Michael Stocker’s “The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories” attacks versions of consequentialism and deontological ethics on the grounds that they are self-effacing. While it is often thought that Stocker’s argument gives us a reason to favour virtue ethics over those other theories, Simon Keller has argued that this is a mistake. He claims that virtue ethics is also self-effacing, and is therefore afflicted with the self-effacement- related problems that Stocker identifies in consequentialism and deontology. This paper defends virtue ethics against (...) this claim. Although there is a kind of self-effacement invol- ved in the exercise of virtue, this is quite different from the so-called schizophrenia that Stocker thinks is induced by modern ethical theory. Importantly, manifesting virtue does not require one to embrace mutually inconsistent moral commitments, as is at times encouraged by consequentialists and deontologists. This paper also considers a reading of the virtue-ethical criterion of right action that is encouraged by Bernard Williams’s distinction between a de re and a de dicto interpretation of the phrase “acting as the virtuous person would.” I argue that such a reading addresses concerns that a virtue-ethi- cal criterion of right action inevitably generates a problematic form of self-effacement. (shrink)

In this dissertation I set out to address the “scope problem” in Nietzsche scholarship. In the secondary literature, the scope problem is characterized as a problem for Nietzsche, who seems deeply skeptical about nearly every item of his inherited western metaphysical toolkit. If his skepticism about western metaphysics penetrates all dimensions of his thought, how can he motivate a reader to also reject western metaphysics without himself committing to some of it? I stipulate that answering the scope problem means explicating (...) what Nietzsche views as the general source of normativity—it is there that we can understand the resources Nietzsche is committing himself to, and the ones he rejects. I examine Leiter’s solution to this problem, which assigns science as the general source of normativity. However, Leiter’s solution depends on textual pedigree that I argue is inconsistent with the texts themselves. I argue that the normativity of science, instead of being the source of general normativity, represents an order of normativity for Nietzsche—but it is not ordered generally. I look to GS 341 to analyze “eternal recurrence,” and argue that an expression of Nietzsche’s “higher morality” can be located in the passage. Higher morality, I argue, places the general source of normativity in the value the reader places on her life. This account of higher morality solves the scope problem by narrowing it to readers who already accept or embrace the challenge of placing a level of value on their life commensurate with eternal recurrence. (shrink)

Argues for an interpretation of Iris Murdoch on which her account of moral reasons has Platonic roots, and on which she gives an ontological proof of the reality of the Good. This reading explains the structure of Sovereignty, how Murdoch's claims differ from a focus on "thick moral concepts," and how to find coherent arguments in her book.

Zusammenfassung: In diesem Beitrag wird der normative Gehalt von Armut und sozialer Exklusion im Wohlfahrtsstaat untersucht. Dazu wird der Grundriss der Gerechtigkeitstheorie von David Miller in Zusammenhang mit dem Konzept der materiellen Deprivation diskutiert, einem von der Europäischen Union verwendeten Indikator für soziale Exklusion. Kernthese ist dabei, dass materielle Deprivation sozial ungerecht ist, da sie die drei Gerechtigkeitsprinzipien des Bedarfs, des Verdienstes und der Gleichheit verletzt. Dieser Befund wird sowohl theoretisch als auch anhand ausgewählter empirischer Erkenntnisse expliziert. Vor diesem Hintergrund (...) wird zum Anschluss dann das Verhältnis von Armutsforschung und Sozialphilosophie und politischer Philosophie diskutiert. -/- Schlagwörter: soziale Gerechtigkeit, Armut, materielle Deprivation, David Miller -/- Social Justice in the Welfare State. On the normative weight of material deprivation -/- Abstract: This paper explores the normative relevance of poverty and social exclusion in the welfare state. I discuss David Miller's theory of social justice and one indicator of poverty and social exclusion utilized by the European Union, namely that of material deprivation. The main thesis is that material deprivation is socially unjust as it violates the three principles of social justice: need, desert, and equality. This finding will be explored on the theoretical level as well as considering empirical insights. Against this background, I will conclude with remarks on the possible contribution of social and political philosophy to poverty research. (shrink)

Race is one of the most common variables in the social sciences, used to draw correlations between racial groups and numerous other important variables such as education, healthcare outcomes, aptitude tests, wealth, employment and so forth. But where concern with race once reflected the view that races were biologically real, many, if not most, contemporary social scientists have abandoned the idea that racial categories demarcate substantial, intrinsic biological differences between people. This, in turn, raises an important question about the significance (...) of race in those social sciences: if there is no biological basis of race, why are racial categories useful to social scientists? More specifically, in virtue of what are racial categories a successful basis of informative, important social scientific generalizations? 2 We’ll call this social science’s race puzzle. (shrink)

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

In his essay “The Human Prejudice” Bernard Williams presented a sophisticated defense of the moral relevance of the concept “human being”. Here I offer both an analysis of his essay and a defense of his conclusions against criticisms made by Julian Savulescu and Peter Singer. After a discussion of the structure of Williams’s argument, I focus on several complaints from Savulescu: that Williams underestimates the similarities between speciesism and racism or sexism, that Williams relies on a disputable internalism about reasons (...) to make his case, that Williams ignores the arbitrariness of species membership, and (a complaint also made by Singer) that Williams attacks a straw man in considering only negative utilitarianism when criticizing the idea of an Impartial Observer. I defend Williams against these charges and end with a brief discussion of how his alien invasion example illustrates the fundamentally different philosophical sensibility of Bernard Williams in comparison to critics like Savulescu and Singer. (shrink)

Richard Moran has argued, convincingly, in favour of the idea that there must be more than one path to access our own mental contents. The existence of those routes, one first-personal —through avowal— the other third-personal —no different to the one used to ascribe mental states to other people and to interpret their actions— is intimately connected to our capacity to respond to norms. Moran’s account allows for conflicts between first personal and third personal authorities over my own beliefs; this (...) enable some instances of Moore-paradoxical cases to be meaningful. In this paper we reflect on the consequences of this view for the acquisition of beliefs, and argue that, as in the moral case, excessive concentration on a third-personal understanding of thought undermines the very idea of being directed to the world and of being capable to fully own our own beliefs. We suggest that maybe too much attention to epistemic virtues or to justification is misdirected and could produce beliefs that are themselves not first-personal enough. (shrink)

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

Moral error theorists argue that moral thought and discourse are systematically in error, and that nothing is, or can ever be, morally permissible, required or forbidden. I begin by discussing how error theorists arrive at this conclusion. I then argue that if we accept a moral error theory, we cannot escape a pressing problem – what should we do next, metaethically speaking? I call this problem the ‘what now?’ problem, or WNP for short. I discuss the attempts others have made (...) to respond to the WNP, and in each case I show that the responses fail to be satisfying. I then propose a new response to the WNP, which I call revolutionary relativism. I define revolutionary relativism, explain why it is preferable to the existing responses to the WNP, and defend it against the most problematic objections I anticipate that opponents might raise. I conclude that revolutionary relativism succeeds where previous WNP responses fail, and that if we accept a moral error theory, we should become revolutionary relativists. (shrink)

This paper argues that a number of entrenched posthumanist positions are seriously flawed as a result of their dependence on a technical interpretive approach that creates more problems than it solves. During the course of our discussion we consider in particular the question of personhood. After all, until we can determine what it means to be a person we cannot really discuss what it means to improve a person. What kinds of enhancements would even constitute improvements? This in turn leads (...) to an examination of the technical model of analysis and the recurring tendency to approach notions like personhood using this technical model. In looking to sketch a Heideggerian account of personhood, we are reaffirming what we take to be a Platonic skepticism concerning technical models of inquiry when it comes to certain subjects. Finally we examine the question as to whether the posthumanist looks to apply technology’s benefits in ways that we have reflectively determined to be useful or desirable or whether it is technology itself (or to speak as Heidegger would – the “essence” of technology) which prompts many posthumanists to rely on an excessively reductionist view of the human being. (shrink)

La investigación reciente en psicología cognitiva sobre la memoria emocional ha estudiado las distintas formas en que las emociones afectan a la memoria, sin profundizar no obstante en la comprensión de la manera en que los aspectos emocionales, afectivos y mnemónicos se encuentran estrechamente entrelazados en el contenido mismo de un acto de reminiscencia. En este artículo propongo un marco conceptual de análisis que nos permite entender los recuerdos personales como recuerdos esencialmente afectivos, y que se articula en torno a (...) dos variables continuas e independientes: por un lado, la intencionalidad del recuerdo, es decir, el objeto hacia el cual el recuerdo está dirigido, que puede ser descriptiva o evaluativa; por el otro, la perspectiva afectiva del recuerdo, que puede fluctuar desde la perspectiva de primera persona hasta la perspectiva de tercera persona. Las dos dimensiones son analizadas en profundidad y las limitaciones de este marco y las futuras líneas de investigación son igualmente presentadas. (shrink)

Collective intentionality is one of the most fundamental notions in social ontology. However, it is often thought to refer to a capacity which does not presuppose the existence of any other social facts. This chapter critically examines this view from the perspective of one specific theory of collective intentionality, the theory of Margaret Gilbert. On the basis of Gilbert’s arguments, the chapter claims that collective intentionality is a highly contingent achievement of complex social practices and, thus, not a basic social (...) phenomenon. The argument proceeds in three steps. First, Gilbert’s thesis that certain kinds of collective intentionality presuppose joint normative commitments is introduced. Second, it is argued that, on this view, individual commitments can only constitute the relevant kinds of collective intentional states if there are socially shared “principles of membership” that connect the force of individual commitments to a shared content. Third, it is shown that strong collective intentionality depends on the practical acceptance of shared norms and on the establishment of authority relations through mutual recognition. (shrink)

Technological developments involving robotics and artificial intelligence devices are being employed evermore in elderly care and the healthcare sector more generally, raising ethical issues and practical questions warranting closer considerations of what we mean by “care” and, subsequently, how to design such software coherently with the chosen definition. This paper starts by critically examining the existing approaches to the ethical design of care robots provided by Aimee van Wynsberghe, who relies on the work on the ethics of care by Joan (...) Tronto. In doing so, it suggests an alternative to their non-principled approach, an alternative suited to tackling some of the issues raised by Tronto and van Wynsberghe, while allowing for the inclusion of two orientative principles. Our proposal centres on the principles of autonomy and vulnerability, whose joint adoption we deem able to constitute an original revision of a bottom-up approach in care ethics. Conclusively, the ethical framework introduced here integrates more traditional approaches in care ethics in view of enhancing the debate regarding the ethical design of care robots under a new lens. (shrink)

Various educational strategies use narrative artworks to pursue ethical training purposes. Based on the works of Dewey and Greene I show how these strategies do not always contribute to an aesthetic education ‒one that promotes experiences with artworks in which we develop sensitivities and capacities necessary to more richly, deeply and intensely experience what these and other artworks have to be experienced‒ and therefore end up having an instrumental use. This is the case with the most commonly used strategies: the (...) exemplary modelling strategy ‒which seeks to inspire students through characters that show an admirable moral character‒ and the moral deliberation strategy ‒which extracts dilemmas or moral problems from which characters from the works face to discuss them with the students. From Diamond’s work I show that, at the same time, it is precisely the non-aesthetic nature of these strategies that limits their chances of becoming a fully fledged ethical education. Hence, ethical education through the narrative arts is only fully developed when it is also an aesthetic education, and aesthetic education in the narrative arts is only fully developed when it also deals with matters of moral significance and is therefore also an ethical education. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to reconstruct Charles L. Stevenson’s metaethical view. Since his metaethical view is a form of emotivism, I will start by explaining what the core claims of emotivism are. I will then explore and comment on the specific claims of Stevenson’s proposal. Last, I will offer an overview of the objections that have traditionally been raised against emotivism.

Abstract. Richard Feldman’s Uniqueness Thesis holds that “a body of evidence justifies at most one proposition out of a competing set of proposi- tions”. The opposing position, permissivism, allows distinct rational agents to adopt differing attitudes towards a proposition given the same body of evidence. We assess various motivations that have been offered for Uniqueness, including: concerns about achieving consensus, a strong form of evidentialism, worries about epistemically arbitrary influences on belief, a focus on truth-conduciveness, and consequences for peer disagreement. (...) We argue that each of these motivations either misunderstands the commitments of permissivism or is question-begging. Better understanding permissivism makes it a much more plausible position. (shrink)

Moral conflicts are real, and while a deontic logic containing a modified "agglomeration rule" may be able to accommodate this fact, even the most sophisticated logic will still overlook much of what everyday normative reasoning involves.

Although hypointellectuals have long been a part of our cultural landscape, it is in post-conflict societies, such as those in Bosnia and Kosovo, that there has arisen a strong need for a different breed of intellectual, one who is more than simply a social critic, an educator, a person of action, and a compassionate individual. Enter the non-partisan intellectual—the hyperintellectual. It is the hyperintellectual, whose non-partisanship is manifested through a reciprocating critique and defense of both the nationalist enterprise and strong (...) interventionism of the International Community, who strives to create a climate of understanding and to enlarge the moral space so as to reduce the divisiveness between opposing parties. It is in this way that the hyperintellectual acts as a catalyst for the creation of a democratic culture within the civil societies of Bosnia and Kosovo. (shrink)

In this article I aim to show that one of the criticisms that have been leveled at Williams’s Basic Legitimation Demand, the one that states that it rests on a moral presupposition – that of the equal worth of persons – arises out of a misreading of his realist politics. For this purpose, I will start by sketching Williams’s critique of moralism in ethics, which will serve as the basis of later analyzing his realist critique of moralism in politics. Once (...) William’s arguments have been laid out I will proceed to show that what has been interpreted as the moral presupposition on which he builds his whole project, is nothing more but a misreading of Williams’s purposes. (shrink)

References are frequent to Arstotle's emphasis on habit in discussions of moral development. However, the connotation of the term is emaciatingly more limited in scope than the conceptually kindred terms Aristotle used. The historical or cultural factors leading to the change are briefly described. The paper is mainly an attempt to analyze the content of the two terms: Hexisand Disposition and their distinct significance in Aristotle's moral psychology. Past and contemporary thinkers are drawn on to clarify or endorse Aristotle's ideas (...) as well as to suggest their relevance to moral education. (shrink)

This article contrasts Epicurus's and Diogenes the Cynic's respective views on acceptable desires. I emphasize their appeals to nature to legitimize or de-legitimize certain types of desires.

Philosophers have identified a number of principles that characterize morality and underlie moral judgments. However, philosophy has failed to establish any widely agreed-upon justification for these judgments, and an “error theory” that views moral judgments as without justification has not been successfully refuted. Evolutionary psychologists have had success in explaining the likely origins and mechanisms of morality but have also not established any justification for adopting particular values. As a result, we are left with moral nihilism -- the absence of (...) any unarguable values or behaviors we must or should adopt. The philosophical and psychological implications of this nihilism suggest accepting shared, non-absolute values as “good enough”; a revised, humbler view of moral and other value judgments; and the possible acceptance of the hard truth of a value nihilism. (shrink)

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

Eliminative functionalism is the view that mental attributes, of humans and other machines, consist ultimately in behavioural abilities or dispositions. Hence, ‘Strong AI’: if a machine consistently acts as if it were fully conscious, then conscious it is. From these assumptions, optimistic futurists have derived a variety of remarkable visions of our ‘post-human’ future; from widely-recognised ‘robot rights’ to ‘mind uploading’, immortality, ‘apotheosis’ and beyond. It is argued here, however, that eliminative functionalism is false; for at least on our present (...) knowledge, the subjectively qualitative characteristics of conscious experience are neither deducible from, nor logically required to generate, the performance of any sort of overtly ‘intelligent’, or indeed, characteristically human behaviour. Thus, a machine could easily be designed to report awareness of phenomenal qualities, without necessarily possessing them; and Alan Turing’s ‘Imitation Game’ test for artificial thinking is unable to determine whether or not a machine is sentient. An alternative test is proposed, in which the machine is asked phenomenological questions under conditions designed to detect any form of cheating—whilst also, potentially revealing evidence for the occurrence of genuine qualitative experience. (shrink)

Are values objective or subjective? To clarify this question we start with an overview of the main concepts and debates in the philosophy of values. We then discuss the arguments for and against value realism, the thesis that there are objective evaluative facts. By contrast with value anti-realism, which is generally associated with sentimentalism, according to which evaluative judgements are grounded in sentiments, value realism is commonly coupled with rationalism. Against this common view, we argue that value realism can be (...) combined with sentimentalism, and we suggest that a plausible account, which we call ‘sentimental realism’, and according to which evaluative judgements are closely related to emotions, can be developped. (shrink)

The so-called ‘central problem’ of internalism has been formulated like this: one cannot concurrently maintain the following three philosophical positions without inconsistency: internalism about practical reason, moral rationalism, and moral absolutism. Since internalism about practical reason is the most controversial of these, the suggestion is that it is the one that is best abandoned. In this paper, I point towards a response to this problem by sketching a deontic logic of internal reasons that deflates moral normativity to the normativity of (...) instrumental rationality, and provides support for the assertion that one can hold fast simultaneously to internalism and at least many of the intuitive commitments of liberal moral thinking. Crucial to the proposal is an account of the enkratic principle – I ought to attempt to realise what I ultimately desire – as the source of obligations we owe to ourselves. I attempt to show how from this, in conjunction with some plausible assumptions, obligations to others might be derived. (shrink)

This paper (in Finnish) concerns the ontological status of categories of entities. I argue that categories are not be considered as further entities. Rather, it is suffcient for entities belonging to the same category that they are in exactly the same formal ontological relations and have the same general category features.

This thesis inquires into our ‘human nature’ through an interdisciplinary approach that considers some of the radical changes in intellectual thought at those key points in Western culture in which this concept has been centrally deployed. The broad historical sweep that this study covers finds the preoccupation with defining who we are and what we are capable of inextricably linked with the focus, at most of the pivotal moments examined, on a dominant impulse to conceive human beings as moral creatures.

This Thesis reconsiders the prospects for an approach to global justice centring on the proposal that every human being should possess a certain bundle of goods, which would include certain members of a distinctive category: the category of capabilities. My overall aim is to present a clarified and well-developed framework, within which such claims can be made. To do this, I visit a number of regions of normative and metanormative theorising. I begin by introducing the motivations for the capability approach, (...) and clarifying some of its most distinctive features. Next, I focus on Martha Nussbaum's version of the approach, and identify several problems therein. The most important concerns epistemology, and especially the challenges that constructivist theories pose. The middle part of the Thesis presents an alternative, based on the work of John McDowell, which I argue has superior prospects. Then, I turn to two further problems: that of making sense of the universalistic aspirations of cosmopolitanism, and that of integrating the microscopic prescriptions of ethics with the macroscopic analyses of political philosophy. Using the Aristotelian interpretation of its core framework that I have developed, I conclude that the capability approach can provide compelling answers to important questions about global justice. (shrink)

The book has two interrelated objectives. One objective is meta-theoretical and concerns the exploration of theoretical debates connected to issues of studying society and environmental problems; another objective is empirical/analytical, referring to the analysis of "green" public participation in the electricity and waste sectors in Sweden, and partly in the Netherlands as well as the UK. The metatheoretical part draws the conclusion that the ontology of critical realism, combined with a problem-subjectivist tenet, is a particularly fruitful basis for the social (...) sciences in order to provide an understanding environmental conflicts. The empirical questions refer to preconditions and obstacles to public participations in the "greening" of the domestic practices related to electricity and waste. Methodologically, the empirical part is based on a combination of statistical data and comparative case study research, conducted through semi-structured interviews with local authorities, housing organizations, energy companies, a windpower cooperative, and households. The challenges of providers are divided into making visible, making acceptable, and making doable, based on both material and socio-political characteristics of the sectors. Households, in turn, face the challenges of constructing combinations of green identity as a foundation of their motivation: ecological, environmental, economic, and social green identities. The study shows how differences in identity-combinations across cases-although materially influenced-are rarely materially determined in any irrevocable way. Instead, policy reform may substantially strengthen the social support of action-motivating combinations of green identities. (shrink)

The law of England and Wales provides that an adult with capacity has the right to refuse medical treatment both contemporaneously and in an advance refusal. Legislation separates general advance refusals of treatment from advance refusals of life-sustaining treatment. The law, outlined in ss.24 to 26 of the Mental Capacity Act 2005, is stricter for creation of the latter. These sections brought with them a new age of interests by purporting to elevate individual autonomy as the primary concern. Beginning with (...) the classical tale of Odysseus and a general discussion of the value to be found in a law seeking to preserve individual autonomy, this thesis seeks to act as a critique of the current enactment in practice. The provisions are already under-used and under-applied; without change, they may never reach the stage where they are ethically and practically viable. It is argued that the advance refusals provisions are not taking full effect due to a combination of lacking moral grounding and general dismissal of key ethical dilemmas at the forefront of application. Building on this, the moral basis for this thesis is found in Alan Gewirth’s Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC) which links directly with the general application of human rights. The PGC becomes a compass for determining how best to treat persons when addressing the three most prominent challenges faced by the 2005 Act which are: the debate between the conferred right of autonomy versus the right to life; the issue of personhood; and, the personal identity problem. Ultimately, unless framework provisions are strengthened, and the Mental Capacity Act 2005 is rethought in light of prominent ethical, legal and social considerations, the constraints of the Act on paper will continue to suppress the important underlying values promulgating individual autonomy. (shrink)

The goal of this thesis is to create a distinctively Aristotelian-Thomistic ethical schema. I shall do this in four stages. First, in chapter one, I am going to present a summary of Aristotelian metaphysics. I will present a slightly Thomistic take on Aristotelian metaphysics specifically when it comes to the distinction between accidental and substantial form. However, I will present a more classically Aristotelian account when it comes to the source of teleology. Along the way I will explore whether science (...) can disprove any aspects of Aristotelian metaphysics. In particular, I will examine whether science can show that there are no final causes, and whether evolution poses problems for the Aristotelian concept of form and essence in biology. Second, in chapter two, I shall explain the nature of goodness within this metaphysical schema. I will also engage with competing accounts of the nature of goodness and will argue that my Aristotelian account is superior. Third, in chapter three, I will list and defend my account of the basic goods. I will also explain why certain things, such as pleasure and freedom, are not included in my list of the basic goods. I will then explain how and why they do fit into my schema. Finally, in chapter four, I will move onto duties. I will show how we can derive a list of pro tanto duties from the Aristotelian ethical schema. Along the way I will also briefly sketch out an account of human rights. My ethical theory will differ from many contemporary neo-Aristotelians in that it will place emphasis on, and smoothly follow from, Aristotelian metaphysics. At the same time, my ethical theory will differ from more traditional neo-Aristotelians and the medieval neo-Aristotelians in the way that it reconciles an Aristotelian ethical schema with a non-natural account of goodness and a reasons-based account of obligation. (shrink)

A view inherited from Max Weber states that purposive rational action, value rational action and affective action are three distinct types of social action that can compete, oppose, complement or substitute each other in social explanations. Contrary to this statement, I will defend the view that these do not constitute three different types of social actions, but that social actions always seem to concurrently involve rationality, normativity and affectivity. I show this by discussing the links between rational actions and consequentialism (...) and non-consequentialism, and by elaborating on certain major relationships between rationality, normativity and emotions. (shrink)