A key distinction in ethics is between members and nonmembers of the moral community. Over time, our notion of this community has expanded as we have moved from a rationality criterion to a sentience criterion for membership. I argue that a sentience criterion is insufficient to accommodate all members of the moral community; the true underlying criterion can be understood in terms of whether a being has interests. This may be extended to conscious, self-aware machines, as well as (...) to any autonomous intelligent machines. Such machines exhibit an ability to formulate desires for the course of their own existence; this gives them basic moral standing. While not all machines display autonomy, those which do must be treated as moral patients; to ignore their claims to moral recognition is to repeat past errors. I thus urge moral generosity with respect to the ethical claims of intelligent machines. (shrink)

I attempt to vindicate our authority to create new practical reasons for others by making choices of own own. In The Doctrine of Right Kant argues that we have an obligation to leave the Juridical State of Nature and found the state. In a less familiar passage in Religion within the Bounds of Mere Reason he argues for an obligation to leave what he calls the Ethical State of Nature and join together in the Moral Community. I read both (...) texts as addressing and trying to resolve a tension between our individual freedom and our authority to make claims on one another. I explicate the political argument, and then develop the view that Kant sketches in the Religion, arguing that regarding others as capable of making choices that give you reasons to act is a condition of the full exercise of your autonomy. (shrink)

This article argues that Bowers and Paternoster’s emphasis on a moral community marks an important step towards a more ethical and effective approach to anti-doping. However, it also argues that the authors’ proposed strategies undermine their stated goal of effectively engaging athletes as partners in anti-doping efforts and raise ethical concerns. Their proposed emphasis on exploiting shaming as a punishment and their general view of athletes as adversaries fosters mistrust between athletes and those who enforce the anti-doping rules. Instead, (...) this article describes a model for empowering athletes as stakeholders in anti-doping policy as a means to provide anti-doping rules with increased moral legitimacy among athletes. (shrink)

This work aligns James Buchanan’s theory of social contract with the structure of Michael Moehler’s multilevel social contract. Most importantly, this work develops Buchanan’s notions of moral community and moral order. It identifies moral community as the vehicle of escape from moral anarchy, where community is established upon a system of rules akin to James Buchanan’s first-stage social contract. Moral order establishes the baseline treatment of non-members by members of a moral community and also (...) provides a minimum standard for resolving disputes that are not resolved by the more robust social contract shared among community members. This work links the multilevel contract to polycentric social order, noting that polycentric systems may promote development of the moral order by enabling experimentation with and emulation of rules and rule systems made available by overlapping and adjacent institutions. (shrink)

Moral reflection is the process through which persons come to perceive, analyze, judge, and decide moral problems, issues, and dilemmas. Because of its complex character, the process can be studied from a variety of perspectives. Psycho-genetic approaches, such as those of Lawrence Kohlberg, study the sequential stages through which individuals develop capacities for moral reasoning. Victor Turner, an anthropologist interested in the relationship between elements of structure and antistructure in society, considered the role of structured beliefs during (...) periods of social crises, while some sociologists have focused attention on the everyday structural roles played by norms in social life. Peter Berger's image of religion as a" sacred canopy" which provides a" nomizing" or stabilizing context for societies could be applied with equal justice to moral norms. Philosophers, in contrast to these considerations, have usually been concerned with the rational foundations for specific moral claims; with normative ethical theories and their applications, or with metaethical questions about the meaning and nature of moral utterances and the logic of moral reasoning. This restriction of philosophical interest to rational justification at various levels has led to an emphasis on two phases of the moral reflection process, analysis, and decision, at the expense of two other phases, of perception and resolution. Concentration on the universal and rational character of moral justification has also prevented attention from being given to some unique characteristics which distinguish moral reflection among persons involved in a crisis moral community, called into being by a breach in established social order from moral reflection among persons in everyday moral communities. The following remarks seek to (1) define the moral reflection process in an expanded sense, and then (2) discuss how that process works within crisis moral communities. (shrink)

Michael Zimmerman has recently argued against the twofold Strawsonian claim that there can be no moral responsibility without a moral community and that, as a result, moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal. I offered a number of objections to Zimmerman’s view, to which Zimmerman responded. In this article, I respond to Zimmerman’s responses to my criticisms.

Les problèmes de la vie commençante et ceux de la vie finissante déterminent deux secteurs importants de la bioéthique. La démarche éthique de toutes les personnes concernées par ces problèmes commence par une information sérieuse sur les données scientifiques, biologiques ou médicales, sur les situations des personnes et leurs implications anthropologiques et sociales. Elle requiert ensuite, mais toujours en lien étroit avec ces approches technologiques, l'analyse, principalement philosophique, des concepts de personne et de corps humain, de dignité et de respect (...) de la personne, analyse attentive à la fragilité de l'être humain et aux conflits qui peuvent surgir entre valeurs humaines et procédures médicales comme entre les situations individuelles et les impératifs de la loi. A la « morale commune », élaborée par le discours philosophique, la théologie ajoute son intuition propre de la gratuité de l'amour et de la responsabilité d'autrui, puisée dans la révélation de l'Alliance et de l'identification du Christ aux personnes les plus fragiles et aux conditions de plus grande précarité. Elle n'entre pas en concurrence avec la morale commune ni ne se substitue à la décision éthique qui incombe à chacun, mais elle apporte aux croyants des motivations plus pressantes et un regard plus ouvert et plus compréhensif sur le prochain et sur l'humain.Bioethics can be divided into two sectors, problems in the first stages of life and problems near the end of life . The etbical steps taken by the people concerned by these problems begin with a serious study of the scientific, biological, or medical facts. They must also consider the situation of the individual's case as well as the anthropological and social implications, The ethical steps to be taken require, but always in close connection with technological approaches, the analysis of the concepts of person and the human body. Tbey also require respect for the dignity elabored by pbilosopbical discourse, theology adds its own intuition on the gratuitousness of love and responsibility for the other. Its sources are found in the revelation of the Covenant and the identification of Christ with the weakest persons and to conditions that are the most precarious. Theology does not enter into competition witb common morality, nor put itself in the place of the ethical decision that eacb person must make. Rather it brings strong motives to believers and a more open and more understanding look at one’s neighbour and humanness. (shrink)

This essay suggests that the 21st century knowledge economy represents a moderate form of moral community. To show this I first clarify the ideas of moral community and a knowledge economy. The latter reflects the emergence of high volume, high speed, high precision (or +VSP) electronic communications and exchange networks, both of which embody the ethical value of reciprocity. One result has been the emergence of commercially oriented knowledge communities. In conclusion, the +VSP communications knowledge economy raises (...) several problems, about truth, social turbulence, and democratic community. (shrink)

This paper examines the professions as examples of “moral community” and explores how professional leaders possessed of moral intelligence can make a contribution to enhance the ethical fabric of their communities. The paper offers a model of ethical leadership in the professional business sector that will improve our understanding of how ethical behavior in the professions confers legitimacy and sustainability necessary to achieving the professions’ goals, and how a leadership approach to ethics can serve as an effective (...) tool for the dissemination of moral values in the organization. (shrink)

Many philosophers endorse the idea that there can be no moral responsibility without a moral community and thus hold that such responsibility is essentially interpersonal. In this paper, various interpretations of this idea are distinguished, and it is argued that no interpretation of it captures a significant truth. The popular view that moral responsibility consists in answerability is discussed and dismissed. The even more popular view that such responsibility consists in susceptibility to the reactive attitudes is also (...) discussed, and it is argued that this view at best supports only an etiolated interpretation of the idea that moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal. (shrink)

The invocation of moral rights in moral/social debate today is a recipe for deadlock in our consideration of substantive issues. How we treat animals and humans in part should derive from the value of their lives, which is a function of the quality of their lives, which in turn is a function of the richness of their lives. Consistency in argument requires that humans with a low quality of life should be chosen as experimental subjects over animals with (...) a higher quality of life. (shrink)

En el marco del naturalismo moral PeterF. Strawson propone que la moralidades parte de nuestra natural participaciónen relaciones humanas donde los otrosno pueden resultarnos indiferentes. Sinembargo, esta innegable ganancia teóricade Strawson, puede quedar debilitadapor la insuficiente importancia que elanglosajón concede a las comunidadesmorales. Como agudamente lo ha puestode pr e s e nt e Ror t y, l os s e nt i mi e nt osmorales, tal como los concebía Strawson,no t ranscurren f uera o al margen dediversas (...) comunidades morales. Cuestiónque nos ha conducido a afirmar, inspiradosen Rorty, que responsabilizarse por el otrodepende de la posibilidad de constituircomunidades morales más incluyentes.A e l l o de b e s uma r s e , pe ns a mo s , e lplanteamiento de Baeir, de una educaciónsentimental que comienza en el nacimientocon el recibimiento amoroso de nuestrosfamiliares, quienes a través de su afectoprogresi vamente nos van entregandoesa confianza inicial que nos permitirác o n q u i s t a r “ u n a v e r s i ó n mo d e s t a ,atemperada, no fanática de la hermandadcristiana”*las comuniDaDes moralesfrom partiCipative interaCtions to moral Communitiesde alcance universalIn the framework of the moral naturalism Peter F. Strawson proposes that moralityis part of our natural participation inhuman rel ati ons where others cannotturn out indifferent to us. Nevertheless,this undeniable theoretical achievementof Strawson, can result weakened becauseof the insufficient importance that the Anglo-saxon gives to moral communities.Acutely, has said Rorty, moral sentimentsin the way conceived by Strawson do nottakes place outside or to the margin ofdiverse moral communities. This issuehas conducted us to affirm, inspired inRorty, that being responsible for the otherdepends on the possibility of built moreinclusive moral communities. We guessBaeir’s approach related to sentimentaleducation should be added to that, which starts from the birth with the lovely reception of our relatives, who throughtheir dearness progressively are giving usthe initial trust that will permit us conquer“a modest version, attenuated, non fanaticof the Christian brotherhood”of universal reach. (shrink)

Moral distress is a pervasive phenomenon in healthcare for which there is no straightforward “solution.” Rhetoric surrounding moral distress has shifted over time, with some scholars arguing that moral distress needs to be remedied, resolved, and eradicated, while others recognize that moral distress can have some positive value. The authors of this paper recognize that moral distress has value in its function as a warning sign, signaling the presence of an ethical issue related to patient (...) care that requires deeper exploration, rather than evidencing identification of the “right” course of action. Once the experience of moral distress is identified, steps ought to be taken to clarify the moral issue, and, if possible and reasonable, the patient’s values ought to be prioritized. This paper offers concrete actions steps, drawn from theory, which can be used in clinical practice to provide peer support or to facilitate self-reflection for morally distressed individuals. This approach empowers morally distressed individuals to explore ethical issues, identify concrete steps that can be taken, and mitigate feelings of powerlessness that are often associated with moral-constraint distress. The questions guide individuals and peers to reflect first on the micro-space and then more broadly on the institutional culture, facilitating meso- and macro-reflection and action. (shrink)

This paper will examine the concepts of integrity and moral residue as they relate to nursing practice in the current health care environment. I will begin with my definition and conception of ethical practice, and, based on that, will go on to argue for the importance of recognizing that nurses often find themselves in the position of compromising their moral integrity in order to maintain their self‐survival in the hospital or health care environment. I will argue that (...) class='Hi'>moral integrity is necessary to a moral life, and is relational in nature. When integrity is threatened, the result is moral distress, moral residue, and in some cases, abandonment of the profession. The solution will require more than teaching bioethics to nursing students and nurses. It will require changes in the health care environment, organizational culture and the education of nurses, with an emphasis on building a moral community as an environment in which to practise ethically. (shrink)

Are humans at their core seekers of their own pleasure or cooperative members of society? Paradoxically, they are both. Pleasure-seeking can take place only within the context of what works within a defined community, and central to any community are the evolved codes and principles guiding appropriate behavior, or morality. The complex interaction of morality and self-interest is at the heart of Geoffrey M. Hodgson’s approach to evolutionary economics, which is designed to bring about a better understanding of human behavior. (...) In From Pleasure Machines to Moral Communities, Hodgson casts a critical eye on neoclassical individualism, its foundations and flaws, and turns to recent insights from research on the evolutionary bases of human behavior. He focuses his attention on the evolution of morality, its meaning, why it came about, and how it influences human attitudes and behavior. This more nuanced understanding sets the stage for a fascinating investigation of its implications on a range of pressing issues drawn from diverse environments, including the business world and crucial policy realms like health care and ecology. This book provides a valuable complement to Hodgson’s earlier work with Thorbjørn Knudsen on evolutionary economics in Darwin’s Conjecture, extending the evolutionary outlook to include moral and policy-related issues. (shrink)

Building the Moral Community is an exploration of naturalistic ethics, offering a modified classical analytic philosophy exploration of morality that is consistent with emerging thinking in psychology, neurobiology, game theory, and self-adjusting systems.

Henry S. Richardson is Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. From 2008-18, he was the editor of Ethics. His previous books include Practical Reasoning about Final Ends, Democratic Autonomy, and Moral Entanglements. He has held fellowships sponsored by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University.

L'idée principale qui articule le présent article est la compréhension et la description du phénomène de la liberté à partir de la perspective phénoménologique merleau-pontyenne, donnée par l'explication et la défense du l_ien _comme _empiétement_. Cela nous fait nous situer dans une expérience ambiguë qui révélera une _liberté située_, conséquence de son projet et explication de _l'origine_ des sujets eux-mêmes, ce qui signifiera l'ipséité comme commencement ou nouveau commencement. Par conséquent, les libertés des sujets eux-mêmes, dans cette perspective, seront liées (...) à une coexistence qui est, en même temps, violence et conflit. (shrink)

Moral distress has been covered extensively in the nursing literature and increasingly in the literature of other health professions. Cases that cause nurses’ moral distress that are mentioned most frequently are those concerned with prolonging the dying process. Given the standard of aggressive treatment that is typical in intensive care units (ICUs), much of the existing moral distress research focuses on the experiences of critical care nurses. However, moral distress does not automatically occur in all end-of-life (...) circumstances, nor does every critical care nurse suffer its damaging effects. What are the practices of these nurses? What specifically do they do to navigate around or through the distressing situations? The nursing literature is lacking an answer to these questions. This article reports a study that used narrative analysis to explore the reported practices of experienced critical care nurses who are skilled at and comfortable working with families and physicians regarding the withdrawal of aggressive treatment. A major finding was that these nurses did not report experiencing the dam-Moral Agency, Moral Imagination, and Moral Community: Antidotes to Moral Distress Terri Traudt, Joan Liaschenko, and Cynthia Peden-McAlpine Terri Traudt, MBC, MA, is a Communications Consultant specializing in bioethics at the Center for Bioethics at the University of Minnesota, in Minneapolis. [email protected] Joan Liaschenko, PhD, RN, FAAN, is a Professor at the Center for Bioethics and Nursing at the University of Minnesota. Cynthia Peden-McAlpine, PhD, ACNS, BC, is an Associate Professor in the School of Nursing at the University of Minnesota. © 2016 by The Journal of Clinical Ethics. All rights reserved. aging effects of moral distress as described in the nursing literature. The verbal communication and stated practices relevant to this finding are organized under three major themes: (1) moral agency, (2) moral imagination, and (3) moral community. Further, a total of eight subthemes are identified. The practices that constitute these themes and subthemes are further detailed and discussed in this article. Understanding these practices can help mitigate critical care nurses’ moral distress. (shrink)

The Bible guides Christian ethics by showing how Jesus and early Christianity transformed the moral conventions of first-century Greco-Roman society by making them more inclusive and compassionate. This is the one side of the coin. The other side, however, is that the Bible also attests to the problem of the existence of evil and suffering in human life. In Paul's theology of cross and resurrection, Christian ethicists confront the ineradicable nature of this problem and the need to identify with (...) those who must suffer. (shrink)

Colleges and universities have largely abandoned their traditional stance in loco parentis, as moral guardians over student life, and instead seek to promote toleration while preventing conflict. In this volume David A Hoekema argues that in doing so, they fail to provide an atmosphere conducive to the attainment of the kind of responsible independence that such goals presuppose.

This book presents the foundations of a liberal individualistic theory of rights, and explains what rights we have and do not have, why we have them, who is and who is not a holder of rights, and the place of rights within the overall structure of morality. The author argues for the moral importance of individual commitments to 'projects', and demonstrates the implications of this for a variety of problems and issues.

It is argued here that business firms can and do provide an incubator that enables the Aristotelian category of friendships of advantage to develop into friendships of virtue. This contradicts other literature that views acquaintances of utility as the business norm, and expresses pessimism concerning more advanced virtuous development of friendship within the business firm. It is argued here, however, that this virtuous development is integral to the Kantian social aim of pursuing a moral community, an aim which declares (...) the appropriate moral motivation for business, and that certainly should incorporate a role for developing virtuous relations as a component of that pursuit. An atmosphere that encourages the development of relations of virtue is feasible, exists in real business, and is optimal for pursuit of moral business communities. (shrink)

Moral philosophy is concerned with matters of right and wrong, and with answering questions about how we should live. Moral philosophy aims to tell us how to think about particular moral dilemmas; it aims to give us principles by which we can make moral decisions; and it aims to give us insight into how those moral principles are grounded. This chapter presents a discussion on certain gropus of creatures that fall clearly outside of the boundaries (...) of the moral community. These are the antisocial monsters and low‐functioning monsters. Another group, namely the moral monsters, take moral reasons into consideration when they make decisions, and because of this, they are included in the moral community. (shrink)

Some philosophers object that Kant's respect cannot express mutual recognition because it is an attitude owed to persons in virtue of an abstract notion of autonomy and invite us to integrate the vocabulary of respect with other persons-concepts or to replace it with a social conception of recognition. This paper argues for a dialogical interpretation of respect as the key-mode of recognition of membership in the moral community. This interpretation highlights the relational and practical nature of respect, and accounts (...) for its governing role over other persons-regarding concepts. (shrink)

ABSTRACT I argue for a broader understanding of the morally considerable. I propose a neo‐Aristotelian account of individuals wherein some entities, often precluded from those deserving of moral consideration, are deemed proper subjects of such treatment. The criterion suggested is, roughly, that of self‐regulatory development, a teleological notion, that I argue should not be viewed as archaic and useless. Not only do many non‐human animals then become legitimate subjects of moral concern, but objects outside the animal kingdom, such (...) as plants and trees, also are to be included in our ethical arena. (shrink)

Gary Steiner argues that ethologists and philosophers in the analytic and continental traditions have largely failed to advance an adequate explanation of animal behavior. Critically engaging the positions of Marc Hauser, Daniel Dennett, Donald Davidson, John Searle, Martin Heidegger, and Hans-Georg Gadamer, among others, Steiner shows how the Western philosophical tradition has forced animals into human experiential categories in order to make sense of their cognitive abilities and moral status and how desperately we need a new approach to animal (...) rights. Steiner rejects the traditional assumption that a lack of formal rationality confers an inferior moral status on animals vis-à-vis human beings. Instead, he offers an associationist view of animal cognition in which animals grasp and adapt to their environments without employing concepts or intentionality. Steiner challenges the standard assumption of liberal individualism according to which humans have no obligations of justice toward animals. Instead, he advocates a "cosmic holism" that attributes a moral status to animals equivalent to that of people. Arguing for a relationship of justice between humans and nature, Steiner emphasizes our kinship with animals and the fundamental moral obligations entailed by this kinship. (shrink)

Three views of sustainability are juxtaposed with four views about who the members of the moral community are. These provide points of contact for understanding the moral issues in sustainability. Attention is drawn to the preferred epistemic methods of the differing factions arguing for sustainability. Criteria for defining membership in the moral community are explored; rationality and capacity for pain are rejected as consistent criteria. The criterion of having interests is shown to be most coherent for explaining (...) why all living humans belong to the moral community. This criterion allows inclusion of future generations as well, and extends to animals and plants membership in the moral community. Inferences are drawn that food sufficiency advocates hold only presently living persons to be full-fledged members of the moral community, but that this view is internally inconsistent. Stewards should agree that all living things are members of the moral community. A distinction between welfare interests and ulterior interests allows the steward to include the aims of those who argue for sustainability as community without committing some of their errors. Community advocates argue that essential values and virtues will be lost is the culture of agriculture is transformed. I argue that community advocates may fail to pass on our most important virtue — justice — without such a transformation. (shrink)