How can one establish if a corporate code of ethics is ethical in terms of its content? One important first step might be the establishment of core universal moral values by which corporate codes of ethics can be ethically constructed and evaluated. Following a review of normative research on corporate codes of ethics, a set of universal moral values is generated by considering three sources: (1) corporate codes of ethics; (2) global codes of ethics; and (3) (...) the business ethics literature. Based on the convergence of the three sources of standards, six universal moral values for corporate codes of ethics are proposed including: (1) trustworthiness; (2) respect; (3) responsibility; (4) fairness; (5) caring; and (6) citizenship. Relying on the proposed set of universal moral values, implications are discussed as to what the content of corporate codes of ethics should consist of. The paper concludes with its limitations. (shrink)

Attitudes toward sow husbandry differ between citizens and conventional pig farmers. Research showed that moral values could only predict the judgment of people in case of culling healthy animals in the course of a disease epidemic to a certain extent. Therefore, we hypothesized that attitudes of citizens and pig farmers cannot be predicted one-on-one by moral values. Furthermore, we were interested in getting insight in whether moral values can be useful in bridging the gap (...) between attitudes toward sow husbandry of citizens and pig farmers. Based on a questionnaire, it was found that pig farmers and citizens, when considered as one group, shared the valuation of most moral values. However, when studying the four clusters of citizens with different attitudes toward sow husbandry, determined in a previous study, a variation in valuation of the moral values between the clusters of citizens and farmers came to the fore. This means that moral values are interpreted differently by groups of people when forming attitudes toward sow husbandry. The results of our study give an indication of which moral values are weighed differently between clusters of citizens and pig farmers. This information can be useful in future research on attitudes toward animal husbandry in order to understand why attitudes differ between groups of people. Besides, our results can be useful for the pig sector and citizens to learn to understand each other’s attitudes. With this understanding it is possible to invest in a husbandry system that can build on societal support. (shrink)

Business moral values are defined as the personal moral values held by individuals who are engaged in business interactions. Direct supervisors may play an important role in shaping the business moral values of their subordinates. Using 264 supervisor— subordinate dyadic data from Taiwanese organizations, the study investigated the relationships among supervisor business moral values, subordinate business moral values, subordinate organizational commitment, job performance, and attendance. The results indicated that supervisor business (...) moral values were positively associated with subordinate business moral values, and that the latter mediated the relationship between the former and subordinate outcomes. Implications for business moral values research are discussed. (shrink)

What would it take for an artificial agent to be treated as having moral value? As a first step toward answering this question, we ask what it would take for an artificial agent to be capable of the sort of autonomous, adaptive social behavior that is characteristic of the animals that humans interact with. We propose that this sort of capacity is best measured by what we call the Embodied Turing Test. The Embodied Turing test is a test in (...) which intelligence is operationally defined in terms of autonomous, adaptive interaction with the environment and with other animals. Three versions of the Embodied Turing test were performed with a SONY AIBO robot. Human participants were asked to differentiate between AIBO in a human-controlled mode and AIBO in a software-controlled mode. Our results indicate that the human participants were guessing at how AIBO was controlled. Our data reveals that people do not have enough experience with robots to accurately evaluate its behavior. This indicates that today’s humans do not have enough experience with artificial agents to treat them as morally valuable. (shrink)

Recent work on empathy has focused on the phenomenon of feeling on behalf of, or for, others, and on determining the role it ought to play in our moral lives. Much less attention, however, has been paid to ‘feeling-with.’ In this paper, I distinguish ‘feeling-with’ from ‘feeling-for.’ I identify three distinguishing features of ‘feeling-with,’ all of which serve to make it distinct from empathy. Then, drawing on work in feminist moral psychology and feminist ethics, I argue that ‘feeling-with’ (...) has unique moral value over and above ‘feeling-for.’ I end by rebutting some likely objections to the claim that ‘feeling-with’ is morally valuable. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Teachers are regularly blamed–especially in times of moral panic–for failing to set a good example and teach proper moral standards to their pupils. As well as familiar issues about moral values and the legitimacy of different modes of moral pedagogy this also raises the question of the degree of connection between a teacher's private and personal values, attitudes and behaviour and his or her professional conduct and responsibilities. Two common responses to these problems–paternalism (...) and liberalism–are here criticised and an alternative perspective on the moral role of the teacher is sought, drawing on communitarian insights into the nature of moral and other values and their function in human affairs. (shrink)

Solutions to the problem ofprotecting informational privacy in cyberspacetend to fall into one of three categories:technological solutions, self-regulatorysolutions, and legislative solutions. In thispaper, I suggest that the legal protection ofthe right to online privacy within the USshould be strengthened. Traditionally, inidentifying where support can be found in theUS Constitution for a right to informationalprivacy, the point of focus has been on theFourth Amendment; protection in this contextfinds its moral basis in personal liberty,personal dignity, self-esteem, and othervalues. On the other (...) hand, the constitutionalright to privacy first established by Griswoldv. Connecticut finds its moral basis largelyin a single value, the value of autonomy ofdecision-making. I propose that an expandedconstitutional right to informational privacy,responsive to the escalating threats posed toonline privacy by developments in informationaltechnology, would be more likely to find asolid moral basis in the value of autonomyassociated with the constitutional right toprivacy found in Griswold than in the varietyof values forming the moral basis for the rightto privacy backed by the Fourth Amendment. (shrink)

My aim is to consider how private philanthropy – and that of foundations specifically – can better serve its social purposes. What I have to say may strike professionals in the field as naive. Admittedly my perspective is limited, for I have sat only on the grantee side of the desk. But I have also often tried to put myself into the grantor's frame of mind. The impressions gained in that way have been confirmed and modified by numerous recent conversations (...) in preparation for this paper. The heads of foundations with whom I talked, the board members, and program officers, all were warmly forthcoming, forgiving of my naivete, and very helpful. I hope that what may be construed as criticism in what I have to say will not be taken as betrayal of those good offices. I mean it as support and encouragement of the positive intent I found in every instance. When I accepted the invitation to write a paper on moral values and philanthropy, I first reflected on my own experience. I have often been troubled by my own moral standards in dealing with foundations. In nearly every instance, the proposals that I have written have contained an element of exaggeration – a heightening of the importance of the project I was proposing and of the capacity of my institution to carry it out. My end-of-grant follow-up reports have almost always contained exaggerated claims for the project's success. This inflation was not done consciously. It was a tendency learned early in my career from reading other proposals and participating in committees designing projects to be proposed. (shrink)

BackgroundIn the Netherlands, patients have the legal right to make a request for euthanasia to their physician. However, it is not clear what it means in a moral sense for a physician to receive a request for euthanasia. The aim of this study is to explore the moral values of physicians regarding requests for euthanasia. MethodsSemi-structured interviews were conducted with nine primary healthcare physicians involved in decision-making about euthanasia. The data were inductively analyzed which lead to the (...) emergence of themes, one of which was about values regarding end-of-life decisions.ResultsFour clusters of values related to euthanasia requests are described: values related to 1) the patient; 2) the family; 3) the physician; and 4) life and death. The data show that the participants value patient autonomy as a necessary but not sufficient condition for meeting a euthanasia request. A good relationship with the patient and the family are important. For the physician, the values physician autonomy, responsibility, understanding the patient and relief of suffering play a role. Life as an intrinsic good and a peaceful death are also important values.ConclusionThis study shows that next to patient autonomy and the relationship with the patient and the family, it is important for the participants to act in accordance with their professional values and to do justice to values related to life and death. The awareness of going against the intrinsic value of life is crucial, even if performing euthanasia may result in a feeling of relief or gratitude afterwards. (shrink)

It is common to think that we would be morally better people if we never felt envy. Recently, some philosophers have rejected this conclusion by arguing that envy can often be directed toward unfairness or inequality. As such, they conclude that we should not suppress our feelings of envy. I argue, however, that these defenses only show that envy is sometimes morally permissible. In order to show that we would not be better off without envy, we must show how envy (...) is not merely morally permissible, but morally valuable. Here I provide a defense of envy's moral value. I argue that feelings of envy are integral to the value that moral agents place on the goods and talents that they judge to be central to a worthwhile life. (shrink)

Abstract:This article suggests that there are individual differences in how people define important moral values, and that these differences are made manifest in differences in the situations. It identifies five dimensions along which individuals can differ in their understandings of values: 1)value category(where the value lies in the hierarchy), 2)agent(how voluntary the action is and whether it is morally required of the agent), 3)object(how close the self is to the object of the action; whether the action offends (...) God) 4)effect(whether the effect of the action is to harm or help), and 5)intention(whether the intention of the action is to harm or help). It then addresses four important values entailing moral dimensions: respect for life, respect for property, honest communication, and respect for religion. The article suggests that empirical research, classroom teaching, and business practice can be strengthened by considering these dimensions. (shrink)

By reflecting upon ordinary morality, Aurel Kolnai observed that the constituents of human life are already valued pre-morally. Asking himself how morality could be understood against this background, Kolnai implicitly reflected about the question what makes us moral. By developing a neo-Kolnaian conception of ordinary morality and by making use of the phenomenological method, I argue that man’s moral consciousness is built on the foundation of primordial positive values but that it takes on its proper negative and (...) emphatic character only in the face of aggressive threat to those values. Ethical phenomenology, then, reveals that morality concerns the preservation, protection and improvement of this valuable mode of life. We emphatically experience the valuable when it is in need of protection. This also explains the primarily imperative or negative character of morality. Likewise, moral rules and principles primarily express the concern not to break or transgress them and this precisely because they say to uphold and thereby protect the existing good. Additionally, vice and virtue suitably fall within this view. As morality is about what we do and refrain from doing, thus about our actions and conduct, it is also about our moral character. Repeated compliance with the existing good results in the ascription of virtue, repeated noncompliance in vice. Thus, I argue, in the spirit of Kolnai, that ordinary morality should be, and earns to be, taken much more seriously and less sceptically. In particular, a phenomenology that tries to describe and learn from morality as it is, has much more to offer than is claimed by contemporary moral philosophy, all too often disregarding phenomenology and the search for relevant descriptions of ethical phenomena. (shrink)

As it comes to animal ethics, broad versions of contractualism are often used as a reason for excluding animals from the category of those with moral value in the individualistic sense. Ideas of “reciprocity” and “moral agency” are invoked to show that only those capable of understanding and respecting the value of others may have value themselves. Because of this, possible duties toward animals are often made dependent upon altruism: to pay regard to animals is to act in (...) an other-regarding manner instead of mutual benefit. There are three main versions of altruism in animal ethics. The first one of these is the most traditional, and emphasises benevolence as a source of moral regard. The second concentrates on the notion of value, and claims that animals have value in the individualistic sense despite being incapable of moral agency. The third resists overt theory-dependency, often included in the second version, and concentrates more on the elements of “context” and “identification”. Out of these, a combination of the last two is identified as the most fruitful basis for altruistic animal ethics. (shrink)

The article considers how the preservation of biodiversity is morally justified in some of the key texts on environmental ethics, i.e. whether or not biodiversity can be justified as a moral end in itself. The views are classified according to the criteria which they hold to be the ultimate moral beneficiaries; positions are named as anthropocentrism, biocentrism and ecocentrism. In general, they are not in favor of regarding biodiversity as intrinsically valuable, but think its moral value as (...) derivative. This means that the myriad characters of life on Earth are to be maintained as diverse because of their instrumental value for the constituents. It seems that Naess's deep ecology is the only major position that argues for biodiversity's intrinsic value, but this view has proved to be problematic. (shrink)

Journal of Social Philosophy, EarlyView.

Central to the debate on the moral relevance of shame is whether we take others’ assessments of our moral shortcomings seriously. Some argue that viewing shame as a social emotion undermines the moral standing of shame; for a moral agent, what is authoritative are his own moral values, not the mere disapproval of others. Adam Smith's framework sheds some light on the contemporary debates in philosophy on the moral value of shame. Shame is (...) mostly a social emotion but has moral value for Smith. This is because we desire sympathy and share an ongoing social practice of morality with others. Smith developed the underpinnings of an account for a sympathetic basis of shame. An agent is evaluated through the sympathetic process to determine whether he/she has lived up to shared norms and morality. Shame emerges from the understanding that we ought not to be favorably thought of by others, the impartial spectator, or by our own conscience. We want to avoid shame for two reasons: first, we want to receive praise which gives pleasure, blame and blameworthiness operate by giving pain. Secondly, we are pleased with the sympathy of others. According to Smith, shame is a very painful emotion. Given our dread of pain and love of pleasure, we are motivated to be not blamed or blameworthy. We want to be favorably thought of so as not to be, or feel, shamed. Our dread of blameworthiness and our desire for sympathy motivates us to be a person who acts according to the norms and morality of society. Shame has a moral value both as a social emotion and when it arises from our conscience; however, Smith was also aware that there are limits to shame as a moral value, which arises from misjudgments of spectators. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for the following thesis: racial and ethic groups differ in their per capita intrinsic moral value. My argument rests on the notion that autonomy is a ground for intrinsic moral value and the notion that there are individual and group differences in autonomy. I then argue that the implications of this per capita difference between racial and ethnic groups are in some cases significant in that they are relevant to both public policy and (...) private action. (shrink)

"In the United States, we try to comfort ourselves with the belief that this country, as the leading world power and industrial democracy, is different from the rest of the world--that we have solved our day-to-day problems. Such optimism--undergirded with the best of intentions--obscures the reality of the social problems that remain among us. To name only a few, these include violence, drugs, and other crime illiteracy, homelessness, and poverty and the rising rate of illegitimacy in our society. "A vigorous (...) debate over these issues, which are of such pressing concern, is taking place now in our country. It largely concerns the means we should use to address them: What is the proper role of the government in solving these problems without depriving individuals of their right to shape their own destinies?" --from the Introduction by Andrew R. Cecil. (shrink)

This Is A New Release Of The Original 1919 Edition.

In this paper I wish to discuss two types of moral judgment, the ascription of moral value and of moral worth. Such judgments attribute evaluative properties to persons. There can be little doubt that such judgments are frequently passed and that, though many people find them distasteful, they are indispensable to the effective operation of a morality. To take seriously the slogan ‘Judge not lest ye be judged’ is to treat morality as a private, personal matter, which (...) is solely a person’s own concern. But so taken, the slogan invites indiscriminate mutual condonation of, and so connivance at, immorality. I therefore ignore possible objections to such judgments on the grounds of their supposed illegitimacy. (shrink)

John Alexander entered the Powell Street branch of the San Francisco Savings Bank shortly after 2:00 p.m. yesterday. He took his place in line and quietly waited his turn. But when he reached the window of teller Jane East, he quickly took a pistol from his pocket and began to order her to give him all the money in her cash drawer. Just as Alexander started to make his demand, Barney Gleason, a bank customer, rushed up to East’s window, shoved (...) Alexander to the side, and simultaneously knocked Alexander’s pistol to the floor. Bob Mann, the guard on duty, saw the gun, quickly scooped it up, and turned the tables on Alexander, who was soon handcuffed and taken off by the police. James Metzger, the bank manager, warmly thanked Gleason and said he would recommend him for a “San Francisco Certificate of Merit.” These certificates are awarded monthly to citizens who risk their lives for their fellow San Franciscans. (shrink)

Ethical culture construction is beneficial to maximize policy following behavior and avoid accidents of coal miners in an economic downturn. This paper examines the congruence between coal mine ethical culture values and miners’ moral values and the relationship with PFB. To shed light on this relationship, supervisor moral values act as a key moderator. We build on the initial structure of values to measure ECVs, MVs, and SMVs. At the same time, available congruence was (...) defined to describe the relationship between the two values. Drawing upon a survey of 267 miners in Chinese large state-owned coal mining enterprises, results revealed that ECVs–MVs congruence had a linear relationship with intrinsic PFB and a non-linear relationship with extrinsic PFB. These findings demonstrate that SMVs had a moderating effect on the relationship between ECVs–MVs congruence and extrinsic PFB. Thus, we continued to calculate the available congruence scope in tested enterprises. Furthermore, this study gives relative management proposals and suggestions to improve miners’ moral standards and to reduce coal mine accidents. (shrink)

This short and accessible book is designed for those learning about the search for ethical rules that can apply despite cultural differences. Robert Audi looks at several such attempts: Aristotle, Kant; Mill; and the movement known as "common-sense" ethics associated with W.D. Ross. He shows how each attempt grew out of its own time and place, yet has some universal qualities that can be used for an ethical framework. This is a short, accessible treatment of a major topic in ethics (...) by a senior and highly-respected figure. (shrink)

According to some philosophers of technology, technology embodies moral values in virtue of its functional properties and the intentions of its designers. But this paper shows that such an account makes the values supposedly embedded in technology epistemically opaque and that it does not allow for values to change. Therefore, to overcome these shortcomings, the paper introduces the novel Affordance Account of Value Embedding as a superior alternative. Accordingly, artefacts bear affordances, that is, artefacts make certain (...) actions likelier given the circumstances. Based on an interdisciplinary perspective that invokes recent moral anthropology, I conceptualize affordances as response-dependent properties. That is, they depend on intrinsic as well as extrinsic properties of the artefact. We have reason to value these properties. Therefore, artefacts embody values and are not value-neutral, which has practical implications for the design of new technologies. (shrink)

AI research is being challenged with ensuring that autonomous agents learn to behave ethically, namely in alignment with moral values. Here, we propose a novel way of tackling the value alignment problem as a two-step process. The first step consists on formalising moral values and value aligned behaviour based on philosophical foundations. Our formalisation is compatible with the framework of (Multi-Objective) Reinforcement Learning, to ease the handling of an agent’s individual and ethical objectives. The second step (...) consists in designing an environment wherein an agent learns to behave ethically while pursuing its individual objective. We leverage on our theoretical results to introduce an algorithm that automates our two-step approach. In the cases where value-aligned behaviour is possible, our algorithm produces a learning environment for the agent wherein it will learn a value-aligned behaviour. (shrink)

Without some form of objectivity, Harbour argues, there is no firm grounding other than taste for criticizing whatever constitutes another culture's values, or even for reforming one's own—and there is no firm grounding for moral objections to someone such as Hitler or Idi Amin.

Those who have had the benefit of a reasonably lengthy familiarity with the philosophy of religion, and more particularly with the God question, may be so kind to a speaker long in exile from philosophy and only recently returned, as to subscribe, initially at least, to the following rather enormous generalization: meaning and truth, which to most propositions are the twin forces by which they are maintained, turn out in the case of claims about God, to be the centrifugal forces (...) by which they disintegrate. In simpler language, the greater the amount of intelligible meaning that can be given to the idea of God, the less grounds there would appear to be for assuming let alone asserting, that God exists, at least as a being distinguishable from all the things in this empirical world which are the source of the range of meanings available to us; on the other hand, the more we insist that God exists, a being over and above the things that make up this empirical world the less the amount of commonly available meaning we appear to be able to apply to God. Or, to put this in a manner which might obviate an obvious objection to it; either everything we know is tout ensemble, God, and then nothing in the world that we know is distinctively divine; or else nothing in this world is God, and then nothing that we appear to be able to know is God. That same formulation will work, it should be noted, even if we substitute for ‘things in the world’, ‘an aspect or aspects of things in the world’. (shrink)

One of the most important roles of schools is to enable students to become good citizens, capable of participating in the public affairs of society. However, the term ‘good citizens’ evokes different interpretations and definitions in different value systems. Using the methods of quantitative content analysis and narrative analysis, this paper aims to identify the dominant moral values of a good citizen that are conveyed by Malaysian moral education textbooks. The findings demonstrate that ‘responsibility’ is the dominant (...) value for shaping a good citizen in Malaysia. The value of responsibility in the textbooks embraces not only the meanings of self-obligation and accountability, but responsibility is also defined as an individual's sense of self-discipline in their behaviour that enables them to avoid conflict and strive for harmonious social order. The other important values are “Respect”, “Helpful”, “Hard-working” and “Caring”. This study provides an example of how a multi-ethnic nation state like Malaysia promotes these moral values through its educational curriculum, for political legitimacy and forging national unity. (shrink)

"Every professor knows his own area, but who is able to see the whole picture?" Based on the author's background and the wide-ranging areas she has studied in the university, Gila Gat-Tilman presents articles on science, psuedo-science and moral values from an all-encompassing perspective. The first article in this book represents an overview of science and academic knowledge. Articles that follow discuss moral values, the Sabbath, experiments on animals, and the philosophical questions of certainty. Additionally, she (...) includes the biography of two people whose influence has helped hone her viewpoint. Science has improved our lives, and pseudo-science has followed suit. But pseudo-science, built upon baseless, faulty and tendentious theories and assumptions, has won unjustified credibility, as if it was real science, and has only caused harm. In ancient times there were philosophers like Socrates who investigated the question of what is justice and what is the good. They said that one should know what is the good in order to be good. They clarified what are the values that one should hold dear. In the generations that followed, those values were sanctified by religions, were kept in a sanctified way, and improved the life of the society. In our days, the values in the Ten Commandments are not enough, because technology has markedly changed our life, increased our performance abilities, and created new layers of relationships between strangers. Inventions such as the engine, telephone, television, and the computer enable mass communication, with all the implications. For example, today, from birth to death, every person is registered and the authorities have records about them that areused to influence their educational and employment chances. The Ten Commandments are a start for establishing the basis of moral values in our day, but they are not enough. We therefore need additional basic values, which when observed in a sacrosanct way, will provide people with the ability to properly integrate their social life into our society for the good of everyone. The author has a broad, varied academic knowledge in many fields. Her keen ability to focus on what is happening to others and put herself in their position has enabled her to see the bigger picture in society and to understand which values are lacking and must be widely adopted. This book offers these moral values. (shrink)

This book studies the pilgrimage of the Ancient World in its search for moral truth. After a brief examination of the values which dominated Homeric society and the subsequent aristocracies, the central portion of the book is an account and analysis of the moral ideas which illuminated the Greek, Roman and Hebrew worlds during the classical period. The volume discusses the cardinal virtues, the place of friendship, Plato’s love, _philanthropia _and the moral insights of the Jewish (...) prophets and subsequently examines Christian love. (shrink)

The theme of this paper is that while there are four seemingly contradictory classes of statements in the Tao de Ching regarding moral values and the Taoist sage, these statements can be interpreted to be consistent with each other. There are statements which seemingly state or imply that nothing at all can be said about the Tao; there are statements which seemingly state or imply that all value judgements are relative; there are statements which appear to attribute (...) class='Hi'>moral behaviour to the Taoist sage and there are statements which appear to attribute amoral or immoral behaviour to the Taoist sage. A consistent interpretation of these different statements can be found first by qualifying the assertion that the Tao is not capable of description to the less absolute assertion that nothing absolutely true can be said about the Tao; second, by arguing that the statements that appear to make all values relative refer to the correlativity of concepts, not the equality of values. Moreover, since the statements that appear to attribute moral behaviour to the sage are, by virtue of their predominance in the text, well justified and that by virtue of their paucity in the text, it is plausible to seek an alternate interpretation for the statements that seem to attribute amoral or immoral behaviour to the sage. Finally, the way in which the sage can be seen as good without attributing goodness to the Tao is by distinguishing between the way the sage appears to the observer who is outside of the Tao and the way in which the sage appears to himself. This latter distinction takes the form of the sage as appearing to display the quality of goodness in itself but not goodness for itself. (shrink)