Causing People to Exist and Saving People’s Lives

Most people are skeptical of the claim that the expectation that a person would have a life that would be well worth living provides a reason to cause that person to exist. In this essay I argue that to cause such a person to exist would be to confer a benefit of a noncomparative kind and that there is a moral reason to bestow benefits of this kind. But this conclusion raises many problems, among which is that it must be determined how the benefits conferred on people by causing them to exist weigh against comparable benefits conferred on existing people. In particular, might the reason to cause people to exist ever outweigh the reason to save the lives of existing people?     

Testimony and Kant’s Idea of Public Reason

It is common to interpret Kant’s idea of public reason and the Enlightenment motto to ‘think for oneself’ as incompatible with the view that testimony and judgement of credibility is essential to rational public deliberation. Such interpretations have led to criticism of contemporary Kantian approaches to deliberative democracy for being intellectualistic, and for not considering our epistemic dependence on other people adequately. In this article, I argue that such criticism is insufficiently substantiated, and that Kant’s idea of public reason is neither at odds with deference to a certain kind of authority, nor with making judgements of character in rational deliberation. This view is corroborated by recent work on Kant’s epistemology of testimony.     

Rycroft’s Idea of Language

This paper outlines some of Charles Rycroft's thoughts about language. It divides into three parts: the first addresses the general hypothesis of communicative interaction, with particular reference to (a) the presence or fullness of signs and (b) original speech. In the second part of the paper I trace some of the theoretical background to the concept of affective communication. This includes a brief comparative reading of Rycroft and Brierley. The third part concentrates more specifically on technique, including the analysis of Miss Y whose case helps to illustrate the nature of affective interaction in Rycroft's account of the analytic relationship.     

Moore’s Paradox and Moral Motivation

Assertions of statements such as ‘it’s raining, but I don’t believe it’ are standard examples of what is known as Moore’s paradox. Here I consider moral equivalents of such statements, statements wherein individuals affirm moral judgments while also expressing motivational indifference to those judgments (such as ‘hurting animals for fun is wrong, but I don’t care’). I argue for four main conclusions concerning such statements: 1. Such statements are genuinely paradoxical, even if not contradictory. 2. This paradoxicality can be traced to a form of epistemic self-defeat that also explains the paradoxicality of ordinary Moore-paradoxical statements. 3. Although a simple form of internalism about moral judgment and motivation can explain the paradoxicality of these moral equivalents, a more plausible explanation can be provided that does not rely on this simple form of internalism. 4. The paradoxicality of such statements suggests a more credible understanding of the thesis that those who are not motivated by their moral judgments are irrational.     

Role of Moral Identity and Moral Courage Characteristics in Adolescents’ Tendencies to Be a Moral Rebel

Extending prior research on the characteristics potentially associated with adolescents’ tendencies to be a moral rebel, the present study found that adolescents themselves, their peers, and their teachers agreed on adolescents’ tendencies to (a) possess a moral identity, (b) possess moral courage characteristics, and (c) be a moral rebel. Although moral identity (when considered independently and in combination with the moral courage characteristics) did not consistently predict the tendency to be a moral rebel, all indices of the adolescents’ moral courage characteristics positively predicted the tendency to be a moral rebel.     

Dialectics of Individual Life and Moral Law: On Adorno’s Non-Identical Moral Philosophy

The article aims to discuss the theme of Adorno’s non-identical moral philosophy, particularly the primacy of individual life over moral laws, as based mainly on his key works like Minima Moralia: Reflections from Damaged Life, On Subject and Object, Problems of Moral Philosophy, and Negative Dialectics. The claim here is that the primacy of individual life is made through negative dialectics (“non-idealist dialectics”) dealing with the antithesis between object and subject, particular and universal, individual and society under the theoretical horizon of non-identical philosophy. Meanwhile, as a private ethics, this non-identical moral philosophy based on individual life stands as a kind of negativism, which is focused on negative guidance towards the possibility of right life.     

The Objective and Subjective Sides of Human Moral Consciousness and Their Relation: Author’s Reply to Reviews of Kant’s Conception of Pedagogy

Studies in Philosophy and Education -     

Working with Fischer and Ravizza’s Account of Moral Responsibility

This paper examines the account of guidance control given in Fischer and Ravizza's book, Responsibility and Control, with the aim of revising it so as to make it a better account of what needs to be added to having alternatives open to yield a specification of the control condition for responsibility that will be acceptable to an adherent of the principle that one is responsible for something only if one could have avoided it.     

Dōgen’s Idea of Buddha-Nature: Dynamism and Non-Referentiality

Busshō, one of the central fascicles of Dōgen’s Shōbōgenzō, is dedicated to the problematic of Buddha-nature, the understanding of which in Dōgen’s thought is fairly different from previous Buddhist philosophy, but concordant with his views on reality, time and person. The article will present a close reading of several passages of the fascicle with comment in order to argue that Dōgen’s understanding of Buddha-nature is not something that entities have, but a mode of how they are, neither in itself nor for us, but in the total world-process. The relation between totality and particularity is not hierarchical, nor one of opposition, but conceived of a matter of perspective, which, as Dōgen shows, is both mediated and circumscribed by language. As a result, we can see that particularity of being is precisely what makes the totality of being accessible to every existent, not an obstacle to be overcome.     

Predicting People’s Intention to Donate Their Body to Medical Science and Research

Predictors of people’s intention to register with a body bequest program for donating their deceased body to medical science and research were examined using standard theory of planned behavior (TPB) predictors (attitude, subjective norm, perceived behavioral control) and adding moral norm, altruism, and knowledge. Australian students (N = 221) at a university with a recently established body bequest program completed measures of the TPB’s underlying beliefs (behavioral, normative, and control beliefs) and standard and extended TPB predictors, with a sub-sample reporting their registration-related behavior 2 months later. The standard TPB accounted for 43.6%, and the extended predictors an additional 15.1% of variance in intention. The significant predictors were attitude, subjective norm, and moral norm, partially supporting an extended TPB in understanding people’s body donation intentions. Further, important underlying beliefs can inform strategies to target prospective donors.     

Naturalistic Moral Realism and Moral Disagreement: David Copp’s Account

To enhance the plausibility of naturalistic moral realism, David Copp develops an argument from epistemic defeaters aiming to show that strongly a priori synthetic moral truths do not exist. In making a case for the non-naturalistic position, I locate Copp??s account within the wider literature on peer disagreement; I identify key points of divergence between Copp??s doctrine and conciliatorist doctrines; I introduce the notion of ??minimal moral competence??; I contend that some plausible benchmarks for minimal moral competence are grounded in substantive moral considerations; and I discuss two forms of spinelessness that Copp??s moral naturalism could result in.     

On the Very Idea of Brandom’s Pragmatism

Although Brandom is critical of some features of narrowly conceived classical pragmatism, at the same time he explicitly embraces a version of pragmatism, both in his overall philosophical outlook, and in his philosophy of language. Brandom’s distinctive theoretical approach is based on what he calls rationalist pragmatism, which is a version of fundamental pragmatism. Within the philosophy of language it takes the form of semantic pragmatism. The paper briefly discusses Brandomian version of fundamental pragmatism and its semantic underpinning, and subsequently formulates a basic dilemma it encounters there.     

Naturalistic Explanations of Apodictic Moral Claims: Brentano’s Ethical Intuitionism and Nietzsche’s Naturalism

In this article (1) I extract from Brentano’s works (three) formal arguments against “genealogical explanations” of ethical claims. Such explanation can also be designated as “naturalism” (not his appellation); (2) I counter these arguments, by showing how genealogical explanations of even apodictic moral claims are logically possible (albeit only if certain unlikely, stringent conditions are met); (3) I show how Nietzsche’s ethics meets these stringent conditions, but evolutionary ethics does not. My more general thesis is that naturalism and intuitionism in ethics need not be mutually incompatible.

Castañeda’s Moral Theory and Globalization

This paper examines the moral theory presented by Castañeda in his 1974 book The Stucture of Morality and illustrates its usefulness in dealing with some intercultural phenomena concerning women and children rights which globalization has brought to the fore. In particular, Castañeda’s crucial distinction between moral codes and the moral ideal is highlighted. Moreover, the role that freedom and happiness play in his framework is discussed and further elaborated by appealing to Berlin’s distinction between negative and positive freedom and current empirical studies on happiness.     

On the Very Idea of Social Construction: Deconstructing Searle’s and Hacking’s Critical Reflections

The starting point of the following inquiry addresses John Searle’s and Ian Hacking’s most prominent critique of contemporary “constructionism” in the 1990s. It is stimulated by the astonishing fact that neither Hacking nor Searle take into account Peter Berger’s and Thomas Luckmann’s classical essay and sociological masterpiece The Social Construction of Reality in their contributions. Critically revisiting Searle’s and Hacking’s critique on the so-called constructivist approach, the article demonstrates that both authors have failed to put forth a sociologically valid understanding of the approach in question. The following analysis aims to deconstruct the conceptualizations offered by Searle and Hacking, and to reconstruct and defend the original sense of the term “social construction” as most prominently introduced by Berger and Luckmann to sociology, and social sciences in general.     

Korsgaard’s Moral Theory ln the Light of Kant’s Architectonics

Philosophia - In The Sources of Normativity Korsgaard introduces her conception of practical identities understood as the source of moral obligations. This conception forms a point of transition...