Whether the prefrontal cortex is part of the neural substrates of consciousness is currently debated. Against prefrontal theories of consciousness, many have argued that neural activity in the prefrontal cortex does not correlate with consciousness but with subjective reports. We defend prefrontal theories of consciousness against this argument. We surmise that the requirement for reports is not a satisfying explanation of the difference in neural activity between conscious and unconscious trials, and that prefrontal theories of consciousness come out of this (...) debate unscathed. (shrink)

This volume is the first to bring together original work by leading philosophers and psychologists in an examination of the moral psychology of contempt.

Background Moral distress is a phenomenon that can lead to an imbalance of the mind and body. There are many coping strategies to overcome the obstacles that lead the subject to this condition. Some coping strategies are capable of being achieved through the cultivation of moral resilience. Aim The aim is to identify the strategies of moral resilience in the nursing management of University Hospitals in Brazil. Research design The research design is the qualitative study with discursive (...) textual analysis. Participants and research context : 44 nurse managers and nurses in leadership positions participated in a total of 30 University Hospitals in Brazil. Data were collected online, using a questionnaire with open questions. Ethical considerations The Ethics Committee approved the study. Participants received information about the research, agreed to respond to the questionnaire, and were guaranteed anonymity. Findings Personal adaptive strategies (intrapersonal and interpersonal) and organizational collaborative strategies (intrinsic and transformational management) emerged from this process. The intrapersonal strategies involved elements of rationality, flexibility, rebalancing practices, moral courage, and detachment. The interpersonal strategies addressed support networks, team involvement, and dialog. Organizational strategies dealt with actions which reorient ethical infrastructure, ethical education, and psychological protection, as well as fostering dialogical relationships, empowerment, and cooperation. Conclusion From the perspective of social historical construction, it is understood that developing personal and organizational strategies is essential to cultivating moral resilience. (shrink)

In this paper, we will use Ricoeur's philosophy in order to present money laundering as a metaphor and a narrative. We will firstly analyze the corporate moral discourse of 10 banks about money laundering. We have selected 10 banks that have codes of ethics and a corporate moral discourse about money laundering. The banks come from six countries: United States (2), Canada (2), Switzerland (2), Spain (2), Germany (1), and Belgium (1). We will see how their moral (...) discourse about money laundering contributes to deepen the understanding of money laundering as a narrative. Then, we will see to what extent Ricoeur's philosophy could help us to better understand the moral discourse of banks. We will describe the main components of money laundering as a narrative. (shrink)

This paper takes issue with the exemplarist strategy of fostering virtue development with the specific goal of improving its applicability in the context of education. I argue that, for what matters educationally, we have good reasons to endorse a liberal account of moral exemplarity. Specifically, I challenge two key assumptions of Linda Zagzebski’s Exemplarist Moral Theory (2017), namely that moral exemplars are exceptionally virtuous agents and that imitating their behavior is the main strategy for acquiring the virtues. (...) I will introduce and discuss the notions of enkratic exemplars and injustice illuminators and show that we have good reasons to consider them moral exemplars although they fail to satisfy (either of) the key assumptions. (shrink)

" Pour chanter les vingt ans du Pommier, mon éditrice me demanda d'écrire quelques lignes. Les voici. Pour une fois, j'y entre en morale, comme en terre nouvelle et inconnue, sur la pointe des pieds. On disait jadis de l'Arlequin de mes rêves, bienheureux comédien de l'art, qu'il corrigeait les moeurs en riant. Devenu arrière-grand-père, son disciple a, de même, le devoir sacré de raconter des histoires à ses petits descendants en leur enseignant à faire des grimaces narquoises. Parvenus ensemble (...) à l'âge espiègle, j'en profite pour leur dire de l'austère en pouffant de rire. " Michel Serres. (shrink)

Moral distress is an experience of profound moral compromise with deeply impactful and potentially long‐term consequences to the individual. Critical care areas are fraught with ethical issues, and end‐of‐life care has been associated with numerous incidences of moral distress among nurses. One such area where the dichotomy of life and death seems to be at its sharpest is in the pediatric intensive care unit. The purpose of this study was to understand the moral distress experiences of (...) pediatric intensive care nurses when caring for pediatric patients at the end of life. A secondary analysis was undertaken of seven transcripts from registered nurses across six Canadian pediatric intensive care units and produced three themes: under prioritization of child patient dignity, burden of insider knowledge, and environmental constraints on nursing roles and responsibilities. When caring for patients at the end of life, nurses experienced moral distress when a dignified death was not realized. Furthermore, despite interprofessional collaboration efforts in Canada, the concept of silo mentality persists and contributes to moral distress. Organizational involvement is needed to address moral distress in pediatric intensive care nurses both to achieve a dignified death for child patients and in addressing silo mentality. (shrink)

While possessing moral understanding is agreed to be a core epistemic and moral value, it remains a matter of dispute whether it can be acquired via testimony and whether it involves an ability to engage in moral reasoning. This paper addresses both issues with the aim of contributing to the current debates on moral understanding in moral epistemology and virtue ethics. It is argued that moral epistemologists should stop appealing to the argument from the (...) transmissibility of moral understanding to make a case for their favorite view of moral understanding. It is also argued that proponents of exemplarist moral theories cannot remain neutral on whether the ability to engage in moral reasoning is a necessary component of moral understanding. (shrink)

This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of 'lenses' and 'tensions' to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and (...) procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the 'mess' of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses. (shrink)

This book develops an intersectional feminist approach to moral responsibility. It accomplisheses four main goals. First, it outlines a concise list of the main principles of intersectional feminism. Second, it uses these principles to critique prevailing philosophical theories of moral responsibility. Third, it offers an account of moral responsibility that is compatible with the ethos of intersectional feminism. And fourth, it uses intersectional feminist principles to critique culturally normative responsibility practices. -/- This is the first book to (...) provide an explicitly intersectional feminist approach to moral responsibility. After identifying the five principles central to intersectional feminism, the author demonstrates how influential theories of responsibility are incompatible with these principles. She argues that a normatively adequate theory of blame should not be preoccupied with the agency or traits of wrongdoers; it should instead underscore, and seek to ameliorate, oppression and adversity as experienced by the marginalized. Apt blame and praise, according to her intersectional feminist account, is both communicative and functionalist. The book concludes with an extensive discussion of culturally embedded responsibility practices, including asymmetrically structured conversations and gender- and racially biased social spaces. -/- An Intersectional Feminist Approach to Moral Responsibility presents a sophisticated and original philosophical account of moral responsibility. It will be of interest to philosophers working at the crossroads of moral responsibility, feminist philosophy, critical race theory, queer theory, critical disability studies, and intersectionality theory. (shrink)

There are studies on the normative ethical frameworks used by long-term care staff and studies proposing how staff should reason, but few studies explore how staff actually reason. This study reports on the ethical reasoning process and experiences of moral distress of long-term care staff in the provision of social care. Seven interdisciplinary focus groups were conducted with twenty front-line staff. Staff typically did not have difficulty determining the ethical decision and/or action; however, they frequently experience moral distress. (...) To manage these experiences of moral distress in making ethical decisions, staff 1) comply with being told what to do out of fear of consequences, 2) defer decisions to family, 3) “have a meeting,” 4) socialization into and acceptance of workplace culture. Findings suggest that to better understand how and why staff make ethical decisions and improve quality and ethical care, we must explore the interaction between front-line practice and organizational and public policy. (shrink)

This article introduces an account of moral education grounded in Zagzebski’s recent Exemplarist Moral Theory and discusses two problems that have to be solved for the account to become a realistic alternative to other educational models on the market, namely the limited-applicability problem and the problem of indoctrination. The first problem raises worries about the viability of the account in ordinary circumstances. The second charges the proposed educational model with indoctrinating students. The main goal of this article is (...) to show how an exemplar-based account of moral education can handle both problems without compromising its structure and upshot. (shrink)

This paper concludes a special feature of Sustainability Science that explores a broad range of social value theoretical traditions, such as religious studies, social psychology, indigenous knowledge, economics, sociology, and philosophy. We introduce a novel transdisciplinary conceptual framework that revolves around concepts of ‘lenses’ and ‘tensions’ to help navigate value diversity. First, we consider the notion of lenses: perspectives on value and valuation along diverse dimensions that describe what values focus on, how their sociality is envisioned, and what epistemic and (...) procedural assumptions are made. We characterise fourteen of such dimensions. This provides a foundation for exploration of seven areas of tension, between: (1) the values of individuals vs collectives; (2) values as discrete and held vs embedded and constructed; (3) value as static or changeable; (4) valuation as descriptive vs normative and transformative; (5) social vs relational values; (6) different rationalities and their relation to value integration; (7) degrees of acknowledgment of the role of power in navigating value conflicts. In doing so, we embrace the ‘mess’ of diversity, yet also provide a framework to organise this mess and support and encourage active transdisciplinary collaboration. We identify key research areas where such collaborations can be harnessed for sustainability transformation. Here it is crucial to understand how certain social value lenses are privileged over others and build capacity in decision-making for understanding and drawing on multiple value, epistemic and procedural lenses. (shrink)

BackgroundCommentators believe that the ethical decision-making climate is instrumental in enhancing interprofessional collaboration in intensive care units. Our aim was twofold: to determine the perception of the ethical climate, levels of moral distress, and intention to leave one's job among nurses and physicians, and between the different ICU types and determine the association between the ethical climate, moral distress, and intention to leave.MethodsWe performed a cross-sectional questionnaire study between May 2021 and August 2021 involving 206 nurses and physicians (...) in a large urban academic hospital. We used the validated Ethical Decision-Making Climate Questionnaire and the Measure of Moral Distress for Healthcare Professionals tools and asked respondents their intention to leave their jobs. We also made comparisons between the different ICU types. We used Pearson's correlation coefficient to identify statistically significant associations between the Ethical Climate, Moral Distress, and Intention to Leave.ResultsNurses perceived the ethical climate for decision-making as less favorable than physicians. They also had significantly greater levels of moral distress and higher intention to leave their job rates than physicians. Regarding the ICU types, the Neonatal/pediatric unit had a significantly higher overall ethical climate score than the Medical and Surgical units and also demonstrated lower moral distress scores and lower “intention to leave” scores compared with both the Medical and Surgical units. The ethical climate and moral distress scores were negatively correlated ; moral distress and "intention to leave" was positively correlated ; and ethical climate and “intention to leave” were negatively correlated.ConclusionsSignificant differences exist in the perception of the ethical climate, levels of moral distress, and intention to leave between nurses and physicians and between the different ICU types. Inspecting the individual factors of the ethical climate and moral distress tools can help hospital leadership target organizational factors that improve interprofessional collaboration, lessening moral distress, decreasing turnover, and improved patient care. (shrink)

Despite contemporary moral philosophers' renewed attention to the moral significance of emotions, the attitudinal repertoire with which they equip the mature moral agent remains stunted. One attitude moral philosophers neglect (if not disown) is contempt. While acknowledging the nastiness of contempt, I here correct the neglect by providing an account of the moral psychology of contempt. In the process, I defend the moral propriety of certain tokens of properly person-focused contempt against some prominent objections (...) -- among them, objections stemming from Kantian worries that contempt is incompatible with the respect we owe to persons as such. (shrink)

The idea of moral progress is a necessary presupposition of action for beings like us. We must believe that moral progress is possible and that it might have been realized in human experience, if we are to be confident that continued human action can have any morally constructive point. I discuss the implications of this truth for moral psychology. I also show that once we understand the complex nature and the complicated social sources of moral progress, (...) we will appreciate why we cannot construct a plausible comprehensive action-guiding theory of moral progress. Yet while the nature and sources of moral progress consistently thwart many theoretical hopes, the idea of moral progress is a plausible, critically important and morally constructive principle of historical interpretation. (shrink)

Pierre André,Michel Bourban | : Dans un contexte d’urgence, les philosophes ne peuvent plus se contenter d’élaborer des théories idéales de la justice climatique fondées sur des motivations purement morales. Il est désormais nécessaire d’envisager des approches non idéales. Nous proposons ici de prendre au sérieux le problème de la motivation à l’action et nous mettons en avant certains motifs prudentiels pour lutter contre le changement climatique, en vue non pas de remplacer, mais de renforcer les motivations morales existantes, (...) mais insuffisantes. Nous commençons par présenter trois grandes approches idéales qui ont prévalu jusqu’ici dans la recherche sur la justice climatique et sont fondées respectivement sur l’éthique déontologique, sur l’éthique des vertus et sur l’utilitarisme. Nous mettons en évidence leurs limites pratiques, en ciblant le problème de la motivation à l’action. Nous proposons ensuite quelques pistes pour résoudre ce problème en esquissant une approche non idéale de la justice climatique. Cette approche est centrée sur les motivations amorales ressortant de l’examen attentif des perturbations systémiques globales et des contextes nationaux et locaux spécifiques. Elle est à notre sens incontournable pour motiver les États-nations, les entreprises et les individus. Il s’agit cependant moins de la substituer totalement aux théories idéales de la justice climatique que de compléter celles-ci pour établir une vision plus compréhensive qui distingue le problème de la justification morale de celui de la motivation. | : In a situation of urgency, philosophers can no longer rely exclusively on ideal theories of climate justice grounded on purely moral motives. It has become necessary to build nonideal approaches. We propose to give serious consideration to the problem of motivation to act by putting forward some prudential reasons for tackling climate change—with the aim not of replacing existing but inadequate moral motivations, but of strengthening them. First, we identify three major ideal approaches that have so far prevailed in climate justice research, grounded respectively on deontological ethics, on virtue ethics, and on utilitarianism. We highlight their practical limitations, particularly with regards to the problem of motivation to act. Second, we open the way for an alternative nonideal approach to climate justice based on amoral motivations issuing from a careful examination of global systemic disruptions as well as of specific national and local situations. This approach cannot be ignored if one wishes to motivate nation-states, corporations, and individuals to act. However, our goal is not to replace ideal theory with nonideal theory, but rather to complete the former with the latter for a more comprehensive account of climate justice that distinguishes the problem of moral justification from the problem of motivation. (shrink)

Fieldwork in Familiar Places challenges the misconceptions about morality, culture, and objectivity that support these skepticisms, to show that we can take ...

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)

In Moral philosophy meets social psychology, Gilbert Harman argues that social psychology can educate folk morality to prevent us from committing the ‘fundamental attribution error,’ i.e. ‘the error of ignoring situational factors and overconfidently assuming that distinctive behaviour or patterns of behaviour are due to an agent’s distinctive character traits’ (Harman, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 99, 315–331, 1999). An overview of the literature shows that while situationists unanimously agree with Harman on this point, they disagree on whether we (...) also tend to commit a kind of fundamental attribution error with respect to moral responsibility and blame. Do we also tend to ignore situational factors and overconfidently assume that people are morally responsible and blameworthy for their distinctive patterns of wrongful behaviour? Very few scholars have addressed this issue, and none has ever given a comprehensive account of moral responsibility and blame from a situationist perspective. In this paper, I argue that situationist social psychology impugns subjective theories of responsibility and blame which focus on the agent’s inner states and supports an objective theory—namely, the standard of the reasonable person. I defend this standard as a tool for moral appraisal, and then I refute the common misperception that this approach lets most perpetrators off the hook and poses a threat to society. (shrink)

Il problema di determinare quali siano i fondamenti dell’etica si riflette direttamente sul dibattito tra le principali etiche normative che si è arricchito, in tempi molto recenti, della teoria morale detta “esemplarista”, proposta da Linda Zagzebski, voce illustre nel panorama della filosofia morale, della conoscenza e della religione analitiche. L’esemplarismo, come ogni altra teoria morale fondazionalista, ha a cuore la questione del fondamento, ma si distingue dalle classiche teorie fondazionaliste sfidando l’idea che tale fondamento possa essere un concetto. Infatti, Zagzebski (...) non fonda la sua teoria su uno dei concetti morali fondamentali (bene, virtù, atto giusto), bensì fa derivare la definizione di tali concetti dall’individuazione di un esemplare morale in “questa o quella” persona. In altre parole, l’esemplarismo trova la sua fondazione non-concettuale in quei soggetti che ammiriamo per la loro eccezionalità morale. Questo contributo intende fornire una breve analisi della proposta esemplarista suddivisa in due parti: nella prima parte, ricostruirò i lineamenti essenziali dell’esemplarismo tentando di definire chi sia l’esemplare e quale sia la struttura portante della teoria esemplarista; la seconda parte, invece, includerà una breve critica della proposta di Zagzebski e alcune riflessioni sui vantaggi e le prospettive di ricerca che essa apre. (shrink)

Beauchamp and Childress’ biomedical principlism is nearly synonymous with medical ethics for most clinicians. Their four principles are theoretically derived from the “common morality”, a universal cache of moral beliefs and claims shared by all morally serious humans. Others have challenged the viability of the common morality, but none have attempted to explain why the common morality makes intuitive sense to Western ethicists. Here I use the work of Charles Taylor to trace how events in the Western history of (...) ideas made the common morality seem plausible and yet, ironically, underscore the cultural particularity of the so-called common morality. I conclude that the supposedly universal common morality is actually quite culturally contained. Importantly, this should give us pause about the global authority of principlism and Beauchamp and Childress’ claim to a global bioethics project. (shrink)

Beginning with the view that human consciousness is essentially embodied and that the way we consciously experience the world is structured by our bodily dynamics and surroundings, the book argues that emotions are a fundamental manifestation of our embodiment, and play a crucial role in self-consciousness, moral evaluation, and social cognition.

Street’s “Darwinian Dilemma” is a well-known epistemological objection to moral realism. In this paper, I argue that “third-factor” replies to this argument on behalf of the moral realist, as popularized by Enoch :413–438, 2010, Taking morality seriously: a defense of robust realism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011), Skarsaune :229–243, 2011) and Wielenberg :441–464, 2010, Robust ethics: the metaphysics and epistemology of godless normative realism, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014), cannot succeed. This is because they are instances of the (...) illegitimate form of reasoning known as “bootstrapping.” The phenomenon of bootstrapping has been discussed in detail, most notably by Vogel :602–623, 2000) and Cohen :309–329, 2002), in a different context as an objection to reliabilism and related theories of knowledge. I introduce four different characterizations of the error of bootstrapping from the epistemic literature in order to argue that the form of reasoning exemplified by third-factor replies would be deemed illegitimate by every one of them. I conclude that the moral realist should abandon third-factor replies, or else suggest a novel diagnosis for what goes wrong in bootstrapping cases that does not apply equally to the realist’s form of argument. However, I am not optimistic about the prospects for this latter strategy. (shrink)

This dissertation urges philosophers to reevaluate how they frame the question of the rationality of moral action. Its motivation is the thought that approaches to the question have suffered from mistakes in the relata. On the part of theories of practical reason, philosophers adopt an inadequate theory of action. On the part of moral theory, philosophers hold narrow conceptions of moral worth. As a result, not only have we failed to vindicate the thought that the moral (...) agent acts well, our conception of moral action invites the charge of remoteness from human life. ;In response, I propose we abandon some dogmas of moral psychology. My rethinking proceeds, negatively, by rejecting desire-based instrumentalist accounts of practical rationality and, positively, from renewed attention to virtuous action, a focus some suggest might counteract the remoteness of which morality's critics complain. I attend to the virtue of true friendship to defend non-instrumental conceptions of moral psychology and practical rationality that bring both into closer contact with commonsense norms of admirable action as they bear on what agents have reason to do. ;Chapter 1 introduces desire-based instrumentalism as the theory proponents claim is best suited to avoid the problem of the alienation of practical reason. I argue their claim does not survive scrutiny. ;In Chapter 2 I distinguish between explicit desiderative content and desiderative framing versions of desire-based instrumentalism. I argue the former is false to the content of deliberation and that arguments from the nature of intentional action fail to support the latter. ;Chapter 3 examines the evaluatively non-detachable quality of the descriptions under which actions performed out of friendship are intentional. I develop an account of virtuous action as nonteleologically ally motivated action understood in terms not of what it brings about but of its expressive quality. I argue action's expressive quality is key to assessing moral worth and rationality. ;Chapter 4 develops my account of virtuous agents' reasons for acting and asks what earns expressive action its claim to rationality. I argue certain actions inherit their rationality by expressing dispositions to regulate practical attitudes , dispositions themselves rationally assessable. (shrink)

Background Over the past few decades, moral distress has been examined in the nursing literature. It is thought to occur when an individual has made a moral decision but is unable to act on it, often attributable to constraints, internal or external. Varying definitions can be found throughout the healthcare literature. This lack of cohesion has led to complications for study of the phenomenon, along with its effects to nursing practice, education and targeted policy development. Objectives The aim (...) of this analysis was to uncover unique definitions of moral distress as found in the nursing literature and to examine the relationship between these definitions. Research Design and Context Morse’s method of concept clarification was applied given the large body of literature which includes definitions, descriptions and measurements of the concept in research. The steps include (a) conducting a literature review; (b) analysing the literature; and (c) identifying, describing, comparing, and contrasting attributes, antecedents and consequences of each category. Findings Each of the 18 included studies described constraints in their definition of moral distress, whether implied or explicitly stated. External constraints are widely described as obstacles outside of the individual, whether institutional, systemic or situational, while internal constraints are located within the individuals themselves and are described as personal limitations, failings or weakness of will. Conclusion Upon reviewing these definitions, we determined that the term ‘internal constraints’ is problematic due to the emphasis of responsibility on the individual experiencing moral distress. We propose an alteration to ‘internal characteristics’ that will assume less responsibility of change from the individual to place a heavier onus on systemic and institutional constraints. (shrink)

In traditional analytic philosophy, critical thinking is defined along Cartesian lines as rational and linear reasoning preclusive of intuitions, emotions and lived experience. According to Michael Gilbert, this view – which he calls the Natural Light Theory (NLT) – fails because it arbitrarily excludes standard feminist forms of argumentation and neglects the essentially social nature of argumentation. In this paper, I argue that while Gilbert’s criticism is correct for argumentation in general, NLT fails in a distinctive and particularly problematic manner (...) in moral argumentation contexts. This is because NLT calls for disputants to adopt an impartial attitude, which overlooks the fact that moral disputants qua moral agents are necessarily partial to their own values and interests. Adopting the impartial perspective would therefore alienate them from their values and interests, causing a kind of “moral schizophrenia.” Finally, I urge a re-valuation of epistemic virtue in argumentation. (shrink)

Despite appeals to Hume in debates over moralism in art criticism, we lack an adequate account of Hume’s moralist aesthetics, as presented in “Of the Standard of Taste.” I illuminate that aesthetics by pursuing a problem, the moral prejudice dilemma, that arises from a tension between the “freedom from prejudice” Hume requires of aesthetic judges and what he says about the relevance of moral considerations to art evaluation. I disarm the dilemma by investigating the taxonomy of prejudices by (...) which Hume justifies the true judge’s moralism. The result distinguishes Hume’s aesthetic and moral points of view while defending aesthetic moralism. (shrink)

There is growing interest in the positive organizational literature in the complex interplay between the positive and negative facets of organizations, individuals, and situations. The concept of courage provides fertile ground to study this interplay, since it is generally understood to be a positive quality that is manifested in challenging situations. The empirical study presented here looks at courage in a strategic decision-making context and takes an interpretive perspective; it focuses on the cognitive structures and subjective understandings of managers and (...) administrators involved in merger projects as a way to understand the dynamics surrounding managerial courage. Our study makes several contributions: it shows that managers consider courage to have a moral dimension, e.g., to be a positive and ethical response to a risky or difficult situation in which there is an interplay between organizational and personal interests; it identifies two kinds of managerial moral courage; it proposes a conceptual model with which to understand how evaluations of what is courageous and what is not are made; and finally, it offers four schemas developed from the data that add to our understanding of moral courage in management. (shrink)

Technology is even more than our world, our form of life, our civilization. Technology interacts with the world to change it. Philosophers need to seriously address the fluidity of a smartphone interface, the efficiency of a Dyson vacuum cleaner, or the familiar noise of an antique vacuum cleaner. Beyond their phenomenological description, the emotional experience acquires moral significance and in some cases even supplies ethical resources for the self. If we leave this dimension of modern experience unaddressed, we may (...) miss something of value in contemporary life. Combining European humanism, Anglophone pragmatism, and Asian traditions, Michel Puech pleads for an "ethical turn" in the way we understand and address technological issues in modern day society. Puech argues that the question of "power" is what needs to be reconsidered today. In doing so, he provides a three-tier distinction of power: power to modify the outer world ; power over other humans ; power over oneself. (shrink)

Abstract:In this paper, I dispute what I callpsychological internalismabout moral responsibility, which comprises most classic accounts as well as newer neurobiological ones, and I defendpsychological externalismabout moral responsibility instead. According to psychological internalism, an agent's moral responsibility is determined solely or primarily by her intentional states. I argue that psychological internalism is empirically challenged by recent findings in social psychology and cognitive science. In light of the empirical evidence, I contend that moral responsibility depends on historical (...) and environmental factors to a much greater degree than previously appreciated. Thus, moral responsibility is not just in the head: indeed, it is much less in the head than typically assumed. (shrink)

This contribution discusses two aspects of Watson’s account of epistemic rights: namely, the nature of epistemic rights, and a particular form of epistemic rights violation that Watson calls the abuse of perceived epistemic authority. It is argued that Watson’s take on both aspects is unsatisfactory, and some suggestions for an alternative view are offered.

Deceptive communication and misinformation are crucial issues that are currently having a significant impact on social life. Parallel to the important work of identifying misinformation on digital platforms is understanding why such material proliferates. One approach to answering this question is to attempt to understand the values that are being targeted by misinformation as a means of interpreting the underlying social bonds that are at stake. This study examines the kinds of social bonds that are communed around and contested in (...) a corpus of YouTube video comments about the viral internet hoax ‘The Momo Challenge’. A social semiotic approach to ‘ambient affiliation’ is used to investigate how these bonds are negotiated in this digital discourse. This approach involves establishing the types of personae who were negotiating meaning in the comments on the basis of the values that they recurrently shared, deferred or disputed. The analysis suggests that, in addition to concern over whether Momo was real and dangerous, there was a deeper moral panic about parenting in the digital age and the legitimacy of institutions such as schools and media as brokers of knowledge. (shrink)

The Care of the Self is the third and possibly final volume of Michel Foucault’s widely acclaimed examination of "the experience of sexuality in Western society." Foucault takes us into the first two centuries of our own era, into the Golden Age of Rome, to reveal a subtle but decisive break from the classical Greek vision of sexual pleasure. He skillfully explores the whole corpus of moral reflection among philosophers and physicians of the era, and uncovers an increasing (...) mistrust of pleasure and growing anxiety over sexual activity and its consequences. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical introduction to moral epistemology, that is, one of the emerging disciplines within metaethics and epistemology. The main sections of this contribution are devoted to addressing the three following issues: first, whether it is possible to acquire moral knowledge; second, how – viz., through which sources – we can acquire moral knowledge; and third, which implications moral epistemology draws from empirical sciences.

I propose solutions to two longstanding interpretive questions about J.G. Fichte’s 1796–97 Foundations of Natural Right: 1. What does Fichte mean when he describes the theory of right as ‘independent’ of moral theory, and what motivates that independence thesis? 2. What does Fichte mean when he describes requirements of right and the principle of right as ‘hypothetical’ imperatives, and how is that characterization consistent with his claim to have derived the concept of right as a condition of possibility of (...) self-consciousness? Answers to both questions are motivated by an approach to the text that looks at it through the lens of Fichte’s 1798 System of Ethics, into which its results must fit if, as Fichte believes, the possibility of morally sanctioned interactions with others requires standing in some law-governed political relationship with them. (shrink)