Particularism and the Point of Moral Principles

According to radical moral particularists such as Jonathan Dancy, there are no substantive moral principles. And yet, few particularists wish to deny that something very like moral principles do indeed play a significant role in our everyday moral practice. Loathe at dismissing this as mere error on the part of everyday moral agents, particularists have proposed a number of alternative accounts of the practice. The aim of all of these accounts is to make sense of our appeal to general moral truths in both reaching and justifying our particular moral judgments without thereby violating the particularists' stricture against substantive moral principles. In this paper, I argue that the most prominent non-substantive accounts of moral generalities appealed to by radical particularists – the heuristic account and default reasons accounts – fail in this aim.     

A comment on mill's argument for utilitarianism

This article contains criticisms of various interpretations of Mill's argument for Utilitarianism. An attempt is made to explain how Mill conceived the rationality of his proof, and how his justification of the Principle of Utility differs from a justification of fundamental moral principles on the basis of the logic of ethical discourse.     

An investigation of the use of linguistic probes “by” and “in order to” in assessing moral grammar

Proponents of the linguistic analogy suggest that methodologies originally developed for investigating linguistic grammar can also be fruitfully applied to the empirical study of moral grammar: the causal and intentional representations of moral events which – according to the linguistic analogy – drive moral judgements. In the current study, we put this claim to the empirical test. Participants were presented with moral dilemmas which previously have been shown to implement a central principle in moral judgements: the principle of double effect (PDE). Participants responded to by and in order to probes to assess causal and intentional representations of this principle. Results show that these linguistic probes do not relate to moral judgement in the manner predicted by proponents of the linguistic analogy and moral grammar. Although the linguistic analogy is a theoretically rich framework, the procedures posited to give it empirical traction require revision.     

The Moral Dilemmas Debate, Deontic Logic, and the Impotence of Argument

In this paper I argue for modesty concerning what theoretical reason can accomplish in the moral dilemmas debate. Specifically, I contend that philosophers' conclusions for or against moral dilemmas are driven less by rational argument and more by how the moral world intuitively appears to them.I support this thesis by first considering an argument against moral dilemmas, the argument from deontic logic, and showing that its persuasive force depends on one's having already accepted its conclusion. I then make a different, and general, case that any argument in the moral dilemmas debate concerning the defeasibility of conflicting obligations can be marginalized by making not-unreasonable adjustments in the conditions for wrongdoing.These two strands of argument are related by the notion of inescapable wrongdoing. It is our standing intuitions about inescapable wrongdoing which make the relevant deontic logical principles plausible or implausible to us. And whether wrongdoing can be inescapable is central to deciding what the conditions for wrongdoing are. My conclusion is that the arguments in the moral dilemmas debate merely implement whatever standing intuition we have concerning inescapable wrongdoing, and that apart from any such intuition the arguments are unpersuasive.     

The Dual Moral Self: Moral Centrality and Internal Moral Motivation

In this study, the relationship between two aspects of the moral self, moral centrality and internal moral motivation, was analyzed. It is argued that these 2 aspects are conceptually distinct but nonetheless empirically related. Based on a cross-sectional study of 205 adolescents (M age = 14.83 years, SD = 2.21 years) it was found that moral centrality and internal moral motivation, even though substantially correlated, interacted in predicting moral emotion expectancies. Even though moral centrality was unrelated to adolescents’ age it predicted a longitudinal increase in internal moral motivation over a 1-year interval. Overall, the findings call for a differentiation of moral centrality and internal moral motivation as 2 distinct but interrelated aspects of moral self-development that follow different developmental trajectories and are differentially related to age. At the same time, the study points out that adolescence may be less important for the development of the moral self than commonly assumed.     

Ross and the particularism/generalism divide

W. D. Ross is commonly considered to be a generalist about prima facie duty but a particularist about absolute duty. That is, many philosophers hold that Ross accepts that there are true moral principles involving prima facie duty but denies that there are any true moral principles involving absolute duty. I agree with the former claim: Ross surely accepts prima facie moral principles. However, in this paper, I challenge the latter claim. Ross, I argue, is no more a particularist about absolute duty than a utilitarian or a Kantian is. While this conclusion is interesting in its own right, it is also important, I argue, because it prevents us from overlooking Ross's criterion of moral obligation and because it may have implications on the broader debate between particularists and generalists.     

道德本能与道德判断

Human beings’ moral life can be divided into two forms, one based on moral instincts and the other on moral judgments. The former is carried on without deliberation, while the latter relies upon valuations and judgments. The two can ultimately be viewed as man’s innate moral nature and acquired moral conventions. Theoretically, preference for the former will lead to naturalism and for the latter to culturalism, but this is the reality of man’s moral life. Moreover, there may be a parallel relation between the moral structure of human life and the grammatical structure of human language. Translated by Yu Xin from Zhexue yanjiu 哲学研究 (Philosophical Researches), 2007, (12): 72–78     

The argument from agreement: How universal values undermine moral realism

The most popular argument against moral realism is the argument from disagreement: if there are mind‐independent moral facts, then we would not expect to find as much moral disagreement as we in fact do; therefore, moral realism is false. In this paper, I develop the flipside of this argument. According to this argument from agreement, we would expect to find lots of moral disagreement if there were mind‐independent moral facts. But we do not, in fact, find much moral disagreement; therefore, moral realism is false. I defend the argument, explain the empirical evidence that supports it, and show what makes this challenge novel and powerful.     

Competing Conceptions of Justice: Faculty Moral Reasoning About Affirmative Action

College faculty (N = 115) were recruited to investigate the influence of moral reasoning on hiring decisions about affirmative action dilemmas. Participants completed the Defining Issues Test (DIT), a standard test of moral reasoning, a measure that presented two hypothetical moral dilemmas about affirmative action that manipulated candidates' race and moral issues, and a scale evaluating the use of external norms versus self-chosen principles. Results indicated that moral issue but not race of a minority candidate affected hiring decisions. Faculty used greater percentages of principled reasoning when solving the more salient affirmative action dilemmas than when solving the hypothetical dilemmas of the DIT. Higher scores on the DIT were related to the use of principles rather than norms when making hiring decisions. Findings suggest that faculty decisions about hiring a hypothetical affirmative action candidate are more influenced by moral reasoning level and competing conceptions of justice than racial bias or ambivalence.     

Privileged, Typical, or not even that? – Our Place in the World According to the Copernican and the Cosmological Principles

Summary  If we are to constrain our place in the world, two principles are often appealed to in science. According to the Copernican Principle, we do not occupy a privileged position within the Universe. The Cosmological Principle, on the other hand, says that our observations would roughly be the same, if we were located at any other place in the Universe. In our paper we analyze these principles from a logical and philosophical point of view. We show how they are related, how they can be supported and what use is made of them. Our main results are: 1. There is a logical gap between both principles insofar as the Cosmological Principle is significantly stronger than the Copernican Principle. 2. A step that is often taken for establishing the Cosmological Principle on the base of the Copernican Principle and observations is not incontestable as it stands, but can be supplemented with a different argument. 3. The Cosmological Principle might be crucial for cosmology to the extent it is not supported by empirical evidence.     

Re‐embedding Moral Agency

The connection between ethics and theological vision has become increasingly important for ethics as we better appreciate how the moral agent is embedded in a framework that affectively and intellectually shapes her moral reasoning. Moral reasoning is always reasoning within (that is, within a moral framework, a religious worldview, and/or a set of ideological commitments). A similar framing occurs in literature, which I refer to as its “horizon.” A literary text's horizon comprises the theological and metaphysical commitments that are implied by the text and that the reader relies on to make sense of it. I suggest that there is a parallel between how moral frameworks and literary horizons operate in that both shape moral judgment. I argue that in using literature as a resource for ethics, the same contemporary currents that have led us to appreciate the embeddedness of moral reasoning should also encourage us to give more careful attention to the theological or metaphysical vision implied by a text. Such a “theo‐ethical” reading of literature provides a richer understanding of particular moral goods and the interplay between those goods and ethical themes like agency, hope, and redemption. I substantiate this claim with a reading of William Blake's Jerusalem: The Emanation of the Giant Albion.     

Alternative motivation: a new challenge to moral judgment internalism

Internalists argue that there is a necessary connection between motivation and moral judgment. The examination of cases plays an important role in philosophical debate about internalism. This debate has focused on cases concerning the failure to act in accordance with a moral judgment, for one reason or another. I call these failure cases. I argue that a different sort of case is also relevant to this debate. This sort of case is characterized by (1) moral judgment and (2) behavior that accords with the content of the moral judgment but that has been performed not because of the moral judgment. Instead it is due to some other source of motivation. I call these alternative motivation cases. I distinguish two sorts of alternative motivation cases, and I argue that externalists have natural explanations of these cases. By contrast, extant internalist accounts of failure cases are inadequate when applied to alternative motivation cases.     

The influence of decision time on sensitivity for consequences,moral norms,and preferences for inaction: Time,moral judgments,and the CNI model

It is often discussed that moral judgments are either consistent with the principle of utilitarianism or with the principle of deontology. Utilitarianism is a moral principle stating that the right act is the one that produces the best overall outcome. Deontology represents an ethical position indicating that the morality of an action depends on the intrinsic nature of the action regardless of the consequences. Criticism on the structure of moral dilemmas includes the problem that these dilemmas confound norms and consequences. Recently, a multinomial model (the CNI model) was developed to disentangle and measure sensitivity to consequences (C), sensitivity to moral norms (N), and general preference for inaction versus action (I), respectively. In Experiment 1, we examined the influence of time pressure on moral judgments using the CNI model. We found that time pressure influenced moral dilemma judgments by decreasing participants' sensitivity for consequences. There were no significant effects of time pressure on participants' sensitivity to norms and general preference for inaction. Furthermore, in Experiment 2, we examined the link of reaction times to moral judgments more closely by fitting a hierarchical Bayesian version of the CNI model. Longer reaction times lead to an increase in parameter N, and there was no influence of reaction times on parameter C or I.     

Morphological Rationalism and the Psychology of Moral Judgment

According to rationalism regarding the psychology of moral judgment, people’s moral judgments are generally the result of a process of reasoning that relies on moral principles or rules. By contrast, intuitionist models of moral judgment hold that people generally come to have moral judgments about particular cases on the basis of gut-level, emotion-driven intuition, and do so without reliance on reasoning and hence without reliance on moral principles. In recent years the intuitionist model has been forcefully defended by Jonathan Haidt. One important implication of Haidt’s model is that in giving reasons for their moral judgments people tend to confabulate – the reasons they give in attempting to explain their moral judgments are not really operative in producing those judgments. Moral reason-giving on Haidt’s view is generally a matter of post hoc confabulation. Against Haidt, we argue for a version of rationalism that we call ‘morphological rationalism.’ We label our version ‘morphological’ because according to it, the information contained in moral principles is embodied in the standing structure of a typical individual’s cognitive system, and this morphologically embodied information plays a causal role in the generation of particular moral judgments. The manner in which the principles play this role is via ‘proceduralization’ – such principles operate automatically. In contrast to Haidt’s intuitionism, then, our view does not imply that people’s moral reason-giving practices are matters of confabulation. In defense of our view, we appeal to what we call the ‘nonjarring’ character of the phenomenology of making moral judgments and of giving reasons for those judgments.

Liberal–conservative dimension of moral concerns underlying political faction formation in Taiwan

Moral foundations theory provides a framework for understanding the traditional liberal–conservative dichotomy in political factions. Typically, factions on the liberal side are more concerned with individualizing foundations—including care/harm and fairness/cheating—for the protection of individual rights and welfare whereas factions on the conservative side are concerned with both individualizing and binding foundations—including loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation—for the maintenance of existing social ethics. Our research extended this framework to the analysis of Taiwanese political factions, which are not distributed conspicuously along the liberal–conservative line but instead on whether Taiwan should become a legally independent state or unify with the People's Republic of China (Mainland China). Our results indicate that despite the scarce use of the terms liberal or left and conservative or right in common communication, a liberal–conservative dimension underlies the Taiwanese political spectrum. Specifically, supporters of Taiwan independence exhibit liberal‐like moral concerns whereas supporters of China unification and the status quo demonstrate conservative‐like moral concerns. Moreover, indirect effects exist through moral foundations from political factions to stances on social issues; this is especially prevalent in the case of Taiwan independence camp's clear support for the legalization of same‐sex marriage, a stance resulting from anti‐authoritarian moral and political characteristics.     

Humanity or justice?

This paper reflects on a critique of cosmopolitanism mounted by Tom Campbell, who argues that cosmopolitans place undue stress on the issue of global justice. Campbell argues that aid for the impoverished needy in the third world, for example, should be given on the Principle of Humanity rather than on the Principle of Justice. This line of thought is also pursued by ‘Liberal Nationalists’ like Yael Tamir and David Miller. Thomas Nagel makes a similar distinction and questions whether the ideal of justice can even be meaningfully applied on a global scale. The paper explores whether the distinction between the Principle of Humanity and the Principle of Justice might be a false dichotomy in that both principles could be involved in humanitarian assistance. It will suggest that both principles might be grounded in an ethics of caring and that the ethics of caring cannot be so sharply distinguished from the discourse of justice and of rights. As a result, the Principle of Humanity and the Principle of Justice cannot be so sharply distinguished either. It is because we care about others as human beings (Principle of Humanity) that we pursue justice for them (Principle of Justice) and the alleviation of their avoidable suffering.     

Contingency,arbitrariness, and the basis of moral equality

Hardly anyone denies that (nearly) all human beings have equal moral status and therefore should be considered and treated as equals. Yet, if humans possess the property that confers moral status upon them to an unequal degree, how come they should be considered and treated as equals? It has been argued that this is because the variations in the degree to which the status-conferring property is held above a relevant threshold are contingencies that do not generate differences in degrees of moral status. Call this the contingency argument for the basis of moral equality. In this paper, I reject the contingency argument. Instead, I develop an attitude-based account of the basis of moral equality: according to this account, the basis of moral equality lies in a fitting, basic, and independent moral attitude which is owed to human beings qua moral status-holders, and provides a coherent and plausible explanation for why the variations above the threshold for moral status do not matter.     

How does culture shape our moral identity? Moral foundations in Saudi Arabia and Britain

North American measures of moral identity (MI) assume that caring and fairness are the most prototypical features of morality. Moral foundations theory describes such individualising foundations of morality as dominant in individualist cultures and binding foundations of morality as more particular to collectivist cultures. We weighed the criticism that moral identity scales are guilty of “liberal ethnocentrism” in two studies drawing on participants in the UK and Saudi Arabia. Only individualising traits were prototypical of concepts of moral people in Britain, while individualising and binding traits were both prototypical of such concepts in Saudi Arabia (Study 1, N = 160). In Study 2 (N = 539), participants completed the moral identity scale following typical instructions that referred to the prototypical traits of one of five moral foundations. Overall MI scores were lower in Britain than in Saudi Arabia, particularly when instructions described binding traits as characteristics of a moral person. Cross-cultural differences were mediated by the perceived cultural importance attributed to these traits, particularly binding traits. These results justify concerns that existing moral identity scales underestimate important cultural variation in conceptualising moral identity, but justice and caring concerns remain the best single candidates for a universal foundation of human morality.     

Reason and emotion,not reason or emotion in moral judgment

One of the central questions in both metaethics and empirical moral psychology is whether moral judgments are the products of reason or emotions. This way of putting the question assumes that reason and emotion are two fully independent cognitive faculties, whose causal contributions to moral judgment can be cleanly separated. However, there is a significant body of evidence in the cognitive sciences that seriously undercuts this conception of reason and emotion, and supports the view that moral judgments are caused by a complex interplay of psychological mechanisms that are both cognitive and affective, but in a way that is not simply a function of the independent causal contributions of reason and emotion. The paper concludes by considering the implications of this view for metaethics.     

解释水平视角下的道德判断

道德判断对社会合作有重要意义。近20年来涌现出大量对道德判断的研究。经典的社会直觉模型和双加工模型已经不足以解释所有的研究发现。近年来,解释水平理论为道德判断的研究提供了一个新的视角。通过文献梳理发现,基于解释水平理论的道德判断研究可以分为两难的道德判断研究和一般的道德判断研究。两难的道德判断研究已经有了较为一致的结论,但是一般的道德判断研究还存在争议。解释水平影响道德判断的深层原因可能是通过关注点影响道德判断的标准。未来的研究可以着眼于跨文化研究和深层机制的剖析,为解释水平视角下的道德判断研究提供更多的实验证据,加深人们对道德判断的理解。