Introspection is a fundamental part of our mental lives. Nevertheless, its reliability and its underlying cognitive architecture have been widely disputed. Here, I propose a principled way to model introspection. By using time-tested principles from signal detection theory (SDT) and extrapolating them from perception to introspection, I offer a new framework for an introspective signal detection theory (iSDT). In SDT, the reliability of perceptual judgments is a function of the strength of an internal perceptual response (signal- to-noise ratio) which is, (...) to a large extent, driven by the intensity of the stimulus. In parallel to perception, iSDT models the reliability of introspective judgments as a function of the strength of an internal introspective response (signal-to-noise ratio) which is, to a large extent, driven by the intensity of conscious experiences. Thus, by modelling introspection after perception, iSDT can calibrate introspection’s reliability across a whole range of contexts. iSDT offers a novel, illuminating way of thinking about introspection and the cognitive processes that support it. (shrink)

The present research study focuses on how the language of instruction has an impact on the mathematical thinking development as a consequence of using a language of instruction different from the students’ mother tongue. In CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) academic content and a foreign language are leant at the same time, a methodology that is widely used in the schools in the present times. It is, therefore, our main aim to study if the language of instruction in (...) second language immersion programs influences the development of the first formal mathematical concepts. More specifically, if the learning of mathematical concepts in the early ages develops in a similar way if it is taught in the students’ mother tongue and is not influenced by the language used for teaching. Or else, if it can influence the development of the first skills only in the students’ general performance or in certain areas. The results of both the analysis of variance and multiple regression confirm how influencing the language of instruction is when mathematical thinking is developed teaching formal contents in a non-coincidence language. The second language is affecting the resolution of daily life problems, being more competent those students in 1st grades whose language of instruction matched with their mother tongue. (shrink)

In the epistemological context of theory transferand scientific exchanges, the aim of this paper is to indicate the presence of Weberian categories and ideas on dependency theory formulated by Fernando Cardosoand Enzo Faletto. Here we see how the construction of this paradigm was based on some issues, concepts, approaches and orientations of the Weberian research program formulated by José Medina Echavarría to explain Latin American development. We will also consider the contexts of enunciation and reception theories, allowing us to talk (...) about the "sociological school" that was formed in the Social Planning Division of ILPES in mid-sixties, crucial for understanding the history of sociology in Latin America. En el contexto de la discusión epistemológica sobre el examen de las transferencias y los intercambios científicos de las teorías, el objetivo de este artículo es señalar la presencia de categorías e ideas weberianas en lateoría de la dependencia formulada por Fernando Cardoso y Enzo Faletto. Aquí veremos cómo la construcción de este paradigma se sustentó en algunos temas, conceptos, enfoques y orientaciones del programa de investigación weberiano formulado por José Medina Echavarría para explicar el desarrollo latinoamericano. También tendremos en cuenta los contextos de enunciación y de recepción de las teorías, lo que nos permitirá hablar de la "escuela sociológica" que se formó en la División de Planificación Social del ILPES a mitad de los años 60, decisiva para comprender la historia de la sociología en América Latina. (shrink)

1492. The American continent was drawing Europeans on. Some saw in it the chance of a utopia, others saw it as utopia already coming about, in its natural state. All at once two processes of domination were triggered: one supported by the force of arms, and the other by the power of ideas and beliefs. If the defenders of utopian thinking were able to create a lasting achievement, it is because they managed to make their ideas fit with the (...) principles governing the social life of the indigenous peoples: thus a substantial part of what remains from the period of Don Vasco de Quiroga had preceded it. Cultures will not be able to transcend nationalisms and rise to the level of concerns shared by the whole of humanity until they can stand up for their own particular character against ‘globalizing’ trends. (shrink)

before i begin, i would like to express my considerable gratitude to Heldke, Orosco, and Stehn for their stimulating reading of my work and their considered critiques, and to the SAAP Coss Committee for taking pains to represent a community, identifying members in the spirit of the SAAP. Indeed I must parallel and reflect the words Heldke used: "It was just fun to read... about a place... [described] by a theoretical tradition I value" or Orosco locating my scholarship in ancient (...) debates between forms of reasoning about human behavior, or Stehn making me think how to better achieve the aspirations of my applied scholarship. Again, let me say, thanks to you all.Readers made... (shrink)

Do we have control over the content of our imaginings? More precisely: do we have control over what our imaginings are about? Intentionalists say yes. Until recently, intentionalism could be taken as the received view. Recently, authors like Munro & Strohminger (2021) have developed some arguments against it. Here, I tentatively join their ranks and develop a new way to think about the way in which imaginings develop their contents that also goes against intentionalism. My proposal makes use of what (...) we may call a ballistic framework for mental dynamics, which I sketch to some length. In this model, imaginings are articulated by ballistic events sensitive to constraints that modify the trajectories that imaginings trace in a special working space. This framework leaves room for alternatives to pre-assigned-content models, such as Kung’s (2016). In the ballistic-based models sketched here, and against intentionalism, imaginings can fail to be about what we intend them to be about. The framework also has applications beyond the intentionalism debate, some of which I will sketch. (shrink)

Teaching mathematics and improving mathematics competence are pending subjects within our educational system. The PEIM (Programa Evolutivo Instruccional para Matemáticas), a constructivist intervention program for the improvement of mathematical performance, affects the different agents involved in math learning, guaranteeing a significant improvement in students’ performance. The program is based on the following pillars: (a) students become the main agents of their learning by constructing their own knowledge; (b) the teacher must be the guide to facilitate and guarantee such a construction (...) by being a great connoisseur of the fundamental aspects of the development of the child’s mathematical thinking; (c) the mathematical contents must be sequenced in terms of the complexity and significance for the student as well as contextualized at all times; and (d) the classroom must have a constructivist climate highlighting cooperative work among students. The implementation of PEIM along with the empirical evaluation conducted in several centers in Madrid and Zaragoza (Spain) confirm how students improve their mathematical competence. Both first- and second-grade students in elementary education were far more effective in solving problems, highlighting the use of more advanced strategies in their resolution and a lower incidence of conceptual errors. Moreover, it was possible to verify how the students proving greater difficulty, experienced an evolution in learning similarly to those who did not present it. The program provides customized education to allow the teacher to know at all times how he should be more influential on the students’ learning through mathematical profiles. Both teaching practice and teachers were observed, being that of the experimental group more prone to analyzing processes and allowing the construction of knowledge by students, due to their psycho-developmental training. As a result, we found several improvements through the implementation of the program that may serve, for upcoming years, as a basis for the necessary changes in the teaching of mathematics. (shrink)

Stephen Grimm defends the idea that for understanding people, we need to think of understanding not only in terms of grasp of structure but also in terms of a notion of understanding-as-taking-to-be-good. In this paper, I critically examine this idea. First, I argue that in some cases, understanding-as-taking-to-be-good can be explained in terms of understanding-as-grasp-of-structure. Then, I consider one further way in which understanding-as-taking-to-be-good could be obtained through something which is not a form of grasp of structure, which narrows and (...) refines Grimm’s understanding-as-taking-to-be-good concept. (shrink)

The prospect of replication of human beings through genetic manipulation has engendered one of the most controversial debates about reproduction in our society. Ideology is clearly influencing the direction of research and legislation on human cloning, which may present one of the greatest existential challenges to the meaning of creation. In this article, I argue that, in view of the possibility that human cloning and other emerging technologies could enhance physical and cognitive abilities, there is a need for a different (...) way of thinking about life, new technologies and creation. New scientific discoveries require a shift in the way psychology takes responsibility to help individuals and society. Today, psychology needs to follow the progress that humans are taking toward a transhuman stage of development as a transition to a later posthuman stage. (shrink)

Resumen Este artículo da cuenta de la forma en que el liberalismo del filósofo chileno Jenaro Abasolo (1833-1884), al conceder un rol activo al Estado en la “habilitación de la masa desheredada”, responde al adjetivo “social”. En Abasolo, el deber de asegurar en lo posible la prosperidad de las personas, se sostiene en el derecho natural y en una teología de la historia pan[en]teísta afín al krausismo. Abasolo piensa que la redención del desheredado en naciones aun juveniles debe apoyarse en (...) una forma de Estado “casi socialista”. Esto implica una acción de centralización y de tutela del pueblo que enfrenta a los autores del artículo a la gran dificultad de determinar cómo el autor chileno realiza la transición de una habilitación consumada a través de un buen grado de despotismo, hacia la libertad. Es decir, resulta controversial establecer la factibilidad de la realización de esta vía cuasi socialista a un liberalismo contrafácticamente orientado por el laissez faire. Abstract This article shows how the liberalism of the Chilean philosopher Jenaro Abasolo (1833-1884), by granting an active role to the State in the “empowerment of the disinherited mass”, responds to the adjective “social”. In Abasolo, the duty to ensure as far as possible the prosperity of the people is based on natural law and on a pan[en]theistic theology of history akin to Krausism. Abasolo thinks that the redemption of the disinherited in even juvenile nations must be supported by an “almost socialist” form of state. This implies an action of centralization and guardianship of the people that confronts the authors of the article with the great difficulty of determining how the Chilean author makes the transition from an empowerment consummated through a good degree of despotism, towards freedom. That is to say, it is controversial to establish the feasibility of the realization of this quasi-socialist path to a liberalism counterfactually oriented by laissez faire. (shrink)

This article compares two groundings of ethics: the ethical postulates of Immanuel Kant with the existential thinking of S. Kierkegaard. To achieve this goal, first, it proposes highlighting the fundamental ideas of Kantian ethics; then, secondly, highlighting Kierkegaard’s ethical stance; and finally, contrasting both approaches to identify differences and similarities. Conclusively, we can say that the pure Kantian ethical formality of duty for duty’s sake necessarily dispenses with existential and concrete content; it is an ethics that is grounded in (...) itself, that refers to itself, to the rational nature of the human being and its universality. In contrast, Kierkegaardian ethics is a Christian ethics, it is the ethics of love for one’s neighbour and, above all, for God; it is a relational and existential ethics of the single individual. (shrink)

Iris Murdoch thinks that ‘the activity and imagery of vision is at the centre of human consciousness’, ever re-orienting us to ‘reflection, reverence, respect’ for reality. Murdoch believes that Buber’s emphasis on the ‘I-Thou’ relation conflicts with this morally re-orienting power of the visual. Buber thinks that his language of encounter and dialogue makes space for the moral challenge of the other, and for growth, movement, creative response in human life, in a way shouldered out by ‘visual metaphysics’. Murdoch’s (...) privileging of ‘the visual’ is a source of her moral objections to Buber’s I-Thou God, and of her objections to his language of encounter and dialogue more generally. I mount various criticisms of Murdoch’s championing of the visual and of her broader critique of Buber. (shrink)

Moral thinking and communication are critical competencies for confronting social dilemmas in a challenging world. We examined these moral competencies in 70 college students and graduates from Taiwan, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Participants were assessed through semi-structured written interviews, Facebook group discussions, and a questionnaire. In this paper, we describe the similarities and differences across cultural groupings in (1) the social issues of greatest importance to the participants; (2) the factors influencing their approaches to (...) thinking about social issues and communicating with others; and (3) the characteristics of their moral functioning in terms of moral awareness, moral judgment, moral discourse, and moral decision-making. (shrink)

This paper argues that moral thinking is an essential management capability which strengthens organizations and contributes to theirperformance in the marketplace. The paper explains what moral thinking is, and addresses the most common reasons for considering it inappropriate or irrelevant to managerial practice. The argument provides a compelling rationale for the corporate ethics initiatives undertaken in recent years.

Human beings find themselves sharing the world with a great variety of other animals. Besides using them in various ways, we think about them and compare ourselves with them, and it is hard to envisage the difference it would make to our understanding of ourselves if they were not there. For one thing we should not have the concept of the human species, and that human beings should be thought of, however theoretically, as all belonging to one species is of (...) momentous importance for morality. The existence of other species might be significant in that way, however, even if we did not pay much attention to them and even if more particular thoughts about or observations of them did not form part of the fabric of our moral thinking. It is with some particular ways in which other species enter our moral thinking and our thinking about morals that I intend to concern myself. There are three of these that I shall discuss: first, the use of animal characters in moral tales, secondly the description of human characteristics in terms of real or supposed analogies with the characteristics of beasts; and thirdly much more briefly the application to human beings of behaviour patterns established in studies of other animals. (shrink)

Human beings find themselves sharing the world with a great variety of other animals. Besides using them in various ways, we think about them and compare ourselves with them, and it is hard to envisage the difference it would make to our understanding of ourselves if they were not there. For one thing we should not have the concept of the human species, and that human beings should be thought of, however theoretically, as all belonging to one species is of (...) momentous importance for morality. The existence of other species might be significant in that way, however, even if we did not pay much attention to them and even if more particular thoughts about or observations of them did not form part of the fabric of our moral thinking. It is with some particular ways in which other species enter our moral thinking and our thinking about morals that I intend to concern myself. There are three of these that I shall discuss: first, the use of animal characters in moral tales, secondly the description of human characteristics in terms of real or supposed analogies with the characteristics of beasts; and thirdly much more briefly the application to human beings of behaviour patterns established in studies of other animals. (shrink)

Issues such as moral motivation, the nature of desire and the difference between moral and scientific inquiry are discussed in this work, among others.

In traditional analytic philosophy, critical thinking is defined along Cartesian lines as rational and linear reasoning preclusive of intuitions, emotions and lived experience. According to Michael Gilbert, this view – which he calls the Natural Light Theory (NLT) – fails because it arbitrarily excludes standard feminist forms of argumentation and neglects the essentially social nature of argumentation. In this paper, I argue that while Gilbert’s criticism is correct for argumentation in general, NLT fails in a distinctive and particularly problematic (...) manner in moral argumentation contexts. This is because NLT calls for disputants to adopt an impartial attitude, which overlooks the fact that moral disputants qua moral agents are necessarily partial to their own values and interests. Adopting the impartial perspective would therefore alienate them from their values and interests, causing a kind of “moral schizophrenia.” Finally, I urge a re-valuation of epistemic virtue in argumentation. (shrink)

In this work, the author has fashioned out of the logical and linguistic theses of his earlier books a full-scale but readily intelligible account of moral argument.

We conducted an on-line survey to investigate the professor’s idea of “morality” and then to compare their moral thinking at the abstract level with their moral thinking in the real life situations by sampling 257 professors from the University of Novi Sad. We constructed questionnaire based on related theoretical ethical concepts. Our results show (after we performed exploratory factor analysis) that the professor’s idea of “morality” consists of the three moral thinking patterns which are (...) simultaneously activated during the process of their abstract moral thinking. We have identified these patterns in the following manner: deontological, formal and subjective pattern. In addition, our results show that of the three, the subjective pattern is more activated than the other two during their process of the moral thinking at the abstract level. We also discovered that there is a statistically significant difference between professor’s moral thinking patterns activation level at the abstract level and their moral thinking patterns activation level in the real life situation. (shrink)

In recent research, dual-process theories of cognition have been the primary model for explaining moral judgment and reasoning. These theories understand moral thinking in terms of two separate domains: one deliberate and analytic, the other quick and instinctive. -/- This book presents a new theory of the philosophy and cognitive science of moral judgment. Hanno Sauer develops and defends an account of "triple-process" moral psychology, arguing that moral thinking and reasoning are only insufficiently (...) understood when described in terms of a quick but intuitive and a slow but rational type of cognition. This approach severely underestimates the importance and impact of dispositions to initiate and engage in critical thinking – the cognitive resource in charge of counteracting my-side bias, closed-mindedness, dogmatism, and breakdowns of self-control. Moral cognition is based, not on emotion and reason, but on an integrated network of intuitive, algorithmic and reflective thinking. -/- Moral Thinking, Fast and Slow will be of great interest to philosophers and students of ethics, philosophy of psychology and cognitive science. (shrink)

Cushman, Young, & Greene (2010) urge the consolidation of moral psychology around a dual-system consensus. On this view, a slow, often-overstretched rational system tends to produce consequentialist intuitions and action-tendencies, while a fast, affective system produces virtuous (or vicious) intuitions and action-tendencies that perform well in their habituated ecological niche but sometimes disastrously outside of it. This perspective suggests a habit-corrected-by-reason picture of moral behavior. Recent research, however, has raised questions about the adequacy of dual-process theories of cognition (...) and behavior, which tend to distinguish categorically between fast, affect-laden, automatic, sometimes-unconscious, nearly-incorrigible mental processes and slow, rational, effortful, conscious, corrigible mental processes. Processes of one alleged type often have properties associated with the contrary type. For instance, rational processes can be emotional, and fast thinking can perform logical operations. In addition, the fast-slow binary transforms a continuous temporal scale into a dichotomous one, losing potentially important information along the way. While these problems are beginning to be addressed in some subfields of psychology, moral psychology has yet to grapple with them. In this theoretical paper, we argue that moral psychology needs a framework that accounts for our knowledge of both temporal and spatial (anatomical) dimensions of the brain basis of moral cognition and virtuous decision-making. We argue that methodologies with very fine-grained temporal granularity, such as electroencephalography (EEG), should be used to complement more frequently used methodologies such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). We outline how this might be accomplished using generosity, gratitude, and integrity as a case study. (shrink)

In his tripartite theory of corporate responsibility, Kenneth Goodpaster argues for the inclusion of “Comprehensive Moral Thinking (CMT)” as the third part alongside shareholder and stakeholder thinking. CMT requires managers sometimes to act for reasons of dignity or a just community, against what shareholder and stakeholder thinking recommend. To address concerns about the demandingness of CMT, Goodpaster argues that the responsibilities it imposes are significant but qualified or conditional: they require only that managers make efforts to (...) address problems of dignity and justice, especially in cooperation with other willing firms. If extreme efforts are required or if other firms are unwilling to cooperate, managers can be justified in deciding in favor of shareholder or stakeholder values, even when dignity or justice is at stake. I raise two problems for the appeal to qualified responsibility—an extensional problem about the inability of the account to yield the correct judgment in important cases and an internal problem about the coherence of the account when qualified responsibility is included. I conclude by considering the prospects of a theory that includes CMT but rejects qualified responsibility. (shrink)

Most recent texts in moral philosophy have either concentrated on practical moral issues or else, if theoretical, have tended toward one-sided presentations of recent, fashionable views. Discussions of applied ethics cannot go very far without revealing underlying philosophical assumptions about how deeper, more general issues are treated. Similarly, recent approaches to ethics are difficult to understand without a knowledge of the context of the historical views against which these approaches are reacting. The Nature of Moral Thinking (...) will satisfy the intellectually curious student, providing a solid and fair discussion of the classical philosophical questions about our moral thinking, surveying the main types of meta-ethical and normative ethical theories, while not excluding the more recent discussions of moral realism, of anti-realism, and of virtue morality. Francis Snare demonstrates that glib intellectualistic thinking about morality, especially in regard to relativism andsubjectivism, is seriously flawed. He also focuses attention on the question of whether particular theories of the origins of morality (for example, those of Nietzsche and Marx) undermine morality. All students and teachers of ethics and philosophy will find this book one of the most complete and detailed introductory-level surveys of the foundations of ethics with emphasis on the problems of the subjectivity, the relativity, and the origins of morality. (shrink)

Kantian and commonsense moral thinking are incoherent because self‐other asymmetry does not cogently combine with the belief that we owe more to people the closer they are to us in familial or personal terms. The latter is commonsensically explained by the claim that it is natural or inevitable that we should care about those closer to us more than about those less close to us, but this seemingly plausible assumption tends to undercut the justification that is typically and (...) intuitively offered for self‐other asymmetry, namely, that we naturally care more about ourselves than about others, so that there is no need to assume any duty to avoid harming oneself. A commonsense ethics of virtue avoids this and other incoherences or tensions in Kantian and commonsense moral thinking. (shrink)

David Enoch recently defended the idea that there are valid inferences of the form ‘it would be good if p, therefore, p’. I argue that Enoch's proposal allows us to infer the absurd conclusion that ours is the best of all possible worlds.

Counterfactuals are conjectures about what would have happened, had an alternative event occurred. It provides lessons for the future by virtue of contemplating alternatives; it permits thought debugging; it supports a justification why different alternatives would have been worse or not better. Typical expressions are: “If only I were taller …”, “I could have been a winner …”, “I would have passed, were it not for …”, “Even if... the same would follow”. Counterfactuals have been well studied in Linguistics, Philosophy, (...) Physics, Ethics, Psychology, Anthropology, and Computation, but not much within Critical Thinking. The purpose of this study is to illustrate counterfactual thinking, through logic program abduction and updating, and inspired by Pearl’s structural theory of counterfactuals, with an original application to morality, a common concern for critical thinking. In summary, we show counterfactual reasoning to be quite useful for critical thinking, namely about moral issues. (shrink)

While individual differences in the willingness and ability to engage analytic processing have long informed research in reasoning and decision making, the implications of such differences have not yet had a strong influence in other domains of psychological research. We claim that analytic thinking is not limited to problems that have a normative basis and, as an extension of this, predict that individual differences in analytic thinking will be influential in determining beliefs and values. Along with assessments of (...) cognitive ability and style, religious beliefs, and moral values, participants judged the wrongness of acts considered disgusting and conventionally immoral, but that do not violate care- or fairness-based moral principles. Differences in willingness to engage analytic thinking predicted reduced judgements of wrongness, independent of demographics, political ideology, religiosity, and moral values. Further, we show that those who were higher in cognitive ability were less likely to indicate that purity, patriotism, and respect for traditions and authority are important to their moral thinking. These findings are consistent with a “Reflectionist” view that assumes a role for analytic thought in determining substantive, deeply-held human beliefs and values. (shrink)

By examining fundamental Confucian concepts -- zhengming, ren, li, xiao, shu and dao -- the essay demonstrates that Confucian ways of thinking do not always fit neatly into categories such as 'moral' or rights'. The author provides a positive interpretation of certain Confucian ideas including: the concept of a person as a self- in- relation; the notion of responsibility as particularistic and dependent upon the kinds of relationships one has and the social positions one occupies; and the view (...) of the moral community as comprised by selves- in- relation who are reciprocally connected and who share similar ideals and forms of life. (shrink)

I am lying on a small table in a tiny room, dizzy with nausea and apprehension. A young woman busies herself with the preparations of a plaster mold that will be used to position my arm and chest for the twenty five ‘shots’ of radiotherapy that I will undergo during the ensuing five weeks. I had called the hospital that morning to say that I was too sick to come for this appointment. I had better come, said a young man (...) from the department, because if I missed this appointment I would I might not get a new appointment in time start the treatments within the recommended time frame. So I am here, on the table. I mention the nausea to the technician. My apprehension at this moment is that I might become so dizzy as to somehow swirl out of control. The young woman gives me a mask to blunt the smell of the plaster. The procedure will take twenty-five minutes. I keep my mind focused on each breath and get through the ordeal breath by breath. She seems, in contrast to me, gloriously free of distress and worry, listening to the radio while she works. I envy her good fortune. As we finish up the procedure I take a chance and share my experience: I say that being a cancer patient can be tricky because you are sometimes utterly in the grip of the idea that the cancer will spread and you’ll die soon and in a very unpleasant way. After each round of chemo I was admitted to hospital for extreme nausea and dehydration. During those days in the cancer ward some of those who were dying called out and moaned distressingly, sometimes for hours, during the night. I was, at those moments, unable to shake off the belief that I too would be in that state within a few months. The signs of cancer had been missed on the mammogram two years earlier and, when the lump made itself evident, I was in Stage III. When I mentioned this experience of being gripped by the idea of death she said “Oh I know exactly what you mean, my mother has breast cancer, and every time she has an examination I go searching the internet to find out what I can.” This young woman was twenty four, and I fifty six at the time, and she had given me an unexpected small precious gift that I took with me out of that little cupboard of a room.. (shrink)

Moral skepticism is the denial that there is any such thing as moral knowledge. Since the publication of The Myth of Morality in 2001, Richard Joyce has explored the terrain of moral skepticism and has been willing to advocate versions of this radical view. Joyce's attitude toward morality is analogous to an atheist's attitude toward religion: he claims that in making moral judgments speakers attempt to state truths but that the world isn't furnished with the properties (...) and relations necessary to render such judgments true. Moral thinking probably emerged as a human adaptation, but one whose usefulness derived from its capacity to bolster social cohesion rather than its ability to track truths about the world. Essays in Moral Skepticism gathers together a dozen of Joyce's most significant papers from the last decade, following the developments in his ideas, presenting responses to critics, and charting his exploration of the complex landscape of modern moral skepticism. (shrink)

In her article, "Thinking and Moral Considerations," Hannah Arendt provides a provocative approach to the question of evil by suggesting that banal evil-the most common kind-may arise directly from thoughtlessness. If that is so, thinking may provide an antidote to evil. Learning to think would then offer the individual and society protection against the dangers of thoughtless evil. She further suggests that thinking may clear the way for a form of judging that "when the chips are (...) down" may turn people toward right rather than wrong, beauty rather than ugliness. In this essay I address her claim by noting an example of apparently thoughtless evil, the murder of Duncan by Macbeth, and by showing how this event clarifies Arendt's thesis, including both its weaknesses and its strengths. The use of Macbeth will amount to a sketch of certain features of the play particularly relevant to this ethical issue, followed by an analysis of ways Arendt's thesis connects with the murder of Duncan. (shrink)

It is easy to read Hobbes's moral thinking as a deviant contribution to 'modern' natural law, especially if Leviathan (1651) is read through a lens provided by De Cive (1642). But The Elements of Law (1640) encourages the view that Hobbes's argument is 'physicalist', that is, that it requires no premises beyond those required by his physics of matter in motion. The Elements included a draft De Homine and its argument is intimately connected with De Cive's; it shows (...) how such concepts as 'reason', 'right', 'natural law' and 'obligation' can be understood in physicalist terms. But Hobbes's decision to print the latter work in isolation has led to serious misunderstandings. (shrink)

The Reliability Challenge to moral non-naturalism has received substantial attention recently in the literature on moral epistemology. While the popularity of this particular challenge is a recent development, the challenge has a long history, as the form of this challenge can be traced back to a skeptical challenge in the philosophy of mathematics raised by Paul Benacerraf. The current Reliability Challenge is widely regarded as the most sophisticated way to develop this skeptical line of thinking, making the (...) Reliability Challenge the strongest epistemic challenge to normative nonnaturalism. In this paper, I argue that the innovations that have occurred since Benacerraf’s statement of the challenge are misconceived and confused in a number of ways. The Reliability Challenge is not the most potent epistemic challenge to moral non-naturalism. The most potent challenge comes from the fact that there is a causal condition on knowledge – or, more precisely, a becaual condition – that non-natural moral facts cannot satisfy. (shrink)

This book is the fruit of well over thirty years' reflection on moral philj osophy. A complete appreciation of it requires reference to The Language of Morals , Freedom and Reason and many of Hare's extensive shorter writings. To some, it will appear to represent a radical, if gradual, reversal of his early views. His early position was thought by some to be one similar, in certain respects, to that of certain existentialist thinkers: that the most fundamental moral (...) attitudes must be the outcome of sheer choice, or commitment. Whereas in the latest book Hare argues that to think fully rationally about moral questions requires us to be Utilitarians. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a two level account of moral thinking that, unlike other accounts, does justice to three very plausible propositions that seem to form an inconsistent triad: (1) People can be morally virtuous without the aid of philosophy. (2) Morally virtuous people non-accidentally act for good reasons, and work out what it is that they ought to do on the basis of considering such reasons. (3) Philosophers engaged in the project of normative (...) ethics are not wasting their time when they search after highly general moral principles which could not be discovered or be justifiably accepted through non-philosophical thinking, and which specify the good reasons that virtuous people act on, as well as provide a criterion or criteria for determining what it is that people ought to do. (shrink)

Food has become a prominent object of everyday moral discussions. This study examines how gender, political orientation, and country of origin are connected to moral foundation endorsement in food-related moral thinking. Respondents were university students (N = 371) from Finland, Denmark, and Italy who completed a word association task, in that given stimulus words were “ethical food” and “unethical food.” Results showed a presence of five moral foundations in the data, and indicated high prevalence of (...) the Purity/Sanctity foundation in food-related moral thinking. As expected, gender differences emerged in the endorsement of the Fairness/Reciprocity and the Purity/Sanctity foundations. Also, between-country differences emerged in four of the five moral foundations, indicating that even within Europe countries may differ from each other in their endorsement of foundations. The results also verified the previously found effect of political orientation in three of the five moral foundations, although the study used a completely new and different type of method compared with previous studies. The study concludes by proposing more cross-national comparative studies where the focus is on the specific objects of moral thinking. (shrink)

This essay defends a version of the Doctrine of Double Effect (DDE) – the doctrine that there is normally a stronger reason against an act that has a bad state of affairs as one of its intended effects than against an otherwise similar act that has that bad state of affairs as an unintended effect. First, a precise account of this version of the DDE is given. Secondly, some suggestions are made about why we should believe the DDE, and about (...) why it is true. Finally, a solution is developed to the so-called ‘closeness problem’ that any version of the DDE must face. (shrink)

_The Nature of Moral Thinking_ is an introductory text to the questions of ethics, offering a solid philosophical and historical basis for understanding the central issues. Francis Snare discusses in detail the classical philosophical arguments of Plato and Butler in relation to relativism and subjectivism and treats Marx and Nietzsche in regard to the origins and explanation of morality.

_The Nature of Moral Thinking_ is an introductory text to the questions of ethics, offering a solid philosophical and historical basis for understanding the central issues. Francis Snare discusses in detail the classical philosophical arguments of Plato and Butler in relation to relativism and subjectivism and treats Marx and Nietzsche in regard to the origins and explanation of morality.