emergence of a transcultural corporate ethic. (shrink)

There are some texts about moral sentences in the Islamic logical literature especially in the logical books of Ibn Sina that have been interpreted in completely opposite ways. Relying on these texts, some scholars take Ibn Sina to be proposing a non-cognitive theory of ethics and to the contrary some scholars hold that he is a proponent of a sort of moral intuitionism. Reflecting on the alleged textual evidence in Ibn Sina’s books, I propose a middle way in (...) the interpretation that accepts the cognitive status of the moral sentences but at the same time rejects intuitionism. (shrink)

In his article The Moral Responsibility of Corporate Executives for Disasters, John Bishop has argued that we are justified on moral considerations for holding corporate executives responsible for disasters resulting from corporate activities, even in circumstances where they could not reasonably have been expected to possess the information necessary to avert these disasters. I argue that he is mistaken in this claim.

In order to ensure that corporations act in socially responsible ways. R. Freeman says that firms should be legally required to act in accordance with the directives of a moral theory which he developed especially for business – a theory which has come to be called "normative stakeholder theory" (NST). I argue that NST fails as a moral theory and that this failure indicates: (1) that we should abandon the quest to develop a special moral theory for (...) use in business, and (2) that we should not attempt to impose the use of any moral theory upon business, but rather should allow corporations to determine their moral responsibilities in any way they see fit. (shrink)

In the literature on social ontology, two perspectives on collective agency have been developed. The first is the internal perspective, the second the external one. The internal perspective takes the point of view of the members as its point of departure and appeals, inter alia, to the joint intentions they form. The idea is that collective agents perform joint actions such as dancing the tango, organizing prayer meetings, or performing symphonies. Such actions are generated by joint intentions, a topic which (...) has been investigated extensively in recent decades.1 The external perspective takes the point of view of outsiders as its point of departure. Here the idea is that outsiders ascribe certain properties to collections of individuals that thereby acquire a new status. An example that is discussed in some detail below is provided by universities that, at least initially, had to be recognized by the pope in order to perform the actions that are characteristic of universities, in particular the awarding of academic degrees. This perspective has received considerably less attention.2 In this paper I present and defend a new account of collective agents from the external perspective. I call it ‘the status account’. At the heart of this account lies the idea just mentioned. A collective agent can come into existence by outsiders granting a collection of individuals some kind of status. I call a collective agent for which this holds a ‘corporate agent’, because such an agent is or has been, in a sense to be explained, incorporated. I develop this idea by distinguishing between two kinds of rules: status rules and constitutive rules. Status rules explicate the normative attributes that are characteristic of a particular kind of corporate agent. Constitutive rules specify the conditions that have to be met for a certain collection of individuals to have those attributes. The status account shares some important features with John Searle’s social ontology.3 The advantages that my account has over Searle’s are discussed in section 2.2, immediately after the account has been introduced in section 2.1. Before doing that, however, I shall discuss the internal perspective.. (shrink)

This article explores the concept of corporate identity from a moral perspective. In it we argue that the reification and personification involved in attributing an identity to an organization has moral repercussions. Through a discussion of 'intentionality' we suggest that it is philosophically problematic to treat an abstraction of the corporation as possessing identity or acting as a conscious moral agent. The article moves to consider practical and ethical issues in the areas of organizational commitment, of (...) health and safety, and corporate social responsibility, and finds that the notion of identity can be abused, although it will no doubt continue to be used as it does have some practical utility. In conclusion, we argue that despite being meaningless from a philosophical stance, the concept of corporate identity need not be discarded, however, it is far from benign and intense moral scrutiny is necessary wherever it is applied. (shrink)

Persons of low socioeconomic status generallyexperience worse health and shorter lives thantheir better off counterparts. They alsosuffer a greater incidence of adversepsychosocial characteristics, such as lowself-esteem, self-efficacy, and self-masteryand increased cynicism and hostility. Thesepopulation data suggest another category ofharm to persons: diminished moral agency. Chronic socioeconomic deprivation can createenvironments that undermine the development ofself and capacities constitutive to moralagency – i.e., the capacity forself-determination and crafting a life of one''sown. The harm affects not only the choicesa person (...) makes, but the chooser herself. Thismoral harm is particularly salient in modernWestern societies, especially in the UnitedStates, where success and failure is attributedto the individual, with little notice of thelarger social and political realities thatinform an individual''s circumstances and choices. (shrink)

The authors argue that corporate philanthropy is far too important as a social instrument for good to depend on ethical egoism for its support. They claim that rule utilitarianism provides a more compelling, though not exclusive, moral foundation. The authors cite empirical and legal evidence as additional support for their claim.

This paper reports on a study of large U.S. based corporations concerning the status of formal ethics statements. Almost all responding firms (91%) have promulgated a formal code of ethics while one-half have published values statements and about one-third have a corporate credo. Analysis of these statements concentrated on to whom they are communicated; whether codes of ethics contain information pertinent to the industry, include sanctions for violations and provide specific guidance regarding gifts. Conclusions and implications for managers (...) and researchers are drawn. (shrink)

Despite some exceptions, the business ethics literature on the moral responsibility of corporations does not emphasize a subject critical to that inquiry: the general nature of corporations. This article attempts to lessen the imbalance by describing three conceptions of the corporation that have been prominent in twentieth century legal theorizing, and by sketching their implications for the moral responsibility of corporations. These three conceptions, at least two of which have counterparts in the philosophical and organizational theory literature, are (...) the concession, aggregate, and real entity theories. The article concludes that the real entity theory is the most plausible of the lot. At least under prevailing tests of moral responsibility, it then contends, corporations-as-real-entities are morally responsible for most of their members' actions. (shrink)

Can a soldier be held responsible for fighting in a war that is illegal or unjust? This is the question at the heart of a new debate that has the potential to profoundly change our understanding of the moral and legal status of warriors, wars, and indeed of moral agency itself. The debate pits a widely shared and legally entrenched principle of war - that combatants have equal rights and equal responsibilities irrespective of whether they are fighting (...) in a war that just or unjust - against a set of striking new arguments. These arguments challenge the idea that there is a separation between the rules governing the justice of going to war (the jus ad bellum) and the rules governing what combatants can do in war (the jus in bello). If ad bellum and in bello rules are connected in the way these new arguments suggest, then many aspects of just war theory and laws of war would have to be rethought and perhaps reformed. -/- This book contains eleven original and closely argued essays by leading figures in the ethics and laws of war and provides an authoritative treatment of this important new debate. The essays both challenge and defend many deeply held convictions: about the liability of soldiers for crimes of aggression, about the nature and justifiability of terrorism, about the relationship between law and morality, the relationship between soldiers and states, and the relationship between the ethics of war and the ethics of ordinary life. -/- This book is a project of the Oxford Leverhulme Programme on the Changing Character of War. (shrink)

An empirical study using two ethics-related and three sales force outcome variables was conducted in Taiwan and compared to an existing U.S. sample. Across the two national cultures, individual perceptions of corporate ethics appears to be a more direct determinant of organizational commitment than individual moral values. Differences between the two national cultures were found in ethics perception as it relates to moral values, job satisfaction, and turnover intention. Explanations for the differences are discussed.

Peter French has argued that conglomerate collectivities such as business corporations are moral persons and that aggregate collectivities such as lynch mobs are not. Two arguments are advanced to show that French's claim is flawed. First, the distinction between aggregates and conglomerates is, at best, a distinction of degree, not kind. Moreover, some aggregates show evidence of moral personhood. Second, French's criterion for distinguishing aggregates and conglomerates is based on inadequate grounds. Application of the criterion to specific cases (...) requires an additional judgment of a pragmatic nature which undermines any attempt to demonstrate French's thesis that actual conglomerates are moral persons and aggregates are not. Thus, French's theory is seriously lacking both empirical basis and empirical relevance. (shrink)

The purpose of this research paper is to identify which types of corporate philanthropy (CP): cause-related marketing (CRM) or sponsorship, create higher moralcapital under two conditions: proactive or reactive (following a scandal). Results showed that CP created higher moral capital for a proactive company than for a reactive company. Both CRM and sponsorship were perceived as more sincere in the proactive company than the reactive company. However, CRM was seen as self-serving in the reactive company, but not the (...) proactive company. The study demonstrated that companies need to take into account the different types of CP, as it has an effect on their moral capital. Socially proactive firms should engage in both CRM and sponsorship philanthropy, as both types can generate high moral capital, which creates better company reputation. However, CP may not be the most effective or appropriate strategy for creating moral capital following negative publicity. (shrink)

This essay deals with the following issues: (1) whether corporations can have moral responsibilities; (2) whether, granting that corporations can have moral responsibilities, nature can be an object of these responsibilities; and (3) what moral theory can appropriately justify why corporations ought to contribute to the cause of environmental protection. It is here argued that while it can be shown that corporations can have moral responsibilities, such responsibilities are limited towards humans and other corporations. The main (...) reason is that the morally relevant functional capacities which corporations can be shown as possessing are limited to those functional capacities that give moral status to humans. As such, natural nonhumans are beyond the scope of these responsibilities. But this does not mean that it becomes justifiable for corporations to disregard environmental concerns. For part of the moral responsibilities of corporations towards humans is to respect the right of humans to a livable natural environment. In addition, because of their enduring existence and long-term goals, corporations can act as a bridge between humans of the present generation and those of future generations. This bridge makes it meaningful to speak of the moral responsibilities of humans of the present generation towards those of future generations. (shrink)