Our pains can be more or less intense, our mental imagery can be more or less vivid, our perceptual experiences can be more or less striking. These degrees of intensity of conscious experiences are all manifestations of a phenomenal property I call mental strength. In this article, I argue that mental strength is a domain-general phenomenal magnitude; in other words, it is a phenomenal quantity shared by all conscious experiences that explains their degree of felt intensity. Mental strength has been (...) largely overlooked in favor of mental states’ type, representational contents, domain-specific phenomenology, or processes such as attention. Considering mental strength in our reflections about the mind illuminates debates about the relation of representational contents and phenomenal character, and it also helps address questions about the structure and functions of consciousness. Mental strength provides a unifying construct to model what is shared in the phenomenology of different types of conscious experiences. (shrink)

El presente artículo tiene como objetivo señalar el procedimiento, que Jean Paul Sartre lleva a cabo en su primera obra filosófica, La trascendencia del ego. A nuestro juicio, esta obra al igual que El ser y la nada tiene como fundamento metodológico la llamada “ontología fenomenológica”. Con el fin de fundamentar esta tesis señalamos que el ego trascendente y el cogito tienen el mismo sentido ontológico que el ser-en-sí y ser-para-sí.

Through the concept of enjoyment in Levinas, this paper examines the phenomenological and ontological dimension of everyday aesthetics. Enjoyment, in Levinas, forms an essential element in the constitution of the subjectivity of the human being and is no longer to be seen as a moment of ‘inauthenticity’ or ‘alienation’. The experience of the objects of everyday experience is not related to that of objects of representation or of tools, but rather to that of a system of nourishment into which the (...) subject is integrated, as in an ‘element’ or ‘atmosphere’. This constitutive closeness of enjoyment indicates the fundamental difference between what we understand as everyday aesthetics and other aesthetics characterised by contemplation or disinterest. (shrink)

Through the concept of enjoyment in Levinas, this paper examines the phenomenological and ontological dimension of everyday aesthetics. Enjoyment, in Levinas, forms an essential element in the constitution of the subjectivity of the human being and is no longer to be seen as a moment of ‘inauthenticity’ or ‘alienation’. The experience of the objects of everyday experience is not related to that of objects of representation or of tools, but rather to that of a system of nourishment into which the (...) subject is integrated, as in an ‘element’ or ‘atmosphere’. This constitutive closeness of enjoyment indicates the fundamental difference between what we understand as everyday aesthetics and other aesthetics characterised by contemplation or disinterest. (shrink)

It is relevant to interpret the perception that students with disabilities, teachers, and managers have about an inclusive educational program, to identify and describe the facilitators and barriers during the training of those students; analyze the relevance of the inclusive program from the perceptions of the participating actors; and assess the program's supports from the perception of students with disabilities. This is a mixed investigation of sequential design and phenomenological approach carried out through surveys and in-depth interviews with the actors.

En este estudio intentamos aportar una clarificación sobre la constitución del objeto estético a partir de un análisis de dicho objeto en general (basado en las investigaciones fenomenológicas de R. Ingarden). Luego, indagamos cómo ocurre esta constitución en el caso concreto de La Tierra Baldía con toda su riqueza poética y sus valores estéticos. Particularmente, investigamos cómo es dado concretamente a nuestra conciencia el fenómeno estético de esta obra de arte literaria.

In this short paper, I argue that the phenomenology of moral judgment is not unified across different areas of morality (involving harm, hierarchy, reciprocity, and impurity) or even across different relations to harm. Common responses, such as that moral obligations are experienced as felt demands based on a sense of what is fitting, are either too narrow to cover all moral obligations or too broad to capture anything important and peculiar to morality. The disunity of (...) class='Hi'>moral phenomenology is, nonetheless, compatible with some uses of moral phenomenology for moral epistemology and with the objectivity and justifiability of parts of morality. (shrink)

In this paper, I address the what, the how, and the why of moral phenomenology. I consider first the question What is moral phenomenology?, secondly the question How to pursue moral phenomenology?, and thirdly the question Why pursue moral phenomenology? My treatment of these questions is preliminary and tentative, and is meant not so much to settle them as to point in their answers’ direction.

In the philosophy of mind, the study of mental life has tended to focus on three central aspects of mental states: their representational content, their functional role, and their phenomenal character. The representational content of a mental state is what the state represents, what it is about; its functional role is the role it plays within the functional organization of the subject’s overall psychology; its phenomenal character is the experiential or subjective quality that goes with what it is like, from (...) the inside, to be in it. The study of this third aspect of mental life is known as phenomenology. Thus, moral phenomenology is the study of the experiential dimension of our moral inner life – of the phenomenal character of moral mental states. (shrink)

This paper distinguishes between two senses of the term “ phenomenology ”: a narrow sense and a broader sense. It claims, with particular reference to the moral sphere, that the narrow meaning of moral phenomenology cannot stand alone, that is, that moral phenomenology in the narrow sense entails moral intentionality. The paper proceeds by examining different examples of the axiological and volitional experiences of both virtuous and dutiful agents, and it notes the correlation (...) between the phenomenal and intentional differences belonging to these experiences. The paper concludes with some reflections on how the focus on the broader sense of “ phenomenology ” serves to provide a more precise sense of what we might mean by “ moral phenomenology.”. (shrink)

Moral phenomenology is the dedicated study of the experiential dimension of our moral inner life – of the phenomenal character of moral mental states. Many different questions arise within moral phenomenology, but three stand out. The first concerns the scope of moral experience: How much of our moral mental life is experienced by us? The second concerns the nature of moral experience: What is it like to undergo the various kinds of (...) moral experience we have? The third concerns the theoretical ​significance of moral experience: How might our understanding of moral experience impact central debates in moral philosophy? This entry considers each of these in turn. (shrink)

Do the introspectively ascertainable aspects of our moral experiences carry ontological objective purport—portraying reality as containing worldly moral properties and facts, thus supporting moral realism? Horgan and Timmons answer this question in the negative, arguing that their non-realist view, cognitivist expressivism, can accommodate the introspectively ascertainable moral phenomenology just as well as realism can—where accommodating the phenomenology means accounting for it without construing it as misleading or erroneous. If sound, this constitutes an important defense (...) of cognitivist expressivism, undermining a central attraction of realism. They thus pose a challenge to realists to identify any aspects of moral phenomenology that cannot be accommodated by expressivism and instead favor realism. I here take up that challenge, in two stages. First, I argue that cognitivist expressivism does not after all capture certain important aspects of the phenomenology of the sort of moral experience on which they focus, while realism does. This argument does not depend on claiming that the phenomenology has ontological objective purport. The claim so far is just that there is more to categorical authoritativeness than the expressivist account captures, though this leaves the door open to Kantian rationalism as well as realism. Second, I will go on to argue that although some aspects of moral phenomenology may only point to this broader range of views, others do specifically carry ontological objective purport and thus directly support realism insofar as we take the phenomenology seriously. (shrink)

Moral phenomenology, as i will use the term in this paper, is the study of our experience of morality. It is the study of morality “as experienced from the first-person point of view,” 1 the study of the “what-it-is-like features of concrete moral experiences,” 2 the study of introspectively accessible features that can be discerned by “a direct examination of the data of men’s moral consciousness.” 3A crucial part of moral phenomenology is the study (...) of what it is like to make a moral judgment. This part of moral phenomenology seeks to delineate the introspectively accessible mental features that are essentially involved in judging that an act ought or ought not to be performed, and in judging that a person is virtuous or vicious.An adequate moral theory must account for the phenomenological facts. It must accommodate or explain in some way the introspectively accessible mental features essentially involved in our moral experience. An adequate moral theory must cohere with what it is like to make moral judgments.It has been common for philosophers to claim that their moral theories are superior to others because their moral theories better account for our experience of moral judgment. In sections 2 and 3 of this paper, I will show how Francis Hutcheson and David Hume used phenomenological claims of this sort to argue that their sentimentalist moral theories were superior to rationalist and egoist rivals.But Hutcheson’s and Hume’s phenomenological arguments do not succeed, or so I will argue in section 4. They fail to show that the phenomenology of moral judgment constitutes a strong reason for us to accept sentimentalism and reject rationalism and egoism. I think, moreover, that this failure is the typical fate of moral phenomenological arguments in general. This is because I think the introspectively. (shrink)

Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons’ work implies four criteria that moral phenomenology must be capable of meeting if it is to be a viable field of study that can make a worthwhile contribution to moral philosophy. It must be (a) about a unifed subject matter as well as being, (b) wide, (c) independent, and (d) robust. Contrary to some scepticism about the possibility or usefulness of this field, I suggest that these criteria can be met by elucidating (...) the very foundations of moral experience or what I call a moral ontology of the human person. I attempt to partially outline such an ontology by engaging with Robert Sokolowski's phenomenology of the human person from a moral perspective. My analysis of Sokolowski's thought leads me to five core ideas of a moral ontology of the human person: well-being, virtue, freedom, responsibility, and phronesis. Though I do not by any means boast a complete moral ontology of the human person, I go on to demonstrate how the account I have presented, or something like it, can go a long way to helping moral phenomenology meet the criteria it requires to be a viable and worthwhile pursuit. (shrink)

Many moral philosophers in the Western tradition have used phenomenological claims as starting points for philosophical inquiry; aspects of moral phenomenology have often been taken to be anchors to which any adequate account of morality must remain attached. This paper raises doubts about whether moral phenomena are universal and robust enough to serve the purposes to which moral philosophers have traditionally tried to put them. Persons’ experiences of morality may vary in a way that greatly (...) limits the extent to which moral phenomenology can constitute a reason to favor one moral theory over another. Phenomenology may not be able to serve as a pre-theoretic starting point or anchor in the consideration of rival moral theories because moral phenomenology may itself be theory-laden. These doubts are illustrated through an examination of how moral phenomenology is used in the thought of Ralph Cudworth, Samuel Clarke, Joseph Butler, Francis Hutcheson, and Søren Kierkegaard. (shrink)

Moral phenomenology is concerned with the elements of one's moral experiences that are generally available to introspection. Some philosophers argue that one's moral experiences, such as experiencing oneself as being morally obligated to perform some action on some occasion, contain elements that (1) are available to introspection and (2) carry ontological objectivist purportargument from phenomenological introspection.neutrality thesisthe phenomenological data regarding one's moral experiences that is available to introspection is neutral with respect to the issue of (...) whether such experiences carry ontological objectivist purport. (shrink)

In a series of publications, Tamar Gendler has argued for a distinction between belief and what she calls ?alief?. Gendler's argument for the distinction is a serviceability argument: the distinction is indispensable for explaining a whole slew of phenomena, typically involving ?belief-behaviour mismatch?. After embedding Gendler's distinction in a dual-process model of moral cognition, I argue here that the distinction also suggests a possible (dis)solution of what is perhaps the organizing problem of contemporary moral psychology: the apparent tension (...) between the inherently motivational role of moral judgments and their manifestly objectivistic phenomenology. I argue that moral judgments come in two varieties, moral aliefs and moral beliefs, and it is only the former that are inherently motivating and only the latter that have an objectivistic phenomenology. This serves to both bolster the case for the alief/belief distinction and shed new light on otherwise well-trodden territory in metaethics. I start with an exposition of the moral-psychological problem (?1) and a discussion of Gendler's alief/belief distinction (?2). I then apply the latter to moral judgments in an attempt to dissolve the former (?3). I close with discussion of the upshot for our understanding of moral thought, moral motivation, and moral phenomenology (?4). (shrink)

This dissertation offers a phenomenology of that mode of self-interpretation in which it becomes possible for an interpreter to intentionally participate in the production of moral norms to which the interpreter himself or herself feels bound. Part One draws on Richard Rorty's notion of the "ironist" in order to thematize the phenomenon I call "moral friction"; a condition in which an interpreter becomes explicitly aware of the historical and cultural contingencies of their own moral vocabularies, practices, (...) and concerns and as a result find themselves incapable of feeling the normative weight implicit in these. Part Two draws on Heidegger's existential analytic of human being, Gadamer's development of Hermeneutic Phenomenology, and Hegel's notion of "sublation" in order to map how novel interpretations can irreversibly displace the coherence of older interpretations. I call this form of interpretation "moral phenomenology." Finally, in Part Three, I utilize a selective phenomenology of musical improvisation to plot the unique temporal orientation of self-interpretation that results from intentionally deploying this irreversible displacement of older interpretations that involve normative moral implications. I call the form of life that is marked by this hermeneutic mode the "improviser." The result is a description of a form of life in which it becomes possible to explicitly participate in the production of moral norms within a historical and culturally contingent context that nevertheless preserves standards of rational justification for normative moral judgment without the need for atemporal first principles. The availability of this mode of self-interpretation displaces the sharp distinction between non-normative descriptive phenomenology and normative moral reasoning by placing the latter within a non-teleological historical practice that engages in the production of interpretations which irreversibly displace older interpretations--a practice that is governed by the critical cultivation of contingent moral norms within the open investigation into the good life for human being. (shrink)

This article puts Buddhist moral phenomenology in dialogue with ethical veganism to propose a new way of thinking about animal ethics. It first defines ethical veganism and outlines Buddhist moral phenomenology before articulating what a moral phenomenological approach to ethical veganism looks like. It then provides some examples of this approach to ethical veganism in both Tibetan and Western settings to demonstrate its viability. It concludes by thinking through some of the implications of a (...) class='Hi'>moral phenomenological approach to ethical veganism and argues that moral phenomenology is an exemplary mode of understanding and establishing ethical veganism. (shrink)

Many researchers in moral psychology approach the topic of moral judgment in terms of value—assessing outcomes of behaviors as either harmful or helpful which makes the behaviors wrong or right, respectively. However, recent advances in motivation science suggest that other motives may be at work as well—namely truth (wanting to establish what is real) and control (wanting to manage what happens). In this review, we argue that the epistemic experiences of observers of (im)moral behaviors, and the perceived (...) epistemic experiences of those observed, serve as a groundwork for understanding how truth and control motives are implicated in the moral judgment process. We also discuss relations between this framework and recent work from across the field of moral psychology, as well as implications for future research. (shrink)

This paper discusses the issue of German moral responsibility for the Holocaust in the light of the thesis of Daniel Goldhagen and others that inherited negative stereotypes of Jews and Jewishness were prime causal factors contributing to the genocide. It is argued that in so far as the Germans of the Third Reich were dupes of an ''hallucinatory ideology,'' they strikingly exemplify the ''paradox of moral luck'' outlined by Thomas Nagel, that people are not morally responsible for what (...) they are and are not responsible for. The implications of this paradox for the appraisal of German guilt are explored in relation to the views of a number of recent writers on the Holocaust. (shrink)

In the eyes of many “classical” phenomenologists, Kantianism has seemed to invite individuals to leave the rich, complexly motivated environment of lived experience in favor of a shadowy, formal kingdom of abstract duties and rights. Yet there have been notable attempts within the phenomenological tradition to articulate a richer vision of Kantian moral consciousness and to exhibit, from a first-person perspective, the shape of mental life and the standing dispositions that befit membership in a Kantian kingdom of ends. Here (...) I offer two such competing paradigms of Kantian moral consciousness: on the one hand, the responsive, situational Kantian moral consciousness that recent commentators have reconstructed from Martin Heidegger’s work, and on the other hand, the very different, explicitly cosmopolitan Kantian moral consciousness traced in Hannah Arendt’s conception of an “enlarged mentality.” While each is arguably a legitimately Kantian view, these alternative models of moral consciousness offer considerably different spirits of Kantianism with different benefits and detriments, and each places very different cognitive and moral burdens on agents. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article analyzes the moral-psychological stakes of Jay Garfield's reading of Buddhist ethics as moral phenomenology and applies that thesis to the pedagogical mechanisms of the Tibetan Buddhist lojong tradition. I argue that moral phenomenology requires that the practitioner work on a part of her subjectivity not ordinarily accessible to agential action: the phenomenological structures that condition experience. This makes moral phenomenology a highly ambitious ethical project. I turn to lojong as an example (...) of a Buddhist practice that claims to accomplish this ambitious task. As a training toward the ethical ideal of bodhicitta, lojong utilizes practices of meditation and contemplation to disrupt the habitual, affective responses that arise from the conventional phenomenological orientation to the world, replacing them with imagined responses of radically compassionate altruism. This ultimately inculcates a transformation of the phenomenological structures that underlie both ethical action and conscious experience, fulfilling the aim of moral phenomenology. (shrink)

Recently, a number of phenomenological approaches to experiential justification emerged according to which an experience's justificatory force is grounded in the experience’s distinctive phenomenology. The basic idea is that certain experiences exhibit a presentive phenomenology and that they are a source of immediate justification precisely by virtue of their presentive phenomenology. Such phenomenological approaches usually focus on perceptual experiences and mathematical intuitions. In this paper, I aim at a phenomenological approach to ethical experiences. I shall show that (...) we need to make a distinction between evaluative experiences directed at concrete cases and ethical intuitions directed at general principles. The focus will be on evaluative experiences. I argue that evaluative experiences constitute a sui generis type of experience that gain their justificatory force by virtue of their presentive evaluative phenomenology. In Sect. 1, I introduce and motivate the phenomenological idea that certain experiences exhibit a justification-conferring phenomenology. In Sect. 4, I apply this idea to morally evaluative experiences. In Sect. 5, I suggest that certain epistemic intuitions should be considered epistemically evaluative experiences and I outline a strong parallelism between ethics and epistemology. (shrink)

Bodhicaryåvatåra was composed by the Buddhist monk scholar Íåntideva at Nalandå University in India sometime during the 8th Century CE. It stands as one the great classics of world philosophy and of Buddhist literature, and is enormously influential in Tibet, where it is regarded as the principal source for the ethical thought of Mahåyåna Buddhism. The title is variously translated, most often as A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life or Engaging in the Bodhisattva Deeds, translations that follow the (...) canonical Tibetan translation of the title of the book (Byang chub sems pa’i spyod pa la ‘jug pa) and the commentarial tradition of Tibet. But that translation itself is a bit of a gloss on the original Sanskrit, and I think that a more natural English rendering of the Sanskrit title is simply How to Lead an Awakened Life, and that indeed describes the content of the text admirably. Taking this as the title of the text might also issue in a kind of gestalt shift in our view of the text, allowing us to see it not so much as a characterization of the extraordinary moral life of a saint, but as a guide to moral development open to any of us. So, let’s take that as the English title for now. (shrink)

In this study, I examine the significance of the trace and its legibility in the phenomenologies of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, showing that this trope plays a more significant role in Merleau-Ponty's thinking than has been recognized heretofore and that it constitutes a crucial point of contact between Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. But this point of contact is also, in both their philosophies, a site where their thinking is compelled to confront its limits and the enigmas involved in the description of the (...) topography of a hermeneutical flesh. It is argued that the significance of the trace consists in its alterity, its registering and inscribing in the very matter of the flesh an imperative spiritual assignment: the morally binding hold of the other person on my capacity to be responsive to the other's needs and bear responsibility for the other's welfare. The retrieval or recuperation of the trace, which, I argue, is inscribed as a certain predisposition in what, borrowing from Merleau-Ponty, we might call the prepersonal topology of the flesh, would thus constitute a task of the utmost importance for the formation of the moral self. However, given the paradoxical temporality of the trace and the hermeneutical nature of its legibility, the retrieval of the trace is not actually possible. Nevertheless, the attempt to retrieve it - one's commitment to retrieving it - is an absolutely imperative existential task, determining the character of the moral self. In both Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, however, the problematic nature of this recuperative project is manifested in the ambiguous, equivocal modality of their rhetoric, supposedly engaged in the phenomenological description of the primordial 'inscription', but oscillating, in fact, undecidably between descriptive and prescriptive, constative and performative, literal and metaphorical modes of discourse. It is argued that this, far from being a fault, is necessitated by the hermeneutic nature of the trace, which requires that the description be invocative and evocative, provoking a deep transformation in experience that would make the description true. It accordingly becomes clear that and why the moral phenomenologies of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, depending as they must on a metaphorical interaction between language and experience, cannot function within the framework of the traditional correspondence theory of truth. (shrink)

To explain evaluation we need to take into account the perspective of an evaluator, we need to turn to phenomenological approach in moral theory. This is the approach proposed by John McDowell. According to him, we need to approach to the question ‘How to live right?’ via the concept of a virtuous person. To lendsupport to his views McDowell employs Wittgensteinean philosophy that could be a good basis for establishing moral phenomenology as a metaethical approach to (...) class='Hi'>moral phenomena. First of all, introducing the notion of language-game we can provide a metaethical explanation of moral terms referring to roles they play in certain language-games. From this point of view there is no difference between moral terms and other terms. But understanding a language-game not just as a model of a certain kind of behavior formed by external observer, but as a form of life we can capture moral phenomena form within. The language-game considered as the form of life allows us to discern certain phenomena as moral ones. That is why trying to answer the question about right livingfrom the virtuous person perspective we should be involved in a language game that carves moral phenomena from the brute stuff of the world and forms a certain kind of sensitivity in us to these properties. Wittgensteinean philosophy also allows us to answer the question: how can mere knowledge of situation make us behave? Following Wittgensteinean ideas, we can present moral knowledge as something uncodifiable, which is exhibited in our everyday life, in our way of living and ‘going on doing the same thing’. It is impossible to understand this knowledge from the external point of view. To see how this knowledge can motivate someone, we need to capture the way the person appreciates a particular situation. (shrink)

Metaethical constructivists have proposed many arguments against mind-independence moral realism. In this paper I resume the constructivist critique against realism on the grounds of considerations stemming from moral phenomenology. My claim is that constructivism, in contrast to moral mind-independence theories such as moral realism or quasi-realism, fares better in accounting for the phenomenology of moral practice and discourse. Given the importance of phenomenological investigation for metaethical theorizing as such, my argument shows that there (...) is good reason to prefer constructivism over any kind of theory that endorses the mind-independence of morality. (shrink)

Some thoughts on our moral experience and moral phenomenology, asking whether it can be justified or whether it is misleading.

오늘날 인간배아의 도덕적 지위 문제는 의생명과학기술의 발전에 힘입어 보다 첨예한 문제로 대두되고 있다. 배아줄기세포 연구는 재생의료의 혁신을 가능하게 했지만 연구와 사용의 과정에서 배아가 파괴될 수밖에 없다는 점에서 윤리적 문제를 제기한다. 배아의 도덕적 지위는 도덕적 지위의 근거를 무엇으로 보느냐에 달려 있다. 이에 우리는 먼저 도덕적 지위의 근거에 대해 지금까지 제시된 몇 가지 대표적인 이론들을 그 핵심적 논리와 각각의 문제점을 확인하는 방식으로 검토했다. 우리는 지금까지 제시된 견해들이 나름의 인간 개념에 기초해 있다는 점에 주목했고, 이 인간 개념(들)이 과연 타당한가를 물었다. 분석의 결과 도덕적 (...) 지위 문제에 접근하는 기존의 인간 개념(들)에 문제가 있음을 깨달았고, 메를로-퐁티의 철학에서 이를 대체할, 인간과 인간 신체를 이해하는 새로운 관점을 발견했다. 메를로-퐁티는 인간을 신체와 의식의 결합물로 파악한 것이 아니라 ‘신체’와 ‘의식’의 구분 이전에 존재하는 통일적 존재로 파악했다. 우리는 인간과 인간 신체에 대한 메를로-퐁티의 분석이 배아의 지위 문제에 대해 어떤 새로운 생각과 근본적인 해결의 실마리를 제공하는지를 밝혔다. 결론부에서 우리는 오늘의 의생명과학기술이 제기하는 문제들에 대해 우리의 분석이 가지는 의의를 논의했다. (shrink)

Moral phenomenology is (roughly) the study of those features of occurrent mental states with moral significance which are accessible through direct introspection, whether or not such states possess phenomenal character – a what-it-is-likeness. In this paper, as the title indicates, we introduce and make prefatory remarks about moral phenomenology and its significance for ethics. After providing a brief taxonomy of types of moral experience, we proceed to consider questions about the commonality within and distinctiveness (...) of such experiences, with an eye on some of the main philosophical issues in ethics and how moral phenomenology might be brought to bear on them. In discussing such matters, we consider some of the doubts about moral phenomenology and its value to ethics that are brought up by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Michael Gill in their contributions to this issue. (shrink)

The topic of this book is a fundamental philosophical question: why should I be moral? Philosophers have long been concerned with the legitimacy of morality's claim on us, especially with morality's ostensible aim to motivate certain actions of all persons unconditionally. While the problem of moral normativity - that is, the justification of the binding force of moral claims - has received extensive treatment analytic moral theory, little attention has been paid to the potential contribution that (...) phenomenology might make to this central debate in metaethics. -/- In The Phenomenology of Moral Normativity, William H. Smith takes up the question of morality's legitimacy anew, drawing contemporary moral philosophers, particularly Christine Korsgaard and Stephen Darwall, into conversation with present-day phenomenologists like John Drummond and the phenomenological philosophy of Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, and Emmanuel Levinas. -/- The results of this juxtaposition are surprising: utilizing a two-part account of moral normativity, Smith contends that the ground of morality itself is second-personal, rooted in the ethical demand intrinsic to other persons, while the ground for particular moral-obligations is first-personal, rooted in the subject's avowal or endorsement of certain moral norms within a concrete historical situation. Thus, Smith argues that phenomenological analysis allows us to make sense of an idea that has long held intuitive appeal, but that modern moral philosophy has been unable to render satisfactorily, namely, that the normative source of valid moral claims is simply other persons and what we owe to them. (shrink)

This research study used descriptive phenomenological methods to investigate and document the lived experience of altruism as described by moral exemplars. Six moral exemplars wrote descriptions of situations in which they engaged in spontaneous altruism. Altruism was defined for the purpose of this study as a motivational state with the ultimate goal of increasing another's welfare . These descriptions were then expanded and clarified through follow up interviews. The results of this descriptive phenomenological analysis produced two structures: the (...) structure of the lived experience of altruism as described by moral exemplars, and the structure of the lived experience of helping as described by moral exemplars. The differences between these two structures suggest that altruistically motivated pro-social behavior is more committed, extensive and effective than egoistically motivated helping, and results in a higher level of concern for the long-term well-being of the individuals helped. Although differentiated by primary motivations, altruistic or egoistic, both structures identify the motivating factors of empathy, personal historical life experiences, moral values, and personal identity as essential to the experience of assisting another individual in need. (shrink)

In a recent article appearing in this journal, Theresa Scavenius compellingly argues that the traditional “rational-individualistic” conception of responsibility is ill-suited to accounting for the sense in which moral agents share in responsibility for both contributing to the causes and, proactively, working towards solutions for climate change. Lacking an effective moral framework through which to make sense of individual moral responsibility for climate change, many who have good intentions and the means to contribute to solutions for climate (...) change tend to dismiss or put off addressing the root causes. With this tendency arises the practical problem that climate change calls for urgent global collective action, both in terms of mitigation and adaptation, in order to prevent global temperature rise from exceeding 2C and avoid worst case climate scenarios. In this paper, I develop a phenomenological theory of ecological responsibility which addresses the conceptual problem Scavenius brings out and contributes to clarifying the sense in which moral agents share responsibility for both the causes and solutions for climate change. To develop this theory, I draw from, combine, and transform insights from the late work of Husserl on open horizons, transcendental intersubjectivity, and genetic phenomenology with breakthroughs from Emmanuel Levinas in articulating an original, asymmetrical theory of unlimited, diachronic responsibility. In drawing from Husserl, I show how what Levinas describes as the source of a demand for unlimited, diachronic responsibility can be phenomenologically reinterpreted in terms of a horizon of indeterminacy. I then show how horizons of indeterminacy arise in phenomenological descriptions of both human and nonhuman entities in such a way that discloses the demand for responsibility as a broad-ranging demand for unlimited, diachronic ecological responsibility. An important implication of this phenomenological theory of ecological responsibility is that it contributes to clarifying the sense in which individual moral agents share in responsibility for long range collective moral problems such as climate change. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that a phenomenological account of moral sense-bestowal can provide valuable insight into the possibility of moral dilemmas. I propose an account of moral sense-bestowal that is grounded in the phenomenology of expression that Maurice Merleau-Ponty developed throughout the course of his philosophical work, and most explicitly in the period immediately following the publication of Phenomenology of Perception. Based on this Merleau-Pontian account of moral sense-bestowal, I defend the view that (...) there are genuine moral dilemmas, i.e., that we can be faced with situations of conflicting oughts that we cannot resolve without moral remainder. (shrink)

Moral judgment commonly depends on intuition. It is also true, though less widely agreed, that ethical theory depends on it. The nature and epistemic status of intuition have long been concerns of philosophy, and, with the increasing importance of ethical intuitionism as a major position in ethics, they are receiving much philosophical attention. There is growing agreement that intuition conceived as a kind of seeming is essential for both the justification of moral judgment and the confirmation of ethical (...) theories. This paper describes several importantly different kinds of intuition, particularly the episodic kinds often called seemings. This is done partly by sketching numerous examples of intuition. Intuitive seemings and moral judgments based on them differ in content, basis, epistemic authority, and phenomenology. The paper explores these four dimensions of intuition and, in doing so, compares moral intuition with moral perception. The overall aim is to clarify moral phenomenology both descriptively and epistemologically and to support the view that intuitions are often discriminative responses to experience and have justificatory power analogous to the power of sense-perceptions. (shrink)

This symposium collects together five essays reflecting on The Phenomenology of Moral Normativity by William H. Smith. This work is an original monograph bridging the phenomenological tradition and contemporary moral theory in an attempt to articulate a phenomenological theory of moral normativity. The first piece in the symposium, by Smith, offers a précis of the book’s argumentative structure, including its central theses, methodological commitments, and pluralistic orientation. The next three pieces provide critical assessments of the book’s (...) major narrative turns: Therese Cory writes in defense of moral realism and the third-person perspective, in response to Smith’s use of Korsgaard in the opening chapters of his book; Apple Igrek wonders whether the post-modern radicality of Levinas’s ethics have been compromised by Smith’s appropriation of Levinas; and Matthew Rellihan contends that Smith’s purported phenomenological theory of morality is inconsistent with a rigorous application of the phenomenological method. In the final piece, Smith responds to each critic in turn. This last offering defends Smith’s two-fold grounding of morality in a phenomenological account of the self and our responsibility to others, a reimagining of Heidegger’s fundamental ontology in light of Levinas’s ethical metaphysics. The theory unites authenticity with the face-to-face encounter, resoluteness with first-person reflective endorsement, and infinite responsibility to the other with second-personal address. These essays were first delivered at an author-meets-critics session hosted at Seattle University in the winter of 2012, then substantially revised and updated for this publication. (shrink)