Why Human Rights? addresses universal human rights as moral mandates – rights to justice that all m persons have by virtue of their humanity alone. These are not the legal rights of statutes and treaties, but moral rights of the kind Gandhi, King, and Mandela invoked to oppose unjust laws. All such rights presuppose three claims: (1) that some duties of justice apply universally, (2) that all human beings have equal moral (...) status, and (3) that states must protect or serve certain individual interests regardless of the societal impact of doing so. -/- Can these three premises be justified? Is the human equality claim, for example, rationally supportable, or is it no less faith-based than hierarchical doctrines like caste? This book explores the case for these foundational claims along with other philosophical controversies pertaining to human rights. Because these issues lie at the heart of moral and political philosophy, readers will also obtain a broad appreciation of these disciplines and their leading theorists, including Mill, Kant, Rawls, Sandel, Nozick, Rorty, and many others. Written in concise, jargon-free language, this book presents a high-relief map of the philosophical issues surrounding human rights. (shrink)

S. Matthew Liao argues here that children have a right to be loved. To do so he investigates questions such as whether children are rightholders; what grounds a child's right to beloved; whether love is an appropriate object of a right; and other philosophical and practical issues. His proposal is that all human beings have rights to the fundamental conditions for pursuing a good life; therefore, as human beings, children have human rights to the fundamental conditions for pursuing (...) a good life. Since being loved is one of those fundamental conditions, children thus have a right to be loved. Liao shows that this claim need not be merely empty rhetoric, and that the arguments for this right can hang together as a coherent whole. This is the first book to make a sustained philosophical case for the right of children to be loved. It makes a unique contribution to the fast-growing literature on family ethics, in particular, on children's rights and parental rights and responsibilities, and to the emerging field of the philosophy of human rights. (shrink)

The free world stands and falls on its cultural and religious policies, which affect not only the social structures within countries, but also the relations between people and peoples, generations and nations. No culture can exist in the abstract, and therefore no one can take an intelligent interest in cultural and religious affairs without a clear and consistent philosophy of life. However, after years of development we see a widening gap between people and groups in the same society caused by (...) different viewpoints on the same issues. The „fringe population” becomes more and more disillusioned because of unemployment or poverty. In this marginalized zone lie the strongest roots of radical issues, because these people do not have very much to lose. These people find hope and solutions in the radical ideas of extreme groups, i.e. in religious sects, in right-wing quasi-political groups (the Neo-Nazis) or left-wing groups (Neo-Communists). It may prove fruitful to look into the fundamentals of the tension between relativism and radicalism for a better understanding the role of morality and ethics in a globalized world. (shrink)

Personhood argument is important in moral philosophy specially to determine the moral status of a being (human or non-human) and organism. Justifying moral status of these is significant and necessary because without knowing whether those substances have moral status, it is difficult to sketch a moral considering framework for moral action towards them. There are a number of standards e.g. sentience, higher cognitive capacities, the capacity to flourish, sociability, the possession of life, viability, personhood (...) etc, to determine moral status of human beings, non-human beings and organisms. In biomedical ethics it is widely discussed whether the abnormal and marginal human beings, animals and foetus are moral agents. The beings and organisms which qualify the test for moral status are considered as moral agents and the society has moral obligations to ensure their moral rights. Personhood is one of the criteria to determine a being or organism as a moral agent. In this article I will examine whether the argument of personhood is acceptable in justifying the agency of different kinds of beings and organisms. It is because the personhood requirement for the moral status is too demanding as claimed by contemporary ethicists who work for animal rights and the rights of the foetus to flourish. (shrink)

Writers on human dignity roughly divide between those who stress the social origins of this concept and its role in marking rank and hierarchy, and those who follow Kant in grounding dignity in an abstract and idealized philosophical conception of human beings. In these lectures, Jeremy Waldron contrives to combine attractive features of both strands. In the first lecture, Waldron presents a conception of dignity that preserves its ancient association with rank and station, thus allowing him to tap rich historical (...) resources while avoiding what many perceive as the excessive abstraction and dubious metaphysics of the Kantian strand. At the same time he argues for a conception of human dignity that amounts to a generalization of high status across all human beings, and so attains the appealing universality of the Kantian position. The second lecture focuses particularly on the importance of dignity - understood in this way - as a status defining persons' relation to law: their presentation as persons capable of self-applying the law, capable of presenting and arguing a point of view, and capable of responding to law's demands without brute coercion. Together the two lectures illuminate the relation between dignity conceived as the ground of rights and dignity conceived as the content of rights; they also illuminate important ideas about dignity as noble bearing and dignity as the subject of a right against degrading treatment; and they help us understand the sense in which dignity is better conceived as a status than as a kind of value. (shrink)

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

This is the second volume of a two volume study on ethical issues concerning death. Volume 2 is subtitled Death and Whom to Save from It. In this second volume, Kamm deals with rights, duties, and status, developing an account of when it is permissible to harm others, especially when it is permissible to kill others. There is, however, a third book that must be considered if we are to fully understand the import of Volume 2 of Morality, Mortality. (...) This third book is entitled Creation and Abortion. It was originally intended to be included in Morality, Mortality, but, on account of considerations of length, the material on abortion was published separately by Oxford University Press in 1992. Creation and Abortion was prompted by Kamm's attempt to understand and modify Judith Thomson's "A Defense of Abortion.". (shrink)

This volume collects two lectures by Jeremy Waldron that were originally given as Berkeley Tanner Lectures along with responses to the lectures from Wai Chee Dimock, Don Herzog, and Michael Rosen; a reply to the responses by Waldron; and an introduction by Meir Dan-Cohen.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Peter Singer and Christian Ethics: Beyond Polarization by Charles E. CamosyWerner WolbertPeter Singer and Christian Ethics: Beyond Polarization CHARLES E. CAMOSY Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. 278 pp. $29.99Peter Singer’s “Copernican revolution” against a sanctity of life ethic may be regarded, from a Roman Catholic viewpoint, as an expression of the “culture of death” denounced by John Paul II. One must keep in mind, however, that “we know (...) that historically there have been times where those participating in discussions about ethics disagree deeply about theory, but nevertheless come to important and even broad agreement about applied or practical ethics” (179). The aim of Camosy’s book is to sketch the various areas of agreement and disagreement between Peter Singer and Catholic moral theology as well as the possibilities of working together.There are issues even about the subject of abortion on which Singer and the Church agree: that moral relativism is wrong; that it is seriously wrong to kill a person; that the right to privacy (see Roe vs. Wade) does not apply to acts harming others; and that the right to abortion is not a constitutional matter (chapter 1). Both positions see a connection between abortion and infanticide, but both draw different conclusions. The disagreements between them are about who is to count as a person, which Camosy comments on in the rest of chapter 1 (27–37). In the area of euthanasia, the Church and Singer share some skepticism about brain death (chapter 2). Camosy discusses the church’s position on one’s moral status at the end of life and the Roman Catholic understandings of ordinary and extraordinary means, acts, and omissions. Commenting on public policy in that field, Camosy gives some useful and convincing illustrations of the slippery slope effect in different countries that have legalized active euthanasia or assisted suicide (68–81).With regard to problems of killing, however, Helga Kuhse’s The Sanctity of Life Doctrine in Medicine (Oxford University Press, 1987) should perhaps have been considered. On the subject of acting and refraining, I would recommend Dieter Birnbacher’s Tun und unterlassen (Reclam 1995).Commenting on Singer’s championing of the moral status of nonhuman animals, Camosy points to elements in the Christian tradition that may support Singer’s issue of animal liberation (chapter 3). I wonder why the discussion concentrates on domestic animals and the problems of eating meat or [End Page 225] vegetarianism but omits problems of environmental ethics (e.g., ecological balance). Would the aim of avoiding animal harm include saving animals from predators? And if some animals are to be regarded as persons, we may get in trouble with our basic conviction of the equality (of the dignity) of human beings—as the debate on the margins of human life shows.Duties to the poor are not in dispute except for “partial preferences” (166) for members of our family, kinship, or country (chapter 4). Speaking of “partiality” in this context is, however, a bit misleading. Since no one can care for all people, preferences of an ordo caritatis (order of love) are a necessary part of a system of coordination from which—ideally—all humans can benefit. (Recall Augustine in De doctrina Christiana, 1.28–29: “The interests of society, however, and its common bonds will be best conserved if kindness be shown to each individual in proportion to the closeness of his relationship.”) Chapter 5, which compares Singer’s ethical theory with Catholic moral theology, would need more discussion (e.g., on double effect, object, and act), which I cannot cover within the limits of this review. Overall, Camosy’s book makes a valuable contribution to the dialogue between Christian and secular ethics.Werner WolbertUniversity of SalzburgCopyright © 2014 Society of Christian Ethics... (shrink)

Jurisprudence is the prudence of jus, law's consciousness and conscience. Throughout history, when thinkers wanted to contemplate the organisation of society or the relationship between authority and the subject, they turned to law. All great philosophers, from Plato to Hobbes, Kant, Hegel, Marx and Weber had either studied the law or had a deep understanding of legal operations. But jurisprudence is also the conscience of law, the exploration of law's justice and of an ideal law or equity at the bar (...) of which state law is always judged. Jurisprudence brings together 'is' and 'ought', the positive and the normative, law and justice. But after a long process of decay, legal theory is today characterised by cognitive and moral poverty. Jurisprudence has become restricted and academically peripheral, a guidebook to technocratic legalism and a legitimation of the existent. Critical jurisprudence returns to the classical tradition of a general philosophy of law and adopts a much wider concept of legality. It is concerned both with posited law and with the law of the law. All legal aspects of the economic, political, emotional and physical modes of production and reproduction of society are part of critical jurisprudence. This widening of scope allows a radical rethinking of the nature of rights, justice, sovereignty and judgement. A political philosophy of justice today must examine the political economy of law; transitions from Empire to nation; ideological and imaginary constructions through which we understand ourselves and relate to others; ways in which gender, race or sexuality create forms of identity that both discipline bodies and offer sites of resistance. Law's complicity with political oppression, violence and racism has to be faced before it is possible to speak of a new beginning for legal thought, which in turn is the necessary precondition for a theory of justice. Critical Jurisprudence offers an ethics of law against the nihilism of power and an aesthetics of existence for the melancholic lawyer. (shrink)

There are two popular ways of explaining why a person has authority over her own gender identity: epistemic FPA and ethical FPA. Both have problems. Epistemic FPA attributes to the self-identifier an unrealistic degree of doxastic reliability. Ethical FPA implies the existence of an unqualified obligation not to reject which is too strong to be plausible. This essay offers a third explanation called “weak FPA” and investigates how far first-person authority reaches in terms of grounding rights and obligating others. (...) Weak FPA doesn’t obligate one not to reject but it implies that when self-identification can be satisfactorily defended against attempted defeaters, the self-identifier has the right to recognition, which entails the respect and all other legal and social rights any other self-identifier receives from her peers. (shrink)

This paper provides a new analysis and critique of Rawlsian public reason’s handling of the abortion question. It is often claimed that public reason is indeterminate on abortion, because it cannot say enough about prenatal moral status, or give content to the (allegedly) political value which Rawls calls ‘respect for human life’. I argue that public reason requires much greater argumentative restraint from citizens debating abortion than critics have acknowledged. Beyond the preliminary observation that fetuses do not meet the (...) criteria of political personhood, I contend, public reasoners may say nothing about prenatal moral status. Indeed, respect for human life (as distinct from respect for persons) is not, I show, a genuine political value, whose interpretation lies within public reason’s remit. This fact does not, however, prevent deliberators from drawing determinate conclusions regarding the law of abortion. Instead, I show, public reason has radically permissive implications for the legal regulation of feticide, inclining heavily towards the view that abortion should be allowed with little or no qualification, right until birth. I end by giving grounds for thinking that, even if the argumentative restraint which public reason enjoins over prenatal moral status does not generate indeterminacy, it is nonetheless objectionable. (shrink)

In Intricate Ethics, Kamm questions the moral importance of some non-consequentialist distinctions and then introduces and argues for the moral importance of other distinctions. The first section discusses nonconsequentialist ethical theory and the trolley problem; the second deals with the notions of moral status and rights; the third takes up the issues of responsibility and complicity and the possible moral significance of distance; and the fourth section analyzes the views of others in the non-consequentialist and (...) consequentialist camps. (shrink)

Integrity : a shared moral value -- Religion, nature and intuition as possible sources of moral truth -- Some distinctions and some mistakes -- Rights and procedures -- Principles that define morality -- Reasons for being moral -- Relativism -- Second order principles -- Moral vs. social, ecological and sexual values -- Moral vs. health and safety values -- Moral questions in education -- The question of moral education -- Forms of (...) class='Hi'>moral education. (shrink)

Environmental ethics is generally searching for the intrinsic value in natural beings. However, there are very few holistic models trying to reflect the various dimensions of the experience‐to‐be a natural being. We are searching for that intrinsic value, in order to determine which species are holders of rights. In this article, I suggest a set of moral and rational principles to be used for identifying the intrinsic value of a given species and for comparing it to that of (...) other species. (shrink)

The Good and the Right is a Christian introduction to the major theories of ethics in the history of philosophy (e.g., relativism, egoism, utilitarianism, Kantian deontology, social contract theory, natural law theory, virtue theory, and divine command theory). Philosophers J. Caleb Clanton and Kraig Martin offer a lucid survey of each ethical framework, and they carefully reconstruct and critically evaluate the case for and against each view. Along the way, the authors engage with the presuppositions, affirmations, and implications of the (...) Christian Faith-and in a way that takes the Christian tradition seriously. Ultimately, the authors rediscover and incrementally develop a unique but classically Christian framework for thinking about the moral life and making ethical decisions. J. Caleb Clanton is the Distinguished University Chair in Philosophy & Humanities and professor of philosophy at Lipscomb University Kraig Martin is an associate professor of philosophy at Harding University. (shrink)

This book develops a new contractualist foundation for just war theory, which defends the traditional view of the moral equality of combatants and associated egalitarian moral norms. -/- Traditionally it has been viewed that combatants on both sides of a war have the same right to fight, irrespective of the justice of their cause, and both sides must observe the same restrictions on the use of force, especially prohibitions on targeting noncombatants. Revisionist philosophers have argued that combatants on (...) the unjust side of a war have no right to fight, that pro-war civilians on the unjust side might be targetable, and that lawful combatants on the unjust side might in principle be liable to prosecution for their participation on the unjust side. This book seeks to undercut the revisionist project and defend the traditional view of the moral equality of combatants. It does so by showing how revisionist philosophers fail to build a strong foundation for their arguments and misunderstand that there is a moral difference between collective military violence and a collection of individually unjustified violent actions. Finally, the book develops a theory defending the traditional view of military ethics based on a universal duty of all people to support just institutions. (shrink)

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

A central question in contemporary ethics and political philosophy concerns which entities have moral status. In this article, I provide a detailed analysis of the view that moral status comes in degrees. I argue that degrees of moral status can be specified along two dimensions: (i) the weight of the reason to protect an entity’s morally significant rights and interests; and/or (ii) the rights and interests that are considered morally significant. And I explore some of (...) the complexities that arise when we link degrees of moral status to the weight of reasons to protect bundles and/or the content and size of these bundles, in particular regarding the attribution of moral status to nonparadigmatic entities (e.g. people with severe cognitive disabilities, children, embryos and foetuses, robots, non-human animals, ecosystems, and rivers). (shrink)

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

The chapter provides the reader with one way to approach and understand African moral philosophy. It pivots African moral philosophy on the concepts of personhood. It identifies these concepts of personhood in the salient axiological concept of Ubuntu, which is typically explained in terms of the saying “a person is a person through other persons.” In relation to the first two instances of the concepts of personhood in the saying, it identifies three crucial themes of African moral (...) philosophy. First, it identifies foundational issues relating the source and the nature of moral value as secular and construes morality to be derived from human nature. In relation to foundations, it further clarifies that African ethics is a dignity-based ethics. Second, it identifies and elucidates the final good to revolve around the pursuit and acquisition of virtue or excellence. Finally, it considers the robustness of African moral philosophy by considering how it can account for right action, the debate on partiality and impartiality and the status and place of animals in African moral philosophy. (shrink)

This volume continues the examination of issues of life and death which F.M. Kamm began in Morality, Mortality, Volume I. Kamm continues her development of a non-consequentialist ethical theory and its application to practical ethical problems. She looks at the distinction between killing and letting die, and between intending and foreseeing, and also at the concepts of rights, prerogatives, and supererogation. She shows that a sophisticated non-consequentialist theory can be modelled which copes convincingly with practical ethical issues, and throws (...) considerable light on some of the key distinctions and concepts of ethical discourse. (shrink)

African ethics is primarily concerned with community and harmonious communal relationships. The claim is frequently made on behalf of African moral beliefs and customs that African society does not objectify and exploit nature and natural existents, unlike Western moral attitudes and practices. This book investigates whether this claim is correct by examining religious and philosophical thought, as well as traditional cultural practices in Africa. Through exploration of what kind of status is reserved for other-than-human animals in African ethics, (...) Horsthemke argues that moral perceptions and attitudes on the African continent remain resolutely anthropocentric, or human-centred. Although values like ubuntu (humanness) and ukama (relationality) have been expanded to include nonhuman nature, animals have no rights, and human duties to them are almost exclusively 'indirect'. Animals and African Ethics concludes by asking whether those who, following their own liberation, continue to exploit and oppress other creatures, are not thereby contributing to their own dehumanization. (shrink)

In three parts, this volume in the AP-LS series explores the phenomena of captivity and risk management, guided and informed by the theory, method, and policy of psychological jurisprudence. The authors present a controversial thesis that demonstrates how the forces of captivity and risk management are sustained by several interdependent "conditions of control." These conditions impose barriers to justice and set limits on citizenship for one and all. Situated at the nexus of political/social theory, mental health law and jurisprudential ethics, (...) the book examines and critiques constructs such as offenders and victims; self and society; therapeutic and restorative; health; harm; and community. So, too, are three "total confinement" case law data sets on which this analysis is based. The volume stands alone in its efforts to systematically "diagnose" the moral reasoning lodged within prevailing judicial opinions that sustain captivity and risk management practices impacting: (1) the rights of juveniles found competent to stand criminal trial, the mentally ill placed in long-term disciplinary isolation, and sex offenders subjected to civil detention and community re-entry monitoring; (2) the often unmet needs of victims; and (3) the demands of an ordered society. Carefully balancing sophisticated insights with concrete and cutting-edge applications, the book concludes with a series of provocative, yet practical, recommendations for future research and meaningful reform within institutional practice, programming, and policy. (shrink)

Part I: WHAT IS ETHICS? Plato: Socratic Morality: Crito. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part II: ETHICAL RELATIVISM VERSUS ETHICAL OBJECTIVISM. Herodotus: Custom is King. Thomas Aquinas: Objectivism: Natural Law. Ruth Benedict: A Defense of Ethical Relativism. Louis Pojman: A Critique of Ethical Relativism. Gilbert Harman: Moral Relativism Defended. Alan Gewirth: The Objective Status of Human Rights. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part III: MORALITY, SELF-INTEREST AND FUTURE SELVES. Plato: Why Be Moral? Richard Taylor: On the Socratic Dilemma. David (...) Gauthier: Morality and Advantage. Gregory Kavka: A Reconciliation Project. Derek Parfit: Later Selves and Moral Principles. Bernard Williams: Persons, Character, and Morality. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part IV: VALUE. Jeremy Bentham: Classical Hedonism. Robert Nozick: The Experience Machine. Richard Taylor: Value and the Origin of Right and Wrong. Friedrich Nietzsche: The Transvaluation of Values. Derek Parfit: What Makes Someone’s Life Go Best? Thomas Nagel: Value: The View from Nowhere. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part V: UTILITARIANISM AND CONSEQUENTIALISM. John Stuart Mill: Utilitarianism. J.J.C. Smart: Extreme and Restricted Utilitarianism. Kai Nielsen: Against Moral Conservatism. Bernard Williams: Against Utilitarianism. John Hospers: Rule-Utilitarianism. Robert Nozick: Side Constraints. Peter Singer: Famine, Affluence and Morality. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part VI: KANTIAN AND DEONTOLOGICAL SYSTEMS. Immanuel Kant: Foundation for the Metaphysic of Morals. W. D. Ross: What Makes Right Acts Right? Onora O’Neill: Kantian Formula of the End in Itself and World Hunger. Thomas Nagel: Moral Luck. Philippa Foot: Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives. Judith Jarvis Thomson: Killing, Letting Die, and the Trolley Problem. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part VII: CONTRACTARIAN ETHICAL SYSTEMS. Thomas Hobbes: The Leviathan. David Gauthier: Why Contractarianism? John Rawls: Contractualism: Justice as Fairness. T.M. Scanlon: Contractualism and Utilitarianism. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part VIII: VIRTUE-BASED ETHICAL SYSTEMS. Aristotle: The Ethics of Virtue. Bernard Mayo: Virtue and the Moral Life. William Frankena: A Critique of Virtue-Based Ethics. Walter Schaller: Are Virtues No More than Dispositions to Obey Moral Rules? Alasdair MacIntyre: The Nature of the Virtues. Susan Wolf: Moral Saints. Louis P. Pojman: In Defense of Moral Saints. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part IX: THE FACT/VALUE PROBLEM: METAETHICS IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY. David Hume: On Reason and the Emotions: The Fact/Value Distinction. G. E. Moore: Non-Naturalism. A. J. Ayer: Emotivism. R. M. Hare: Prescriptivism: The Structure of Ethics and Morals. Geoffrey Warnock: The Object of Morality. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part X: MORAL REALISM AND THE CHALLENGE OF SKEPTICISM. J.L. Mackie: The Subjectivity of Values. Jonathan Harrison: A Critique of Mackie’s Error Theory. Gilbert Harman: Moral Nihilism. Nicholas Sturgeon: Moral Explanations. Bernard Williams: Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. Bruce Russell: Two Forms of Ethical Skepticism. Michael Smith: A Defense of Moral Realism. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part XI: RELIGION AND ETHICS. Plato: Morality and Religion. Immanuel Kant: God and Immortality as Necessary Postulates of Morality. George Mavrodes: Religious and the Queerness of Morality. Kai Nielson: Ethics Without God. Suggestions for Further Reading. Part XII: CONTEMPORARY CHALLENGES TO CLASSICAL ETHICAL THEORY. Part A. Sociobiology and the Question of Moral Responsibility. Charles Darwin: Ethics and the Descent of Man. E.O.Wilson: Sociobiology and Ethics. Michael Ruse: Evolution and Ethics: The Sociobiological Approach. Elliot Sober: Prospects for an Evolutionary Ethics. J.L. Mackie: The Law of the Jungle, Evolution and Morality. Suggestions for Further Readingon Sociobiology. Part B. The Challenge of Determinism to Moral Responsibility and Desert. Galen Strawson: The Impossibility of Moral Responsibility. Louis Pojman: Free Will, Determinism, and Moral Responsibility:A Response to Galen Strawson. Richard Taylor: A Libertarian Defense of Free Will and Responsibility. Suggestions for Further Reading on Moral Responsibility. Glossary of Ethical Terms. (shrink)

A basic income is typically defined as an individual’s entitlement to receive a regular payment as a right, independent of other sources of income, employment or willingness to work, or living situation. In this article, we examine what it means for the state to institute a right to basic income. The normative literature on basic income has developed numerous arguments in support of basic income as an inextricable component of a just social order, but there exists little analysis about basic (...) income within a jurisprudential or philosophical rights perspective. In our view, strong reasons of either a principled or a pragmatic nature in support of instituting a basic income scheme nevertheless often fall short of ascribing to basic income a distinctive Hohfeldian rights status. This article aims to partially redress this gap by examining two sets of questions. First, what are the implications – ethical and practical – of adopting basic income as a legal right as opposed to a mere policy? Second, we also enquire whether there should be such a right: what, if anything, is the ethical foundation that warrants granting basic income a distinctive legal rights status? This article suggests that any such foundation must be grounded in comparative evaluation and discusses several comparative strategies available to basic income advocates. The aim of this article is not to offer a definite argument in favor of a legal right to basic income, but to chart several lines of argument that a rights perspective might add to the contemporary discussion. (shrink)

This chapter considers the status and coherence of modern humanism as a secular and ethical philosophy. As secular, humanism prioritizes the naturalistic worldview, and privileges information from the social and cognitive sciences about human sociality and morality. As ethical, humanism does more than recommend specific moral virtues and rules, by proposing methods to evaluate moralities and recommend ideals of moral progress for all peoples around the world. Moral relativism is one of most talked‐about yet least understood notions (...) around today. Despite what one might hear, morality is neither a matter of taste nor preference, it is not arbitrary or immune from criticism, and we don't have to tolerate just anybody's moral opinions. Morality can be objectively studied, morality can be rationally debated and evaluated, there are justifiable ways to determine better and worse moral norms, and important moral norms can be reasonably recommended for all people. (shrink)

Gendered Morality offers a textual-critical examination of gender in Islamic metaphysics and virtue ethics. Through a close reading of how masculinity and femininity are constructed, the book argues that the historically contingent nature of gender hierarchy, characterized as Islamic and ethical, is at odds with the overarching goal of Islamic ethics as earthly justice. Because the book moves beyond the typical Qur'anic and jurisprudence-based discourses about women's status, it makes a lasting contribution to our understanding of gender in the ethical (...) philosophy of Islam. (shrink)

In two studies, we used the Ethics Position Questionnaire (EPQ) to investigate the relationship between individual differences in moral philosophy, involvement in the animal rights movement, and attitudes toward the treatment of animals. In the first, 600 animal rights activists attending a national demonstration and 266 nonactivist college students were given the EPQ. Analysis of the returns from 157 activists and 198 students indicated that the activists were more likely than the students to hold an "absolutist" (...) class='Hi'>moral orientation (high idealism, low relativism). In the second study, 169 students were given the EPQ with a scale designed to measure attitudes toward the treatment of animals. Multiple regression showed that gender and the EPQ dimension of idealism were related to attitudes toward animal use. (shrink)

Applied ethics is relatively new on the philosophical scene, having grown out of the various civil rights movements of the 1950s and 1960s, as well as the student demand that college courses be relevant. Even today, there are those who think that there are no philosophically interesting practical ethical questions, and that applied ethics is not a branch of philosophy at all. This article rejects that view, both because some of the most interesting and respectable philosophers in the world (...) have worked in applied ethics and because applied ethics has been the source of many difficult conceptual questions in theoretical ethics and even metaphysics. These include the grounds for moral status, human identity, how to conceive rights in general and the right to life in particular, the question whether existence itself can be a harm (the nonidentity problem), and the nature of moral principles. (shrink)

Are we morally required to act in the interests of others? Does our worth as persons depend in any way on our valuing the good of others? These questions, illustrative of those addressed in this book, concern the relevance of other-interested considerations -- of facts about what is good or bad for others -- to the moral status of persons and their actions. Pursuing answers to such questions is not only interesting and important in its own right, but also (...) yields valuable insights in to the nature of morality. A distinguishing feature of the book is its unusually comprehensive treatment of the moral significance of other-interested considerations per se, of how these considerations are interrelated, and of where they should be located in more general moral theory. It will be of greatest interest to individuals with fairly well-developed philosophical interests and abilities -- to teachers and advanced students of moral philosophy in particular. (shrink)

Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint addresses in a novel format the major topics and themes of contemporary metaethics, the study of the analysis of moral thought and judgement. Metathetics is less concerned with what practices are right or wrong than with what we mean by 'right' and 'wrong.' Looking at a wide spectrum of topics including moral language, realism and anti-realism, reasons and motives, relativism, and moral progress, this book engages students and general readers in order (...) to enhance their understanding of morality and moral discourse as cultural practices. Catherine Wilson innovatively employs a first-person narrator to report step-by-step an individual's reflections, beginning from a position of radical scepticism, on the possibility of objective moral knowledge. The reader is invited to follow along with this reasoning, and to challenge or agree with each major point. Incrementally, the narrator is led to certain definite conclusions about 'oughts' and norms in connection with self-interest, prudence, social norms, and finally morality. Scepticism is overcome, and the narrator arrives at a good understanding of how moral knowledge and moral progress are possible, though frequently long in coming. Accessibly written, Metaethics from a First Person Standpoint presupposes no prior training in philosophy and is a must-read for philosophers, students and general readers interested in gaining a better understanding of morality as a personal philosophical quest."--Publisher's website. (shrink)

International institutions such as the International Labour Organization (ILO) have been examined from various industrial relations viewpoints. This article seeks to discuss the ILO from the standpoint of moral philosophy. Traditionally, philosophy has not been concerned with industrial relations (IR) and IR writers have not engaged with ethics either. Nonetheless, all IR agents and institutions, international or otherwise, are moral agents. Being part of the United Nations (UN), the ILO follows the Universal Declaration of Human Rights (1948). (...) In philosophical terms, the ILO carries connotations of the German moral philosopher Kant's (1724-1084) concept of universalism. Ethical universalism is also the core of American psychologist and philosopher Laurence Kohlberg's developmental model that allows an assessment of moral values and ethical behaviours. To ascertain the ILO's morality, an empirical study (n=121) was conducted at a regional University. The study indicated that most respondents (68%) saw the ILO as a reflection of the morality of " defending everyone's right to justice and welfare, universally applied while applying well-thought principles and being ready to share and debate these openly and non-defensively with others". In line with the ILO's self-understanding, survey respondents also viewed it as a thoroughly moral agent committed to the advancement of humanity as a whole. Respondents also thought that the ILO goes beyond the confinements of the standard industrial relations framework, actively engaging with the universality of all people. The overall conclusion is that the way the ILO is perceived to act along the scale of Kohlberg's text matches the ILO's actual existence and work. For the first time, the ILO's moral status has been tested using Kohlberg's scale of morality. This provides a significant contribution to our understanding of the morality of a very important universal institution that has virtually all countries as members. (shrink)

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

These essays address some of the most intriguing questions raised by natural law theory and its implications for law, morality, and public policy. some of the essays explore the implications that natural law theory has for jurisprudence, asking what natural law suggests about the use of legal devices such as constitutions and precedents. Other essays examine the connections between natural law and various political concepts, such as citizens' rights and the obligation of citizens to obey their government.

"We hold these truths to be self-evident..." So begins the U.S. Declaration of Independence. What follows those words is a ringing endorsement of universal rights, but it is far from self-evident. Why did the authors claim that it was? William Talbott suggests that they were trapped by a presupposition of Enlightenment philosophy: That there was only one way to rationally justify universal truths, by proving them from self-evident premises. With the benefit of hindsight, it is clear that the authors (...) of the U.S. Declaration had no infallible source of moral truth. For example, many of the authors of the Declaration of Independence endorsed slavery. The wrongness of slavery was not self-evident; it was a moral discovery. In this book, William Talbott builds on the work of John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, J.S. Mill, Amartya Sen, and Henry Shue to explain how, over the course of history, human beings have learned how to adopt a distinctively moral point of view from which it is possible to make universal, though not infallible, judgments of right and wrong. He explains how this distinctively moral point of view has led to the discovery of the moral importance of nine basic rights. Undoubtedly, the most controversial issue raised by the claim of universal rights is the issue of moral relativism. How can the advocate of universal rights avoid being a moral imperialist? In this book, Talbott shows how to defend basic individual rights from a universal moral point of view that is neither imperialistic nor relativistic. Talbott avoids moral imperialism by insisting that all of us, himself included, have moral blindspots and that we usually depend on others to help us to identify those blindspots. Talbott's book speaks to not only debates on human rights but to broader issues of moral and cultural relativism, and will interest a broad range of readers. (shrink)

Originally published in 1987 and re-issued in 2020 with a new Preface, this book presents and elaborates interrelated solutions to a number of problems in moral philosophy, from the location of intrinsic value and the nature of a worthwhile life, via the limits of obligation and the nature of justice, to the status of moral utterances. After developing a biocentric account of moral standing, the author locates worthwhile life in the development of the generic capacities of a (...) creature, whether human or nonhuman, and presents an account of relative intrinsic value which later generates a theory of interspecific justice. This value-theory also informs a consequentialist understanding of obligation, of moral rightness and of supererogation. The understanding thus supplied is shown to cope with the problems of integrity, of justice and of the 'Repugnant Conclusion' in population ethics. A cognitivist account of ethical conclusions such as those so far reached is then defended against non-cognitivist and relativist objections and a far-reaching naturalist theory is defended, integrating earlier conclusions with an account of the logic of the fundamental ethical concepts. This wide-ranging volume which maps the whole area of morality is thoroughly argued with reference both to contemporary philosophical developments and to classical theories. (shrink)

Two problems about rights have received so far little attention. One is the problem of identifying a general value in the practice of rights. The second is to see when, if at all, rights violations wrong the right-holder, in a morally significant sense. In the present essay, I address the first question by investigating the second. I first show that if we commit to the two ideas, common in the contemporary philosophy of rights, that claim-rights (...) always correlate with directed duties and that rights aspire to protect interests of the right-holder, we make it hard to explain why rights violations, in general, wrong right-holders. In the final section, I present what I see as a promising solution to the puzzle. I describe a particular social environment (the society of equals) where interacting with others through rights is indeed valuable because respecting rights communicates that one takes seriously others’ equal moral status. In such a society and only in such a society, I conclude, moral agents are required to treat all rights violations as wrongs perpetrated against the right-holder. (shrink)

Two problems about rights have received so far little attention. One is the problem of identifying a general value in the practice of rights. The second is to see when, if at all, rights violations wrong the right-holder, in a morally significant sense. In the present essay, I address the first question by investigating the second. I first show that if we commit to the two ideas, common in the contemporary philosophy of rights, that claim-rights (...) always correlate with directed duties and that rights aspire to protect interests of the right-holder, we make it hard to explain why rights violations, in general, wrong right-holders. In the final section, I present what I see as a promising solution to the puzzle. I describe a particular social environment (the society of equals) where interacting with others through rights is indeed valuable because respecting rights communicates that one takes seriously others’ equal moral status. In such a society and only in such a society, I conclude, moral agents are required to treat all rights violations as wrongs perpetrated against the right-holder. (shrink)

'Internalism’ in ethics is a cluster of views according to which there is an ‘internal’ connection between moral obligations and either motivations or reasons to act morally; ‘externalism’ says that such connections are contingent. So described, the dispute between internalism and externalism may seem a technical debate of minor interest. However, the issues that motivate it include deep problems about moral truth, realism, normativity, and objectivity. Indeed, I think that some philosophers view externalism as undermining the ‘dignity’ of (...) morality. They might say that if morality needs an ‘external sanction’ - if the belief that one has an obligation is not sufficient motive or reason to do the right thing- then morality is debased in status. Even an arbitrary system of etiquette could attract an external sanction under appropriate conditions.Although I believe that the more interesting internalist theses are false, there are important truths that internalism is attempting to capture. The most important of these is the fact that moral judgments are intrinsically ‘normative’ or ‘choice-guiding,’ that they are, very roughly, relevant to action or choice because of their content. (shrink)

The international community has long been affected by the political, philosophical and ethical issues surrounding the practice of tyrannicide, defined as the targeted killing of a tyrant. However, there exists no specific international legal instrument that concerns the practice of tyrannicide, rendering the legitimacy of the practice ambiguous. This paper aims to investigate the issue of tyrannicide and offers a number of speculative arguments concerning its legal-philosophical status. It finds that there are essentially two arms of international legal jurisprudence that (...) may regulate the practice of tyrannicide. The first is largely prohibitive and is based on the derived legal arguments against assassination involving the element ofperfidy, relevant extradition law, provisions in the Hague, Geneva and New York Conventions, and the prohibition on the use of force in the UN Charter. The second position, though far more radical and speculative, is more permissive regarding the moral legitimacy of tyrannicide. This position is based on arguments from the classical international theorists Gentili, Grotius and Vattel, contemporary human rights standards, the principle of humanitarian intervention, the duty to protect, and legal category of hostis hutnani generis. It is argued that though the vast majority of international legal principles are indicative ofthe illegality oftyrannicide, that the practice may nevertheless be philosophically legitimated under humanitarian principles. (shrink)

The study of social, ethical, and political issues from a naturalistic perspective has been pervasive in social sciences and the humanities in the last decades. This articulation of empirical research with philosophical and normative reflection is increasingly getting attention in academic circles and the public spheres, given the prevalence of urgent needs and challenges that society is facing on a global scale. The contemporary world is full of challenges or what some philosophers have called ‘existential risks’ to humanity. Nuclear wars, (...) natural and/or engineered pandemics, climate change, global totalitarianism, and emergent technologies, are some of the challenges mentioned by many authors devoted to the study of long-term potential risks for the survival of the human species. However, while there are many reasons to be a pessimist about the future of humanity, there is also a lot of ink wasted in showing that the world today is far better than we had in the past and also that there have been many instances of social and moral progress in the last centuries. Some authors have even claimed that “we have made more progress over the last 100 years than in the first 100,000”. According to ‘our world in data’, some of the most relevant advances of humanity in the last centuries have to do with the reduction of poverty and/or inequality, better health and security, the decline of violence and war, and the development of democracy and institutional mechanisms to guarantee individual freedom and rights. Yet, there is a more concrete concern that our world faces nowadays, and requires a particularly detailed analysis. In a few words, the advance in information and communication technologies, the huge volume of people migration because of prevalent instances of global inequality, and the reality of an interconnected world that just mirrors an extensive history of massive human intergroup relations open the question about the feasibility of social and moral progress in the contexts of diverse, multicultural, and unequal societies. This makes it crucial to reflect not only on whether human societies may keep advancing on a path of social progress, but how this can be achieved by addressing the challenges of inequality and potential intergroup conflict. This concern closely relates to the further consolidation of democratic values and the achievement of a more generalized consideration of the equal moral value of human individuals far from group, ethnic, or collective distinctions. This vision of progress follows the moral convictions that have been considered right and worthy to be pursued by most ethical theories explored by philosophers and social scientists so far. This work aims to contribute to the study of the mechanisms and feasibility of social and moral progress grounded on the precept of human equality and is guided by the idea that social and moral progress in a plural world requires the accomplishment of a more democratic and tolerant society. These forms of progress have already been defined by philosophers Allen Buchanan and Russel Powell as inclusivist forms of moral progress. According to these authors, inclusivist moral progress is featured by the transformation of moral judgments, motivations, and norms guided by the rejection of “group-based restrictions on moral standing and moral status” (2018). The work of Buchanan and Powell is fundamental for the argumentation developed in this work since they have pioneered a more complex debate in the field of evolutionary social sciences and philosophical anthropology. In brief, these authors have inquired how human nature, conceptualized by the advances in evolutionary thinking and the empirical sciences, is related to our moral convictions and the possibilities that we have to establish certain forms of social and moral progress. The work of Buchanan and Powell contributes to the debate on moral progress by incorporating empirically-informed concepts and arguments. With this objective in mind, they develop their discussion around a generalized tension between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of moral progress. This tension revolves around the question of whether and to what extent human moral concerns, motivations, and norms, are limited or bounded by social identities, group thinking, or collective values. This question is at the center of this work. In other words, I aim to answer whether and to what extent the nature of our social and moral cognition hinders or enables the development of inclusivist forms of morality and moral progress. As I mentioned so far, the distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist forms of morality has a practical implication and facilitates the reflection on the mechanisms and feasibility of concrete forms of progress based on the precept of human equality, which is the road to progress that we should follow according to most ethical theories. The distinction between exclusivist and inclusivist morality is not used here as a form of summarizing highly divergent descriptive approaches to morality, but as a way to address the practical implications of morality research, particularly around the question of the feasibility of social forms of progress based on the precept of equality and tolerance. My objective then has less to do with offering a conceptualization of human morality or with the proposition of a new ethical perspective. Instead, I aim to identify, from an empirically informed perspective, what enables the achievement of egalitarian forms of social progress, to subsequently offer a normative reflection about what we should do if we want to accomplish such inclusivist forms of progress. This task is of great relevance, having in mind that some theoretical proposals on the matter have claimed that human prosocial behavior and morality are constrained by exclusivist fixed tendencies as a product of our evolutionary history. According to these views, human morality is a group-centered cognitive and behavioral expression that has severe limits in its scope and extent, which hinders in the end the emergence of inclusivist forms of moral concerns and behaviors. These claims align with the philosophical intuition about the ‘dissociation of empathy’, or the fact that human individuals tend to express empathy and sympathy preferably for members of their group whereas their empathic and moral concern and recognition for outgroup individuals tend to be reduced or eliminated in real-life social interactions. Multiple theorists have expressed, however, that these assumptions are wrong for empirical and philosophical reasons, which results in a serious challenge to the conception of human morality as exclusivist by nature. Furthermore, simple intuition and practical experience constantly show us that human individuals can develop and endorse a broad spectrum of moral considerations and adopt an arguably inclusivist stance concerning the kind of persons or agents that deserve moral concern. Moreover, and adopting a historical perspective, the expansion of cultural and commercial exchanges, the consolidation of democracy, the development of welfare states, or the emergence of institutions based on the concept of universal human rights, have partially driven human progress based on the impartial concern for the well-being of persons. These historical instances of cultural evolution and institutional design have shown that it is feasible to promote behaviors and attitudes grounded in impersonal prosocial and inclusivist principles. This optimistic perspective, however, still begs the question of the exact relationship between social, cultural, and historical contexts, and the emergence of certain behavioral expressions of inclusivist morality. This is crucial since a great number of human individuals around the world still do not make part of these instances of social progress, and some authors have suggested that such instances of social and moral progress are particularly favored by the contexts of the WEIRD world, that is the world of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic societies. Some of these approaches consider moral inclusivity a ‘luxury good’ and follow the ‘dependency thesis’ according to which the expression of moral inclusivity depends on the presence of very concrete material conditions that trigger inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. This thesis is problematic for various reasons and has led to incomplete explanations about the enabling and causal factors of inclusivist moral progress, as well as unsatisfactory suggestions about what we should do to foster the accomplishment of more generalized instances of progress based on inclusivist concerns. In an attempt to contribute to this debate, the main objective of this thesis is to offer an alternative proposal about the nature of human morality and a more detailed reflection on what we should do if we want to further accomplish such instances of progress. More precisely, this work adopts a particular developmental and constructivist vision of human morality to answer the question of how feasible it is to reach generalized forms of social progress based on the precepts of moral inclusivity. Furthermore, it offers some ideas about what are the most adequate and favorable conditions to foster such progress both at the individual and the collective level. At this point, a preliminary clarification of some starting points is necessary. In the first place, and contrary to what other authors have proposed when debating moral progress from an empirically-based approach, my perspective adopts a radical developmental and constructivist perspective, following particularly the conceptual and empirical ideas of the social-domain theory in moral psychology. From this perspective, morality is a domain of normative and social knowledge that develops and emerges in human interactions. Moral concerns, judgments, and norms are not only the result of the expression of innate adaptive intuitions, nor the product of social conformity and a simple process of mirroring the normativity that communities have established to organize their social life. Human individuals, instead, construct moral concerns and judgments during their situated interactions. More specifically, the constructivist tradition claims that we need to research how moral concerns, judgments, and reasons emerge in social interactions and how human beings construct the content of their moral knowledge in the first place. Based on these ideas, morality is defined here as the result of a constructive process through which human individuals, by the means of constant interactions on a background of mutual respect and recognition, develop evaluative concerns about how we ought to treat others, and how to ‘care’ and ‘respect’ others’ well-being, needs, and vulnerabilities. This developmental-constructivist theory of human psychology contributes to an alternative understanding of the origins of moral variability and informs a very particular normative stance about the most desirable contexts needed for the urgent accomplishment of inclusivist forms of morality in contemporary societies. This is so given that the very same definition of morality adopted presupposes the feature of inclusivity. The main objective of this work is then to argue, based on a developmental perspective, what are the most favorable conditions to foster the development of moral inclusivity and what we should do to accomplish concrete instances of moral progress that truly help us to overcome our most urgent moral challenges. The whole thesis is organized as follows. In part I, I show how received visions about human social evolution have informed conceptions of morality as an adaptive function evolved to solve the challenges of cooperative life. Based on these assumptions, some theories argue that human morality is limited by the boundaries of group thinking, and always obeys the mandates of collective interests and the will of the majority. However, this conception has problematic implications from a normative and ethical perspective. The aim of Chapter 1 is to present this introductory debate in detail. In chapter 2, I consider a relevant amount of scientific evidence that helps to consolidate a more optimistic and inclusivist perspective about the starting conditions of human prosocial behavior. Later, I will summarize some ideas offered to explain the possible evolutionary mechanisms that led to the consolidation of these inclusivist capacities. However, I will also show how evolutionary theories that share the same adaptationist foundations but initially seem relevant to explain the feasibility of moral inclusivity, result incomplete when considering the complexity of moral behavior and its ethical implications. Part II is devoted to presenting a developmental alternative to the adaptationist versions around the starting conditions of morality. In this section, I first summarize the epistemological, conceptual, and empirical basis of a constructivist perspective already proposed by several authors in the last decades. This is the goal of chapter 3. More precisely, I adopt the conceptualization of morality established by the social-domain theory school and clarify its conception of the situated development of moral concerns, motivations, and norms. All these ideas are essential for my argumentation on the feasibility of inclusivist moral progress offered later. Chapter 4 provides a more detailed idea of constructivist thinking about moral development, by analyzing one particular dimension: the development of moral concerns for fairness and the sense of justice in distributive dilemmas. In Part III, I assume a constructivist perspective on morality to contribute to the philosophy of moral progress. In particular, I discuss the implications of such a perspective for the conceptualization of human moral nature and discuss what are the most favorable conditions for moral inclusivity to emerge. Answering that question is of enormous relevance since favoring the transition of human societies towards more inclusivist forms of moral concern and behavior supposes a more generalized accomplishment of our most urgent moral convictions. Previous developmental or culturally-sensible attempts to explore this issue are already on the market. As mentioned before, most authors have approached the topic by situating the cultural evolution and development of (inclusivist) moral progress in the WEIRD world. For instance, some of these authors claim that very concrete material conditions (mostly present in the Western World) have been necessary for triggering inclusivist and impersonal prosocial tendencies that human beings are not able to express in threatening contexts without physical security. Despite their interest in explaining inclusivist morality and the feasibility of inclusivist forms of progress following a naturalistic and culturally situated approach, these theories are problematic for two main reasons. In the first place, most of the authors that explain moral progress tend to focus exclusively on the consolidation of liberal values in the Western world and the underlying adoption of laws, social-epistemic practices, and public narratives about tolerance and inclusivity, as unequivocal signs of inclusivist morality. Nevertheless, there is an enormous distance between the institutional and public support of inclusivist moral values or the construction of public images of tolerance and inclusivity, and the real materialization of impersonal moralities in situated social interactions. Secondly, the variability of human moral behavior is far bigger than most of the theories in moral psychology and moral progress tend to assume. Accordingly, inclusivist and exclusivist forms of morality may develop simultaneously in similar or divergent geographical and socio-ecological environments, including those with harsh conditions such as competition for scarce resources, potential intergroup conflict, and risks of disease transmission. In addition, harsh environmental conditions are usually present in almost all societies around the globe, and the presence of socio-ecological conditions such as physical security and prosperity, predominant in highly resourced populations, do not prevent the existence of exclusivist moral tendencies. My model explores a different perspective on the relationships between cultural, institutional, and historical factors, and the situated development of human morality. This supposes a clear distinction from previous approaches to the matter since it offers a different view on what we should do to pursue further instances of inclusivist social progress. In the fifth chapter, I first analyze the proposals of some defenders of the ‘dependency’ theory. The attention is focused on the ‘Evolutionary Developmental Model’ proposed by Buchanan and Powell (2018). Based on a critique of this approach, I will argue that to explain the evolution and development of human morality in its multiple manifestations, it is essential to put focus on social interactions. This also involves a different perspective on human-environment relations that in line with a constructivist worldview makes an innovative contribution to the philosophy of moral behavior and moral progress. Later, in the sixth chapter, I will define my alternative relational view of inclusivist morality and I will offer my view on how to establish favorable conditions that make inclusivist morality possible. Complementing the constructivist approach, my conception is based on the essential role of equality and individuality and on how moral inclusivity is favored if moral concerns do not develop driven by the accomplishment of group-centered, binding, and communitarian concerns and values. In brief, my relational model suggests that the accomplishment of moral inclusivity not only depends on the overall achievement of certain levels of physical security or economic prosperity. Instead, its development is favored by transforming the interactional contexts in which moral concerns towards autonomy and individuality emerge. In arguing so, I will need to start with a critique of contemporary situated and embodied approaches in ethics. Then, I will show how societies guided by the accomplishment of group-centered values of power, dominance, and relational inequality tend to express exclusivist moral behaviors, while individualistic societies tend to be more inclusivist. Starting from this diagnosis, my final attempt is then to reflect on which are the best conditions for the moral valuation of individuality to emerge and what we should do to promote the accomplishment of moral inclusivity at the societal level. (shrink)

The book has two aims. First, to examine the extent and significance of the connection between Hume's aesthetics and his moral philosophy; and, second, to consider how, in light of the connection, his moral philosophy answers central questions in ethics. The first aim is realized in chapters 1-4. Chapter 1 examines Hume's essay "Of the Standard of Taste" to understand his search for a "standard" and how this affects the scope of his aesthetics. Chapter 2 establishes that he (...) treats beauty in nature and art and moral beauty as similar in kind, and applies the conclusions about his aesthetics to his moral thought. Chapter 3 solves a puzzle to which this gives rise, namely, how individuals both accept general standards that they also contravene in the course of aesthetic and moral activity. Chapter 4 takes up the normative aspect of Hume's approach by understanding moral character through his view of moral beauty. The second aim of the book is realized in chapters 5-7 by entertaining three objections against Hume's moral philosophy. First, if morality is an immediate reaction to the beauty of vice and the deformity of virtue, why is perfect virtue not the general condition of every human individual? Second, if morality consists of sentiments that arise in the subject, how can moral judgments be objective and claim universal validity? And third, if one can talk of "general standards" governing conduct, how does one account for the diversity of moral systems and their change over time? The first is answered by showing that like good taste in aesthetics, 'right taste' in morals requires that the sentiments are educated; the second, by arguing against the view that Hume is a subjectivist and a relativist, and the third, by showing that his approach contains a view of progress left untouched by any personal prejudices Hume himself might harbor. The book concludes in chapter 7 by showing how Hume's view of philosophy affects the scope of any normative ethics. (shrink)

In this article I respond to six contributors to a special issue of _Social Theory and Practice_ that is devoted to critical discussions of my book _A Relational Moral Theory: African Ethics in and Beyond the Continent_. In this book I articulate a general principle of rightness that is substantially informed by values salient in the African philosophical tradition (and some others in the Global South) and defend it as preferable to some major rivals, including utilitarianism and Kantianism. Key (...) topics that I address in this article include methodological issues, such as whether it is appropriate to provide an interpretation of the African tradition with some characteristically Western concepts and how metaphysical claims should inform the construction of normative ethical theories, as well as substantive issues pertaining to how to understand the nature of moral status and right action. (shrink)

The book takes a critical view of the Kantian and the Neo-Kantian moral philosophers' preference to universalism, unity of morality, moral impartiality, consensus and common morality. The central claim of the book is if we treat human condition as complex and infested with irreducible choices and alternatives, then moral rightness and wrongness ought to operate beyond these binaries; giving epistemic status to Pluralism's multiple rationalities. Redefining liberal-pluralism, the book also argues that moral reasoning is necessarily bound (...) by paradoxes and contradictions, seen in our choices of life-projects, in the conflict between individual morality and common morality, and in justifying what is morally reasonable in the interpersonal framework. Equivocation in moral argumentation cannot be valued without understanding the nature of the 'interpersonal' that ought to sufficiently argue for moral disagreement, irreducible pluralism and limits of morality. Liberal-pluralism, thus, signifies quasi-relational (partially admitting Gilbert Harman) nature of moral reasoning in the multi-agent framework. It also takes account of reciprocity, fairness, reasonableness, tolerance, open-ended morality and agreeing to disagree. However, this idea of liberal-pluralism no way undermines rationality and reason nor turns anti-theory; but only treats morality as guided by 'reason without unification' and 'pluralism without relativism'. (shrink)

In Rights Forfeiture and Punishment, Christopher Heath Wellman argues that those who seek to defend the moral permissibility of punishment should shift their focus from general justifying aims to moral side constraints. On Wellman's view, punishment is permissible just in case the wrongdoer has forfeited her right against punishment.

A popular accusation against moral relativism is that it goes too far in its vindication of tolerance. The idea behind accusations like this can be summarized in the slogan, frequently attributed to relativism, that “anything goes”. The aim of this paper is to defend moral relativism from the accusation that it is an “anything goes” view; from the accusation that it forces us to suspend our judgment in cases in which we do not think we should even be (...) allowed to. In the end, relativism is not an “anything goes” view because it is not a view about what goes, but about the way things go—about what goes on when we say that something is morally right or wrong. There is indeed a view, sometimes called “relativism”, that forces us to suspend our judgment about practices that do not allow for such comfort, but it is not so much moral relativism as moral contextualism. Apparently, though, the most salient alternative to “anything goes” views such as contextualism is not moral relativism. It is moral objectivism, according to which there is a fact of the matter about moral issues. However, I show that moral objectivism too ends up being an “anything goes” view unless the objectivist takes herself to be endowed with “God’s point of view”, which I prove troublesome. (shrink)

According to many critics of virtue ethics the dominant virtue ethical paradigm of practical reasoning and right action both encourages a dismissive attitude to moral disagreement and offers a bad model for dealing with it. The charge of dismissiveness raises two issues. First, what is it to take moral disagreement seriously? Second, can virtue ethics respond to the charge?In answer to the first question I show that on virtue ethical account of ethics a great deal of pervasive deep (...) disagreement can be explained by the existence of vagueness and cognitive shortcomings. Taking moral disagreement seriously is to appreciate that much disagreement is deep, reasonable, and intractable; and that moral points of view (including those of virtuous agents) are subject to limited perspectives, the narrative particularities of one’s life, and cultural and historical location. The alleged problem with virtue ethics is that it fails to appreciate the perspectival, theory ladenness, and intractability of dispute, for it is commonly assumed that in virtue ethics a virtuous agent is both the determinant of right action and the repository of sound reasoning about which actions are right.In answer to the second question I show that virtue ethics need not be committed to this feature. I assume a dialogical version of virtue ethics where right action is understood in terms of meeting the targets of relevant virtues, many of which pertain to excellence in dialogue. Relative to this account I focus on two areas of disagreement.(1) The status of actions falling within areas where the application of ‘right’ is vague.(2) Disagreement caused by cognitive shortcomings on the part of some or all of the disagreeing parties. (shrink)

The overarching aim of this book is to illuminate a broad array of issues connected with reproduction and ethics through the lens of moral philosophy. With novel frameworks for understanding prenatal moral status and human identity, DeGrazia sheds new light on the ethics of abortion and embryo research, genetic enhancement and prenatal genetic interventions, procreation and parenting, and decisions that affect the quality of life of future generations.

The paper, based on the H.L.A. Hart Memorial Lecture in Jurisprudence and Moral Philosophy, delivered in Oxford on 11th May 2004, sets out to answer two difficulties which the late J. L. Mackie proposed (in his book Ethics: Inventing Right & Wrong) against the idea of objectivity in ethics. These were (1) the metaphysical peculiarity (‘queerness’) of values and obligations and (2) the ‘well known variation in moral codes from one society to another’ (‘relativity’). It is argued that (...) the true import of Mackie's two difficulties is that they are a challenge to us to study with closer attention the dialectical and conceptual resources of ethical thinking. In the answer to the second difficulty, the ethic of globalism is revealed as a gross misunderstanding of true internationalism.1. (shrink)