Objecting Morally

Just war theory entails that some wars may be morally unjustifiable, and hence citizens may be right to object morally to their government's waging of a war and to their being compelled to serve in it. Given the evils attendant upon even justified war, this fact sharply restricts any obligation to die for the state, and raises important questions about the appropriate state response to selective conscientious objectors. This paper argues that such people should be legally accommodated, and discusses objections to doing so, in particular, the possible erosion of the state's capacity to wage justified war, the unfairness of granting such exemptions from military service, and the impossibility of determining genuinely conscientious objection.     

Morally Relevant Features

This article summarizes the account of morality presented in Morality: Its Nature and Justification (Oxford, 1998), with emphasis on that aspect of morality that deals with justifying violations of the moral rules. Such justification requires a two-step procedure; the first is describing the situation using only morally relevant features. I list these features, noting how diverse they are, and describe their characteristics. The second step is estimating the consequences of publicly allowing a violation with the same morally relevant features, that is, allowing a violation when everyone knows that it is allowed to violate the rule in the same circumstances, and comparing this to the estimated consequences of not publicly allowing that kind of violation. I then explain why fully informed, impartial rational persons can sometimes disagree about whether a violation should be publicly allowed and note that such weakly justified violations are the controversial cases.     

Morally Heterogeneous Wars

According to “epistemic-based contingent pacifism” a) there are virtually no wars which we know to be just, and b) it is morally impermissible to wage a war unless we know that the war is just. Thus it follows that there is no war which we are morally permitted to wage. The first claim (a) seems to follow from widespread disagreement among just war theorists over which wars, historically, have been just. I will argue, however, that a source of our inability to confidently distinguish just from unjust wars lies in how we evaluate “morally heterogeneous” wars—i.e., wars with just and unjust aims. Specifically, the practice of reaching a univocal evaluation of a morally heterogeneous war as a whole by aggregating the evaluations of that war’s just and unjust aims is wrongheaded, because it undermines the action-guiding character of jus ad bellum. We ought instead to adopt what I call the “disaggregate approach” to jus ad bellum, according to which we evaluate the various aims of a war individually, without aggregating them into an evaluation of the war as a whole. Adopting this approach will eliminate a source of our disagreement over which wars have been just, and will ipso fact eliminate a basis for epistemic-based contingent pacifism.     

Moralism and Morally Accountable Beings

abstract In this paper I consider the nature of the purported vice of moralism by examining two examples that, I suggest, exemplify this vice: the first from Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter; the second from David Owen's account of his experience as European negotiator between the warring parties in the former Yugoslavia. I argue that in different ways both these examples show the kind of human weakness or failure that is involved in the most extreme version of moralism, a weakness that involves an inability to see or acknowledge those one seeks to judge as real, morally accountable, human beings.     

Problems in privileged communication

Although most counselors offer their clients confidentiality as a condition of the counseling relationship, they are unable to guarantee the protection of privileged communication. Even when protected by statutory provision, counselors do not have total immunity from appearance in court and disclosure of confidential information. There are exceptions to privileged communications statutes that could produce severe conflicts between a counselor's ethical and legal duties, and similar problems can occur if the counselor is faced with a defamation or malpractice suit.     

Crimina Carnis and Morally Obligatory Suicide

The common consensus on suicide seems to be that even if taking one's life is permissible on some basis, it cannot be morally obligatory. In fact, one argument often used against Utilitarianism is that the principle sometimes requires individuals to sacrifice themselves for the benefit of others, as in the case of healthy individuals who can donate all their life saving organs to those in need of transplants.However, a plausible philosophical case can be built for morally obligatory suicide. First, although not a standard interpretation, it seems clear Kant thought some crimes so morally repugnant that the moral agent should commit suicide rather than performing the former. Using this interpretation, I will strengthen and defend a Kantian argument for morally obligatory suicide in situations of crimina carnis contra naturum.An erratum to this article can be found at     

Is Having Pets Morally Permissible?

In this article, I consider the question of whether having pets is morally permissible. However, I do so indirectly by considering three objections to the practice of having pets — what I shall call the ‘restriction of freedom objection’, the ‘property objection’, and the ‘dependency objection’. The restriction of freedom objection is dismissed relatively easily. The property objection also fails to show that having pets is morally impermissible. However, my consideration of this second objection does lead to the conclusion that we ought to aim at changing existing legal systems and the majority of people's attitudes towards pets such that they (pets) are no longer considered to be the personal property of the humans in whose homes they are kept. But, while it is clear that we ought to aim at ending the practice of owning pets, it is not clear whether we ought to aim at ending the practice of keeping pets. Indeed, I do not to reach a definitive conclusion about the cogency of the dependency objection. However, I argue that this lack of clarity is of little concern at this time as our present moral obligations to pets are quite clear.     

On Reasoning Morally about the Environment

ABSTRACT R. M. Hare argues that moral reasoning about the environment requires the setting out of the various interests at stake and adjudication between them, strength for strength. Though there are possible objections to some aspects of his programme, it is clearly intended to be fair. However, it is not clear that in his concluding discussion, of the building of new roads, the interests at stake are set out with total impartiality. Some further relevant interests are listed, in an attempt to redress the balance.     

Morally Serious Critics of Moral Intuitions

I characterize moral intuitionism as the methodological claim that one may legitimately appeal to moral judgments in the course of moral reasoning even when those judgments are not supported by inference from other judgments. I describe two patterns of criticism of this method: 'morally un serious' criticisms, which hold that 'morality is bunk', so appeals to moral intuitions are bunk as well; and 'morally serious' criticisms, which hold that morality is not bunk, but that appeals to moral intuition are nonetheless misguided. I consider morally serious criticisms of Kantian and Aristotelian provenance, but defend the intuitionist method from both.     

Morally Respectful Listening and its Epistemic Consequences

This paper focuses on the phenomenon of morally respectful listening. I defend a specific requirement for respectful listening in the context of disagreement. According to it, when listening occurs in the context of disagreement, the morally respectful listener must be open to the possibility that the speaker will surprise the listener with her positive epistemic qualities. That is, the listener must be open to what I call “epistemic surprise.” I also argue for a specific interpretation of this openness: to be open to epistemic surprise is to be open to unexpected changes in confidence levels concerning the proposition in question. I close by arguing that respectful listening is incompatible with a listener's being certain, and I apply this conclusion to three recent debates in epistemology to show that the phenomenon of listening has potentially far-reaching consequences for epistemology.     

Functional Psychopathy in Morally Relevant Business Decisions

Literature addressing organizational ethical behavior has focused intensely on cognitive moral development, and more recently the automatic and natural moral inclinations (i.e., moral intuitions). Research addressing the incapacity for moral reasoning, such as psychopathy, is rarely addressed in organizational behavior (Smith & Lilienfeld, 2013; Stevens, Deuling, & Armenakis, 2011). Our first aim is to develop a construct definition for functional psychopathy that is appropriate for organizational science and theoretically consistent with the extensive previous clinical and criminal research in this field. Second, we apply two versions of a scale not previously used in business research relative to moral judgments. This scale is a self-reported measure of functional psychopathy and is useful for its relationships with ethically relevant business decisions. Further, we examine which factors emerge as having the highest relationship with ethical decision making. Third, we seek to advance the usefulness of this construct by more precisely placing psychopathy within its nomological network. With these goals in mind, a combined sample of business school seniors (N = 418) participated in three studies. Findings indicate a significant influence of psychopathy over a range of ethically relevant business decisions, as well as negative correlations with factors of the Moral Approbation (Ryan & Riordan, 2000) and the Moral Awareness (Reynolds, 2006a) scales. We conclude with directions for future research and considerations for practice.