MOST of us feel an aversion to lying and believe that it always stands in need of justification. One expression of this is to say that there is a prima facie duty not to lie. Another is Sissela Bok's "Principle of Veracity" which holds that lying has an "initial negative weight" so that there is always a presumption against telling a particular lie. Still a third variation can be found in Arnold Isenberg's "constancy principle" which holds that what is inherently (...) bad in any lie is the same for all, constant from one lie to the next. While these sorts of view are plausible, the literature on lying provides little in the way of a specific account for the negative weight inherent in all lies--their common disvalue. What follows is proposed as such an account, one which should also help clarify why some lies are worse than others, why some are excusable and others justifiable. Without presuming to be exhaustive, the view offered maintains that there are at least two inherent negative components of all lies; further, each of these inherent disvalues disposes the liar toward a particular, contingent harm. The inherent disvalues and the harms they threaten collectively constitute sufficient grounds for the presumption against lying. (shrink)

Philosophers have been troubled by the apparent tension between humility and knowledge of one's excellence. However, humility is compatible with knowledge of one's merit because of the moral perspective in which humility is embedded. The perspective has four dimensions: radical dependence, moral comparison with other people, moral ideals, and objective valuation of things in the world. Recourse to this moral perspective also enables clarification of the relationship between humility and other virtues; what is wrong with arrogance; the role of belief (...) of God in humility; and the difference between being humbled and being humiliated. (shrink)

The film Gandhi expands our understanding of how the virtue of care can function in the public sphere by portraying Gandhi dealing with Indian independence from Britain, the subjugation of women and Untouchables, and strife between Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi illustrates in his social and political activism how the virtue of care is animated by benevolence and structured by the building blocks of the care perspective: responsibility and need, relationship and mutual dependency, context and narrative.

This paper clarifies the nature of genetic screening and morally evaluates using it to deny people employment. Four sets of variables determine screening’s ability to forecast disorder. The first two concern epistemological limitations: whether the gene itself has been located; whether knowledge of other family members is necessary. The latter two refer to genetic causality: whether other genes are needed; whether the gene causes the disorder or just a susceptibility to it.Considerations of privacy and justice warrant restricting screening to job-specific (...) disorders, without prejudice to the worker. Screening is more of an invasion of privacy than most “searches” because our very selves are disclosed; serious stigmatizing can result. It is unjust to penalize someone for a susceptibility to a disorder. It is also unjust to use the genetic knowledge and technology, developed with public monies allocated for public good, against members of the public. (shrink)

The film Gandhi expands our understanding of how the virtue of care can function in the public sphere by portraying Gandhi dealing with Indian independence from Britain, the subjugation of women and Untouchables, and strife between Hindus and Muslims. Gandhi illustrates in his social and political activism how the virtue of care is animated by benevolence and structured by the building blocks of the care perspective: responsibility and need, relationship and mutual dependency, context and narrative.

The title of the film by Steve Kloves (1989) refers to the dual-piano, languishing lounge act performed by two brothers. The resurgence and demise of the musical team is brought about by the addition of a sultry, female vocalist--Susie Diamond. Embedded within the story is an exploration of integrity and its augmentation by the virtues of courage and honesty. Integrity marks an individual whose self is a coherent, consistent whole. Important elements of the individual’s personality are mutually supportive rather than (...) being disparate or in conflict. The integrity scrutinized by the film is Jack’s; it involves the younger brother’s inconsistent fidelity to his considerable musical talent. Late in the story we learn that he despises performing the popular musical fare with his brother and that he really wants to be creative, playing jazz. Although Jack is shown playing piano with modulated passion at a jazz club, we infer that he does so infrequently. Jack’s older brother is not in conflict with himself because his talent is suited to playing the bland tunes that are the staple of the act. Jack’s integrity is compromised because his commitment to his art is half-hearted; he cannot make the leap of faith--in himself. He knows that he hates playing the lounge music, is moved by jazz, and has considerable ability. Jack therefore realizes, however vaguely, that he ought to give himself to the music he loves, despite the risks this would entail. The trajectory of the film-story can be viewed as Jack finally summoning the courage to honestly confront his struggle with integrity and deciding to do something about it. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mobility, Portability, and PlacelessnessJoseph Kupfer (bio)Introduction: A Danger of Electronically Mediated ExperienceA few months ago I was sitting in a Chicago airport, waiting to make my connecting flight. Everywhere I looked, people were talking on cell phones, but the man across from me had gone one better. He had a cell phone and a laptop computer. He was talking on a conference call with two people who were at (...) two different locations as they edited a document that appeared on his laptop. It was a contract that they would soon e-mail to yet a fourth individual for her agreement. In the midst of the conferring, the man across from me broke from the contract to look up something on an Internet Web site. He was able to access data that was needed for the contract work. There is no doubt something astonishing and wondrous about four people hooked up, converging on a document that exists—well, where? Nowhere yet, except in that fanciful ether called cyberspace. Although we need to describe this dimension in familiar language, we realize that the term is just a metaphor. There is no space in cyberspace and no time either for that matter.The portability of information, documentation, and communication enabled the man in the airport to work with people in different places to edit a contract that they would then electronically send to a fourth person. The portability facilitated the individual's mobility since he did not have to be in a particular location to create the document and discuss it with others. The man could have been anywhere. He just happened to be in an airport. But the fact that he, and presumably his colleagues as well, could have been in a car or a park, at home or in a restaurant, rendered the actual place in which he worked—the airport—irrelevant. He did not have to pay attention to his physical environment and probably did not wish to. He was absorbed in his electronically fabricated environment comprised of information, voices, and documents. [End Page 38]As such activity becomes more commonplace, this man and the rest of us become detached from our physical surroundings. When these environments become irrelevant to what we are doing, they will lose meaning for us and we will cease to inhabit them in any meaningful way. Anywhere is nowhere. Obviously, the electronic age of cyberspace provides enormous benefits, and I do not wish to minimize its advantages or seem overly pessimistic. Rather, I wish to call attention to what we risk losing in the hope that awareness of what is at stake can forestall the loss. Just as over-reliance on air travel can undermine our sense of movement through space and the aesthetic of such movement, so too can over-reliance on virtual, electronic connections erode our connection to actual physical places. The more electronically mediated activity replaces place, the more we become dis-placed.In what follows I sketch three dimensions of loss that accompany this exciting new electronic connectedness. With loss of place, with placelessness, we are deprived of the aesthetic experiences particular places provide. Second, we lose touch—with our bodies and other people. Last, we lose a sense of place altogether. Our entire way of being in the world may undergo such a radical change that we foreclose important aspects of our humanity and with it corresponding aesthetic appreciations.Electronic Displacement, Traditional Distance Communication, and Previous Revolutions in MobilitySeveral years ago I wrote about the loss of distinctive places as a result of homogeneity in architecture. The sameness of design in restaurants, motels, sport stadiums, homes, and malls yielded a loss of regionality and locality in our built environment. But these were the result of changes within a pervasive dimension of life—architecture or the built environment. Even if the restaurant, motel, or mall looked the same as others, we nevertheless were functioning within a recognizable spatio-temporal frame. We were aware of it as such and even took some comfort in the familiarity. Americans especially liked the idea of no surprises: the Holiday Inn in Topeka, Kansas, looked and felt and smelled the same as... (shrink)

You are standing in the redwood forest of California, craning your neck to see the top of the giant sequoias. You marvel at their grandeur, as the trees seem to pierce the sunny clouds, but you might find the sequoias even more marvellous if you knew they were over 200 feet high. And wouldn't you stand in still greater awe if you realized that these trees are more than 2,000 years old? Knowing the age of sequoias and other living things (...) can be the basis of a distinctive aesthetic experience – the organically sublime. (shrink)

Towards the end of Analysis, Knowledge, and Valuation, C. I. Lewis remarks that when a Cyrenaic espouses his philosophy of life, “Have no concern for the future,” he contradicts himself. Lewis hastens to add that the contradiction is not formal but “pragmatic.”.

Sentimentality is usually thought of as a mild vice. Unlike such vices as cruelty, dishonesty, or contemptuousness, sentimentality appears to affect only the individuals who have it, and then, not very adversely. So what if we indulge our taste for prematurely dying heroines or stoic, sweet-natured children? Shedding a tear or feeling a diffuse affection does not seem to hurt anyone, not even ourselves. But because of its impact on the self, sentimentality is a more serious vice than might be (...) suspected.Regardless of the immediate object of our sentimental gaze, the self is also sentimentalized. The self is not only the subject engaged in sentimentalizing activity, but also its mediated object. A sentimentalized sense of self discourages activity and keeps us from dealing with the world directly. The distortion of and absorption in the self is dangerous for sentimental individuals and those with whom they interact. To see why, we must examine the structuring of perception, thought, and emotion which makes up sentimentality. Our inquiry will be sharpened by reference to literary depictions which reflect or encourage sentimental response. Versing us in the ways of sentimentality, some literature may generate our everyday patterns of sentimentalized thought and feeling. (shrink)

The film Young Adult offers a striking example of vanity and its entanglement with other vices. Mavis Garry is prompted to return to her home town to woo a married, former beau out of vanity: an overweening desire to be admired for her appearance and authorship. Vanity involves wishing to be seen possessing something valuable that others lack and bestowing excessive attention on it, as in Mavis’s repeated physical preening and buffing. Because comparison is central to vanity, it contributes to (...) Mavis’s envy. Vanity also encourages her arrogance by inflating Mavis’s distorted view of her self-worth. At the film’s climax, Mavis’s defects are publicly witnessed, producing in her the salutary moral experience of shame. However, Mavis’s incipient self-awareness and shame are dissipated by a few words from a fawning fan, as the undertow of vanity pulls Mavis beneath the clarity of the moral sensibility that was momentarily evoked by shame. (shrink)