Courts play a key role in deciding on public health controversies, but the legitimacy of judicial intervention remains highly controversial. In this article I suggest that we need to carefully distinguish between different reasons for persistent disagreement in the domain of public health. Adjudicating between public health controversies rooted in factual disagreements allows us to investigate more closely the epistemic capacities of the judicial process. While the critics typically point out the lack of appropriate expertise of judges—in particular with respect (...) to health and public health—we should not move too fast in inferring from this a generalized competence problem. This article offers four reasons for vindicating the importance of judicial intervention in factual disagreements: the relative independence of judges from the political establishment, the judicial commitment to evidence, the specific nature of judicial reasoning and an additional voice for the people in the policy-making process. (shrink)

In the context of a new wave of women’s activism for equality, the body is once again at the centre of the discussion today, in the USA and globally. Analysing American discourses about health and illness at the turn of the twenty-first century, Tasha Dubriwny has argued that the current narratives are dominated by neoliberal and postfeminist philosophies that have thrived in a framework of biomedicalisation and self-surveillance. What happens, then, when a successful feminist artist is diagnosed with uterine cancer? (...) How does Eve Ensler, author of The Vagina Monologues and founder of V-Day, face the fact that her life may have a painful ending? How does a woman so aware of her physical and psychological self come to terms with illness? Is she willing to put her political project aside to become a patient? Through a close reading of Ensler’s uterine cancer memoir In the Body of the World, and focusing particularly on its structure and narrative strategies, this article situates her work within the corpus of female literature about health and illness in the twenty-first century, exploring her meaning-making process in the light of the current tensions between feminism and postfeminism. (shrink)

The anal y sis is based on a the ory that con cen trates on com mu ni ca tion as the axis of in ter me di a tion be tween pol i tics and de moc - racy. It at tempts to an swer the ques tions: i) Should pol i tics be de fined as a com mu ni ca tive fact?, ii) Can so ci ety’s com mu ni ca tive sy..

This work describes the perceptions that Industrial Engineering students have regarding Colombian firms’ corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices. It also explores the incidence of gender, academic level, work experience and entrepreneurial intention on students’ vision. A survey with 70 CSR practices was designed based on previous research. Practices were grouped in ten dimensions: shareholders, customers, employees, suppliers, stakeholders, ethics, environment, legal, human rights and society. A representative sample of 142 students was used. Results show that students perceive a higher commitment (...) of Colombian companies with the shareholders dimension, while a lower with the society, ethics and environmental CSR practices. Work experience and entrepreneurial intention are the only variables affecting the identified perceptions. Thus, as they gain experience, their perceptions become more favorable. On the other hand, potential entrepreneurs have a more critical view on the companies’ commitment. Additionally, the fact that the academic level does not impact students’ perceptions constitutes a challenge for the academic program, since it is expected that this will affect the vision of future engineers. This is the first study that evaluates perceptions of Industrial Engineering students, who, given their object of study, will be responsible for designing and managing production processes in organizations of the future. Results respond to a specific context (students at a Colombian public university), therefore further research to explore the subject is recommended. (shrink)

Morally progressive social changes seem to have taken place with the onset of democratic governance, the abolition of slavery, the rise of gender equality, and other developments. This essay attempts to demonstrate that natural and objective moral facts are a plausible cause of some morally progressive social changes. Since this hypothesis is a version of naturalistic moral realism, I call it the Naturalist-Realist Hypothesis. To support the NRH, I argue that objective moral facts are natural (...) facts pertaining to the impartial promotion of well-being within a population of agents facing a social dilemma. I then describe a mechanism to explain how natural and objective moral facts so construed may cause some morally progressive social changes. I suggest that the NRH is a credible hypothesis because it is compatible with empirical findings from research on the evolution of moral cognition and on the sociology of mass political movements. (shrink)

Do moral properties figure in the best explanatory account of the world? According to a popular realist argument, if they do, then they earn their ontological rights, for only properties that figure in the best explanation of experience are real properties. Although this realist strategy has been widely influential—not just in metaethics, but also in philosophy of mind and philosophy of science—no one has actually made the case that moral realism requires: namely, that moral facts really (...) will figure in the best explanatory picture of the world. This issue may have been neglected in part because the influential dialectic on moral explanations between philosophers Gilbert Harman and Nicholas Sturgeon has focused debate on whether moral facts figure in relevant explanations. Yet as others have noted, explanatory relevance is irrelevant when it comes to realism: after all, according to the popular realist argument, it is inference to the best explanation of experience that is supposed to confer ontological rights. I propose to ask, then, the relevant question about moral explanations: should we think that moral properties will figure in the best explanatory account of the world? (shrink)

The nature of moral facts, and their relationship to rationality, imagination and sentiment, have been central and pressing issues in recent moral philosophy. In this paper, I discuss and criticise a meta-ethical theory put forward by Alison Denham, which views moral facts as being constituted by the responses of ideal, empathetic agents. I argue that Denham’s account is radically unstable, in that she has given us an account of the nature of such agents which is (...) inconsistent with an independently plausible principle relating to concept acquisition. I go on to discuss one line of defence that Denham might employ, but argue that taking such a line entails abandoning what she takes to be an important advantage of her account over rival ideal-observer theories such as Michael Smith’s. (shrink)

The overarching aim of this essay is to argue that moral realists should be "causalists" or claim that moral facts of certain kinds are causally efficacious. To this end, I engage in two tasks. The first is to develop an account of the sense in which moral facts of certain kinds are causally efficacious. After having sketched the concept of what I call a "configuring" cause, I contend that the exercise of the moral virtues (...) is plausibly viewed as a configuring cause. The second is to show that the causalist position I develop can withstand objections inspired by the work of Robert Audi and Jaegwon Kim. (shrink)

The challenge of Gilbert Harman that there are no moral facts is robust, to an extent extreme and counts most for the realists underline moral facts and moral explanations. The paper begins with the absorbing challenge posed by Harman that ends in some sort of skepticism. After a brief exposition of nature of moral facts, the paper focuses on another interesting squabble whether or not we conceive of serious moral explanation that bridges (...) the gap between theories/ principles, and our moral observations. In a separate section it has been shown that moral explanations are far too necessary for moral facts because moral facts need to have explanatory potency. Moral facts need to explain our observations of moral phenomena. The contentious issue has been addressed remarkably well by Nicholas Sturgeon and Brad Majors. I have a suggestion that cogency of ideas of moral facts and moral explanations depend among other things, on the conception of possible worlds. (shrink)

One cannot give too many or too frequent warnings against this laxity, or even mean cast of mind, which seeks its principle among empirical motives and laws; for, human reason in its weariness gladly rests on this pillow and in a dream of sweet illusions (which allow it to embrace a cloud instead of Juno) it substitutes for a morality a bastard patched up from limbs of quite diverse ancestry, which looks like whatever one wants to see in it but (...) not like virtue for him who has once seen virtue in her true form. (shrink)

An important part of ethics consists in the attempt to find a theoretical framework for the sincere moral discourse of ordinary people; to present, if possible, a consistent account of the ways in which such terms as “good,” “right,” “duty,” “obligation” are used in moral contexts. It is surprising that it should ever have been thought possible to account for such utterances as expressions of emotion. For the most part nothing could be less like the sighs, groans, shouts, (...) and chuckles with which we normally express emotion than are our assertions about right and wrong, good and bad; these are usually the outcome of careful consideration and they are almost invariably expressed in cognitive terms. That is, we describe ourselves as “thinking out what we ought to do,” “coming to a conclusion as to what is right,” “knowing the difference between right and wrong,” “recognizing our obligations,” “seeing our duty.” When we do employ “emotive” words in these contexts it is almost always for the purpose of expressing anger or remorse or disgust with regard to our own moral lapses or those of others. Moral utterances, in short, have all the appearance of being statements of fact, and statements, moreover, which cannot be made in other than moral terms. (shrink)

The purely retributive moral justification of punishment has a gap at its centre. It fails to explain why the offender should not be protected from punishment by the intuitively powerful moral idea that afflicting another person (other than to avoid a greater harm) is always wrong. Attempts to close the gap have taken several different forms, and only one is discussed in this paper. This is the attempt to push aside the ‘protecting’ intuition, using some more powerful intuition (...) specially invoked by the situations to which criminal justice is addressed. In one aspect of his complex defence of pure retributivism, Michael S. Moore attempts to show that the emotions of well-adjusted persons provide evidence of moral facts which justify the affliction of culpable wrongdoers in retribution for their wrongdoing. In particular, he appeals to the evidential significance of emotions aroused by especially heinous crimes, including the punishment-seeking guilt of the offender who truly confronts the reality of his immoral act. The paper argues that Moore fails to vindicate this appeal to moral realism, and thus to show that intrinsic personal moral desert (as distinct from ‘desert’ in a more restricted sense, relative to morally justified institutions) is a necessary and sufficient basis for punishment. Other theories of the role of emotions in morality are as defensible as Moore’s, while the compelling emotions to which he appeals to clinch his argument can be convincingly situated within a non-retributivist framework, especially when the distinction between the intuitions of the lawless world, and those of the world of law, is recognised. -/- . (shrink)

Opponents of physician-assisted suicide (PAS) maintain that physician withdrawal-of-life-sustaining-treatment cannot be morally equated to voluntary active euthanasia. PAS opponents generally distinguish these two kinds of act by positing a possible moral distinction between killing and allowing-to-die, ceteris paribus. While that distinction continues to be widely accepted in the public discourse, it has been more controversial among philosophers. Some ethicist PAS advocates are so certain that the distinction is invalid that they describe PAS opponents who hold to the distinction as (...) in the grip of ‘moral fictions’. The author contends that such a diagnosis is too hasty. The possibility of a moral distinction between active euthanasia and allowing-to-die has not been closed off by the argumentative strategies employed by these PAS advocates, including the contrasting cases strategy and the assimilation of doing and allowing to a common sense notion of causation. The philosophical debate over the doing/allowing distinction remains inconclusive, but physicians and others who rely upon that distinction in thinking about the ethics of end-of-life care need not give up on it in response to these arguments. (shrink)

A central and fundamental problem in moral philosophy is that of understanding how moral principles and theories can be justified. It involves finding rational solutions to both theoretical problems and to substantial moral questions . According to Moral Intuitionism, some normative judgments, usually called moral intuitions, justify moral principles and theories. Typically, moral intuitionists promise a method that is supposed to yield progress toward finding the answers to ethical disputes and controversies. ;I argue, (...) first, that all versions of moral intuitionism must assume that there are moral facts and that moral judgments are descriptions of these facts. Next, I consider whether these assumptions are defensible. I focus on an argument based on a claim that we have no reason to believe that any moral facts exist, because no such facts need to be postulated in our best explanations of anything. I analyze several recent replies to this line of attack, and I argue that none meets the challenge. ;Finally, I propose a reply which seems to meet a number of relevant theoretical requirements: it allows us to say that some moral judgments are true because they correspond to facts, and those judgments are sometimes justified. I argue, however, that even this version of moral realism has serious flaws. It implies that the content of moral language is community relative. That is, such sentences as 'Jews ought to be exterminated' have to be treated as ambiguous, expressing several different propositions, some true and some false. In consequence, when a Nazi issues such a judgment, he may be making a claim that is neither false nor unjustified. ;I conclude that Moral Intuitionism does not help to reach rational solutions to moral disputes and disagreements. Therefore, this view should be rejected, and we should look elsewhere for a method that would solve both theoretical and substantial problems of justification in ethics. (shrink)

Peter Railton argues that normative realism is justified because the non-moral goodness of an individual has explanatory uses. After having equated moral rightness with a kind of impersonal social rationality, he argues that rightness, so defined, helps to explain various social phenomena. If he is right, then moral realism would be justified, too. Railton’s argument fails, however, on both counts. Several crucial steps in his reasoning are unsupported and are likely to be false. The explanations he proposes (...) may be dismissed in favor of better explanations that do not use any normative or moral terms. Some of us may share RaiIton’s moral standards. There is no reason, however, to embrace his metaethical position as welI. His arguments do not support either normative or moral facts. (shrink)

Peter Railton argues that normative realism is justified because the non-moral goodness of an individual has explanatory uses. After having equated moral rightness with a kind of impersonal social rationality, he argues that rightness, so defined, helps to explain various social phenomena. If he is right, then moral realism would be justified, too. Railton’s argument fails, however, on both counts. Several crucial steps in his reasoning are unsupported and are likely to be false. The explanations he proposes (...) may be dismissed in favor of better explanations that do not use any normative or moral terms. Some of us may share RaiIton’s moral standards. There is no reason, however, to embrace his metaethical position as welI. His arguments do not support either normative or moral facts. (shrink)

It seems impossible that organisms selected to maximize their genetic legacy could also be moral agents in a world in which taking risks for strangers is sometimes morally laudable. Brian Zamulinski argues that it is possible if morality is an evolutionary by-product rather than an adaptation.Evolutionary Intuitionism presents a new evolutionary theory of human morality. Zamulinski explains the evolution of foundational attitudes, whose relationships to acts constitute moral facts. With foundational attitudes and the resulting moral (...) class='Hi'>facts in place, he shows how they ground a plausible normative morality, give answers to meta-ethical questions, and provide an account of moral motivation. He explains the nature of moral intuitions and, thus, of our access to the moral facts. He shows that the theory makes confirmed empirical predictions, including the observable variation in moral views. The combination of intuitionism and evolutionary ethics enables Zamulinski to overcome the standard objections to both.Evolutionary Intuitionism is a unified theory of human morality that explains how an objective morality could develop naturally in a physical world like ours, among organisms like us. (shrink)

People can be uncertain in their moral judgments. Philosophers have argued that such uncertainty can either refer to the underlying empirical facts (empirical uncertainty) or to the normative evaluation of these facts itself (normative uncertainty). Psychological investigations of this distinction, however, are rare. In this paper, we combined factor-analytical and experimental approaches to show that empirical and normative uncertainty describe two related but different psychological states. In Study 1, we asked N = 265 participants to describe a (...) case of moral uncertainty and to rate different aspects of their uncertainty about this case. Across this wide range of moral scenarios, our items loaded onto three reliable factors: lack of information, unclear consequences, and normative uncertainty. In Study 2, we confirmed this factor structure using predefined stimulus material. N = 402 participants each rated eight scenarios that systematically varied in their degree of uncertainty regarding the consequences of the described actions and in the value conflict that was inherent to them. The empirical uncertainty factors were mainly affected by the introduction of uncertainty regarding consequences, and the normative uncertainty factor was mainly affected by the introduction of value conflict. Our studies provide evidence that the distinction between empirical and normative uncertainty accurately describes a psychological reality. We discuss the relevance of our findings for research on moral judgments and decision-making, and folk metaethics. (shrink)

Adorno's moral philosophy has often been accused of making aporetic prescriptions that are too taxing for moral agents. In this article, I defend his approach in terms of a theory of moral dilemmas. My guideline is Adorno's famous sentence that wrong life cannot be lived rightly. I argue that this claim is not distinctly prescriptive, as most of Adorno's critics believe, but is a claim about moral reality. Emphasizing realist aspects of his moral theory, I (...) suggest that wrong life is neither inconceivable nor an amoral or skeptical trope. Instead, Adorno's sentence about wrong life can be interpreted as a claim about the salience of particular moral facts. This, I conclude, allows Adorno to envisage moral reasons that motivate moral conduct case by case, although they are blocked overall. (shrink)

Within this paper, I examine Godless normative realism, a naturalistic explanation of morality given by Erik Wielenberg and determine whether the theory poses a threat to abductive moral arguments for the existence of God. In particular, I argue that Wielenberg’s theory is a possible explanation for the existence of moral facts and that it offers a motivation for one to act morally, but that theism, as a whole, remains a better explanation for the moral aspects of (...) the world. To do so, I defend the legitimacy of weak forms of DCT, identify a few areas in which Godless normative realism fails to explain moral aspects of the world, and conclude with a few reasons for thinking that the explanatory scope of theism is superior to that of Wielenberg’s theory. I conclude that abductive moral arguments for the existence of God remain largely unscathed by Godless normative realism. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that whether or not a world is good can be a contingent fact about the world that is not dependent upon that world's natural facts, or, indeed, upon anyother facts. If so, the property, good, does not supervene upon the facts of nature (or upon any other facts). My argument for this claimis that it is possible to view the very world in which we live (viz. the natural facts that (...) constitute it) as good and to view it as bad. (shrink)

Autonomy and ethics are related to each other in complex ways. The paper starts by distinguishing and characterizing three basic dimensions of this relation. It proceeds by arguing for the compatibility of moral realism with a due respect for human autonomy. Nevertheless, supernaturalist moral realism seems to pose a special challenge for the autonomy of ethics as a self-standing normative realm. The paper ends with some considerations on the role of divine authority both in metaethics and in the (...) general theory of value. (shrink)

In our everyday lives we struggle with the notions of why we do what we do and the need to assign values to our actions. Somehow, it seems possible through experience and life to gain knowledge and understanding of such matters. Yet once we start delving deeper into the concepts that underwrite these domains of thought and actions, we face a philosophical disappointment. In contrast to the world of facts, values and morality seem insecure, uncomfortably situated, easily influenced by (...) illusion or ideology. How can we apply this same objectivity and accuracy to the spheres of value and morality? In the essays included in this collection, Peter Railton shows how a fairly sober, naturalistically informed view of the world might nonetheless incorporate objective values and moral knowledge. This book will be of interest to professionals and students working in philosophy and ethics. (shrink)

Strawsonians about moral responsibility often claim that our practices of holding morally responsible fix the facts of moral responsibility, rather than the other way round. Many have argued that such ‘reversal’ claims have an unwelcome consequence: If our practices of holding morally responsible fix the facts of moral responsibility, does this not imply, absurdly, that if we held severely mentally ill people responsible, they would be responsible? We provide a new Strawsonian answer to this question, (...) and we explore the relation between reversal claims and (in)compatibilism. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: What Are Fundamental Principles of Justice? Justice, Human Needs and Moral Capacities The Social Role of a Conception of Justice Justice and the Human Good Methodological Remarks Notes.

At the heart of the argument of the Critique of Practical Reason, one finds Kant’s puzzling and much-criticized claim that the consciousness of the moral law can be called a ‘fact of reason’. In this essay, I clarify the meaning and the importance of this claim. I correct misunderstandings of the term ‘Factum’, situate the relevant passages within their argumentative context, and argue that Kant’s argument can be given a consistent reading on the basis of which the main questions (...) and criticisms can be answered. (shrink)

In the second Critique, Kant claims that the moral law is given as a fact of reason. In this paper, contra the standard view, I argue that there is a non-dogmatic way of defending this claim. And Kant’s principle of morality is widely taken to be a formal principle. How then can such a formal principle be reconciled with our substantial moral end? In this paper, I also argue that Kant’s principle of morality can be construed as a (...) formal principle in the sense that it provides correctness conditions for moral laws, rather than providing specific moral laws.Dans sa deuxième Critique, Kant affirme que la loi morale se donne comme un fait de raison. Dans cet article, contrairement à la position standard, nous prétendons qu’il existe une autre façon — non dogmatique — de défendre cette affirmation. Par ailleurs, le principe de moralité de Kant est largement considéré comme étant formel. Comment un tel principe formel peut-il être réconcilié avec notre fin morale substantielle? Nous soutenons également que le principe de moralité de Kant peut être interprété comme un principe formel dans le sens où il fournit des conditions d’acceptabilité pour les lois morales, et non des lois morales spécifiques. (shrink)

It deals with the question of what a moral judgment is. On the one hand, a satisfactory theory of moral judgments must take into account the descriptive character of moral judgments and the realistic language of morals. On the other hand, it must also meet the non-descriptive character of moral judgments that consists in the recommending or condemning element and in the fact that normative statements are derived from moral judgments. However, cognitivism and emotivism or (...) “normativism” are contradictory theories: If moral judgments are descriptive, it is not possible to deduce norms from them. But if one can deduce norms from moral judgments, they are not descriptive. As a solution to this problem, the paper suggests that moral judgments represent institutional facts; the corresponding theory is moral institutionalism. A moral institutional fact – “an act X is Y”, Y means “morally right” or “morally false” – is a hybrid of descriptive and prescriptive elements: It is stating a fact in descriptive language (“is”) and at the same time, it is short for the prescriptive constitutive rule “X is Y according to the moral rules of the language community C”. Institutional facts contain normative presuppositions without letting them appear in their grammatical form. Institutional facts are now (in relation to the language community C) objective and intersubjective and they can be generalized (cognitive aspect), although they cannot be reduced to brute physical or psychological facts, and it is also possible to deduce norms from them because they are built into them. The meta-ethical concept of moral institutionalism, which is evolved further in the paper, preserves the best intentions of emotivism and cognitivism without leading to contradiction. As a by-product, the article shows exactly the still undetected error in J. R. Searle’s alleged counterexample against the so-called naturalistic fallacy from “is” to “ought”. This lies in the normative “are” of the analytic premise or definition in “2a. All promises are [that is ought to be] acts of placing oneself under (undertaking) an obligation to do the thing promised”. (shrink)

Richard Brandt is one of the most influential moral philosophers of the second half of the twentieth century. He is especially important in the field of ethics for his lucid and systematic exposition of utilitarianism. This new book represents in some ways a summation of his views and includes many useful applications of his theory. The focus of the book is how value judgments and moral belief can be justified. More generally, the book assesses different moral systems (...) and theories of justice, and considers specific problems such as the optimal level of charity and the moral tenability of the criminal law. This book will be essential reading for all professional philosophers concerned with ethics, and will prove helpful to students as well. (shrink)

This volume provides an overview of the most recent developments in empirical investigations of morality and assesses their impact and importance for ethical thinking. It involves contributions of scholars both from philosophy, theology and empirical sciences with firm standings in their own disciplines, but an inclination to step across borders-in particular the one between the world of facts and the world of norms. Human morality is complex, and probably even messy-and this clean distinction becomes blurred whenever one looks more (...) closely at the various components that enable and influence our moral actions and ethical orientations. In that way, morality may indeed be located between facts and norms-and an empirically informed ethics that is less concerned with analytical purity but immerses into this moral complexity may be an important step to make the contributions of ethics to this world more valuable and relevant. (shrink)

The paper gives an interpretation of Kant's doctrine of the fact of reason against the background of a constructivist reading of his philosophy, which does not allow us to appeal to any indubitable facts. The fact of reason is the object of a philosophical account of the moral law forms the quid juris part of deduction or legitimization of the law. A more intuitive grasp of the fact is the phenomenon of reverence for duty which ordinary people grasp (...) in form of a feeling and emotion. (shrink)

In his book Ethics J. L. Mackie says that moral facts would have to be queer facts. I argue that an act’s hurting somebody is necessarily a reason, though not necessarily a conclusive reason, not to do that act; and that such hurting is a natural fact, not a queer fact. I try to defend this externalist position about this particular reason against internalists such as Mackie, and in particular against the position of Stephen Darwall in Impartial (...) Reason. (shrink)

In his book Ethics J. L. Mackie says that moral facts would have to be queer facts. I argue that an act’s hurting somebody is necessarily a reason, though not necessarily a conclusive reason, not to do that act; and that such hurting is a natural fact, not a queer fact. I try to defend this externalist position about this particular reason against internalists such as Mackie, and in particular against the position of Stephen Darwall in Impartial (...) Reason. (shrink)