An Historical Overview of Basic Approaches and Issues in Ethical and Moral Philosophy and Principles

Summary

This article provides a condensed history of ethics development for the purpose of exposing psychologists and other mental health professionals to ethical and moral bases upon which modern psychological ethics are founded. In addition, it focuses on contemporary theories, with an emphasis on professional ethics.     

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.     

Confounds in moral/conventional studies

In ‘The nature of moral judgments and the extent of the moral domain’, Fraser (2012 Fraser, B. 2012. “The nature of moral judgements and the extent of the moral domain.” Philosophical Explorations 15 (1): 1–16. doi:10.1080/13869795.2012.647356.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) criticises findings by Kelly et al. (2007 Kelly, D., S. Stich, K. J. Haley, S. J. Eng, and D. M. T. Fessler. 2007. “Harm, Affect, and the Moral/Conventional Distinction.” Mind & Language 22 (2): 117–131. doi: 10.1111/j.1468-0017.2007.00302.x[Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]) that speak against the moral/conventional (M/C) distinction, arguing that the experiment was confounded. First, we note that the results of that experiment held up when confounds were removed (Quintelier, Fessler, and De Smet 2012 Quintelier, K. J. P., D. M. T. Fessler, and D. De Smet. 2012. “The Case of the Drunken Sailor: On the Generalizable Wrongness of Harmful Transgressions.” Thinking & Reasoning 18 (2): 183–195. doi:10.1080/13546783.2012.669738.[Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Second, and more importantly, we argue that attempts to prove the existence of a M/C distinction are systematically confounded. In contrast to Fraser, we refer to data that support our view. We highlight the implications for the moral/conventional theory.     

Merit,fit, and basic desert

Basic desert is central to the dispute between compatibilists and incompatibilists over the four-case manipulation argument. I argue that there are two distinct ways of understanding the desert salient to moral responsibility; moral desert can be understood as a claim about fitting responses to an agent or as a claim about the merit of the agent. Failing to recognize this distinction has contributed to a stalemate between both sides. I suggest that recognizing these distinct approaches to moral desert will help clarify a central source of disagreement between compatibilists and incompatibilists and assist both sides in resolving the current stalemate.     

Basic desert of reactive emotions

In this paper, I explore the idea that someone can deserve resentment or other reactive emotions for what she does by attention to three psychological functions of such emotions – appraisal, communication, and sanction – that I argue ground claims of their desert. I argue that attention to these functions helps to elucidate the moral aims of reactive emotions and to distinguish the distinct claims of desert, as opposed to other moral considerations.     

Measuring moral reasoning using moral dilemmas: evaluating reliability,validity, and differential item functioning of the behavioural defining issues test (bDIT)

ABSTRACT

We evaluated the reliability, validity, and differential item functioning (DIF) of a shorter version of the Defining Issues Test-1 (DIT-1), the behavioural DIT (bDIT), measuring the development of moral reasoning. About 353 college students (81 males, 271 females, 1 not reported; age M = 18.64 years, SD = 1.20 years) who were taking introductory psychology classes at a public University in a suburb area in the Southern United States participated in the present study. First, we examined the reliability of the bDIT using Cronbach’s α and its concurrent validity with the original DIT-1 using disattenuated correlation. Second, we compared the test duration between the two measures. Third, we tested the DIF of each question between males and females. Findings reported that first, the bDIT showed acceptable reliability and good concurrent validity. Second, the test duration could be significantly shortened by employing the bDIT. Third, DIF results indicated that the bDIT items did not favour any gender. Practical implications of the present study based on the reported findings are discussed.     

The cultural salience of moral character and virtue declined in twentieth century America

In a large corpus of American books, we tracked how frequently words related to moral excellence and virtue appeared over the twentieth century. Considering the well-established cultural trend in the USA toward greater individualism and its implications for the moral domain, we predicted that terms related to morality and virtue would appear with diminishing frequency in American books. Two studies supported our predictions: Study 1 showed a decline in the use of general moral terms such as virtue, decency and conscience, throughout the twentieth century. In Study 2, we examined the appearance frequency of 50 virtue words (e.g. honesty, patience, compassion) and found a significant decline for 74% of them. Overall, our findings suggest that during the twentieth century, moral ideals and virtues have largely waned from the public conversation.     

Witnessing excellence in action: the ‘other-praising’ emotions of elevation,gratitude, and admiration

People are often profoundly moved by the virtue or skill of others, yet psychology has little to say about the ‘other-praising’ family of emotions. Here we demonstrate that emotions such as elevation, gratitude, and admiration differ from more commonly studied forms of positive affect (joy and amusement) in many ways, and from each other in a few ways. The results of studies using recall, video induction, event-contingent diary, and letter-writing methods to induce other-praising emotions suggest that: elevation (a response to moral excellence) motivates prosocial and affiliative behavior, gratitude motivates improved relationships with benefactors, and admiration motivates self-improvement. Mediation analyses highlight the role of conscious emotion between appraisals and motivations. Discussion focuses on implications for emotion research, interpersonal relationships, and morality.     

Ecological issues of justice

In the first part of this article the author explores the implications for justice of the wider range of parties holding moral standing that environmental ethics has recently disclosed. These implications concern the equitable treatment of future generations and nonhuman creatures, and are relevant both to policies, such as approaches to global warming, and procedures, which may need to be revised to give an equitable voice to unrepresented interests. Later the author considers some radical implications of regarding humanity as stewards of the planetary environment, a view defended in his recent book Creation, Evolution and Meaning. If all adult humans have this role, but many are prevented from discharging it by poverty and related constraints, then those who are thus disempowered need to be empowered to exercise this role. This requirement of equity would arise not from their moral patienthood but from what is involved in respecting them as moral agents. Some approaches to tackling global warming are considered in this connection.     

In defense of a regulated market economy

The dominant understanding of political corporate social responsibility (CSR) suggests new, broader political roles for businesses in the globalized economy, challenging the classical liberal social order (where business firms’ task is to focus on economic issues and the government's role is to take care of political responsibilities). In this paper, we show how the major framing of the political CSR discussion not only challenges the classical liberal social order but also goes against the more general political economic perspective of the regulated market economy (where strict and [in most cases] strong boundaries exist between business and politics). We argue that this latter tendency of the political CSR discussion is its main weakness. We introduce a Rawlsian reframing of political CSR that is in line with the idea of a global-regulated market economy and compatible with some of the basic global ethical aims of the political CSR movement.