Struggle with self identity is a life-Iong moral undertaking, an essential dimension of which is connecting one’s past and future in a way that preserves integrity and wholeness. The argument of this paper is that one reading of Sartre’s understanding of bad faith and authenticity can illuminate this project. More specifically, the essay provides an interpretation of Sartre’s claim that “I am not what I am and I am what Iam not” that avoids understanding the self as an ontological nothingness (...) poised between past and future. Rather, Sartre’s phrase is interpreted as recognizing that we experience ourselves as a rich, complex continuum that connects past and future. This understanding of the self acknowledges the tension between past and future, but sees that tension as the matrix out of which a responsible self emerges. (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to catch up with a conjecture designated by the term ‘responsive self-preservation’. This term appears neither strikingly beautiful nor intuitively understandable. Obviously it is a convoluted terminus technicus in need of conceptual clarification. The reasons for introducing it should therefore be good. That this is the case cannot be guaranteed from the outset. What can be offered here is a substitution of good reasons with high ambitions: the concept of ‘responsive self-preservation’ is designed to (...) illuminate the conditio humana. In all brevity the claim is that human beings are responsive beings. This means that they do not just exist. In order to do so, they must respond to their existence. On the one hand the inner drive and utmost aspiration in human responsiveness therefore lies in self-preservation. On the other hand self-preservation is thoroughly transformed when embedded into human responsiveness. The article will thus use the concept of responsiveness and the concept of self-preservation to mutually clarify each other – in order to open the possibilities and avoid the pitfalls in each of them. In doing so, it aspires to intervene in contemporary philosophical anthropology. (shrink)

He finds the key in the concept of responsibility, which implies not only the freedom and flexibility of responsiveness to others but also a guiding ideal of ...

The Responsible Self was H. Richard Niebuhr's most important work in Christian ethics. In it he probes the most fundamental character of the moral life and it stands today as a landmark contribution to the field. The Library of Theological Ethics series focuses on what it means to think theologically and ethically. It presents a selection of important and otherwise unavailable texts in easily accessible form. Volumes in this series will enable sustained dialogue with predecessors though reflection on classic (...) works in the field. (shrink)

The paper examines the issue of corporate social responsibility against the backdrop of its self-regulatory posture. Using the African experience as a case study, the paper observes that the activities of multinationals show very clearly that they are grossly irresponsible despite their professed self-regulation. Instead, the multinationals have created an image of terror due to their deep-rooted involvements in human rights abuses, environmental degradation, tax evasion, bribery, market manipulation, and other forms of unethical practices, notwithstanding their so-called self-regulation. The paper (...) concludes by advocating the establishment of a broad-based United Nations Global Business Regulatory Agency to fully take charge of corporate regulation in the global business terrain. (shrink)

This book should prove provocative reading for philosophers, political scientists, social theorists, professionals of many stripes, and ethicists.

The word I means here I am, answering for everything and for everyone. (Levinas, S, 104)Responsibility carries within it, and must do so, an essential excessiveness. It regulates itself neither on the principle of reason nor on any sort of accountancy. (Derrida, EW, 272)differance, trace, iterability, ex-appropriation, and so on ... are at work everywhere, which is to say, well beyond humanity. (p. 274).

The essay explains why, for Christians, responsible acting and living means responding to Christ and neighbour, and not to a `responsible self'. The history of the concept, `responsibility', is traced from its origin in Roman juridical language, by way of its being theologised in medieval times, up to the peculiar moral slant it acquired in modernity. The author challenges the mainstream understanding of `responsibility as accountability' by demonstrating that it rests on a theological mistake which ultimately invites moral (...) self-justification. This is demonstrated by critically contrasting H. R. Niebuhr's `responsible self' with Bonhoeffer's account of' responsible action'. (shrink)

Anne was sexually and physically abused as a child and adolescent. Since an adolescent, she has had episodes of engaging in self-injurious behavior, where she repetitively cuts her arms with a knife or scissors, sometimes so seriously that she has had to go to the emergency room. She is relatively high functioning as an individual, where her academic cleverness has enabled her to study for a philosophy degree at a top university. Owing to her history of deliberate self-injury, psychiatrists have (...) diagnosed her with borderline personality disorder. In moments of anger and emotional upset, like when her psychiatrist has seemed cold toward her or her session has stopped early, she reverts to cutting her arms.Borderline... (shrink)

In the Socially Responsive Self, Larry May aims “to defend a progressive communitarian conception of social and moral theory that cuts a path between the extremes of the atomism of liberalism and the collectivism of communitarianism”. He seeks to save an ethics of pluralism from itself. On the one hand, liberal ethical theory has stressed the fantasy of the autonomous moral self; yet the pluralism that liberalism protects and the conflicts concerning the good that liberalism induces are not only beneficial (...) but necessary for the moral self to flourish. On the other hand, the communitarians possess the valid insight that the self is socially constructed; but, at the same time, they call for a moral homogeneity that threatens to suffocate the human spirit. Hence, May coins his perspective a “liberationist” or “progressive” communitarian ethics, in order to oppose it to the most harmful tendencies of both liberalism and communitarianism. (shrink)

These posthumously published lectures are designed to sponsor a new root metaphor for reflection on Christian ethics. The familiar models of teleological ethics and deontological ethics are not abandoned, but a new one is added to meet their inadequacies. It is man-the-answerer, homo dialogicus, and in terms of the symbol the notion of a responsible self is delineated. That the new model lends itself more readily to phenomenology than to casuistry is wholly within the author's intention. A lengthy, but (...) useful, introduction by James Gustafson places these lectures in the broader context of Niebuhr's thought.--M. W. (shrink)

In clinical practice, evidence suggests that teaching ethics using normative ethical theory has little influence on the ethical actions of providers in practice. Thus, new training methods are needed that improve clinician response to ethical problems. A sensemaking approach to ethics training has demonstrated promise as an evidence-based pedagogical method to improve ethical reasoning and response. Project ECHO is theoretically linked to improved sensemaking. This study examines the effectiveness of ECHO and training in use of sensemaking approaches to ethical response (...) by clinicians. A quasi-experimental design study using univariate linear regression was used to examine the effect of the three types of ethics training on ethical response self-efficacy scores, while controlling for participant characteristics of years in practice, discipline and sex. We found evidence that training in sensemaking through participation in ECHO promotes improved ethical response self-efficacy of clinicians. However, results also suggest that a traditional ECHO format that does not explicitly introduce sensemaking strategies into the training does not result in the same learning outcomes as measured through an ethical response self-efficacy survey. This study found important preliminary results to support use of sensemaking approaches in clinical ethics training. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:William James and the Moral Life: Responsible Self-Fashioning New by Todd LekanHenry JackmanBy Todd LekanWilliam James and the Moral Life: Responsible Self-Fashioning New York: Routledge, 2022. 156pp., incl. indexWhile William James wrote just a single article in theoretical ethics, it has often been said that ethical concerns animate almost all of his work.1 Indeed, there has been a growing interest in James’s moral philosophy, and Todd (...) Lekan’s William James and the Moral Life: Responsible Self-Fashioning is the latest, and arguably the best, sustained attempt to introduce readers to James’s ethical thought. The task is not an easy one, since the one essay of James’s that explicitly focuses on theoretical ethics, 1891’s “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”, deals with ‘social’ concerns that don’t clearly align with the more ‘existential’ questions that run through the rest of his corpus.2 In particular, James’s main ‘ethical’ concerns in most of his writings seem to relate more to our living ‘meaningful’ or ‘significant’ lives than it does to our living a ‘moral’ ones. Consequently, writings on James’s ethics tend to treat these two strands separately, either focusing disproportionately on just one of these two aspects, or treating the two as separate components that do not affect one another.3 Weaving both strands of James’s ethical though into a coherent whole may be the primary achievement of Lekan’s book, but he provides much insight into interpretive problems relating to the individual threads along the way.The more ‘social’ strand is admirably explained in Lekan’s first chapter, “Pragmatist Moral Philosophy and Moral Life: Embracing the Tensions”, where he outlines James’s meta-ethical views from “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life”, and gives an account of the regulative assumptions and regulative ideals that James appeals to in order to go from his initial thesis that all goodness originates from the desires of sentient beings to the conclusion that “we are morally obligated to [End Page 105] satisfy as many demands as possible”, and that among the available ideals we might choose, “we are morally obligated to adopt ideals whose realization does not undermine the ideals held by others” (15).Ideals move to center stage in the book’s second chapter, “Ideals and Significant Lives”, which trades the social ethics of the first chapter for more existential concerns, and explains how James takes the strenuous pursuit of our own ideals to amount to a kind of ‘self-fashioning’ that makes for a ‘meaningful’ life (36). This answer to the existential question is, however, ambivalent about the social one. Unlike some other interpreters who focus primarily on the existential question, Lekan notes that James’s pluralism about ideals seems to leave plenty of room for ideals that were very much out of line with the moral injunctions of James’s social ethics to produce perfectly significant lives.4 So, for instance, pursuing an ideal tied to the promotion of the supremacy of one’s religion at the expense of all others might satisfy the requirements for creating a significant life, even if that ideal required the relentless persecution of those who did not share it. Indeed, the ideals in question need not be as extreme as this; even more mundane ideals like becoming a great painter, while not directly requiring that you harm others, might still be successfully pursued in a way that ignored the demands of others that was in tension with “The Moral Philosopher”’s emphasis on maximizing overall demand satisfaction.5As the book’s subtitle suggests, Lekan attempts to harmonize the social and existential strands of James’s thought by arguing that our self-fashioning is “responsible” when the ideals involved satisfy the constraints of the moral philosopher discussed in chapter one (50). In particular, the subject who strenuously pursues such moral ideals is characterized as the “existential moral philosopher” (29–30) and striving to satisfy that ideal would produce a life that met both James’s social and existential concerns. That said, it would have been helpful to see a little more about the tension between these two sides... (shrink)

"This book should be read by all who are interested in discerning the ethical teaching of representative African-American leaders of the nineteenth century whose voices have been long silenced by racism's insidious effects." Peter J. Paris, Princeton Theological SeminaryLaunching his investigation from H. Richard Niebuhr's enormously influential THE RESPONSIBLE SELF, Darryl Trimiew seeks to clarify and expand the implications of morally responsible behavior. He offers a corrective to Niebuhr's notion of the "fitting response" by taking the view of (...) the marginalized seriously. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:William James and the Moral Life: Responsible Self-Fashioning by Todd LekanRichard Kenneth AtkinsTodd Lekan. William James and the Moral Life: Responsible Self-Fashioning. New York: Routledge, 2022. Pp. ix + 146. Hardback, $144.00; paperback $43.99.Over the course of five chapters, Lekan develops a distinctive and compelling account of James’s ethics. Any account of James’s ethics must be constructive and clarifying. As James scholars know, he only wrote (...) one essay focused exclusively on philosophical issues in ethics: “The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life.” Nonetheless, James’s writings are rife with ethical themes presented in piecemeal fashion. Any interpreter of James’s ethics must fit these different pieces together and smooth out apparent inconsistencies.Lekan maintains that James’s writings on ethics take on two different perspectives. First, the social moral philosopher “seeks to create an inclusive moral order through expansion of sympathetic concern among those committed to different ideals” (2). Second, the existential moral philosopher “addresses the concerns of the moral agent seeking to abate existential doubts, particularly those that arise in the face of evil and suffering” (2). These two perspectives on ethical matters constrain one another, as I shall explain.On Lekan’s account, James’s moral philosophy begins like most pragmatist theories: with persons as we find them, in the thick of life, having diverse interests, and confronting genuine problems that call for a solution. Lekan writes, “James’s starting point is that of a complex self who has limited altruism rooted in sympathetic awareness of like-minded others. Moral philosophy’s fundamental problem is how to extend this limited sympathy to others who do not share one’s values” (4).At the heart of chapter 1 and the book as a whole is Lekan’s defense of the social-moral philosopher’s “Inclusivity Ideal” (15). The Inclusivity Ideal consists of two tenets: (1) “We are morally obligated to satisfy as many demands as possible,” and (2) “among the available ideals we might choose, we are morally obligated to adopt ideals whose realization does not undermine the ideals held by others” (15). Lekan regards the Inclusivity Ideal as a second-order regulative ideal. It is an ideal that “enjoins us to continuously strive for a social order that accommodates diverse ideals” (50). One will naturally wonder what argument supports adoption of the Inclusivity Ideal.Lekan’s argument is rooted in the Sentiogenic Thesis that “goods originate from the desires of sentient beings” (16, emphasis in original). It is because sentient beings have desires that any action can be good or bad at all. Lekan grounds this thesis in James’s Darwinian naturalism according to which “sentience is a function that evolves to fulfill the organism’s need to establish harmony with its environing circumstances” (18). Lekan’s account of what harmony consists in is not developed; he seems to hold that its contrary is frustration arising from when one’s “activities are blocked” (18). I should note that in other places, Lekan phrases the Sentiogenic Thesis as the thesis that “values originate from the feelings of sentient beings” (18). Lekan is not explicit about how desires and feelings are related and how this impacts what is good or has value.Taking the Sentiogenic Thesis in its first formulation as about desires, two additional theses come into play. The first is the Demand Obligation Thesis that “some sentient being S demanding F is necessary and sufficient to generate a prima facie obligation for satisfying S’s demand for F,” and the second is the Essence of Good Thesis that “the essence of the [End Page 671] good is demand satisfaction” (16). Lekan maintains that the Sentiogenic Thesis is the “underlying context” for these two theses. It is not hard to see why: since values originate from desires, and since desires lead one to make demands, it is reasonable to conclude that the good consists in the satisfaction of those demands. Presumably, moreover, we have an obligation to do whatever is good; in this case, to satisfy a given demand. However, it is plain that not all demands can be satisfied. Moreover, the “social moral philosopher demands an impartial method... (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers of moral responsibility are in widespread agreement that we can only be blamed for actions that express, reflect, or disclose something about us or the quality of our wills. In this paper I reject that thesis and argue that self disclosure is not a necessary condition on moral responsibility and blameworthiness: reactive responses ranging from aretaic appraisals all the way to outbursts of anger and resentment can be morally justified even when the blamed agent’s action expresses or discloses (...) nothing significant about his or her “deep self,” judgments and cares, or the quality of his or her will. I argue that the self-disclosure requirement on responsibility overestimates the extent to which our blaming practices and responsibility judgments are responsive to agents as opposed to actions, and that this mistake has the potential to distort both our reactive responses and our understanding of blamed agents’ characters. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Patient self‐management (SM) of chronic disease is an evolving movement, with some forms documented as yielding important outcomes. Potential benefits from proper preparation and maintenance of patient SM skills include quality care tailored to the patient's preferences and life goals, and increase in skills in problem solving, confidence and success, generalizable to other parts of the patient's life. Four central ethical issues can be identified: 1) insufficient patient/family access to preparation that will optimize their competence to SM without harm (...) to themselves, 2) lack of acknowledgement that an ethos of patient empowerment can mask transfer of responsibility beyond patient/family competency to handle that responsibility, 3) prevailing assumptions that preparation for SM cannot result in harm and that its main purpose is to deliver physician instructions, and 4) lack of standards for patient selection, which has the potential to exclude individuals who could benefit from learning to SM. Technology assessment offers one framework through which to examine available data about efficacy of patient SM and to answer the central question of what conditions must be put in place to optimize the benefits of SM while assuring that potential harms are controlled. (shrink)

This paper discusses two features of the "morally responsible self." The first has to do with the preconditions of personal identity assumed to inhere in a morally responsible self. The paper argues that it is not a requirement of moral responsibility that the self held responsible for some action is one and the same individual as the self that performed it. the second feature involves what's known as the "deep self" theory of responsibility. The paper discusses the (...) history of the theory, as well as some critical contemporary exchanges about it. (shrink)

This book offers a compelling new interpretation of James' moral philosophy: an "ethics of responsible self-fashioning." James' performative writing style articulates this conception by showing how moral inquiry serves both social and personal transformation. James the social moral philosopher seeks to create an inclusive moral order through expansion of sympathetic concern among those committed to different ideals. James the existential moral philosopher defends the right to adopt hope-grounding metaphysical beliefs which encourage strenuous moral action in the face of evil (...) and suffering. The power of James' ethics is demonstrated by its application to current discussions about the status of marginalized nonhuman animals and that of the cognitively disabled. William James and the Moral Life is of interest to a wide variety of ethicists and has special appeal to scholars and advanced students in moral philosophy, social philosophy, pragmatism, and American philosophy. (shrink)

Diagnostic self-testing devices are being developed for many illnesses, chronic diseases and infections. These will be used in hospitals, at point-of-care facilities and at home. Designed to allow earlier detection of diseases, self-testing diagnostic devices may improve disease prevention, slow the progression of disease and facilitate better treatment outcomes. These devices have the potential to benefit both the individual and society by enabling individuals to take a more proactive role in the maintenance of their health and by helping society improve (...) health and reduce health costs. However, the full implications of future home-based diagnostic technology for individuals and society remain unclear due to their novelty. We argue that the development of diagnostic tools, especially for home use, will heighten a number of ethical challenges. This paper will explore some of the ethical implications of home-based self-testing diagnostic devices for the autonomous and relational dimensions of the person. This will be facilitated by examining the impact of diagnostic devices for individual autonomy, for the delivery of accurate diagnosis and for the personal significance of the information for the user. The latter will be examined using Charles Taylor's view of personhood and his emphasis on human agency and interpretation. While the ethical issues are not necessarily new, the development of home-based self-testing diagnostic devices will make issues regarding autonomy, accuracy of information and personal significance more and more demanding. This will be the case particularly when an individual's autonomous choices come into conflict with the person's relational responsibilities. (shrink)

This study investigates the three major educational philosophies behind the medical humanities programs in the United States. It summarizes the characteristics of the Cultural Transmission Approach, the Affective Developmental Approach, and the Cognitive Developmental Approach. A questionnaire was sent to 415 teachers of medical humanities asking for their perceptions of the amount of time and effort devoted by their programs to these three philosophical approaches. The 234 responses constituted a 54.6% return. The approximately 80:20 gender ratio of males to females (...) and other demographic data on age and educational background were consistent with other studies of the field of medical humanities.Reflections on the results in Table II indicate that some changes need to take place in the teaching of the medical humanities if the perceived ideal is to be achieved. In order for the current teachers of the medical humanities to think that the appropriate philosophies behind the teaching of the medical humanities are being implemented as they should be, much less time and effort need to be devoted to the Cultural Transmission Approach. With no other published reports on the educational philosophies behind the medical humanities programs, this study created a new knowledge base about this relatively young and rapidly emerging field. (shrink)

Mark Siderits has raised a number of interesting issues and objections concerning the "pluralist view" of the self I put forward in "Buddhist Philosophy and the No-Self View." In this short reply, I am going to focus on two main points he made, in the reverse order in which he made them.Here is a "metaphysical difficulty" that Siderits raises in the case of the pluralist view. It is useful to formulate the case from the first-person point of view, so let's (...) consider me this morning: I wake up, have breakfast, and I am thinking about whether I should go skiing or whether I should go and start working on this reply. Siderits says that according to the pluralist view, there is a self that corresponds to the series of... (shrink)

According to Dewey, we are responsible for our conduct because it is “ourselves objectified in action”. This idea lies at the heart of an increasingly influential deep self approach to moral responsibility. Existing formulations of deep self views have two major problems: They are often underspecified, and they tend to understand the nature of the deep self in excessively rationalistic terms. Here I propose a new deep self theory of moral responsibility called the Self-Expression account that addresses these issues. (...) The account is composed of two parts. The first part answers the question, What is a deep self? Theorists have tended to favor cognitive views that understand the deep self in terms of rationally formed evaluative judgment. I propose instead a conative view that says one’s deep self consists of a distinctive kind of pro-attitude, cares, and I provide an account of cares in terms of their distinctive psychological functional role. The second part answers the question, When does an action express one’s deep self? I criticize the agentially demanding conditions set out in existing views and propose a more minimalist alternative. I show that the Self-Expression account handles issues that bedeviled traditional deep self views, including how to explain moral responsibility for spontaneous, out of character, and weak-willed actions. (shrink)

Moral responsibility is an issue at the heart of the free-will debate. The question of how we can have moral responsibility in a deterministic world is an interesting and puzzling one. Compatibilists arguments have left open the possibility that the ability to do otherwise is not required for moral responsibility. The challenge, then, is to come up with what our attributions of moral responsibility are tracking. To do this, criteria which can adequately differentiate cases in which the agent is (...) class='Hi'>responsible from cases in which the agent is not responsible are required. I argue that an agent is responsible for the consequences of an action if they stem, in an appropriate way, from the agent's deep values and desires. These deep values and desires make up the Deep Self. Parts of the Deep Self, first, tend to be enduring; second, desires within it tend to be general ; third, they tend to be reflectively endorsed by the agent; fourth, these traits are often central to the agent's self-conception; and fifth, they are not generally in extreme conflict with other deep traits. Empirical work is drawn upon to help develop a suitable account of what deserves to be called a part of the Deep Self. I also strengthen and extend this view by considering issues of poor judgement and weakness of will, and when and how we can be considered responsible for them. (shrink)

This paper focuses on the question of whether and, if so, when people can be responsible for their self-deception and its consequences. On Intentionalist accounts, self-deceivers intentionally deceive themselves, and it is easy to see how they can be responsible. On Motivationist accounts, in contrast, self-deception is a motivated, but not intentional, and possibly unconscious process, making it more difficult to see how self-deceivers could be responsible. I argue that a particular Motivationist account, the Desire to Believe (...) account, together with other resources, best explains how there can be culpable self-deception. In the process, I also show how self-deception is a good test case for deciding important questions about the nature of moral responsibility. (shrink)

The political shift toward an economic liberalism in many developed market economies, emphasizing the importance of the marketplace rather than government intervention in the economy and society (Dorman, Systematic Occupational Health and Safety Management: Perspectives on an International Development, 2000; Tombs, Policy and Practice in Health and Safety 3(1): 24-25, 2005; Walters, Policy and Practice in Health and Safety 03(2):3-19, 2005), featured a prominent discourse centered on the need for business flexibility and competitiveness in a global economy (Dorman, 2000; Tombs, (...) 2005). Alongside these developments was an increasing pressure for corporate social responsibility (CSR). The business case for CSR - that corporations would benefit from voluntarily being socially responsible — was increasingly promoted by governments and corporations as part of the justification for self-regulation. The aim of the article is to examine more closely the proposition that self-regulation is effective, with particular reference to the business case for workplace equality and safety. Based on a comprehensive literature review and documentary analysis, it was found that current predominant management discourse and practice focusing on diversity and safety management systems (OHSMS) resonate well with a government and corporate preference for the business case and self-regulation. However, the centrality of individual rather than organizational factors in diversity and OHSMS means that systemic discrimination and inherent workplace hazards are downplayed, making it less likely that employers will initiate structural remedies needed for real change. Thus, reliance on the business case in the argument for self-regulation is problematic. In terms of government policy and management practice, the business case needs to be supplemented by strong, proactive legislation, and worker involvement. (shrink)

The self-deceived are usually held to be moral responsible for their state. I argue that this attribution of responsibility makes sense only against the background of the traditional conception of self-deception, a conception that is now widely rejected. In its place, a new conception of self-deception has been articulated, which requires neither intentional action by self-deceived agents, nor that they possess contradictory beliefs. This new conception has neither need nor place for attributions of moral responsibility to the self-deceived in (...) paradigmatic cases. Accordingly, we should take the final step toward abandoning the traditional conception, and drop the automatic attribution of responsibility. Self-deception is simply a kind of mistake, and has no more necessary connection to culpability than have other intellectual errors. (shrink)

I present two different models of moral responsibility -- two different accounts of what we value in behavior for which the agent can legitimately be held morally responsible. On the first model, what we value is making a certain sort of difference to the world. On the second model, which I favor, we value a certain kind of self-expression. I argue that if one adopts the self-expression view, then one will be inclined to accept that moral responsibility need not (...) require alternative possibilities. (shrink)

Modern skepticism can be usefully divided into two camps: the Cartesian and the Humean.1 Cartesian skepticism is a matter of a theoretical doubt that has little or no practical import in our everyday lives. Its employment concerns whether or not we can achieve a special kind of certain knowledge – something Descartes calls “scientia” 2—that is far removed from our everyday aims or standards of epistemic appraisal. Alternatively, Humean skepticism engages the ancient skeptical concern with whether we have good reason, (...) or any reason at all, for our beliefs, including the common or garden beliefs that are presupposed in our ordinary practical affairs. On this traditional conception, philosophical doubt is a projection of everyday doubt and the lessons of the study are potentially lessons for the street. In this paper I shall focus on the Humean strain of skepticism whose focus concerns whether we have adequate reasons for our beliefs. Henceforth when I speak of skepticism it is this variety of skepticism that I am primarily referring to.3 I want to relate skepticism, so understood, to two kinds of self-knowledge. I shall argue that the failure of past solutions and dissolutions of skepticism to provide a satisfying response to the skeptic can be accounted for in terms of two stances that we can take towards our own.. (shrink)

Statements of the core ethical and professional responsibilities of medical professionals are incomplete in ways that threaten fundamental goals of medicine. First, in the absence of explicit guida...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Self-Originating Source of Valid Moral Claims or Witness to Moral Truth?Contemporary Revisionist Accounts of Conscience—An Exploration and Response*Thomas Berg"It will not do to identify man's conscience with the self-consciousness of the I, with its subjective certainty about itself and its moral behavior."—Joseph Ratzinger1In his seminal essay "The Procedural Republic and the Unencumbered Self," Michael Sandel observed that the dominant political philosophy that had been implicit in the practices and (...) institutions of the America of his day (he wrote in 1984) presupposed a certain conception of the human person—the unencumbered self. Wrote Sandel:This is … a self understood as prior to and independent of purposes and ends. … For the unencumbered self, what matters above all, what is most essential to our personhood, are not the ends we choose but our capacity to choose them. … The unencumbered self and the ethic it inspires, taken together, hold out a liberating vision. Freed from the [End Page 1319] dictates of nature and the sanction of social roles, the human subject is installed as sovereign, cast as the author of the only moral meanings there are.2This was at the time a most apt description of the modern liberal self. Alasdair MacIntyre captured its essence in similar terms describing the emotivist self, capable of passing moral judgment "from a purely universal and abstract point of view that is totally detached from all social particularity. Anyone and everyone can thus be a moral agent, since it is in the self and not in social roles or practices that moral agency has to be located."3 And the moral claims of these autonomous selves are, in principle, to be held as valid simply because, as John Rawls once put it, they emerge from individuals who understand themselves, and who we take to be "self-originating sources of valid claims."4 It is such a conception of the self—unencumbered, emotivist, self-originating and self-validating source of moral claims—which animates the contemporary zeitgeist.It also captures and articulates the underlying anthropological conception of the self which animates much of contemporary Catholic moral theology. Just such a conception is the root and heart of tensions in contemporary moral theology over what constitutes an adequate understanding of moral conscience appropriate for our times. In the twentieth century, these tensions were experienced first as a much-needed corrective to manualist theology and its excessive emphasis on conscience. Today, however, as Matthew Levering has masterfully retraced, any number of "revisionist" moral theologians—as the present essay will examine—have only strained the existing [End Page 1320] tensions with their own brand of conscience-centered moral theology.5 Writes Levering:Twentieth-century Catholic moral theology was marked throughout by an "abuse of conscience." It gave too expansive a place to conscience in the Christian moral life. By the 1950s, Catholic moral theology was poised to overcome this problem, only to fall even more fully into a new version of conscience-centered moral theology after the Second Vatican Council.6And this largely explains why Catholic moral theology today is in a crisis—what we can call very meaningfully a crisis of conscience. Or to put it more precisely, the institution finds itself today at a tipping point in that crisis.What particularly forces the tipping point is the prominence that has been accorded during the pontificate of Pope Francis to post-conciliar conscience-centered moral theology. It was Cardinal Pietro Parolin, among others, who heralded Pope Francis's 2016 post-synodal apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (AL) as embodying a "new paradigm," an expression commonly employed among the latest generation of revisionist moral theologians.7 To be sure, there are many elements of this paradigm, if we are to call it that, as reflected in AL and more broadly in the magisterium of Pope Francis which are most welcome: the priority of pastoral charity and accompaniment, and the call for "a revolution of tenderness."8 Yet AL [End Page 1321] firmly embraces and authoritatively asserts a conception of the moral life in which conscience plays a primary, if not indeed the decisive, role. Cardinal Robert McElroy states this vision succinctly... (shrink)

Armed Forces personnel are exposed to traumatic experiences during their work; therefore, they are at risk of developing emotional difficulties such as post-traumatic stress disorder, following traumatic experiences. Despite evidence to suggest that self-compassion is effective in reducing the symptoms of PTSD, and greater levels of self-compassion are associated with enhanced resilience, self-compassion in armed forces personnel and armed forces veterans remains under-researched. As a result, it is not known if therapeutic approaches that use self-compassion interventions are an acceptable and (...) effective treatment for this population. Having previously shown that a one-off self-compassion exercise has temporary beneficial psychophysiological effects in non-clinical participants, we conducted this proof-of concept study to investigate whether this exercise is equally beneficial in veterans who had experienced deployment to a combat zone. Additionally, we examined if brief a self-compassion exercise can temporarily reduce hyperarousal symptoms and increase feelings of social connectedness. The current study also investigated the association between PTSD symptom severity, emotion regulation, and self-compassion in 56 veterans. All participants listened to a loving-kindness meditation for self-compassion and psychophysiological recordings were taken throughout. Psychophysiological effects were observed including heart-rate, skin conductance, and heart-rate variability to determine associations with PTSD and changes in response associated with the self-compassion induction. PTSD symptom severity, dispositional emotion regulation, and self-compassion were measured, and participants also completed state measures of hyperarousal and social connectedness before and after the LKM-S. The findings partially demonstrated that self-compassion can be elicited in a veteran population but there were considerable individual differences in psychophysiological responses. The findings are discussed in light of existing theories of PTSD and self-compassion and the implications of using self-compassion based psychological approaches with veterans. (shrink)

In the late preschool years children acquire a "theory of mind", the ability to ascribe intentional states, including beliefs, desires and intentions, to themselves and others. In this paper I trace how children's ability to ascribe intentions is derived from parental attempts to hold them responsible for their talk and action, that is, the attempt to have their behavior meet a normative standard or rule. Self-control is children's developing ability to take on or accept responsibility, that is, the ability (...) to ascribe intentions to themselves. This is achieved, I argue, when they possess the ability to hold an utterance or rule in mind in the form of a quoted expression, and second, when they grasp the causal relation between the rule and their action. The account of how children learn to ascribe intention to themselves and others will then be used to explore the larger question of the relations amongst language, intentional states and the ascription and avowal of those states. (shrink)

Self-blame is an integral part of our lives. We often blame ourselves for our failings and experience familiar unpleasant emotions such as guilt, shame, regret, or remorse. Self-blame is also what we often aim for when we blame others: we want the people we blame to recognize their wrongdoing and blame themselves for it. Moreover, self-blame is typically considered a necessary condition for forgiveness. However, until now, self-blame has not been an integral part of the theoretical debate on moral responsibility. (...) This volume presents twelve new essays by leading moral philosophers, who set out bold new theories of the nature and ethics of self-blame, and the interconnection between self-blame and moral responsibility. The essays cast new light on traditional problems in the debate on moral responsibility and open new, exciting avenues for research in moral philosophy, moral psychology and the philosophy of punishment. (shrink)

ABSTRACTDiagnostic self‐testing devices are being developed for many illnesses, chronic diseases and infections. These will be used in hospitals, at point‐of‐care facilities and at home. Designed to allow earlier detection of diseases, self‐testing diagnostic devices may improve disease prevention, slow the progression of disease and facilitate better treatment outcomes. These devices have the potential to benefit both the individual and society by enabling individuals to take a more proactive role in the maintenance of their health and by helping society improve (...) health and reduce health costs. However, the full implications of future home‐based diagnostic technology for individuals and society remain unclear due to their novelty.We argue that the development of diagnostic tools, especially for home use, will heighten a number of ethical challenges. This paper will explore some of the ethical implications of home‐based self‐testing diagnostic devices for the autonomous and relational dimensions of the person. This will be facilitated by examining the impact of diagnostic devices for individual autonomy, for the delivery of accurate diagnosis and for the personal significance of the information for the user. The latter will be examined using Charles Taylor's view of personhood and his emphasis on human agency and interpretation.While the ethical issues are not necessarily new, the development of home‐based self‐testing diagnostic devices will make issues regarding autonomy, accuracy of information and personal significance more and more demanding. This will be the case particularly when an individual's autonomous choices come into conflict with the person's relational responsibilities. (shrink)

This paper examines the quality and stability of the responsive parenting practices of mothers with infants and the longitudinal links between these practices and children’s self-esteem. Using data presented by the Panel Study on Korean Children, this study identified Korean mothers’ responsive parenting trajectories from birth to age three and examined their associations with children’s self-esteem at first grade. Korean mothers developed one of three responsive parenting patterns from birth to age three: low, moderate, or high. Children’s self-esteem differed according (...) to their mother’s responsive parenting trajectory. First-graders with mothers displaying the low responsive parenting trajectory were more likely to have lower self-esteem than children of mothers with the moderate responsive parenting trajectory and children of mothers with the high responsive parenting trajectory. The longitudinal link between mother-reported responsive parenting patterns during infancy and child-reported self-esteem at first grade was verified. This finding highlights the significance of early responsive parenting from mothers as a predictor of the self-esteem of children in later developmental stages. (shrink)

Responsibility theorists frequently discuss psychopathy because it challenges various accounts of the capacities required for appropriate ascriptions of moral and legal responsibility. As often described, the psychopath has the capacity to reason practically but lacks the capacity to grasp and control himself in light of moral considerations. As portrayed, then, the psychopath resides in the area of disagreement between two philosophical camps: (i) theorists who put forth the general capacity for practical reasoning or rational self-governance as sufficient for an agent (...) to be appropriately held morally responsible for his conduct; and (ii) theorists who view that general capacity as necessary but not sufficient for moral responsibility, additionally requiring the capacity to grasp and respond to distinctly moral reasons. On the former view, we may appropriately hold psychopaths responsible for their wrongful actions, but not on the latter. This article does not aim to describe the opposing views and argue for one over the other. Rather, I propose to deflate the debate as far as possible, attempting to reduce the area of disagreement. Meaningful disagreement exists only if there are, or could be, agents who have an undiminished capacity for practical reasoning or rational self-governance, yet truly are incapable of moral reasoning. However, I suggest that the capacity for rational self-governance entails the capacity to comprehend and act on moral considerations; thus, to the extent that an individual truly is incapable of grasping moral reasons, we should expect to find deeper, more general deficiencies in that individual's rational capacities. I appeal to the work of leading researchers who study individuals with psychopathy to determine whether psychopaths do represent rational self-governors without the capacity to grasp moral considerations. I argue that this work strongly suggests that the psychopath's incapacity for moral reasoning is, indeed, evidence of more general deficits in the rational capacities required for fully accountable agency. The Article closes with relevant considerations for thinking about any implications for criminal law. (shrink)

Richard Moran's Authority and Estrangement offers a subtle and tantalizing exploration of asymmetries that arise between first‐person and third‐person self‐knowledge. According to Moran's central claim, the distinction of first‐person self‐knowledge is to engage the responsibility of the person. I will focus my remarks on this issue. I wish to raise some questions about the nature of the third‐person perspective, and about how assuming it affects the responsibility of the person. In this connection, I examine in some detail Moran's main examples (...) of third‐person loss of responsibility. Moran's discussions are rich and provocative, and the questions I sketch out all too briefly here are primarily pleas for clarification. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:Central to the United Nations Framework setting out the human rights responsibilities of corporations proposed by John Ruggie is the principle that corporations have a responsibility to respect human rights in their operations whether or not doing so is required by law and whether or not human rights laws are actively enforced. Ruggie proposes that corporations should respect this principle in their strategic management and day-to-day operations for reasons of corporate (enlightened) self-interest. This paper identifies this as a serious weakness (...) and argues that identifying the responsibility to respect human rights as an explicitly ethical obligation to be respected for that reason would provide a much stronger justificatory foundation for respecting the principle seen from a corporate perspective, given that corporations are accountable to their shareholders for their deployment of the firm’s financial resources. (shrink)

In this response I address criticisms raised by Ashton, Battaly, McGlynn and Simion that my account of intellectual humility (hereafter, IH), and of the vices opposed to it, is too internalistic, is insufficiently social and structural, and finally that my proposal for ameliorating vice might be not efficacious.

Criminal responsibility is now central to criminal law, but it is in need of re-examination. In the context of Australian criminal laws, Self, Others and the State reassesses the general assumptions made about the rise to prominence of criminal responsibility in the period since around the turn of the twentieth century. It reconsiders the role of criminal responsibility in criminal law, arguing that criminal responsibility is significant because it organises key sets of relations - between self, others and the state (...) - as relations of responsibility. Detailed studies of decisive moments and developments since the turn of the twentieth century, and original explorations of relations of responsibility, expose the complexity and dynamism of criminal responsibility and reveal that it is the means by which matters of subjectivity, relationality and power make themselves felt in the criminal law. (shrink)

I try to show that agent responsibility is an inadequate basis for the attribution of liability, by discrediting the Risk Argument and showing how the Responsibility Argument in fact collapses into the Risk Argument. I have concentrated on undermining these as philosophical theories of self-defense, although I at times note that our theory of self-defense should not be predicated on assumptions that are inapplicable to the context of war. The potential combatant, I conclude, should not look to the agency view (...) to ease his conscience about the killing he will do in war. If he is to fight without violating rights, then he will need a different theory of self-defense; if there are no more defensible theories, then he must either accept pacifism—which I think is a live possibility—or seek to identify stronger countervailing reasons, which can override the great force of his victims’ rights to life. (shrink)

The self is not a metaphysical object but a mode of temporal organization unified by responsibility. Learning to be responsible constitutes the self as a self-identical entity over time. Responsibility depends on the current self interpreting previous events, attributing them to itself and thereby committing itself for the future. (2004) .

“I demote practical reason from the conductor’s podium on which it is traditionally pictured, leading the performance. I picture practical reason less as an orchestral conductor than as a theatrical prompter — out of sight, following the action in case it needs to be nudged back into an intelligible course.” (David Velleman 2009, p. 4)IntroductionIn this paper I discuss our practice of exchanging explanatory and justifying reasons with one another, that is, reasons with which we explain or justify our actions, (...) choices, and decisions. I argue that the general aim and importance of this practice—as well as the associated ideas of responsibility and free will—is compatible with the finding that we are often, or even most of the time, not deliberatively aware of the reasons for which we act, prior to our acting so. That is, in many cases there are no explicit reasons, considerations we have reflected on and are aware of, that precede our actions. It is in this sense, I argue, that human ag. (shrink)