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.     

Moral obligations towards future generations in African thought

Given the importance of being able to account for moral obligations towards future generations, especially in the light of the problem of global climate change, I argue that there are under-appreciated notions in African thought that are able to significantly contribute to the on-going discourse with respect to inter-generational moral obligations. I identify two related African notions, both springing from the prominent belief that ancestors who have died – but continue to have a presence – are entitled to respect, which upon secular refinement are promising in terms of grounding a claim that we do have moral obligations to future generations. These conceptions are that the environment is a communal resource, shared across generations, and that the present generation should express gratitude to its predecessors for preserving the environment on its behalf, by emulating its predecessors and preserving the environment for future generations. I argue that these two conceptions present plausible grounds for thinking that we have moral obligations to posterity, partly because they go some way towards overcoming some of the theoretical concerns generally associated with the notion of moral obligations towards unidentifiable, contingent future persons.     

Moral Orientation as a Component of Ethical Decision Making

Morals are foundational to professional and ethical counseling practice. Moral orientation may play an integral role in ethical decision making. The authors review the literature regarding moral orientation and discuss the connection to ethical decision making. Implications for counselor preparation and practice are addressed.     

Physiological Age and School Entrance

We examined the ability of second and fifth graders to detect subtle order violations in simple, single-event stories, patterned after the “story-grammar” of Stein and Glenn (1979). Children read and listened to several stories in which one element (either the internal response or the consequence) was disordered and were prompted with a series of increasingly suggestive hints to spot and explain the order violation. Although the older students did significantly better than the younger ones in spotting the order violations and explaining the problem, the second graders performed these tasks quite well in an absolute sense. The younger children also performed well when asked to spontaneously order a mixed up set of propositions.     

The Self‐Ambivalence Measure: A psychometric investigation

The purpose of this study was to assess the psychometric properties of the Self‐Ambivalence Measure and its subscales developed by Bhar and Kyrios. The factor structure, reliability, and validity of the measure were examined utilising a non‐clinical sample of 415 participants who completed self‐report measures of aspects of the self. Results indicated that the Self‐Ambivalence Measure exhibited levels of internal consistency and convergent and divergent validity, warranting its use in further research. In contrast to earlier research finding a two‐factor structure, a three‐factor structure was found to best fit the current sample and the factors were labelled Self‐Worth Ambivalence, Moral Ambivalence, and Public Self‐consciousness. This solution separated internal aspects of self‐ambivalence from social aspects which were conceptualised as an aspect of lovability. A discussion of implications is provided.     

How Do We Acquire Moral Knowledge? Is Knowing Our Duty Ever Passive? – Two Questions for Martin Sticker

Martin Sticker's discussion of the common moral agent contains much that I find insightful, true and significant. As a response to his paper, I focus on two important issues that nevertheless separate us: (1) Sticker claims that knowing our duty can be mere passive awareness and that it indeed is passive as awareness of the special status of humanity. I deny that knowing our duty is ever passive. (2) He further claims that the common universalization test is the paradigmatic way active agents acquire moral knowledge. I argue that Sticker appears to construe universalization as a formal test that presupposes no moral knowledge and that so construed the test cannot serve for acquiring moral knowledge.     

Lamenting the Golden Age: Love,Labour and Loss in the Collective Memory of Scientists

Abstract

Academic science is often described as having a moral economy underpinned by curiosity, creativity and a love of the subject. It is also described as having a political economy tied to national programmes for socio-economic growth. According to many writers, in recent decades those moral and political economies have become disconnected through greater managerial, audit and commercial practices pervading the academy. Classic ideals of professional norms and ethos have been eroded in these new economically incentivised environments. Biomedical scientists working at a major UK university echoed these sentiments, lamenting a lost ‘golden age’ of science characterised by intellectual freedom, serendipitous discovery and a love of doing science. In practice, their lamentation serves as a myth and expresses a key tension in pursuing science as a job and as a vocation. Playing a performative role in scientists' own self-understanding, the myth not only underwrites scientific identity, but also supports research management by demarcating ‘science’ from the practices that manage, measure and commercialise it. The ‘golden age’ emerges as a significant explanatory narrative in contemporary science. It embodies a moral economy that is detached from its institutional contexts, and thus unable to resolve the inequalities and tensions produced through the political economy that relies on it.     

Moral Courage and Facing Others

Abstract

Moral courage involves acting in the service of one’s convictions, in spite of the risk of retaliation or punishment. I suggest that moral courage also involves a capacity to face others as moral agents, and thus in a manner that does not objectify them. A moral stand can only be taken toward another moral agent. Often, we find ourselves unable to face others in this way, because to do so is frightening, or because we are consumed by blinding anger. But without facing others as moral subjects, we risk moral cowardice on the one hand and moral fanaticism on the other.     

Sense and Sensibility Educated: A Note on Experience and (Minimal) Empiricism

Abstract

McDowell’s minimal empiricism holds that experience, understood as providing conceptually articulated contents, plays a role in the justification of our beliefs. We question this idea by contrasting the role of perceptual experience in moral and non-moral judgments and conclude that experience per se is irrelevant in the former case and should also be so in the latter one: only with the help of adequate beliefs experience can provide a connection with the world. We conclude with some remarks concerning the importance of experience.