What makes some acts morally right and others morally wrong? Traditionally, philosophers have thought that in order to answer this question we must find and formulate exceptionless moral principles—principles that capture all and only morally right actions. Utilitarianism and Kantianism are paradigmatic examples of such attempts. In recent years, however, there has been a growing interest in a novel approach—Particularism—although its precise content is still a matter of controversy. In this paper I develop and motivate a new formulation of particularism (...) as a research program and I show that my formulation is not vulnerable to the most common objections to particularism. Moreover, I argue that the particularist research program shows enough promise to warrant further exploration. (shrink)

Moral dilemmas have long been debated in moral philosophy without reaching a definitive consensus. The majority of value pluralists attribute their origin to the incommensurability of moral values, i.e. the statement that, since moral values are many and different in nature, they may conflict and cannot be compared. Neuroscientific studies on the neural common currency show that the comparison between allegedly incompatible alternatives is a practical possibility, namely it is the basis of the way in which the agent evaluates choice (...) options. Indeed, both in economic and moral decision-making, the value of options is represented and directly compared in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Therefore, we contend that moral dilemmas do not originate from value incommensurability and, on the basis of the neuroscientific discoveries on the neural currency, we derive the implications for the philosophical debate on moral dilemmas. We also provide a possible connection between the experience of moral dilemmas and their neural representation: one of the causes of the individual’s indecision is the neural tie, i.e. the condition in which two options have the same value at neural level, and her regret could be due to the motivational force of the rejected option that is still signalled by affective processes in the brain. We apply this interpretation and the common currency hypothesis to vocational decisions and propose that, although from the agent’s perspective the options are qualitatively different, they may be nevertheless equivalent at neural level. This can be seen as a reason for downgrading the importance commonly attributed to the risk of making the “wrong choice”. (shrink)

Evidential reasoning is hard, and errors can lead to miscarriages of justice with serious consequences. Analytic methods for the correct handling of evidence come in different styles, typically focusing on one of three tools: arguments, scenarios or probabilities. Recent research used Bayesian networks for connecting arguments, scenarios, and probabilities. Well-known issues with Bayesian networks were encountered: More numbers are needed than are available, and there is a risk of misinterpretation of the graph underlying the Bayesian network, for instance as a (...) causal model. The formalism presented here models presumptive arguments about coherent hypotheses that are compared in terms of their strength. No choice is needed between qualitative or quantitative analytic styles, since the formalism can be interpreted with and without numbers. The formalism is applied to key concepts in argumentative, scenario and probabilistic analyses of evidential reasoning, and is illustrated with a fictional crime investigation example based on Alfred Hitchcock’s film ‘To Catch A Thief’. (shrink)

We argue that there is significant evidence for reconsidering the possibility that moral judgment constitutes a distinctive category of judgment. We begin by reviewing evidence and arguments from neuroscience and philosophy that seem to indicate that a diversity of brain processes result in verdicts that we ordinarily consider “moral judgments”. We argue that if these findings are correct, this is plausible reason for doubting that all moral judgments necessarily share common features: if diverse brain processes give rise to what we (...) refer to as “moral judgments”, then we have reason to suspect that these judgments may have different features. After advancing this argument, we show that giving up the unity of moral judgment seems to effectively dissolve the internalism/externalism debate concerning motivation within the field of metaethics. (shrink)

Many people report that reading first-person narratives of the experience of illness can be morally instructive or educative. But although they are ubiquitous and typically sincere, the precise nature of such educative experiences is puzzling—for those narratives typically lack the features that modern philosophers regard as constitutive of moral reason. I argue that such puzzlement should disappear, and the morally educative power of illness narratives explained, if one distinguishes two different styles of moral reason: an inferentialist style that generates the (...) puzzlement and an alternative exemplarist style that offers a compelling explanation of the morally educative power of pathographic literature. (shrink)

Objective: To determine whether a moral reasoning exercise can improve response quality to surveys of healthcare priorities Methods: A randomised internet survey focussing on patient age in healthcare allocation was repeated twice. From 2574 internet panel members from the USA and Canada, 2020 (79%) completed the baseline survey and 1247 (62%) completed the follow-up. We elicited respondent preferences for age via five allocation scenarios. In each scenario, a hypothetical health planner made a decision to fund one of two programmes identical (...) except for average patient age (35 vs 65 years). Half of the respondents (intervention group) were randomly assigned to receive an additional moral reasoning exercise. Responses were elicited again 7 weeks later. Numerical scores ranging from –5 (strongest preference for younger patients) to +5 (strongest preference for older patients); 0 indicates no age preference. Response quality was assessed by propensity to choose extreme or neutral values, internal consistency, temporal stability and appeal to prejudicial factors. Results: With the exception of a scenario offering palliative care, respondents preferred offering scarce resources to younger patients in all clinical contexts. This preference for younger patients was weaker in the intervention group. Indicators of response quality favoured the intervention group. Conclusions: Although people generally prefer allocating scarce resources to young patients over older ones, these preferences are significantly reduced when participants are encouraged to reflect carefully on a wide range of moral principles. A moral reasoning exercise is a promising strategy to improve response quality to surveys of healthcare priorities. (shrink)

The direct reference point for these analyses is the process of making moral decisions, but a particular point of interest is the difficulty associated with making decisions when acting subjects are aware that their choice of moral good can lead to the breakdown of relationships with those close to them or to their exclusion from the group that have been most important to them so far in their lives, consequently causing them to experience loneliness. This difficulty is a challenge for (...) education, which in supporting the moral development of a maturing person should prepare her/him for choosing moral good even if this requires personal sacrifices. In these analyses, assuming that knowledge of moral good is not sufficient for morally good actions, I refer mainly to the virtues of character that facilitate making morally good decisions and I seek the answer to the question: what character traits should be shaped in maturing persons, so that as adults they can resist moral evil, even when this will clearly lead to the experience of loneliness? I propose these character traits as expressing moral virtues—especially the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, temperance and fortitude. In this way, I join in the discussion relating to the teleology of education. I do not touch on the methodology of education, however. The argument is presented in two parts. In the first, I introduce the problem of decision-making implying consent to loneliness. In the second, I reflect on the characteristics of a person who is capable of making such a decision. (shrink)

Recent experiments in moral psychology have been taken to imply that moral reasoning only serves to reaffirm prior moral intuitions. More specifically, Jonathan Haidt concludes from his moral dumbfounding experiments, in which people condemn other people’s behavior, that moral reasoning is biased and ineffective, as it rarely makes people change their mind. I present complementary evidence pertaining to self-directed reasoning about what to do. More specifically, Albert Bandura’s experiments concerning moral disengagement reveal that moral reasoning often does contribute effectively to (...) the formation of moral judgments. And such reasoning need not be biased. Once this evidence is taken into account, it becomes clear that both cognition and affect can play a destructive as well as a constructive role in the formation of moral judgments. (shrink)

One of the most conspicuous features of law, as it works in the world of our experience, is that legal norms are characteristically backed by coercive enforcement mechanisms. Nevertheless, many legal philosophers specializing in conceptual jurisprudence believe that coercion is not a conceptually necessary feature of law. In this essay, I argue that the authorization of coercive enforcement mechanisms is a conceptually necessary feature of law. I ground the argument in the Hartian claim that the sense of ‘law’ requiring explication (...) picks out municipal legal systems in the modern state; widely accepted Razian claims about how our legal practices construct the content of our legal concepts; claims showing the centrality of coercive enforcement mechanisms in every paradigm instance of law we have ever known; and logical difficulties arising in connection with explaining legal normativity in a system without such mechanisms. (shrink)

One of the dominant traditions in normative ethics is characterised by the attempt to develop a comprehensive moral theory that can distinguish right from wrong in a range of cases by drawing on a philosophical account of the good. Familiar versions of consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics have emerged from this tradition. Yet such theories often seem to lack the resources needed to evaluate the broader contexts in which moral dilemmas arise, which may cause them to encourage moral complicity. Context-insensitive (...) complicity of this sort receives surprisingly little direct philosophical attention, despite its being a ubiquitous concern for ordinary moral agents and despite the threat it poses to this form of ethical theorising. The present paper sketches the problem more formally and canvasses some leading responses before locating its source in the implicit distinction between moral and non-moral domains at the root of much traditional normative theorising. (shrink)

This study uses theories of moral reasoning and moral competence to investigate how university codes of ethics, perceptions of ethical culture, academic pressure from significant others, and ethics pedagogy are related to the moral development of students. Results suggest that ethical codes and student perceptions of such codes affect their perceptions of the ethical nature of the cultures within these institutions. In addition, faculty and student discussion of ethics in business courses is significantly and positively related to moral competence among (...) students. Our results point to the need to further examine the connections among academic institutional structures, ethics pedagogy, and students’ moral development. (shrink)

This chapter concerns the normativity of the concepts of paternalism and libertarian paternalism. The first concept is central in evaluating public health policy, but its meaning is controversial. The second concept is equally controversial and has received much attention recently. It may or may not shape the future evaluation of public health policy. In order to facilitate honest and fruitful debate, I consider three approaches to these concepts, in terms of their normativity. Concepts, I claim, may be considered nonnormative, normatively (...) charged, or normative in that they involve more complex relationships between values or duties. While the last approach is often best, other approaches may be appropriate depending on the context and purpose of discussion. The chapter’s conceptual investigation is illustrated by application to two public health policies: a tax on the consumption of fat and the encouragement of health-promoting food displays in restaurants and supermarkets. (shrink)

This dissertation is a contribution to the debate about ‘climate justice’, i.e. a call for a just and feasible distribution of responsibility for addressing climate change. The main argument is a proposal for a cautious, practicable, and necessary step in the right direction: given the set of theoretical and practical obstacles to climate justice, we must begin by making contemporary development practices sustainable. In times of climate change, this is done by recognising and responding to the fact that emissions of (...) greenhouse gases, with climate change as their result, are an immanent threat to any reflectively embraced development project. In the universal pursuit of progress, basic needs of both present and future people are put at risk. Even so, a political stalemate and business-as-usual prevail. The situation is locked up by an uncertainty about the exact impacts of choices made and by the reasonable disagreement of modern societies. The result is passiveness, and the passing on of a slowly and indiscernibly growing problem to future generations. This dissertation brings out a crucial message about the need to make our development sustainable. Instead of delaying action through trying to resolve the intractable epistemic and normative uncertainty fully, the focus should be on vindicating already shared points of practical convergence. On the constructivist method here adopted, the task is to characterise the agent and the situation faced from a practical and first-person point of view. More specifically, to specify the practical problem climate change gives rise to; the moral importance of needs (chapter three); how a principled priority of basic needs can be defended (chapter four), intergenerationally (chapter five) and internationally (chapter six); and what natural and social limits there are to development (chapter seven). These conceptions narrows the practice of development in the present context: it can be concluded that development must not risk the basic needs of anyone implicated. This common ground brackets off disagreement irrelevant to the urgent need to act, and so brings together otherwise deeply divided agents. A sufficientarian basic needs-principle, as the focus of an overlapping consensus, is practicable and anticipatory in the disuniting moral conundrum of climate change. (shrink)