Social Ethics

The need for justice for individuals, groups, and society as a whole has perhaps never been more pressing. The presence or absence of social recognition plays a vital role in both social injustices and efforts to overcome and prevent them. Critical theory philosopher Axel Honneth’s influential accounts of recognition and struggles for recognition contain important insights about injustice and social justice movements. Unfortunately, some of Honneth’s concepts are narrow and need expansion for them to be useful in considering social injustices (...) and responses to those injustices. This is especially true if we are to understand and respond to current social justice issues such as Black Lives Matter and the climate crisis. -/- Douglas Giles presents an important corrective and addition to Axel Honneth’s view of recognition that gives the concepts of recognition, misrecognition, and struggles for recognition more explanatory power. He first critiques Honneth’s portrayal of misrecognition as being a simple lack of recognition and provides an alternative view of misrecognition as complex and multidimensional, helping us better understand the causes and effects of injustices. He then engages in a critical examination of Honneth’s account of struggles for recognition—the emancipation from injustice. The American civil rights movement and women’s suffrage movements are archetypal political struggles for recognition, but Honneth, like Charles Taylor and others, sees struggles for recognition only as political struggles, leaving out much of the story of struggles for recognition. In response, Giles presents a more robust picture of struggles for recognition that decentralizes struggles for recognition by including individual experience and agency. -/- This contribution to recognition studies expands the reality of recognition and misrecognition beyond theoretical concepts into the daily lives of individuals. Recognition is essential for affirming one’s identity and one’s place in community and society. Misrecognition is at the heart of many injustices from interpersonal relations to structural socioeconomic inequalities. Struggles for recognition are ubiquitous for everyone because people’s need for recognition extends far beyond political recognition. Giles crafts a view of recognition and misrecognition that identifies some important problems in critical theory’s approach to social justice and offers new conceptualizations to assist future research in various fields of critical social theories. (shrink)

2021 marks Dylan's 80th birthday and his 60th year in the music world. It invites us to look back on his career and the multitudes that it contains. Is he a song and dance man? A political hero? A protest singer? A self-portrait artist who has yet to paint his masterpiece? Is he Shakespeare in the alley? The greatest living exponent of American music? An ironsmith? Internet radio DJ? Poet (who knows it)? Is he a spiritual and religious parking meter? (...) Judas? The voice of a generation or a false prophet, jokerman, and thief? Dylan is all these and none. The essays in this book explore the Nobel laureate’s masks, collectively reflecting upon their meaning through time, change, movement, and age. They are written by wonderful and diverse set of contributors, all here for his 80th birthday bash: celebrated Dylanologists like Michael Gray and Laura Tenschert; recording artists such as Robyn Hitchcock, Barb Jungr, Amy Rigby, and Emma Swift; and 'the professors’ who all like his looks: David Boucher, Anne Margaret Daniel, Ray Monk, Galen Strawson, and more. Read it on your toaster! (shrink)

A significant proportion of child protection cases involve care-experienced mothers, which reveals a continuous cycle of mothers who lose their children to social services after having been in state care themselves as children. While the importance of protecting children requires little explanation and forms the justificatory basis for child protection interventions, it is important to remember that care-experienced mothers were once children entrusted to the state’s care, and who arguably have been failed by the state in that their parenting opportunities (...) are significantly reduced. This paper aims to address this underexplored dilemma between protecting children and safeguarding mothering opportunities for care-experienced mothers. Appealing to the concept of solidarity, I argue that the state has an obligation to increase its compensatory efforts to secure the right of care-experienced women to not only become parents but to be able to be parents, with the aim of breaking the cycle of care experience. (shrink)

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

Efforts to develop a coherent role for white people in racial justice initiatives in the USA are often stymied by the defensiveness, paternalism, and guilt of many white liberals. Such efforts are also undermined by critiques of whiteness that conflate white identity and white supremacy. I address this dilemma by developing an account of antiracist white identity politics, conceived of here as taking responsibility for the effects of being socially defined as white. I locate conceptual resources for this project in (...) James Baldwin’s reflections on tragedy, love, and identity. In contrast to those who invoke Baldwin to argue for abolishing white identity, I make a case for politicizing it. I draw on Baldwin’s articulation of a tragic sensibility to argue that white antiracism requires accepting a morally compromised identity one has not chosen. It also requires accepting that serious efforts to end white supremacy inevitably lead to mistakes, misunderstandings, and counterproductive outcomes. By adopting a tragic perspective on these aspects of white antiracism, white people would become more capable of forging antiracist white identities through robust engagement in struggles for racial justice. (shrink)

Ever-increasing numbers of human interactions with intelligent software agents, online and offline, and their increasing ability to influence humans have prompted a surge in attention toward the concept of (online) manipulation. Several scholars have argued that manipulative influence is always hidden. But manipulation is sometimes overt, and when this is acknowledged the distinction between manipulation and other forms of social influence becomes problematic. Therefore, we need a better conceptualisation of manipulation that allows it to be overt and yet clearly distinct (...) from related concepts of social influence. I argue that manipulation is careless influence, show how this account helps to alleviate the shortcomings of the hidden influence view of manipulation, and derive implications for digital ethics. (shrink)

El presente trabajo se propone señalar algunas tareas posibles para la ética del discurso de Karl-Otto Apel en la actualidad. Tales tareas pueden concentrarse en la necesidad de una teoría de la institucionalización del discurso práctico, como forma de racionalidad práctica realizada socialmente. La pregunta que se ha de responder es qué condiciones marco debe cumplir el discurso para que pueda ser puesto en práctica y qué efectos político-institucionales puede producir en el contexto de instituciones realmente existentes. A partir de (...) Gehlen y de Luhmann -aunque en menor medida-, Apel interpreta a las instituciones como sistemas de autoafirmación que, por un lado, liberan a los sujetos de la carga de la acción, pero, por otro lado, limitan o condicionan la racionalidad práctica consensual-argumentativa propia del discurso. Las coerciones (Sachzwänge) funcionales de las instituciones configuran un campo de acción y un tipo de racionalidad que, de acuerdo con Apel, deberían estar bajo el control del discurso institucionalizado como esfera pública racional (Öffentlichkeit). La relación entre los criterios normativos ideales del discurso práctico institucionalizado y las instituciones realmente existentes debe interpretarse como una tensión o entrelazamiento dialéctico no superable. Si esta interpretación es correcta, la ética del discurso, en tanto teoría crítica de la sociedad, no puede ser entendida como una aplicación sin más de criterios normativos ideales a la realidad histórica o de adecuación de esa realidad a los criterios ideales en su sentido vertical, sino como de mutua correlación horizontal. (shrink)

The increasingly prominent role of digital technologies during the coronavirus pandemic has been accompanied by concerning trends in privacy and digital ethics. But more robust protection of our rights in the digital realm is possible in the future. -/- After surveying some of the challenges we face, I argue for the importance of diplomacy. Democratic countries must try to come together and reach agreements on minimum standards and rules regarding cybersecurity, privacy and the governance of AI.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis ought to serve as a reminder about the costs of failure to consider another long-term risk, climate change. For this reason, it is imperative to consider the merits of policies that may help to limit climate damages. This essay rebuts three common objections to carbon taxes: (1) that they do not change behaviour, (2) that they generate unfair burdens and increase inequality, and (3) that fundamental, systemic change is needed instead of carbon taxes. The (...) responses are (1) that there is both theoretical and empirical reason to think that carbon taxes do change behaviour, with larger taxes changing it to a greater extent; (2) that undistributed carbon taxes are regressive but distributing the tax receipts can alleviate that regressivity (and, in many cases, make the overall effect progressive); and (3) that while small changes for increasing democratic decision-making may be helpful, (fundamental) change takes time and the climate crisis requires urgent action. [Open access] //// -/- La crise de lamaladie à coronavirus 2019 (COVID-19) devrait servir de rappel sur les coûts de la non-prise en compte d’un autre risque à long terme, les changements climatiques. Pour cette raison, il est impératif de considérer lesmérites des politiques susceptibles de contribuer à limiter les changements climatiques. Cet essai réfute trois objections courantes aux taxes sur le carbone : (1) qu’elles ne changent pas les comportements (2) qu’elles génèrent des charges injustes et augmentent les inégalités, et (3) qu’un changement fondamental et systémique est nécessaire au lieu de taxes sur le carbone. Les réponses sont (1) qu’il existe des raisons à la fois théoriques et empiriques de penser que les taxes sur le carbone modifient effectivement les comportements, et que des taxes plus élevées les modifient dans une plus grande mesure; (2) que les taxes sur le carbone non distribuées sont régressives,mais que la distribution des recettes fiscales peut atténuer cette régressivité (et, dans de nombreux cas, rendre l’effet global progressif); et (3) que, bien que de petits changements pour l’amélioration de la prise de décision démocratique peuvent être utiles, un changement (fondamental) prend du temps et la crise climatique exige une action urgente. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This article explores the role of educators in our current environment, where truth and truthfulness must fight their corner in a world of ‘alternative facts’. The article opens with a review of the effects of the 24/7 news cycle on our sense of the overall well-being of the world, then discusses the meaning of moral identity and questions whether this is something which can be taught, and moves to a consideration of the role of moral mentors. The paper concludes (...) by arguing that the key challenge for moral education in the years ahead is that of critically training our students to see what is before them, to engage fully with their hearts and minds, and to be sensitive to what is absent – the interplay between presence and absence being the key to the creative functioning of the imagination. (shrink)

This study provides a theological and social ethics for an ecological age. It develops a concept of right for an order of creaturely life. This order consists of a "society" that encompasses humans and other creatures. The concept of right presented here is elaborated by reference to a postnatural condition, which rejects claims of a given natural order. Strong contrasts between nature and the human as well as nature and technology are also called into question. A pioneering study, this theory (...) of right faces an ecological horizon, draws on theological resources in the doctrine of creation and proposes an ethics towards a freer social order. (shrink)

Interest in the work of Bergson has seen a revival in political theory over the past two decades. Initially, this interest focused primarily on Bergson’s earlier writings. However, recently there h...

According to public reason liberalism, the laws and institutions of society must be in some sense justifiable to all reasonable citizens. But why care about justifiability to reasonable citizens? R...

The personality traits of social work leaders are important factors influencing ethical decision-making in organisations. The lack of empirical evidence with regard to the relationship between personal authenticity and ethical decision-making in social work stimulated the present study. Two hundred thirty-eight leaders (81.9% female) from organisations working in various fields of social work were administrated with the Authenticity Scale, Managerial Ethical Profile, and conducted two free association tasks with the cue words authenticity and self. Authenticity was positively correlated with ethical (...) decision-making. In contrast, authenticity was not correlated with the tendency to make decisions in an effort to maximise economic profit for the organisation. The results of the present study have important practical implications for the social work sector. The positive correlation of authenticity with ethical decision-making indicates that positive reinforcement of authenticity in leaders could possibly lead to supporting ethical decision-making within an organisation. Therefore, supporting authenticity in leaders working in social work may also help foster quality services and prevent unethical behaviour. (shrink)

There is significant disagreement among feminists and liberals about the compatibility between the two doctrines. Political liberalism has come under particular criticism from feminists, who argue that its restricted form of equality is insufficient. In contrast, Lori Watson and Christie Hartley argue that political liberalism can and must be feminist. This article raises three areas of disagreement with Watson and Hartley’s incisive account of feminist political liberalism. First, it argues that an appeal to a comprehensive doctrine can be compatible with (...) respecting others, if that appeal is to the value of equality. Second, it takes issue with Watson and Hartley's defence of religious exemptions to equality law. Third, it argues that political liberalism can be compatible with feminism but that it is not itself adequately feminist. It concludes that political liberalism is not enough for feminists. (shrink)

The epistemic basic structure of a society consists of those institutions that have the greatest impact on individuals’ opportunity to obtain knowledge on questions they have an interest in as citizens, individuals, and public officials. It plays a central role in the production and dissemination of knowledge and in ensuring that people have the capability to assimilate this knowledge. It includes institutions of science and education, the media, search engines, libraries, museums, think tanks, and various government agencies. This article identifies (...) two demands of justice that apply specifically to the institutions that belong to it. First, the epistemic basic structure should serve all citizens fairly and reliably. It should provide them with the opportunity to acquire knowledge they need for their deliberations about the common good, their individual good, and how to pursue them. Second, the epistemic basic structure should produce and disseminate the knowledge that various experts and public officials need to successfully pursue justice and citizens need to effectively exercise their rights. After arguing for these duties, I discuss what policies follow from them and respond to the worry that these duties have illiberal implications. (shrink)

Governments around the world have faced the challenge of how to respond to the recent outbreak of a novel coronavirus disease. Some have reacted by greatly restricting the freedom of citizens, while others have opted for less drastic policies. In this paper, I draw a parallel with vaccination ethics to conceptualize two distinct approaches to COVID-19 that I call altruistic and lockdown. Given that the individual measures necessary to limit the spread of the virus can in principle be achieved voluntarily (...) as well as through enforcement, the question arises of how much freedom governments ought to give citizens to adopt the required measures. I argue that an altruistic approach is preferable on moral grounds: it preserves important citizen freedoms, avoids a number of potential injustices, and gives people a much-needed sense of meaning in precarious times. (shrink)

How can we tell whether an incident counts as a microaggression? How do we draw the boundary between microaggressions and weightier forms of oppression, such as hate crimes? I address these questions by exploring the ontology and epistemology of microaggression, in particular the constitutive relationship between microaggression and systemic social oppression. I argue that we ought to define microaggression in terms of the ambiguous experience that its victims undergo, focusing attention on their perspectives while providing criteria for distinguishing microaggression.

How much surveillance is morally permissible in the pursuit of a socially desirable goal? The proportionality question has received renewed attention during the 2020 Coronavirus pandemic, because governments in many countries have responded to the pandemic by implementing, redirecting or expanding state surveillance, most controversially in the shape of collection and use of cell-phone location data to support a strategy of contact tracing, testing and containment. Behind the proportionality question lies a further question: in what way does a state of (...) emergency affect the proportionality of morally permissible surveillance? On the qualitative difference view, a state of emergency has the effect of suspending or altering at least some of the constraints on morally permissible action that apply under ordinary circumstances. On the quantitative difference view, the only difference between states of emergency and ordinary circumstances is that the stakes are greater in a state of emergency. If the qualitative difference view is true, then there are situations, perhaps such as the current Coronavirus pandemic, during which the proportionality condition employs a much less demanding ratio between social goods achieved and the badness of the surveillance performed. The overall objective of this article is to argue against the qualitative and for the quantitative difference view. I proceed by first setting out in somewhat greater detail how we must understand the qualitative difference view (section two). I then present a series of problematic implications of adopting the qualitative difference view and argue that jointly these give us sufficient reason to reject it (section three). This entails that our account of morally permissible surveillance should be unexceptional, i.e. the quantitative difference view: there is no morally significant difference between proportionality in ordinary circumstances and proportionality in emergencies, simply a spectrum of smaller to greater potential goods and bads of surveillance. In order to flesh out the implications of the quantitative view, I briefly sketch an unexceptional theory of proportional surveillance in exceptional circumstances (section four). The last section (five) summarises and concludes. (shrink)

It’s often assumed that if white people have a sexual preference for other white people, they, when using intimate dating platforms, have the right to skip over the profiles of Black people. As some argue, we have the right to act on our sexual preferences, including racialized sexual preferences, because doing so isn’t harmful, and even if it were harmful, this wouldn’t matter because either our “right” to act on our sexual preferences outweighs the harm and/or we cannot even control (...) our sexual preferences. Against this view, I argue that (1) when white people act on anti-Black sexual preferences, white people harm Black people insofar as they reduce their objective welfare level, and (2) we can in fact, to some degree, control our racialized sexual preferences. Moreover, I argue that because white people who engage in racialized sexual discrimination against Blacks disrespect and demean Black people and we don’t have any kind of right to disrespect and demean persons, white people don’t have even a prima facie right to act on anti-Black sexual preferences. Indeed, white racialized sexual discrimination against Black people is always deeply wrong, not only because it wrongs Black people, but it also wrongs the discriminators themselves. (shrink)

Principles of distributive justice bind macro-level institutional agents, like the state. But what does justice require in non-ideal circumstances, where institutional agents are unjust or do not e...

This article explores the psychoanalytic points of commonality between stand‐up comedy shows and fascist rallies, arguing that both are concerned with the creation of a “mass” audience. The article explores the political significance of this analogy by arguing that while stand‐up shows are not as regressive as fascist rallies, their “mass” character does run counter to any political aspirations they may have toward the end of critical consciousness raising.

The largest medical institutions and various ethicists advocate a utilitarian approach in times of public health crises, to maximize benefits for society, in direct conflict with our usual (Kantian) view of respect for people as individuals. A central problem with utilitarianism is that there is no clear way to evaluate moral choices, including in medical decisions. In general, in medicine is respected the Kantian medical ethics. But in a pandemic, when resources are poor, deep choices of life and death must (...) be made. In these situations, the principles of utilitarianism offer the best answer, moving from a patient-centered thinking model to a society-centered thinking model. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.36811.82728. (shrink)

This paper examined the relationship between tertiary students’ social media management attitudes and their academic performance in Cross River State, with a specific focus on Facebook, WhatsApp, and Instagram. To achieve this purpose, three null hypotheses were formulated accordingly. The study adopted a correlational research design. Cluster and simple random sampling techniques were used to select a sample of 1000 students from the entire population. The instrument used for data collection was a questionnaire titled: Tertiary Students’ Social Media Management and (...) Academic Performance Questionnaire (TESSMMAPQ). The reliability of the instrument was established through Cronbach alpha and estimate of .93 was obtained indicating that the instrument was internally consistent in measuring what it purports to measure. Pearson Product Moment Correlation Analysis used to analyze data and to test the hypotheses at .05 level of significance. Findings revealed that there is no significant relationship between tertiary students Facebook management attitudes (r. cal.0.032 < crit. r.0.062), WhatsApp management attitudes (r. cal.0.038 < crit. r.0.062), and Instagram management attitudes (r. cal.-0.009 < crit. r.0.062) respectively, with their academic performance. Based on these findings it was recommended among others that; tertiary students' social media usage should be regulated by smartphones producers and internet service providers; in such a way that a maximum monthly login interval (MMLI) is provided that will restrict users to a limited number of login chances. This will ensure that students maintain focus when they have been barred. (shrink)

A sketch of my ethical views, or secular moral philosophy. Emphasis is on stating how it all hangs together.

This paper presents a critical evaluation of ethical and philosophical concerns about the effective altruism as an ethical position. Effective altruists claim that one of our important ethical obligations is to do the most good possible, with the biggest possible positive impact. This impact should be measured with rational tools and by evaluating the effectiveness of our actions. At first glance, this might seem as a consensus building position, a good starting point for building a community of people wanting to (...) change the world for the better. In our paper, we present some difficulties which are connected with such a way of thinking about charity and an ethical obligation to donate. We discuss the problem of the commercialization of ethical values, understanding effectiveness, agreeing about goals, as well as the political consequences of effective altruism understood as an ethical position. (shrink)

This paper begins by taking seriously former slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass’ response in his What to the Slave is the Fourth of July? to systematic violence and oppression. He claims that direct argumentation is not the ideal mode of resistance to oppression: “At a time like this, scorching irony, not convincing argument, is needed.” I will focus on a few elements of this playful mode of resistance that conflict with the more straightforward strivings for abstract, universal, objective, convergent, absolute (...) thinking that champions reason over emotion, logic over narrative, and science over lived experience. In contrast, the type of protest employed by people like Douglass can utilize aesthetics and logic, playfulness and seriousness, emotion, even anger, and reason. Douglass provides examples of humorous, sincere parrhesia, oscillating between the lexicon of the dominant sphere and the critical reflection from a trickster on the margins. This will require an analysis of Michel Foucault’s conception of parrhesia: courageous truth-telling in the face of powerful people or institutions. It is a study of humor in the parrhesiastes, an element I think neglected by Foucault. I argue that the humorous parrhesiastes offers a mode of resistance which can subvert oppressive power structures that perpetuate injustice, revealing the fact that humor can be integral in courageous truth-telling. (shrink)

The command to love one’s enemies (the ‘LE Principle’ as it shall henceforth be called) is one of the most striking and counterintuitive precepts that have arisen in the Christian tradition. However, it has received little philosophical scrutiny. This paper aims to fill that gap. I shall first answer two questions behind the two main concepts underlying the principle: a) what would count as an enemy; b) and what does it mean to love someone. Then, after clarifying the relevant concepts, (...) I shall try to examine the whether the LE Principle is consistent with two major ethical traditions in philosophy: utilitarianism and deontology. I shall conclude by affirming that despite the psychological barriers inherent in living by the LE Principle, it will be shown to be livable and morally praiseworthy. (shrink)

for The Deweyan Task Before Us: The New Global Paradigm for Philosophy, Education, and Democracy Emerging from the Pandemic (2021 edited volume under review) John Dewey proposed soon after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki that citizens of techno-industrial nations suffer from "cultural lag" (LW 15:199-200; cf. LW 4:203-28). He had in mind a sort of moral jet lag, a condition in which most of the basic alternatives we have on hand to think and talk about moral and political (...) life, from customary moralizing to sophisticated theorizing, were developed, canned, and pickled on a shelf so long ago that they now lag far behind the multi-faceted problems that our values must speak to. The failure of many countries, most visibly the United States, to effectively navigate climate change and the Covid-19 global pandemic exemplifies our moral jet lag. Our collective responses to the new normal of global disruptions are, in William James’s words in Pragmatism, “out of plumb and out of key and out of ‘whack’” (1907, 37). The American philosophical tradition that includes James and Dewey has long sought to compensate for the excesses of America’s hyper-individualism and its anti-naturalistic distrust of experimental intelligence. In this brief analysis of our morally jet lagged response to the Covid-19 pandemic, we draw heavily on two highly articulated intellectual resources for America’s moral, political, and educational recovery: Jane Addams’s social ethics and Dewey’s deeply democratic theory of moral and political deliberation. (shrink)

The ACA shifted U.S. health policy from centering on principles of actuarial fairness toward social solidarity. Yet four legal fixtures of the health care system have prevented the achievement of social solidarity: federalism, fiscal pluralism, privatization, and individualism. Future reforms must confront these fixtures to realize social solidarity in health care, American-style.

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.