Moral Motivation

Edited by Joshua May (University of Alabama, Birmingham)
About this topic
Summary Questions in moral motivation are broad, but often focus on the source and content of one's motivation to do what one judges to be right. For example, is the source of moral motivation more of a cognitive matter, involving reasoning or belief? Or is it primarily a matter of sentiment, desire, or emotion? Is the content of moral motivation, say, a desire to do whatever one believes is right. Or is it something more direct, such as empathy or a concern for features that make the action right? Related questions dealt with in other areas as well concern the apparently internal connection between moral judgments and moral motivation (internalism) and whether benevolent action is always ultimately self-interested (egoism).  The notion of "right" throughout may encompass more than morality, since often philosophers interested in moral motivation have a broader concern for what we might call "normative motivation." This involves, for example, motivation to do what one believes one has most reason to do, whether these reasons are moral or not. Familiar questions can then arise, such as whether it's possible for us to judge that following a strict diet is most prudent, yet lack any motivation to do it. 
Key works Many of the issues in moral motivation dealt with in contemporary literature spring from Hume & Macnabb 1969 and Kant 1785. More recently, Nagel 1970, Korsgaard 1986, and Smith 1994 address the source and structure of moral motivation and have spurred much of the subsequent literature. Herman 1981 provides a key starting point for contemporary discussion of the content of moral motivation---there in connection with the motive of duty (see also Smith 1994, ch. 3).
Introductions The entry by Rosati 2006 provides a detailed introduction; Wallace 1998 is more brief but equally useful. Some of the relevant empirical work is summarized in May 2017 and Schroeder et al 2010Wallace 1990 provides a fairly lengthy but excellent introduction to key arguments for the role of desire in moral motivation.
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  1. A psychological obstacle to posing the all-or-nothing problem.Terence Rajivan Edward - manuscript
    I introduce an argument for rejecting Joe Horton’s all-or-nothing problem on the grounds that saving one child is not a genuine option for most people.
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  2. Principium Vs. Principiatum: The Transcendence of love in Hildebrand and Aquinas.Francis Feingold - manuscript
    This paper seeks to defuse two claims. On the one hand, I confront the Hildebrandian claim that Thomism, by placing the principium of love in the needs and desires of the lover rather than in the beloved, denies the possibility of transcendent love; on the other, I seek to refute the Thomistic objection that Hildebrand lacks a sufficient understanding of nature and its inherent teleology. In order to accomplish this, a distinction must be made between different kinds of principium or (...)
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  3. Natural motives and the motive of duty: Hume and Kant on our duties to others.Christine M. Korsgaard - manuscript
    In this paper I argue that the ground of this disagreement is different than philosophers have traditionally supposed. On the surface, the disagreement appears to be a matter of substantive moral judgment: Hume admires the sort of person who rushes to the aid of another from motives of sympathy or humanity, while Kant thinks that a person who helps with the thought that it is his duty is the better character. While a moral disagreement of this kind certainly follows from (...)
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  4. Counterfeit self: A confirmatory factor analysis among Indonesians.Juneman Abraham, Bagus Takwin & Julia Suleeman - forthcoming - Kasetsart Journal of Social Sciences:1-8.
    It is questionable whether counterfeiting in many areas of life contributes to unethical behavior to a wider extent. If the notion is supported by data, then the moral damage in a society could be prevented by reducing the counterfeit self and behavior to a bare minimum. This study aimed at empirically testing the measurement model of counterfeit self of Wood et al. (2008) among Indonesians as well as theoretically reviewing counterfeit self roles in unethical behavior. The participants of this study (...)
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  5. Varieties of moral motivation: Empirical perspectives.Mark Alfano - forthcoming - In David Copp & Connie Rosati (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory. Oxford University Press.
    This chapter examines three recent empirical approaches to the study of moral motivation: moral foundations theory, deep pragmatism, and morality-as-cooperation. All three approaches conceptualize moral motivation as a suite of desires, emotions, sentiments, dispositions, values, and relationships that move people to think, judge, and act in accordance with morality. Moral foundations theory posits five or six basic foundations: care, fairness, loyalty, authority, sanctity, and sometimes liberty. People are thought to be emotionally attuned to each foundation, though some are more sensitive (...)
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  6. Why being morally virtuous enhances well-being: A Self-Determination Theory approach.Alexios Arvanitis & Matt Stichter - forthcoming - The Journal of Moral Education 52 (3):362-378.
    Self-determination theory, like other psychological theories that study eudaimomia, focuses on general processes of growth and self-realization. An aspect that tends to be sidelined in the relevant literature is virtue. We propose that special focus needs to be placed on moral virtue and its development. We review different types of moral motivation and argue that morally virtuous behavior is regulated through integrated regulation. We describe the process of moral integration and how it relates to the development of moral virtue. We (...)
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  7. Temptation and Apathy.Juan Pablo Bermúdez, Samantha Berthelette, Gabriela Fernández, Alfonso Anaya & Diego Rodríguez - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility.
    Self-control is deemed crucial for reasons-responsive agency and a key contributor to long-term wellbeing. But recent studies suggest that effortfully resisting one’s temptations does not contribute to long-term goal attainment, and can even be harmful. So how does self-control improve our lives? Finding an answer requires revising the role that overcoming temptation plays in self-control. This paper distinguishes two forms of self-control problems: temptation (the presence of a strong wayward motivation) and apathy (the lack of commitment-advancing motivation). This distinction makes (...)
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  8. Genealogical Inquiry and Universal Moral Values.G. Cavallo - forthcoming - Dialegesthai. Rivista Telematica di Filosofia 2017.
    Inspired by american pragmatism and Hans Joas' proposal of an affirmative genealogy, I argue in this paper that a genealogical inquiry (both on the biografical and on the historical level) can explain what motivates individuals to moral agency better than Kantian moral philosophy, without renouncing an historically-informed conception of universal moral values.
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  9. Consistent Desires and Climate Change.Daniel Coren - forthcoming - Analytic Philosophy.
    Philosophers have described the human perspective on climate change as a perfect moral storm. I take a new angle on that storm: I argue that our relevant desires feature a particularly problematic case of seemingly consistent but genuinely inconsistent desires. We have, first, non-indexical desires such as a desire to (make the sacrifices necessary to) stop polluting our environment at some point. We have, second, indexical desires such as a desire not to (make the sacrifices necessary to) stop polluting our (...)
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  10. Giving Up Gratitude.Daniel Coren - forthcoming - Analytic Philosophy.
    Resentment is a negative reaction to expressions of bad will. Gratitude is a positive reaction to expressions of good will. To give up resentment, when someone has wronged you, is to forgive them. We might expect an analog for giving up gratitude. The practice features in some ordinary and extraordinary moments in our lives. But it is unnamed and unstudied. I clarify what giving up gratitude is. I identify three types of ordinary and important cases. I then attend to implications; (...)
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  11. The Morality in Intimacy.Jeremy David Fix - forthcoming - In Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Mind.
    Is the exemplar of modern ethical theory estranged from their intimates because the motive of duty dominates their motivational psychology? While this challenge against modern ethical theory is familiar, I argue that with respect to a certain strand of Kantian ethical theory, it does not so much as make sense. I explain the content and functional role of the motive of duty in the psychology of the moral exemplar, stressing in particular how that motive shapes and informs the content of (...)
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  12. Moral Worth and Skillful Action.David Horst - forthcoming - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
    Someone acts in a morally worthy way when they deserve credit for doing the morally right thing. But when and why do agents deserve credit for the success involved in doing the right thing? It is tempting to seek an answer to that question by drawing an analogy with creditworthy success in other domains of human agency, especially in sports, arts, and crafts. Accordingly, some authors have recently argued that, just like creditworthy success in, say, chess, playing the piano, or (...)
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  13. The Goals of Moral Worth.Nathan Robert Howard - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Metaethics.
    While it is tempting to suppose that an act has moral worth just when and because it is motivated by sufficient moral reasons, philosophers have, largely, come to doubt this analysis. Doubt is rooted in two claims. The first is that some facts can motivate a given act in multiple ways, not all of which are consistent with moral worth. The second is the orthodox view that normative reasons are facts. I defend the tempting analysis by proposing and defending a (...)
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  14. Reappraisal as a means to self-transcendence: Aquinas’s model of emotion regulation informs the extended process model.Anne Jeffrey, Catherine Marple & Sarah Schnitker - forthcoming - Philosophical Psychology.
    Recent work in positive psychology demonstrates the importance of self-transcendence: understanding oneself to be part of something greater than the self, such as a family, community, or tradition of sacred practice. Self-transcendence is positively associated with wellbeing and a sense of meaning and purpose. Philosophers have argued that self-transcendent motivation has a central role in good character, or virtue. Positive psychologists are just now beginning to integrate the aim of developing such motivation in character interventions. In this paper we draw (...)
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  15. What Would Lewis Do?Daniel Nolan - forthcoming - In Helen Beebee & A. R. J. Fisher (eds.), Perspectives on the Philosophy of David K. Lewis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. pp. 220-239.
    David Lewis rejected consequentialism in ethics. However, two aspects of his meta-ethical views make it a challenge to see how consequentialism could be resisted. Lewis endorses a maximising conception of rationality, where to be rational is to maximise value of a certain sort; he appears to think it is possible to be both rational and moral; and yet he rejects conceptions of moral action as acting to maximise moral value. The second tension in Lewis's views arises from his meta-ethics. Lewis's (...)
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  16. The Effects of Morality on Acting against Climate Change.Thomas Pölzler - forthcoming - In Richard Joyce & Richard Garner (eds.), The End of Morality. New York: Routledge.
    Suppose you are a moral error theorist, i.e., you believe that no moral judgment is true. What, then, ought you to do with regard to our common practice of making such judgments? Determining the usefulness of our ordinary moral practice is exacerbated by the great number and variety of moral judgments. In-depth case studies may thus be more helpful in clarifying error theory’s practical implications than reflections about morality in general. In this chapter I pursue this strategy with regard to (...)
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  17. Moral Worth and Our Ultimate Moral Concerns.Douglas W. Portmore - forthcoming - Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics.
    Some right acts have what philosophers call moral worth. A right act has moral worth if and only if its agent deserves credit for having acted rightly in this instance. And I argue that an agent deserves credit for having acted rightly if and only if her act issues from an appropriate set of concerns, where the appropriateness of these concerns is a function what her ultimate moral concerns should be. Two important upshots of the resulting account of moral worth (...)
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  18. Moralische Motivation.Steffi Schadow - forthcoming - In Monika Bobbert & Jochen Sautermeister (eds.), Handbuch Ethik und Psychologie. Berlin: Springer.
    Someone is morally motivated precisely when his moral judgment or a moral fact arouses in him the intention to perform an action corresponding to the judgment or fact; we also speak of someone being moved to perform an action because of a moral attitude. For example, Sarah believes that it is moral to donate a portion of her income to solidarity causes, and this belief moves her to donate a certain amount of money to a charity each month. The philosophical (...)
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  19. Rationalizing our Way into Moral Progress.Jesse S. Summers - forthcoming - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (5):1-12.
    Research suggests that the explicit reasoning we offer to ourselves and to others is often rationalization, that we act instead on instincts, inclinations, stereotypes, emotions, neurobiology, habits, reactions, evolutionary pressures, unexamined principles, or justifications other than the ones we think we’re acting on, then we tell a post hoc story to justify our actions. This is troubling for views of moral progress according to which moral progress proceeds from our engagement with our own and others’ reasons. I consider an account (...)
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  20. Consequentialism, Moral Motivation and the Deontic Relevance of Motives.Seven Sverdlik - forthcoming - In Iakovos Vasiliou (ed.), Moral Motivation: A History. Oxford University press.
    This paper surveys the history of consequentialist thinking about the deontic relevance of motives in the period of its development, 1789-1912. If a motive is relevant deontically it is a factor that determines whether the action it leads to is right or wrong. Bentham, Austin, Mill, Sidgwick and Moore all either stated or implied that motives are never relevant deontically. Their related views on moral motivation—or which motives are morally praiseworthy—are also examined. Despite the arguments given by Mill and Moore, (...)
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  21. Humanism: A Reconsideration.Aleksy Tarasenko-Struc - forthcoming - Journal of the American Philosophical Association:1-20.
    Humanism is the view that people treat others inhumanely when we fail to see them as human beings, so that our treatment of them will tend to be more humane when we (fully) see their humanity. Recently, humanist views have been criticized on the grounds that the perpetrators of inhumanity regard their victims as human and treat them inhumanely partly for this reason. I argue that the two most common objections to humanist views (and their relatives) are unpersuasive: not only (...)
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  22. Williams’s Integrity Objection as a Psychological Problem.Nikhil Venkatesh - forthcoming - Topoi:1-11.
    Utilitarianism is the view that as far as morality goes, one ought to choose the option which will result in the most overall well-being—that is, that maximises the sum of whatever makes life worth living, with each person’s life equally weighted. The promise of utilitarianism is to reduce morality to one simple principle, easily incorporated into policy analysis, economics and decision theory. However, utilitarianism is not popular amongst moral philosophers today. This is in large part due to the influence of (...)
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  23. Kant and Hutcheson on the Psychology of Moral Motivation.Michael Walschots - forthcoming - In Antonino Falduto (ed.), Problems of Reason: Kant in Context. Berlin: De Gruyter.
    In this paper I argue that Kant’s psychology of moral motivation has less in common with Hutcheson’s view than interpreters have traditionally thought. I first offer an interpretation of the role that feeling, desire, and cognition play in Kant’s account of moral action. I then outline the essential features of Hutcheson’s understanding of desire before arguing that although Kant and Hutcheson share the trivial similarity that even moral action springs from a desire, Kant conceives of the desire at the root (...)
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  24. Rich Addiction.Bennett Gilbert - 2024 - Subjectivity 31.
    Examining the author’s own experiences of narcotics addiction reveals certain aspects of the addicted mentality that have strong ethical valence. In general, this shows that addiction is not a state fundamentally characterized by lack. The rudiments of this position are found in some contemporary philosophy of addiction; also, it is contrasted with a common widely held mistaken view. Addiction should instead be understood in continuity with and as illuminating the nature of human personhood and subjectivity. Under a phenomenology specific to (...)
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  25. Exploring the relationship between purpose and moral psychological indicators.Hyemin Han - 2024 - Ethics and Behavior 34 (1):28-39.
    ABSTRACT In the present study, I explore the relationship between purpose, which was measured by the Claremont Purpose Scale, and moral psychological indicators, moral reasoning, moral identity, and empathy. Purpose was quantified in terms of three subcomponents: meaning, goal, and beyond-the-self motivation. Moral reasoning was assessed in terms of utilization of postconventional moral reasoning. Moral identity was examined with two subscales: moral internalization, and symbolization. Among diverse subscales of empathy, I focused on empathic concern and perspective taking, which have been (...)
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  26. Examining the Network Structure among Moral Functioning Components with Network Analysis.Hyemin Han - 2024 - Personality and Individual Differences 217:112435.
    I explored the association between components constituting the basis for moral and optimal human functioning, i.e., moral reasoning, moral identity, empathy, and purpose, via network analysis. I employed factor scores instead of composite scores that most previous studies used for better accuracy in score estimation in this study. Then, I estimated the network structure among collected variables and centrality indicators. For additional information, the structure and indicators were compared between two groups, participants who engaged in civic activities highly versus lowly. (...)
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  27. Relatable and attainable moral exemplars as sources for moral elevation and pleasantness.Hyemin Han & Kelsie J. Dawson - 2024 - Journal of Moral Education 53 (1):14-30.
    ABSTRACT In the present study, we examined how the perceived attainability and relatability of moral exemplars predicted moral elevation and pleasantness among both adult and college student participants. Data collected from two experiments were analyzed with Bayesian multilevel modeling to explore which factors significantly predicted outcome variables at the story level. The analysis results demonstrated that the main effect of perceived relatability and the interaction effect between attainability and relatability shall be included in the best prediction model, and thus, were (...)
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  28. The Self, Emptiness, and Awareness.Claus Janew - 2024 - In Truthfulness. The Consciousness that Creates Reality. KDP.
    In this exploration of self-identity, I argue that the self is not a standalone entity but an integral part of a broader consciousness. Deep meditation reveals the self as a construct beyond egoistic confines, interlinked with the external world and others' experiences. Decisions arise from an awareness that transcends individual ego, suggesting that our sense of self is an inexhaustible center of dynamic consciousness rather than an ultimate emptiness.
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  29. The Modern Guise of the Good.Francesco Orsi (ed.) - 2024 - Routledge.
    This book is the first-ever collection dedicated to the guise of the good in early modern and later Western philosophy. It spans three centuries from Thomas Hobbes to Henry Sidgwick and features original contributions by some of the finest scholars. -/- One of the staple items of Western philosophy is the idea that we can only desire, or pursue, something under the guise of the good: if we see nothing good about it, we cannot want it. After enjoying its heydays (...)
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  30. Do Moral Beliefs Motivate Action?Rodrigo Díaz - 2023 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 26 (3):377-395.
    Do moral beliefs motivate action? To answer this question, extant arguments have considered hypothetical cases of association (dissociation) between agents’ moral beliefs and actions. In this paper, I argue that this approach can be improved by studying people’s actual moral beliefs and actions using empirical research methods. I present three new studies showing that, when the stakes are high, associations between participants’ moral beliefs and actions are actually explained by co-occurring but independent moral emotions. These findings suggest that moral beliefs (...)
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  31. Current cases of AI misalignment and their implications for future risks.Leonard Dung - 2023 - Synthese 202 (5):1-23.
    How can one build AI systems such that they pursue the goals their designers want them to pursue? This is the alignment problem. Numerous authors have raised concerns that, as research advances and systems become more powerful over time, misalignment might lead to catastrophic outcomes, perhaps even to the extinction or permanent disempowerment of humanity. In this paper, I analyze the severity of this risk based on current instances of misalignment. More specifically, I argue that contemporary large language models and (...)
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  32. Oh, All the Wrongs I Could Have Performed! Or: Why Care about Morality, Robustly Realistically Understood.David Enoch & Itamar Weinshtock Saadon - 2023 - In Paul Bloomfield & David Copp (eds.), Oxford Handbook of Moral Realism. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 434-462.
    Suppose someone is brought up as an orthodox Jew, and so only eats kosher, is very conservative sexually, etc. Suppose they then find out that this Judaism stuff is just all a big mistake. If they then regret all the shrimp they could have eaten, all the sex!, this makes perfect sense. Not so, however, if someone finds out that moral realism is false, and they now regret all the fun they could have had hurting people’s feeling, etc. Even if (...)
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  33. Exploring the association between character strengths and moral functioning.Hyemin Han, Kelsie J. Dawson, David I. Walker, Nghi Nguyen & Youn-Jeng Choi - 2023 - Ethics and Behavior 33 (4):286-303.
    We explored the relationship between 24 character strengths measured by the Global Assessment of Character Strengths (GACS), which was revised from the original VIA instrument, and moral functioning comprising postconventional moral reasoning, empathic traits and moral identity. Bayesian Model Averaging (BMA) was employed to explore the best models, which were more parsimonious than full regression models estimated through frequentist regression, predicting moral functioning indicators with the 24 candidate character strength predictors. Our exploration was conducted with a dataset collected from 666 (...)
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  34. The autonomy of the heart : forberg on action without belief.Kevin J. Harrelson - 2023 - In Katerina Mihaylova & Anna Ezekiel (eds.), Hope and the Kantian Legacy: New Contributions to the History of Optimism. London: Bloomsbury Academic. pp. 125-139.
    Friedrich Karl Forberg is known mainly among scholars of German Idealism for his role as protagonist in the Atheismusstreit. This chapter examines the texts of that controversy, but presents Forberg as a positive contributor to the philosophy of action rather than as a mere iconoclast. I argue that Forberg's position on moral optimism is superior in some respects to the one defended by both Kant and Fichte.
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  35. Robust Realism in Ethics: Normative Arbitrariness, Interpersonal Dialogue, and Moral Objectivity.Stephen Ingram - 2023 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Stephen Ingram defends a robustly realistic metaethical theory, based on the concept of normative arbitrariness, of which he provides the first in-depth analysis. He argues that, in order to capture the normative non-arbitrariness of moral choice, we must commit to the existence of robustly stance-independent, categorical, irreducibly normative, non-natural moral facts. Specifically, he identifies five ways in which a metaethical theory might fail to capture the non-arbitrariness of moral choice. The first involves claims about the bruteness of moral attitudes or (...)
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  36. On the Concept and Ethics of Vaccination for the Sake of Others.Steven R. Kraaijeveld - 2023 - Dissertation, Wageningen University and Research
    This dissertation explores the idea and ethics of vaccination for the sake of others. It conceptually distinguishes four different kinds of vaccination—self-protective, paternalistic, altruistic, and indirect—based on who receives the primary benefits of vaccination and who ultimately makes the vaccination decision. It describes the results of focus group studies that were conducted to investigate what people who might get vaccinated altruistically think of this idea. It also applies the different kinds of vaccination to ethical issues surrounding COVID-19, such as lockdown (...)
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  37. Is Sanctification Real? Empirical Evidence for and against Christian Moral Transformation.Lari Launonen - 2023 - Religions 14 (1):26.
    According to a widely held view of the New Testament teaching on sanctification; the Holy Spirit brings about a significant moral transformation in the character of every true believer. This claim about Christian moral transformation (CMT) has empirical implications. Thus, its truth can be evaluated from a scientific perspective. Sociological and psychological data on the relationship of religion and morality suggests that (Christian) religion is negatively correlated with undesirable moral behavior such as alcohol and substance abuse, criminal behavior, domestic abuse, (...)
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  38. Some moral benefits of ignorance.Jimmy Alfonso Licon - 2023 - Philosophical Psychology 36 (2):319-336.
    When moral philosophers study ignorance, their efforts are almost exclusively confined to its exculpatory and blameworthy aspects. Unfortunately, though, this trend overlooks that certain kinds of propositional ignorance, namely of the personal costs and benefits of altruistic actions, can indirectly incentivize those actions. Humans require cooperation from others to survive, and that can be facilitated by a good reputation. One avenue to a good reputation is helping others, sticking to moral principles, and so forth, without calculating the personal costs of (...)
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  39. What Should Be? Navigating Moral Exemplarity and Its Categorical Imperative.Jakub Mácha - 2023 - Distinctio 2 (2):45-58.
    This essay explores the notion of moral exemplarity, positing that our morality is underpinned by moral exemplars – paradigmatic examples of virtuous individuals or actions. Theoretical precepts of moral exemplarity are explored across historical and contemporary contexts, including the philosophies of Plato, Aristotle, Stoic and Christian ethics, and recent works of Alexandro Ferrara and Linda Zagzebski. This essay debates the necessity of moral exemplars, the intrinsic moral and epistemic exemplarity, and the distinction between categorical and hypothetical exemplarity, as well as (...)
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  40. The Convergence of National Rational Self-Interest and Justice in Space Policy.Duncan Macintosh - 2023 - International Journal of Applied Philosophy 37 (1):87-106.
    How may nations protect their interests in space if its fragility makes military operations there self-defeating? This essay claims nations are in Prisoners Dilemmas on the matter, and applies David Gauthier’s theories about how it is rational to behave morally—cooperatively—in such dilemmas. Currently space-faring nations should i) enter into co-operative space sharing arrangements with other rational nations, ii) exclude—militarily, but with only terrestrial force—nations irrational or existentially opposed to other nations being in space, and iii) incentivize all nations into co-operation (...)
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  41. Moralization and self-control strategy selection.Samuel Murray, Juan Pablo Bermúdez & Felipe De Brigard - 2023 - Psychonomic Bulletin and Review 30 (4):1586 - 1595.
    To manage conflicts between temptation and commitment, people use self-control. The process model of self-control outlines different strategies for managing the onset and experience of temptation. However, little is known about the decision-making factors underlying strategy selection. Across three experiments (N = 317), we tested whether the moral valence of a commitment predicts how people advise attentional self-control strategies. In Experiments 1 and 2, people rated attentional focus strategies as significantly more effective for people tempted to break moral relative to (...)
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  42. Should Intro Ethics Make You a Better Person?Katharina Nieswandt - 2023 - In Christian Kietzmann (ed.), Teleological Structures in Human Life: Essays in Honor of Anselm W. Müller. New York: Routledge. pp. 113–134.
    There is a common demand that moral theory be 'practical', voiced both in- and outside of philosophy. Neo-Humeans, Kantian constitutivists and Aristotelian naturalists have all advocated the idea that my knowledge that I ought to do something must lead me to actually do it—an idea sometimes called the “practicality requirement” for moral theory. Some university administrators apply this idea in practice, when they force students who violate the code of conduct to complete classes in moral theory, hoping that the knowledge (...)
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  43. Should We Measure How Ethical We Are?Wes Siscoe - 2023 - The Prindle Post.
    We like to rate each other. We rate restaurants on Yelp, drivers on Lyft, and movies on Rotten Tomatoes. And these ratings can help us make decisions. With all of this rating going on, wouldn’t it be helpful if we rated how ethical other people are? Knowing the moral scruples of others could help us make friends, choose who to date, and avoid getting ripped off. But even though lots of ratings are useful, I don’t think that giving each other (...)
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  44. Coming to Terms with Wang Yangming’s Strong Ethical Nativism: On Wang’s Claim That “Establishing Sincerity” (Licheng 立誠) Can Help Us Fully Grasp Everything that Matters Ethically.Justin Tiwald - 2023 - Journal of Confucian Philosophy and Culture 39:65-90.
    In this paper, I take up one of Wang Yangming’s most audacious philosophical claims, which is that an achievement that is entirely concerned with correcting one’s own inner states, called “establishing sincerity” (licheng 立誠) can help one to fully grasp (jin 盡) all ethically pertinent matters, including those that would seem to require some ability to know or track facts about the wider world (e.g., facts about people very different from ourselves, facts about the needs of plants and animals). Wang (...)
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  45. Moral Nihilism—So What?Lewis Williams - 2023 - Ethics 134 (1):108-121.
    Edward Elliott and Jessica Isserow argue that it is not usually in the best interests of ordinary human beings to learn the truth of moral nihilism. According to Elliott and Isserow, ordinary human beings would suffer costs from learning the truth of moral nihilism that are unlikely to be fully compensated for by any benefits. Here I provide reasons to doubt that ordinary human beings would suffer costs from learning the truth of moral nihilism and present a dilemma for Elliott (...)
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  46. The Mirage of Motivation Reason Internalism.Saleh Afroogh - 2022 - Journal of Value Inquiry 56:1-19.
    What is it for an agent to have a reason to do a certain action? Does this mean that she would desire to do the action under specified conditions, or that there is some external consideration, which she ought to follow? The former affective (i.e., desire-based) theory is ascribed to Humeans, whereas the latter cognitive theory is adopted by Kantians. The debate between the two views has seemingly ended up in a theoretical standoff, and most of the theorists of practical (...)
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  47. Well-Being as Need Satisfaction.Marlowe Fardell - 2022 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 21 (3).
    This paper presents a new analysis of the concept of non-instrumental need, and, using it, demonstrates how a need-satisfaction theory of well-being is much more plausible than might otherwise be supposed. Its thesis is that in at least some contexts of evaluation a central part of some persons’ well-being consists in their satisfying certain “personal needs”. Unlike common conceptions of other non-instrumental needs, which make those out to be moralised, universal, and minimal, personal needs are expansive and particular to particular (...)
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  48. Why and When is Pure Moral Motivation Defective.David Heering - 2022 - Erkenntnis 87 (2):665-684.
    Agents sometimes have a final, de dicto desire to do what is right. They desire to do what is right for its own sake and under this description. These agents have pure moral motivation (PMM). It is often surmised that PMM is in some sense defective. Most famously, it has been suggested that PMM manifests a kind of moral fetishism. However, it also seems defective if an agent shows no concern whatsoever for moral rightness in their motivations. In this paper, (...)
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  49. Partaking of Reason in a Way: Aristotle on the Rationality of Human Desire.Duane Long - 2022 - Apeiron 55 (1):35-63.
    Three times in Book 1 chapter 13 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle says desire partakes of reason in a way. There is a consensus view in the literature about what that claim means: desire has no intrinsic rationality, but can partake of reason by being blindly obedient to the commands of reason. I argue this consensus view is mistaken: for Aristotle, adult human desire has its own intrinsic rationality, and while it is to be obedient to reason, it is not (...)
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  50. On being angry at oneself.Laura Silva - 2022 - Ratio 35 (3):236-244.
    The phenomenon of self-anger has been overlooked in the contemporary literature on emotion. This is a failing we should seek to remedy. In this paper I provide the first ef-fort towards a philosophical characterization of self-anger. I argue that self-anger is a genuine instance of anger and that, as such, it is importantly distinct from the negative self-directed emotions of guilt and shame. Doing so will uncover a potentially distinctive role for self-anger in our moral psychology, as one of the (...)
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