Thinking Morality Interpersonally: A Reply to Burgess-Jackson

In a comment on my paper “Feminism, Ethics, and the Question of Theory” ( Walker 1992 ), Keith Burgess-Jackson argues that I have misdiagnosed the problem with modem moral theory. Burgess-Jackson misunderstands both the illustrative—“theoretical-juridical”—model I constructed there and how my critique and alternative model answer to specifically feminist concerns. Ironically, his own view seems to reproduce the very conception of morality as an individually internalized action-guiding code of principles that my earlier essay argued is the conception central to modern moral theories.     

The nature and grounds of Xunzi's disagreement with Mencius

This, paper argues that the debate between Mencius and Xunzi, as to whether human nature is intrinsically good or evil, represents not so much a disagreement as to the empirical facts of human nature as a disagreement over the nature of morality. Specifically, it argues that Mencius holds a virtue‐theoretic conception of morality while Xunzi subscribes to a rule‐based conception of morality. These differences in their conceptions of morality lead the two philosophers to radically different evaluations of human nature although they are in substantial agreement as to the empirical facts of human nature.     

Who Needs Valid Moral Arguments? (Dedicated to the Memory of R.M. Chisholm, 1916–1999)

Why have so many philosophers agonised over the possibility of valid arguments from factual premises to moral conclusions? I suggest that they have done so, because of worries over a sceptical argument that has as one of its premises, `All moral knowledge must be non-inferential, or, if inferential, based on valid arguments or strong inductive arguments from factual premises'. I argue that this premise is false.     

Thinking about the Needy, Justice, and International Organizations

This article has three main parts, Section 2 considers the nature and extent to which individuals who are well-off have a moral obligation to aid the world’s needy. Drawing on a pluralistic approach to morality, which includes consequentialist, virtue-based, and deontological elements, it is contended that most who are well-off should do much more than they do to aid the needy, and that they are open to serious moral criticism if they simply ignore the needy. Part one also focuses on the United States, and illustrates both how incredibly wealthy the U.S. is and some of the spending habits of its citizens; however, its considerations apply to the well-off generally. Section 3 considers whether justice provides reasons for helping the needy. Noting that justice in an extremely complex notion, it discusses numerous considerations relevant to justice’s scope and implications, including an extended Rawlsian conception of justice, an absolute conception, a comparative conception, the distinction between natural and social justice, and various elements of common-sense morality. Section 2 also distinguishes between agent-relative justice-based reasons, which are relevant to whether we act justly, and agent-neutral justice-based reasons, which are relevant to whether we have reasons of justicefor acting. Correspondingly, it argues that even if one can ignore the needy without acting unjustly, as philosophers like Robert Nozick and Jan Narveson contend, there may be powerful reasons of justicefor addressing their plight. Section 4 briefly address the responsibilities of international organizations like the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and World Trade Organization (WTO). Drawing on Section 2, it is suggested that in addition to standard reasons to act justlytowards needy members of the world’s community, there will be reasons of justicefor such organizations to aid the needy in both present, and future, generations. The article concludes by contending that the well-off in countries like the U.S. have reason to view international organizations like the World Bank, IMF, and WTO as their agents, and to seek to insure that they alleviate misfortunes amongst the world’s needy.     

Fact-Dependent Policy Disagreements and Political Legitimacy

Suppose we have a persistent disagreement about a particular set of policy options, not because of an underlying moral disagreement, or a mere conflict of interest, but rather because we disagree about a crucial non-normative factual assumption underlying the justification of the policy choices. The main question in the paper is what political legitimacy requires in such cases, or indeed whether there are defensible answers to that question. The problem of political legitimacy in fact-dependent policy disagreements has received almost no attention in political philosophy, which has focused mostly on value disagreements and proposed theories of legitimate coercive legislation in valuedependent disagreements. The paper presents an argument showing that under certain plausible assumptions regarding legitimacy, there are serious difficulties in identifying legitimate choices in fact-dependent policy disagreements. This may be unsurprising to political philosophers preoccupied with value-based disagreements, perhaps because it has been assumed that legitimacy-related concerns are irrelevant (or do not apply) to fact-dependent policy disagreements. The paper argues that this response is premature. If we should care about legitimacy et al.l, then it is by no means clear why we should ignore issues of legitimacy in policy-disputes that depend on factual disagreements. The paper ends by defining a set of possibilities that merit further exploration in search of a theory of legitimacy in fact-dependent policy disagreements.     

Through two lenses: A cultural–developmental approach to moral psychology

This paper proposes a cultural–developmental approach to moral psychology. The approach builds on and synthesizes findings from different research traditions, including the cognitive-developmental, domain, two orientations, three ethics, and moral identity traditions. The paper introduces a conception termed a cultural–developmental template. The template charts developmental patterns across the life course for moral reasoning in terms of the three Ethics of Autonomy, Community, and Divinity. The template, however, is not one-size-fits-all. Its general developmental patterns accommodate to the different constellations of Ethics held by culturally diverse peoples. From the present theoretical proposal follows a set of specific research expectations as well as a set of broader research implications for how to conduct research on morality from the vantage points of both culture and development. These expectations and implications include consideration of moral emotions, definitions of morality, and cultural variation in the life course itself.     

Folk Platitudes as the Explananda of Philosophical Metaethics: Are They Accurate? And Do They Help or Hinder Inquiry?

The field of metaethics, the branch of moral philosophy that examines the nature and status of morality, is rich in theoretical diversity. Nonetheless, a majority of professional philosophers embrace a subset of theories that affirm the existence of objective moral facts. I suggest that this may be related to the very method that philosophers use to construct metaethical theories. This method involves analyzing how ordinary people think and argue about morality. Analysis of ordinary moral discourse is meant to reveal common platitudes (or truisms) about the nature of morality itself, including the platitude that morality trades in objective moral facts. But do philosophers investigate ordinary moral discourse in any systematic way? How do they arrive at such platitudes? On what grounds are they justified? In this paper, I critically examine these questions and argue that a) any such platitudes need to be investigated systematically through empirical research and b) philosophers ought to be engaged in this research themselves.

     

Aquinas's Replication of the Acquired Moral Virtues: Rethinking the Standard Philosophical Interpretation of Moral Virtue in Aquinas

Aquinas is often presented as following Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics when treating moral virtue. Less often do philosophers consider that Aquinas's conception of the highest good and its relation to the functional character of human activity led him to break with Aristotle by replicating each of the acquired moral virtues on an infused level. The author suggests that we can discern reasons for this move by examining Aquinas's commentary on the Sententiae of Peter the Lombard and the Summa theologiae within their historical context. The author's thesis is that Dominican pastoral and intellectual concerns led Aquinas to argue that moral virtue must necessarily be ordered toward the highest good. Understanding this purpose helps to explain his presentation of moral virtue and its implications for standard philosophical interpretations of his work.     

Medical ethics' appropriation of moral philosophy: the case of the sympathetic and the unsympathetic physician

Philosophy textbooks typically treat bioethics as a form of "applied ethics"-i.e., an attempt to apply a moral theory, like utilitarianism, to controversial ethical issues in biology and medicine. Historians, however, can find virtually no cases in which applied philosophical moral theory influenced ethical practice in biology or medicine. In light of the absence of historical evidence, the authors of this paper advance an alternative model of the historical relationship between philosophical ethics and medical ethics, the appropriation model. They offer two historical case studies to illustrate the ways in which physicians have "appropriated" concepts and theory fragments from philosophers, and demonstrate how appropriated moral philosophy profoundly influenced the way medical morality was conceived and practiced.     

II. Virtues,Human Good,and the Unity of a Life

Maclntyre's ‘disquieting suggestion’ concerning the apparently irretrievably anarchic state of contemporary moral discourse begs the crucial questions in any argument over the notion of ‘incoherence’ in moral thought and practice. Thus his attempt to establish the canonical authority of Aristotelianism fails. Nonetheless, the attempt to reconstruct a plausible Aristotelianism is of independent interest. Maclntyre introduces the quasi‐technical notion of a ‘practice’ to locate a non‐reductive teleology of the virtues. Though certain teleological expressions come naturally in a deepened understanding of the place of the virtues in a human life, they will not, at crucial points, bear the philosophically motivated teleological emphasis that Maclntyre places on them. This emphasis is a mistaken reaction to the inadequacies of expressions like ‘intrinsic’ and ‘for its own sake’, as often used by philosophers who argue against teleological construals of morality. It is also prompted by the mistaken belief that it is required to reveal the connection between morality and a person's good. For a non‐reductive construal of that connection we must focus on the meaning of action and of a life. This is in accord with some things Aristotle said. It is not in easy accord with the claim that moral judgments are factual or truth‐valued, nor with the claim that such a concern with meaning can be discursively underwritten by showing it to be a requirement of any sound philosophy of action and of personal identity. This does not lead to what Maclntyre calls ‘emotivism’, nor to ‘non‐cognitivism’.     

Moral Philosophers as Ethical Engineers: Limits of Moral Philosophy and a Pragmatist Alternative

Ever since Kant, moral philosophers have been more or less animated by the mission of discovering inescapable law‐like rules that would provide a binding justification for morality. Recently, however, many have started to question (a) whether this is possible and (b) what, after all, this project could achieve. An alternative vision of the task of moral philosophy starts from the pragmatist idea that philosophizing begins and ends in human experiencing. It leads to a view where morality is seen as a “social technology” that aims to make living together possible, and strengthens people's capability to live a good life within a society. The role of moral philosophy is, accordingly, to develop our moral tools further. Moral philosophers become ethical engineers who use their expertise in ethical topics to criticize existing “moral technology” and construct new concepts, tools, and theories that better answer the current challenges for living a good life.     

A Methodologically Pragmatist Approach to Development Ethics

This paper suggests that lessons from the field of environmental ethics and sociological perspectives on knowledge are important tools for rethinking what type of ethical analysis is needed for building up further the field of development ethics and, more generally, for addressing some of the most fundamental ethical problems related to global poverty and development. The paper argues for a methodologically pragmatist approach to development ethics that focuses on the interplay between facts, values, concepts and practices. It views development ethics as a hybrid between a public moral–political philosophy and a public conception of social science. Ethical analyses of poverty and development must lead to fundamental changes in the ways knowledge is produced and justified and must challenge the dominance of global institutions and orthodox economics as the single sources of expert knowledge for development. Two of the main tasks of ethical analysis is to provide tools for the formulation of alternative knowledge for development centred on the equal moral worth of all human beings, and to influence global policy making as well as multilateral institutions' goals and policies. The last section of the paper argues that Amartya Sen's version of the Capability Approach is already methodologically pragmatist and points to some convergence between Sen's work and John Dewey's. Further sociological and methodologically pragmatist analysis of the approach is needed to assess the ways in which it is influencing debates on human development and leading to policy changes, and the possible distortions it suffers when adopted by multilateral agencies and policy makers.     

Turning the history of medical ethics from its head onto its feet: a critical commentary on Baker and McCullough

The paper provides a critical commentary on the article by Baker and McCullough on Medical Ethic's Appropriation of Moral Philosophy. The author argues that Baker and McCullough offer a more "pragmatic" approach to the history of medical ethics that has the potential to enrich the bioethics field with a greater historical grounding and sound methodology. Their approach can help us to come to a more nuanced understanding about the way in which medical ethics has connected, disconnected, and reconnected with philosophical ideas throughout the centuries. The author points out that Baker and McCullough's model can run the danger of overemphasizing the role of medical ethicists whilst marginalizing the influence of philosophers and of other historical actors and forces. He critically reviews the two case studies on which Baker and McCullough focus and concludes that scholars need to bear in mind the levels of uncertainty and ambivalence that accompany the process of transformation and dissemination of moral values in medicine and medical practice.     

The Dark Side of Morality: Group Polarization and Moral Epistemology

This article argues that philosophers and laypeople commonly conceptualize moral truths or justified moral beliefs as discoverable through intuition, argument, or some other purely cognitive or affective process. It then contends that three empirically well‐supported theories all predict that this “Discovery Model” of morality plays a substantial role in causing social polarization. The same three theories are then used to argue that an alternative “Negotiation Model” of morality—according to which moral truths are not discovered but instead created by actively negotiating compromises—promises to reduce polarization by fostering a progressive willingness to “work across the aisle” to settle moral issues cooperatively. This article then examines potential methods for normatively evaluating polarization, arguing there are prima facie reasons to favor the Negotiation Model over the Discovery Model based on their hypothesized effects on polarization. Finally, I outline avenues for further empirical and philosophical research.     

Are children moral objectivists? Children's judgments about moral and response-dependent properties

Researchers working on children's moral understanding maintain that the child's capacity to distinguish morality from convention shows that children regard moral violations as objectively wrong (e.g. Nucci, L. (2001). Education in the moral domain. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press). However, one traditional way to cast the issue of objectivism is to focus not on conventionality, but on whether moral properties depend on our responses, as with properties like icky and fun. This paper argues that the moral/conventional task is inadequate for assessing whether children regard moral properties as response-dependent. Unfortunately, children's understanding of response-dependent properties has been neglected in recent research. Two experiments are reported showing that children are more likely to treat properties like fun and icky as response-dependent than moral properties like good and bad. Hence, this helps support the claim that children are moral objectivists.     

Self-Help,Moral Philosophy,and the Moral Present

In this paper I argue that the lack of interest, among analytic moral philosophers, in the contingencies of our moral present, produces an impoverished moral philosophy, unable to address the moral problems and quandaries of ordinary people. What is needed to remedy this is a broadening of the scope of the moral philosopher’s thought to include a rich attention to moral phenomena of the present. One such phenomenon, attended to by sociologists and critical journalists over the past few decades, is the contemporary proliferating genre of psychologically oriented self-help literature. I display a range of sociological responses to self-help in order to point out aspects of morality that are made visible in these discussions, whereas they often remain invisible in standard moral philosophy. The aim is not to suggest a specific methodology for including such material into philosophical discussions, but rather to urge philosophers to reconsider the range of materials they attend to in their work, in order to produce a more lively engagement with and understanding of contemporary morality.     

Thinking with Beauvoir on the Freedom of the Child

Among philosophers, Simone de Beauvoir is unique in treating childhood as a philosophical phenomenon. In both The Ethics of Ambiguity and The Second Sex, she examines the relationship between childhood and human freedom and considers its role in the development of subjectivity. Despite this, few sustained analyses of her treatment of the phenomenon exist. I argue that Beauvoir's conception of childhood is not uniform, but changes from The Ethics of Ambiguity to The Second Sex. Whereas the former presents children as lacking moral freedom, as not fully sovereign individuals, the latter suggests that children are just as free as adults. When children do not fully possess or exercise freedom, it is not because they are not in a position to do so, but rather because various social institutions hinder them. I find this position useful for developing a phenomenological account of childhood as a site for freedom. Hence, Beauvoir becomes a source for thinking of issues in philosophical anthropology concerning the temporality of human existence and the nature of human agency over a lifespan.     

CREATING IDENTITIES,CREATING VALUES?

A popular view is that we create our own identities and values. An attractive version of this is the thesis that the creation of values follows from the creation of identities. The thesis is best supported by a conception of identity in terms of projects and a conception of values that are internal to projects. The line of thought is: I create my projects; in creating my projects, I create values internal to them; so I create those values. This paper argues that the thesis faces a dilemma: it is either true but uninteresting or interesting but false. The dilemma persists whether the values in question are conceived as purpose‐relative, as moral, or as both purpose‐ relative and moral.     

Morality and Leadership: Examining the Ethics of Transformational Leadership

Morality is a critical factor in leadership that its absence could turn an otherwise powerful leadership model (i.e. transformational leadership) into a disastrous outcome. The importance of morality for leaders is self-evident in light of the far-reaching effects of leaders' actions or inaction on other people. Such proposition necessitates the discourse in the objectivity of universal moral principles as the legitimate basis of a sound understanding of moral leadership. Examining transformational leadership from a moral-laden perspective, this paper argues that morality is a necessary component of leadership and that deontological moral reasoning provides a sufficient ground for morally attractive leadership theories.