SummaryWhat does our analysis mean for moral education? Let's take the first of our four aims mentioned above, the development of moral judgement abilities. With regard to the subject matter, the method, the teacher as person, and the community, we might follow from a postmodern point of view:second, that there is not just one valid method to de‐equilibrate children's moral cognitive schemata, but, again, that the chosen method is believed to be effective–knowing that it is just one option;third, that there (...) is a multitude of positions within the same approach. For instance, the just‐community approach might go along with different social, political and moral reasons, intentions, and meanings. Nevertheless, teachers can stick to ‘their model’, even if they know that their choice is also a pragmatic one.In concluding, I should probably give an answer to the question of the title of my presentation: Can a curriculum of moral education be postmodern? I think to have shown that it can and that it is a necessity if we think about postmodernism not as an attempt to pour out the baby of moral education with the metaphysical bath water of modern dreams. Moral education will exist as long as education does, and conceptions of moral education have to react reflectively to changes of and critiques of modern belief systems. A ring is still a ring, even if it is a just copy of something we do not believe in anymore. (shrink)

First published in 1985. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

What was the ethical perspective of modernist literature? How did Yeats, Eliot, Joyce, Woolf and Beckett represent ethical issues and develop their moral ideas? Lee Oser argues that thinking about human nature restores a perspective on modernist literature that has been lost. He offers detailed discussions of the relationship between ethics and aesthetics to illuminate close readings of major modernist texts. For Oser, the reception of Aristotle is crucial to the modernist moral project, which he defines as the (...) effort to transform human nature through the use of art. Exploring the origins of that project, its success in modernism, its critical heirs, and its possible future, The Ethics of Modernism brings a fresh perspective on modernist literature and its interaction with ethical strands of philosophy. It offers many new insights to scholars of twentieth-century literature as well as intellectual historians. (shrink)

The book includes all 15 long forgotten articles on bioethics and ethics written by Jahr from 1927 to 1947 in English translation. (Series: Practical Ethics / Ethik in der Praxis - Studies / Studien - Vol. 37).

This paper presents a challenge to conciliationist views of disagreement. I argue that conciliationists cannot satisfactorily explain why we need not revise our beliefs in response to certain moral disagreements. Conciliationists can attempt to meet this challenge in one of two ways. First, they can individuate disputes narrowly. This allows them to argue that we have dispute-independent reason to distrust our opponents’ moral judgment. This approach threatens to license objectionable dogmatism. It also inappropriately gives deep epistemic significance to superficial questions (...) about how to think about the subject matter of a dispute. Second, conciliationists can individuate disputes widely. This allows them to argue that we lack dispute-independent reason to trust our opponents’ moral judgment. But such arguments fail; our background of generally shared moral beliefs gives us good reason to trust the moral judgment of our opponents, even after we set quite a bit of our reasoning aside. On either approach, then, conciliationists should acknowledge that we have dispute-independent reason to trust the judgment of those who reject our moral beliefs. Given a conciliationist view of disagreement’s epistemic role, this has the unattractive result that we are epistemically required to revise some of our most intuitively secure moral beliefs. (shrink)

"Oser examines the twentieth-century literary clash between a dogmatically relativist modernism and a robust revival of Christian humanism.

Current views of metaphysical ground suggest that a true conjunction is immediately grounded in its conjuncts, and only its conjuncts. Similar principles are suggested for disjunction and universal quantification. Here, it is shown that these principles are jointly inconsistent: They require that there is a distinct truth for any plurality of truths. By a variant of Cantor’s Theorem, such a fine-grained individuation of truths is inconsistent. This shows that the notion of grounding is either not in good standing, or that (...) natural assumptions about it need to be revised. (shrink)

Fritz Mauthner’s essay Die Philosophie und der Krieg, published in October 1914, is among the nationalist writings of Mauthner written during the First World War. The essay explores the question of returning to philosophy after the war. Asking this question, Mauthner examines the relationship between war and philosophy and argues that the two concepts do not share any substantial points of contact. During his discussion, an unspoken premise of the question about the return to philosophy is revealed: as the (...) science of reason, philosophy cannot understand war. The profession of philosophy can neither contribute to a military victory nor end the people’s suffering. Hence, philosophers should remain silent in times of war. Mauthner himself did not adhere to his demand. In 1914, he believed that Germany would be victorious, and emphasised in his essay that war reveals a new meaning of life by giving a meaning to death. (shrink)

Hypocrites are often thought to lack the standing to blame others for faults similar to their own. Although this claim is widely accepted, it is seldom argued for. We offer an argument for the claim that nonhypocrisy is a necessary condition on the standing to blame. We first offer a novel, dispositional account of hypocrisy. Our account captures the commonsense view that hypocrisy involves making an unjustified exception of oneself. This exception-making involves a rejection of the impartiality of morality and (...) thereby a rejection of the equality of persons, which we argue grounds the standing to blame others. (shrink)

Most agree that, in some special scenarios, prudence can speak against feeling a fitting emotion. Some go further, arguing that the tension between fittingness and prudence afflicts some emotions in a fairly general way. This paper goes even further: it argues that, when it comes to anxiety, the tension between fittingness and prudence is nearly inescapable. On any plausible theory, an enormous array of possible outcomes are both bad and epistemically uncertain in the right way to ground fitting anxiety. What’s (...) more, the fittingness of an emotion is a demanding, not a permissive, normative status. So the norms of fitting emotion demand a great deal of anxiety. For almost any realistic agent, it would be deeply imprudent to feel anxiety in a way that meets the demands set by norms of fitting emotion. (shrink)

According to the view that there is moral encroachment in epistemology, whether a person has knowledge of p sometimes depends on moral considerations, including moral considerations that do not bear on the truth or likelihood of p. Defenders of moral encroachment face a central challenge: they must explain why the moral considerations they cite, unlike moral bribes for belief, are reasons of the right kind for belief (or withheld belief). This paper distinguishes between a moderate and a radical version of (...) moral encroachment. It shows that, while defenders of moderate moral encroachment are well-placed to meet the central challenge, defenders of radical moral encroachment are not. The problem for radical moral encroachment is that it cannot, without taking on unacceptable costs, forge the right sort of connection between the moral badness of a belief and that belief’s chance of being false. (shrink)

Subject-sensitive invariantism posits surprising connections between a person’s knowledge and features of her environment that are not paradigmatically epistemic features. But which features of a person’s environment have this distinctive connection to knowledge? Traditional defenses of subject-sensitive invariantism emphasize features that matter to the subject of the knowledge-attribution. Call this pragmatic encroachment. A more radical thesis usually goes ignored: knowledge is sensitive to moral facts, whether or not those moral facts matter to the subject. Call this moral encroachment. This paper (...) argues that, insofar as there are good arguments for pragmatic encroachment, there are also good arguments for moral encroachment. (shrink)

In this paper, I take a critical stance on the emerging field of nanoethics. After an introductory section, “Conceptual Foundations of Nanotechnology” considers the conceptual foundations of nanotechnology, arguing that nanoethics can only be as coherent as nanotechnology itself and then discussing concerns with this latter concept; the conceptual foundations of nanoethics are then explicitly addressed in “Conceptual Foundations of Nanoethics”. “Issues in Nanoethics” considers ethical issues that will be raised through nanotechnology and, in “What’s New?”, it is argued that (...) none of these issues is unique to nanotechnology. In “It’s a Revolution!”, I express skepticism about arguments which hold that, while the issues themselves might not be unique, they nevertheless are instantiated to such a degree that extant moral frameworks will be ill-equipped to handle them. In “What’s Different?”, I draw plausible distinctions between nanoethics and other applied ethics, arguing that these latter might well identify unique moral issues and, as such, distinguish themselves from nanoethics. Finally, in “What Now?”, I explore the conclusions of this result, ultimately arguing that, while nanoethics may fail to identify novel ethical concerns, it is at least the case that nanotechnology is deserving of ethical attention, if not a new associative applied ethic. (shrink)

Ongoing research in nanotechnology promises both innovations and risks, potentially and profoundly changing the world. This book helps to promote a balanced understanding of this important emerging technology, offering an informed and impartial look at the technology, its science, and its social impact and ethics. Nanotechnology is crucial for the next generation of industries, financial markets, research labs, and our everyday lives; this book provides an informed and balanced look at nanotechnology and its social impact Offers a comprehensive background discussion (...) on nanotechnology itself, including its history, its science, and its tools, creating a clear understanding of the technology needed to evaluate ethics and social issues Authored by a nanoscientist and philosophers, offers an accurate and accessible look at the science while providing an ideal text for ethics and philosophy courses Explores the most immediate and urgent areas of social impact of nanotechnology. (shrink)

This paper investigates the moral permissibility of torture. After briefly considering some empirical evidence, it discusses the conflict between deontological and consequentialist approaches to torture. It is argued that, even if we are to take rights seriously, torture should at least be allowed if some conditions are satisfied. Finally, the paper discusses what those conditions should be and what sorts of torture are morally permissible.

Tae Wan Kim, John Hooker, and Thomas Donaldson make an attempt, in recent articles, to solve the alignment problem. As they define the alignment problem, it is the issue of how to give AI systems moral intelligence. They contend that one might program machines with a version of Kantian ethics cast in deontic modal logic. On their view, machines can be aligned with human values if such machines obey principles of universalization and autonomy, as well as a deontic utilitarian principle. (...) Programming machines to do so might be useful, in their view, for applications such as future autonomous vehicles. Their proposal draws both on traditional logic-based and contemporary connectionist approaches, to fuse factual information with normative principles. I will argue that this approach makes demands of machines that go beyond what is currently feasible, and may extend past the limits of the possible for AI. I also argue that a deontological ethics for machines should place greater stress on the formula of humanity of the Kantian categorical imperative. On this principle, one ought never treat a person as a mere means. Recognition of what makes a person a person requires ethical insight. Similar insight is needed to tell treatment as a means from treatment as a mere means. The resources in Kim, Hooker, and Donaldson’s approach is insufficient for this reason. Hesitation regarding deployment of autonomous machines is warranted in light of these alignment concerns. (shrink)

Radical moral encroachment is the view that belief itself is morally evaluable, and that some moral properties of belief itself make a difference to epistemic rationality. To date, almost all proponents of radical moral encroachment hold to an asymmetry thesis: the moral encroaches on rational belief, but not on rational credence. In this paper, we argue against the asymmetry thesis; we show that, insofar as one accepts the most prominent arguments for radical moral encroachment on belief, one should likewise accept (...) radical moral encroachment on credence. We outline and reject potential attempts to establish a basis for asymmetry between the attitude types. Then, we explore the merits and demerits of the two available responses to our symmetry claim: (i) embracing moral encroachment on credence and (ii) denying moral encroachment on belief. (shrink)

After the events of 9/11, the concept of torture has emerged as one that is both pertinent and provoking. National polls have shown that some Americans support torture in some situations, though the majority still stand opposed. Torture has not received a tremendous amount of discussion in the philosophical literature, though I suspect that the leftward slant of academia would, for the most part, ensure limited support for torture. In this paper, I would like to first discuss why torture is (...) an important issue and then advance an argument that supports torture in limited cases. (shrink)

: Genetic interventions raise a host of moral issues and, of its various species, germ-line genetic enhancement is the most morally contentious. This paper surveys various arguments against germ-line enhancement and attempts to demonstrate their inadequacies. A positive argument is advanced in favor of certain forms of germ-line enhancements, which holds that they are morally permissible if and only if they augment Rawlsian primary goods, either directly or by facilitating their acquisition.

In Terrorism, Ticking Time-Bombs, and Torture, Fritz Allhoff demonstrates the weakness of the case against torture; while allowing that torture constitutes a moral wrong, he nevertheless argues that, in exceptional cases, it represents the ...

The author considers ethical obligations in relation to all living beings. As a result, he formulates the guiding principle of our actions - a bioethical imperative «Respect each living being as an end in itself and, if possible, treat it, as yourself». Based on this principle, you can pedagogically influence morality with the help of various scientific disciplines.

This paper develops a theory of aesthetic experience from the perspective of the empathetic observer. It suggests that there are some experiences in which empathy and aesthetic experience are indistinguishable. The paper focusses on one of these experiences, namely that of narrative turning points. Empathy involves co-experiencing the situations of others and their emotional states, while aesthetics involves an intense experience from some distance. The two come together when emotions are shared between observer and observed and with some distance. Narratives (...) are one of these forms where sharing and distance can coexist. In particular, narrative turning points involve an intense recursive or oscillating reception structure: Observers who are absorbed by a specific moment imagine and experience alternative developments and alternative versions of the events or take more than one perspective of the moment (as in recognition scenes), thereby mentally looping back and forth. This paper discusses this structure along with its key notions: intensity, narrative empathy, aesthetic experience, empathy triggers, stage effects, and clarity. In diesem Aufsatz wird eine Theorie der Ästhetik ausgehend von der Perspektive des empathischen Beobachters entwickelt. Man könnte von einer Theorie der ästhetischen Anteilnahme sprechen. Die Kernthese des Aufsatzes besteht darin, dass es Erfahrungen gibt, in denen Empathie und ästhetische Erfahrung identisch sind. Eine dieser Erfahrungen steht im Zentrum der Argumentation, nämlich der narrative Wendepunkt. Empathie besteht im Mit-Erleben der Situation eines anderen inklusive der mit ihr verbundenen emotionalen Zustände; ästhetische Erfahrung involviert intensive innere Bewegung bei gleichzeitiger Distanz. Empathie und Ästhetik kommen darin überein, dass Emotionen trotz einer gewissen Distanz von Beobachter und Beobachtetem geteilt werden. Dazu kann es in Narrationen kommen. Narrative Wendepunkte beinhalten eine intensive und rekursive Rückkoppelung oder Oszillation, in denen Beobachter alternative Entwicklungen zu dem gegebenen Augenblick hinzudenken oder mehr als eine Perspektive einnehmen, wie in Wiedererkennungen, und insofern mental hin- und herspringen. Der Aufsatz diskutiert diese Struktur mit ihren Elementen wie Intensität, narrative Empathie, ästhetische Erfahrung, Empathie-Auslöser, Bühnen-Effekte und Klarheit. (shrink)

This paper is a study of higher-order contingentism – the view, roughly, that it is contingent what properties and propositions there are. We explore the motivations for this view and various ways in which it might be developed, synthesizing and expanding on work by Kit Fine, Robert Stalnaker, and Timothy Williamson. Special attention is paid to the question of whether the view makes sense by its own lights, or whether articulating the view requires drawing distinctions among possibilities that, according to (...) the view itself, do not exist to be drawn. The paper begins with a non-technical exposition of the main ideas and technical results, which can be read on its own. This exposition is followed by a formal investigation of higher-order contingentism, in which the tools of variable-domain intensional model theory are used to articulate various versions of the view, understood as theories formulated in a higher-order modal language. Our overall assessment is mixed: higher-order contingentism can be fleshed out into an elegant systematic theory, but perhaps only at the cost of abandoning some of its original motivations. (shrink)

Hugh Gash’s target article is characterized as an attempt to free sustainable-development discourse from its preoccupation with naïve realism. While this is, even today, an honorable and ….

The title of Renaud Gagné’s book hides as much as it reveals. Hyperborea, R.G.’s name for the country of the Hyperboreans, is attested in a wide variety of ancient texts on those fascinating and enigmatic people of the farthest North, of which the A. proposes a “slow reading”: this reading is also a test case in which he tries out his “anthropological philology”. “Philology” might seem too narrow a term, since R.G. does not only look at the texts that talk (...) about the Hyperboreans from Hesiod t... (shrink)

Genetic interventions raise a host of moral issues and, of its various species, germ-line genetic enhancement is the most morally contentious. This paper surveys various arguments against germ-line enhancement and attempts to demonstrate their inadequacies. A positive argument is advanced in favor of certain forms of germ-line enhancements, which holds that they are morally permissible if and only if they augment Rawlsian primary goods, either directly or by facilitating their acquisition.

: I argue that the modernist synthesis of the higher self and dehumanized art prepares the way for the Age of Biotech. The high modernists went "out of nature" to recreate man and morality. The critical heirs of modernism, including postmodernists, inherit this ambitious effort — the modernist moral project. The roads of modernism run from the City of Art in Yeats's Byzantium poems, through the dehumanized aesthetic of Woolf and others, to the postmodernist deconstruction of character, as well as (...) to the democratic vistas of John Dewey and Freeman Dyson. (shrink)

This special issue on ethics and error in medicine reinvigorates a conversation that has been substantially dormant for twenty years. The papers in this issue elaborate and update that conversation in significant ways, particularly with regard to vulnerable populations and the epistemology of medical error. But this first paper is largely conceptual, laying out the motivation for caring about medical error in the first place, exploring what medical error is, and proposing a moral framework to help us think about it. (...) This paper therefore sets up those that follow—while, at the same time, remaining largely neutral about the substantive views advanced by those authors. The papers are therefore complementary and form a... (shrink)

This paper discusses how we are to understand claims to the effect that something is good relative to a person. It is argued that goodness relative to should not be equated with good for as the latter is a relational value notion and the former is a value theoretical notion. It is argued further that good relative to a person should be understood as good from the perspective or the point of view of the person. But this analysis of the (...) notion ‘good relative to’ leaves open questions about the full nature of relative goodness. For that, a positive proposal about what it is for something to be good relative to a person’s point of view is needed. One such proposal is put forward on which the relevant perspective is determined or fixed in terms of the pro and con attitudes of the individual person. (shrink)

Book reviewed:;Jerrold J. Katz, Sense, Reference, and Philosophy.

First, the chief method and object of philosophy as phenomenological realism understands it will be explained. Second, I turn to Dietrich von Hildebrand’s distinction between a person’s awareness of philosophical objects based on that person’s lived contact with the world and his or her theories about these objects. I emphasize that there is to be an organic transition between these two levels of awareness but that this organic transition is often missing, as in the case of non-philosophers who uncritically adopt (...) theoretical views without paying attention to what reality has “told” them about itself, as well as in the case of philosophers. I will show that often, the absence of this organic transition leads to contradictions between what a person is aware of pre-theoretically and that very same person’s theoretical views. Thus, it is of crucial importance to pay attention to what is immediately given. (shrink)

First, the chief method and object of philosophy as phenomenological realism understands it will be explained. Second, I turn to Dietrich von Hildebrand’s distinction between a person’s awareness of philosophical objects based on that person’s lived contact with the world and his or her theories about these objects. I emphasize that there is to be an organic transition between these two levels of awareness but that this organic transition is often missing, as in the case of non-philosophers who uncritically adopt (...) theoretical views without paying attention to what reality has “told” them about itself, as well as in the case of philosophers. I will show that often, the absence of this organic transition leads to contradictions between what a person is aware of pre-theoretically and that very same person’s theoretical views. Thus, it is of crucial importance to pay attention to what is immediately given. (shrink)

Can conjunctive propositions be identical without their conjuncts being identical? Can universally quantified propositions be identical without their instances being identical? On a common conception of propositions, on which they inherit the logical structure of the sentences which express them, the answer is negative both times. Here, it will be shown that such a negative answer to both questions is inconsistent, assuming a standard type-theoretic formalization of theorizing about propositions. The result is not specific to conjunction and universal quantification, but (...) applies to any binary operator and propositional quantifier. It is also shown that the result essentially arises out of giving a negative answer to both questions, as each negative answer is consistent by itself. (shrink)

This new Handbook offers a comprehensive overview of contemporary extensions and alternatives to the just war tradition in the field of the ethics of war. -/- The modern history of just war has typically assumed the primacy of four particular elements: jus ad bellum, jus in bello, the state actor, and the solider. This book will put these four elements under close scrutiny, and will explore how they fare given the following challenges: -/- • What role do the traditional elements (...) of jus ad bellum and jus in bello—and the constituent principles that follow from this distinction—play in modern warfare? Do they adequately account for a normative theory of war? -/- • What is the role of the state in warfare? Is it or should it be the primary actor in just war theory? -/- • Can a just war be understood simply as a response to territorial aggression between state actors, or should other actions be accommodated under legitimate recourse to armed conflict? -/- • Is the idea of combatant qua state-employed soldier a valid ethical characterization of actors in modern warfare? -/- • What role does the technological backdrop of modern warfare play in understanding and realizing just war theories? -/- Over the course of three key sections, the contributors examine these challenges to the just war tradition in a way that invigorates existing discussions and generates new debate on topical and prospective issues in just war theory. -/- This book will be of great interest to students of just war theory, war and ethics, peace and conflict studies, philosophy and security studies. (shrink)