In light of the variety of uses of the term autonomy in recent bioethics literature, in this paper, I suggest that competence, not being as contested, is better placed to play the anti-paternalistic role currently assigned to autonomy. The demonstration of competence, I will argue, can provide individuals with robust spheres of non-interference in which they can pursue their lives in accordance with their own values. This protection from paternalism is achieved by granting individuals rights to non-interference upon demonstration of (...) competence. In this paper, I present a risk-sensitive account of competence as a means of grounding rights to non-interference. On a risk-sensitive account of competence individuals demonstrate their competence by exercising three capacities to the extent necessary to meet a threshold determined by the riskiness of the decision. These three capacities are the capacity to acquire knowledge, use instrumental rationality, and form and revise a life plan. (shrink)

This book offers a unique and insightful analysis of Western and Middle Eastern concepts of dignity and illustrates them with examples of everyday life. Dignity in the 21st Century - Middle East and West is unique and insightful for a range of reasons. First, the book is co-authored by scholars from two different cultures (Middle East and West). As a result, the interpretations of dignity covered are broader than those in most Western publications. Second, the ambition of the book is (...) to use examples from everyday life and fiction to debate a range of dignity interpretations supplemented by philosophical and theological theories. Thus, the book is designed to be accessible to a general readership, which is further facilitated because it is published with full open access. Third, the book does not defend one superior theory of dignity, but instead presents six Western approaches and one based on the Koran and then asks whether a common essence can be detected. -/- The answer to the question whether a common essence can be detected between the Koranic interpretation of dignity and the main Western theories (virtue, Kant) is YES. The essence can be seen in dignity as a sense of self-worth, which persons have a duty to develop and respect in themselves and a duty to protect in others. The book ends with two recommendations. First, given the 7 concepts of dignity introduced in the book, meaningful dialogue can only be achieved if conversation partners clarify which variation they are using. Second, future collaborations between philosophers and psychologists might be helpful in moving theoretical knowledge on dignity as a sense of self-worth into practical action. The “scourges” of a sense of self-worth and dignity are identified by psychologists as violence, humiliation, disregard and embarrassment. To know more about how these can be avoided from psychologists, is helpful when protecting a sense of self-worth in others. (shrink)

Metaphilosophy, Volume 53, Issue 1, Page 25-37, January 2022.

Two large online surveys were conducted among employees in Germany to explore the importance employees and organizations place on aspects of interpersonal respect in relation to other work values. The first study (n = 589) extracted a general ranking of work values, showing that employees rate issues of respect involving supervisors particularly high. The second study (n = 318) replicated the previous value ranking. Additionally, it is shown that the value priorities indicated by employees do not always match their perceptions (...) of actual organizational practices. Particularly, interpersonal respect issues that involve employees’ supervisors diverge strongly negative. Consequences and potentials for change in organizations are discussed. (shrink)

Research on work values shows that respectful leadership is highly desired by employees. On the applied side, however, the extant research does not offer many insights as to which concrete leadership behaviors are perceived by employees as indications of respectful leadership. Thus, to offer such insights, we collected and content analyzed employees’ narrations of encounters with respectful leadership ( N 1 = 426). The coding process resulted in 19 categories of respectful leadership spanning 149 leadership behaviors. Furthermore, to also harness (...) this comprehensive repertoire for quantitative organizational research, we undertook two more studies ( N 2a = 228; N 2b = 412) to empirically derive a feasible item-based measurement of respectful leadership and assess its psychometric qualities. In these studies, we additionally investigated the relationships between respectful leadership as assessed with this new measurement and employees’ vertical and contextual followership as assessed via subordinates’ identification with their leaders, their appraisal respect for their leaders, their feeling of self-determination, and their job satisfaction. (shrink)

Our paper consists of four parts. In the first part, we describe the challenge of the pervasive and permanent philosophical disagreement over philosophers’ epistemic self-esteem. In the second part, we investigate the attitude of philosophers who have high epistemic self-esteem even in the face of philosophical disagreement and who believe they have well-grounded philosophical knowledge. In the third section, we focus on the attitude of philosophers who maintain a moderate level of epistemic self-esteem because they do not attribute substantive philosophical (...) knowledge to themselves but still believe that they have epistemic right to defend substantive philosophical beliefs. In the fourth section, we analyse the attitude of philosophers who have a low level of epistemic self-esteem in relation to substantive philosophical beliefs and make no attempt to defend those beliefs. We argue that when faced with philosophical disagreement philosophers either have to deny that the dissenting philosophers are their epistemic peers or have to admit that doing philosophy is less meaningful than it seemed before. In this second case, philosophical activity and performance should not contribute to the philosophers’ overall epistemic self-esteem to any significant extent. (shrink)

The medical developments and their subsequent influence on the duration of human life have brought in the limelight various moral questions. The pathological conditions do not constitute anymore the decisive causes of death, whereas an ascending number of people suffer more by being maintained in life. In this reality, the euthanasia debate seems more apropos than ever. The following article examines the aforementioned issue through the supportive argument of autonomy in contrast to a Foucauldian approach. In essence, based on the (...) Kantian concept of autonomy, several scholars have advocated in favor of the legalization of euthanasia in order that our ability to define not only the course of our life and its duration, but also the way of our death is ensured. However, on the other side, a Foucauldian approach of the issue seems to be equally worth cited and taken into consideration. In accordance with that, the domination of Foucault's concept of biopower would deterministically imply that our choices are totally determined by a form of power that targets at the absolute control over our lives through medicine and legislation. In such a context, euthanasia could not constitute a promoter of autonomy. On the contrary, it would contribute to the absolute escalation of the governmental power that would be imposed on every inch of our lives being exclusively interested in its own prosperity! (shrink)

Desde hace unas décadas se ha manifestado un movimiento en la literatura relevante que busca la superación de la tolerancia, especialmente en casos como el de la diversidad sexual y otras diferencias atributivas. La idea subyacente es que la tolerancia es incompatible con el respeto que nos debemos como iguales en una democracia. En este artículo argumentamos que la noción de respeto que motiva tal movimiento es inadecuada políticamente, dados los profundos desacuerdos de nuestras sociedades. En su lugar proponemos una (...) alternativa que denominamos “respeto institucional”, que privilegia las posibilidades efectivas de participación política. (shrink)

Despite signifying a negative self-appraisal, shame has traditionally been thought by philosophers to entail the presence of self-respect in the individual. On this account, shame is occasioned by...

This article examines Lamb, Gable & de Ruyter's critique of consent as the standard by which one can determine if a sexual encounter is ethical in their ‘Mutuality in sexual relationships: a standard of ethical sex?’. Their examination of this issue is to be welcomed for a number of reasons, including growing criticism of ‘consent’ as the gold standard in medical and social science research ethics. The focus of this article is specifically on school sex education (principally, for 11–16-year-olds). Contrary (...) to Lamb et al., I argue that it is difficult to maintain that ‘The standard of mutuality should be taught in all schools and the government should indeed demand or support this, even with checks to see if children have learned this standard, at least in attitudes about sexual behavior’ for three reasons. First, while there are good arguments in favour of school children being introduced to the ideal of mutuality, it seems too high a bar to require children to ‘have learned’—a phrase that can be taken to mean to ‘have come to accept’ rather than merely to ‘understand’—this; consent is a more appropriate requirement and is itself a sufficiently rich term that it merits analysis by students, aided by their teachers. Second, my judgement as a sex educator is that sex education is more effective when students are given the opportunity to explore what is good and what is right, rather than simply being told. Third, if we have to adopt a single principle, there is much to be said for ‘respect for others’ to trump both ‘consent’ and ‘mutuality’. (shrink)

This paper addresses the issue of paternalism in child-rearing. Since the parent–child relationship seems to be the linguistic source of the concept, one may be tempted to assume that raising a child represents a particularly appropriate sphere for paternalism. The parent–child relationship is generally understood as a relationship that is supposed to promote the development and autonomy-formation of the child, so that the apparent source of the concept is a form of autonomy-oriented paternalism. Far from taking paternalism to be overtly (...) unproblematic in such paradigmatic, pedagogical settings, this article analyzes how an effort should be made to understand a child’s capacities and which standards parents should be held to when deciding whether interference truly serves the child’s interests. (shrink)

I seek to advance enquiry into the philosophical question of in virtue of what human beings have a dignity of the sort that grounds human rights. I first draw on values salient in sub-Saharan African moral thought to construct two theoretically promising conceptions of human dignity, one grounded on vitality, or liveliness, and the other on our communal nature. I then argue that the vitality conception cannot account for several human rights that we intuitively have, while the community conception can (...) do so. I conclude that, of plausible theories of human dignity with an African pedigree, the field ought to favour a community-based view and critically compare it in future work with the Kantian, autonomy-based view that dominates Western thinking about dignity. (shrink)

There are many ways in which a musical performance can be “bad,” but here the focus is on two: those performances that make you laugh, and those that make you angry. These forms of musical badness, however, are not primarily compositional deficits, but either that the performer simply cannot competently deliver the music to their audience, inducing laughter, or that the performer exhibits some form of disrespect, provoking anger. Such laughter or anger stems from failure of the expected relationship between (...) a performer and their audience, that is, a social failure. After surveying a range of musical faults, the article examines the causes of laughter in general and in relation to some of examples of risible “bad” music. Similarly, the causes of social and moral anger in general are examined, and several cases of anger-inducing musical performances are presented. The article concludes with a consideration of the broader implications of these responses to “bad” music for theories of emotional expression in music, the relationship between aesthetic and moral judgments, and the centrality of musical performances as opposed to works in discussions of musical expression and value. (shrink)

When governments create refugee policies they consider several factors. There are reasons why admitting refugees could have negative consequences. On the other hand, if the recipient societies have ideals that stress the importance of helping other people, they should act according to their values. The aim of this article is to examine the concept of human dignity and show that European states should admit and help refugees because it is in accordance with their ethical values and the international agreements they (...) have signed. This is important because when European countries hesitate to help refugees, they act not only contrary to their humane tradition, but they can harm them. The western concept of human dignity is one of the main values that stresses that each person is important—that they are equal and free. (shrink)

Supported decision-making, a process by which people who might otherwise be unable to make their own decisions do so with help from other people, is rapidly gaining attention as an alternative to g...

In Education Sciences, the notion of ‘competence’ is widely used, both as an aim to be reached with students and as performance in teachers’ education. This article advances a type of competence that is highly relevant for teachers’ work, namely the ‘ethical competence.’ Ethical competence enables teachers to responsibly deal with the daily challenges arising from their professional roles. In this study, I put forward a definition of ethical competence and I propose a conceptual structure, both meant to support the (...) illustration, description, and development of ethical competence for teachers. (shrink)

Supported decision making, as outlined by Peterson et al. highlights real-world challenges in the messy context of clinical care. We agree with Peterson et al. that patients...

There is surprisingly little attention in Information Technology ethics to respect for persons, either as an ethical issue or as a core value of IT ethics or as a conceptual tool for discussing ethical issues of IT. In this, IT ethics is very different from another field of applied ethics, bioethics, where respect is a core value and conceptual tool. This paper argues that there is value in thinking about ethical issues related to information technologies, especially, though not exclusively, issues (...) concerning identity and identity management, explicitly in terms of respect for persons understood as a core value of IT ethics. After explicating respect for persons, the paper identifies a number of ways in which putting the concept of respect for persons explicitly at the center of both IT practice and IT ethics could be valuable, then examines some of the implicit and problematic assumptions about persons, their identities, and respect that are built into the design, implementation, and use of information technologies and are taken for granted in discussions in IT ethics. The discussion concludes by asking how better conceptions of respect for persons might be better employed in IT contexts or brought better to bear on specific issues concerning identity in IT contexts. (shrink)

Interpersonal respect can be differentiated into two kinds: horizontal respect, i.e. treating someone with dignity; and vertical respect, i.e. genuinely honoring someone’s merits. With the present research, we draw on motivation theory to explore their interplay in leadership relations. Specifically, we argue for a moderated mediation hypothesis in that leaders’ horizontal respect for their subordinates fundamentally speaks to subordinates’ self-determination and that the message of respectful leadership is enhanced by the vertical respect subordinates have for their leaders. As a result, (...) subordinates are more satisfied with their jobs, which should also show in a decreased willingness to leave. The proposed model was supported in two survey studies and an experimental scenario study —thus suggesting that perceived leader behavior needs to be complemented by leader standing. (shrink)

Respectfulness is demanded of doctors and predicts more positive patient health-related outcomes, but research is scarce on ways to promote it. This study explores two ways to conceptualize unconditional respect from medical students, defined as respect paid to people on the basis of their humanity, in order to inform strategies to increase it. Unconditional respect conceptualized as an attitude suggests that unconditional respect and conditional respect are additive, whereas unconditional respect conceptualized as a personality trait suggests that people who are (...) high on unconditional respect afford equal respect to all humans regardless of their merits. One hundred and eighty-one medical students completed an unconditional respect measure then read a description of a respect-worthy or a non-respect-worthy man and indicated their respect towards him. The study found a main effect for unconditional respect and a main effect for target respect-worthiness but no interaction between the two when respect paid to the target was assessed, supporting the attitude-based conceptualization. This suggests that unconditional respect can be increased through relevant interventions aimed at increasing the relative salience to doctors of the human worth of individuals. Interventions to increase unconditional respect are discussed. (shrink)

Abstract: This paper examines the claim that agents' self-respect depends on receiving appropriate respect from others. It concentrates on a particular version of the claim defended by Avishai Margalit. The paper argues that Margalit's arguments fail to explain why the rival stoic view, that agents ultimately retain responsibility for their own self-respect, is incorrect.

In 2012, a provincial bill amended the Ontario Education Act to provide more focused measures to eliminate bullying on the basis of sexual orientation. Bill 13 specifically requires that students be allowed to establish gay-straight alliances, including in the publicly-funded Catholic school system. The Ontario Catholic School Trustees’ Association responded by proposing an alternative policy, called “Respecting Difference,” on the grounds that GSAs run contrary to Catholic teaching. Respect is a complex ethical notion with a long philosophical history. Through an (...) overview of what philosophers from different traditions have said about respect, it becomes apparent that the kind of respect that is due to all persons requires recognition, or a willingness to accept the other as a self-identifying subject who is irreducible to my experience. In its discussion of LGBT students, the OCSTA fails to accord them such recognition, even while it emphasizes the meaning of difference. Consequently, there is reason to conclude that it does not truly respect sexual minority students and that it is not fully committed to eradicating homophobia-based bullying in the Catholic school system. “Respecting Difference” declines to heed best evidence about the factors that actually protect LGBT students from bullying, and uses the guidelines for “Respecting Difference” groups as an opportunity to reinforce its pathologization of LGBT identity itself. (shrink)

What does it mean to listen to someone respectfully, that is, insofar as they are due recognition respect? This paper addresses that question and gives the following answer: it is to listen in such a way that you are open to being surprised. A specific interpretation of this openness to surprise is then defended.

Emotions can be understood generally from two different perspectives: (i) a third-person perspective that specifies their distinctive functional role within our overall cognitive economy and (ii) a first-person perspective that attempts to capture their distinctive phenomenal character, the subjective quality of experiencing them. One emotion that is of central importance in many ethical systems is respect (in the sense of respect for persons or so-called recognition-respect). However, discussions of respect in analytic moral philosophy have tended to focus almost entirely on (...) its functional role, in particular the behaviors that respect disposes us to engage in (or refrain from). Here we wish to investigate the phenomenal character of respect, what it is like to feel respect for persons. Since Kant is the reference point for modern discussions of respect, we try to reconstruct Kant’s account of the phenomenology of respect, but also endeavor to refine his account in light of our own phenomenological observations. (shrink)

What is dignity? My starting point is that dignity is one of those philosophical primitives that admit of no informative analysis. Nonetheless, I suggest, dignity might yield to indirect illumination when we consider the kind of experience we have (or rather find it fitting to have) in its presence. This experience, I claim, is what is sometimes known as recognition-respect. Through an examination of a neglected aspect of the phenomenology of recognition-respect, I argue that the possession of inner consciousness is (...) a precondition for the possession of dignity. The reason for this, I suggest, is that the ultimate privacy of the contents of our consciousness grounds a kind of inviolability characteristic of dignity. (shrink)

I begin the chapter with research, reported recently in The Atlantic, on the surprising phenomenon that many successful women, all accomplished and highly competent, exhibit high degrees of self-doubt. Unlike the original research, the chapter aims to bring into view the role self-respect plays in higher education as another crucial explanatory factor. First, I clarify the main concepts that are relevant for getting a clear view of the notion of self-respect: different kinds of self-respect and the connection to the notion (...) of self-esteem are discussed. After this, in section III, I move on to the main theoretical positions that historically have put self-respect in the centre of their theorizing. The story starts with Immanuel Kant, continues with John Rawls, and ends with the influential accounts of Axel Honneth, Avishai Margalit and several feminist thinkers. Having covered the theoretical and conceptual landscape, I finally connect self-respect to higher education both on the systematic as well as on the more applied level of thinking. I then wrap up the chapter by connecting back to The Atlantic story we have started out with as well as make suggestions of further reading for those with deeper interest in the topic. I also provide a a brief list of the main takeaways as well propose some questions for discussion. (shrink)

Joseph Butler characterizes his account of virtue as fulfilling the “true meaning” of the ancient precept that one ought to revere one’s self. The idea that self-reverence is important to moral conduct opposes a common view that moral conduct involves solely other-regarding attitudes and actions, and it also seems problematic for Butler’s theological commitments as an Anglican Bishop. In this thesis, I provide an interpretation of Butler’s sermons that makes sense of the role self-reverence plays in his moral thought. I (...) argue 1) that self-reverence motivates obedience to conscience, which for Butler, secures virtue, and 2) that for Butler, self-reverence is a genuine obligation that we have. I close by considering reasons why Butler was not more explicit about the importance of self-reverence to virtue. (shrink)

In this thesis, I argue against a claim about pain which I call the "Minimization Thesis" or MT. According to MT, pain is objectively unconditionally intrinsically bad. Using the case of grief, I argue that although MT may be true of pain as such, it is not true of particular pains. I then turn to an examination of the justification provided by Thomas Nagle for offering the MT and find that his argument is inadequate because it depends on an implausible (...) phenomenology of pain experience. I argue it is more plausible to claim, as Kant does, that pain has desire-conditional badness. Finally, I present a Nietzschean argument for the irreducible complexity of badness. I suggest we may be willing to concede pain's badness so readily only because it has not been specified what kind of badness it actually has. (shrink)

Dedication: I would like to dedicate this essay to Mort Morehouse, whose intelligence, warmth, and good humour sustains NAACI to this day. I would like, too, to dedicate this essay to Nadia Kennedy who, in her paper “Respecting the Complexity of CI,” suggests that respect for the rich non-reductive emergent memories and understandings that evolve out of participating in the sort of complex communicative interactions that we experienced at the 2012 NAACI conference requires “a turning around and looking back so (...) that we might understand it better.” Thus, though “we cannot grasp the essence of the system in some determinate way, since each description provides a limited view, and portrays some aspect of the system from a specific position inside or outside it, and at a specific point in time,” nonetheless respect requires that we try “to take different ‘snapshots’ of such systems and attempt to make sense of them.” It is as a result of this urging that the following snapshot was attempted. My thanks to Nadia for being such an inspiration, and to all the participants for making this conference such a memorable occasion. (shrink)

This Dissertation argues for a care-centrically grounded account of relational personhood and widely realized diachronic personal identity. The moral distinction between persons and non-persons is arguably one of the most salient ethical lines we can draw since many of our most fundamental rights are delineated via the bounds of personhood. The problem with drawing such morally salient lines is that the orthodox, rationalistic definition of personhood, which is widespread within philosophical, medical, and colloquial spheres, excludes, and thereby de-personifies, a large (...) number and a great variety of human beings such as neonates, young children, the elderly who suffer from dementia, individuals with severe cognitive disabilities, and patients in vegetative states. The reconceptualization of personhood necessary for a more inclusive definition ought to originate with an appropriate moral grounding. To this end, this Dissertation grounds the notion of personhood in the care ethical sphere, thereby emphasizing the role of care relations in the maintenance of the moral consideration of vulnerable individuals. This Dissertation argues that grounding the concept of a person in care relations entails a relational account of personhood, which, along with the insights of the Extended Mind and Social Manifestation Theses, leads to an extended and externalized understanding of diachronic identity, which allows fragile people to be held in their personal identities even if they themselves lack the capacities usually associated with moral personhood. As we trace a person’s identity through time, we track the various relational properties, which constitute personal narratives and thus act as a glue that binds such dynamic and often unique properties into stable, trackable narratives. Since care relations are morally relevant on a care-centric account of personhood, what is lost in cases where such care relating ceases is not merely of sentimental value, but of great moral importance as well. Morally meaningful care relations are not replaceable, and, by extension, neither are the narratives that are constituted by such unique and irreplaceable instances of relating. This Dissertation argues that the constitutive care relational nature of personal narratives makes such narratives irreplaceable and is precisely what makes persons so morally precious. (shrink)

This thesis discusses implications of framing bioethical concerns in international legal discourse. It starts from the observation that legal approaches to questions of bioethical relevance have become dominant frameworks for addressing many bioethical concerns at the international level. In particular, the UN General Assembly has long attempted to regulate human cloning processes through an international Convention. Similarly, UNESCO and the Council of Europe have both addressed a variety of bioethically relevant issues, such as the processing of human genetic data, the (...) ethics of research or organ transplantation within international legal standards. It is in the context of this strong connection between international law, international legal discourse and bioethics that this thesis seeks to analyse what exactly happens when issues of bioethical relevance are discussed within such a framework, how this affects the way bioethical issues are conceptualized, conceived of and dealt with, and, ultimately, how well-suited or successful international legal discourse is in its attempt to resolve current bioethical questions. Following the methodological approach of discourse theory, this thesis bases its analysis on the assumption that where and when international legal standards, as manifestations of an international legal discourse, serve as framework for bioethical debate that also somewhat defines how bioethically relevant issues are approached, thought of and dealt with within that framework, that it somewhat determines what methods are used to resolve such issues and that it somewhat limits the range of conceivable and viable solutions to these issue. The thesis thereby does not aim to demonise or abrogate legal approaches to bioethics and it does not understand the implications discussed in this thesis to be necessarily good or bad. To the contrary, it will be shown that legal approaches to bioethics can and have contributed to the development of the field in several important ways. Yet, this thesis also shows that it is worthwhile to closely examine implications that follow from a specific legal approach to bioethical issues as these implications are not always easily perceived. Given the important, and often dominant or near exclusive role of international law and legal discourse in the area of bioethics as well as the former's strong influence on bioethical debates as a whole, the implications of addressing questions of bioethical relevance within an international legal discourse should at least be understood and acknowledged, a contribution that this thesis aims to make. Moreover, only if these implications are understood is it possible to ask whether engaging in that type of discourse is at all a valuable enterprise and whether or not international legal standards directly addressed to questions of bioethical relevance constitute a suitable means to effectively address questions in the area of bioethics. (shrink)

While respect for persons is fundamental to many moral and political theories, its nature and ground remain controversial. According to the standard model of respect, respect is primarily a response to certain inherent features of a person or an object. Importantly, it is in virtue of the value, status or authority of those features that respect is justified or owed. This model, however, faces many serious challenges. Drawing on the classical Confucian notion of jing, I develop an alternative model of (...) respect, which construes respect as an expression of agent’s sense of the self and its place in the world. The emphasis is thus on the agent’s own self-conception and the corresponding attitudes and dispositions, as opposed to on inherent features of the objects of respect. To further illustrate this distinction, I contrast the traditional Kantian conception of respect for persons with the Confucian, jing-based, conception along three dimensions: the normative ground, the content, and the distribution of respect. The Kantian respect certainly has its merits, and perhaps is indispensable in some contexts, but there is much more to respect than what Kantians can offer. The Confucian conception of respect, on the other hand, has important theoretical and practical values such that it is essential to an adequate understanding of the role of respect in our moral and political life. (shrink)