Moral psychology studies the features of cognition, judgement, perception and emotion that make human beings capable of moral action. Perspectives from feminist and race theory immensely enrich moral psychology. Writers who take these perspectives ask questions about mind, feeling, and action in contexts of social difference and unequal power and opportunity. These essays by a distinguished international cast of philosophers explore moral psychology as it connects to social life, scientific studies, and literature.

This essay suggests that common themes in recent feminist ethical thought can dislodge the guiding assumptions of traditional theories of free agency and thereby foster an account of freedom which might be more fruitful for feminist discussion of moral and political agency. The essay proposes constructing that account around a condition of normative-competence. It argues that this view permits insight into why women's labor of reclaiming and augmenting their agency is both difficult and possible in a sexist society.

How can any of my actions genuinely be my own? How can they be more than just intentional performances, with whatever investment of my will that involves, but also belong to me in the special way that makes me autonomous in performing them? How, in other words, can any of my actions be my own in such a way that they arise from or manifest my capacities for self-governance? -/- The literature on autonomous agency employs a number of metaphors to (...) characterize the difference between merely intentional action and action that is, in the fullest sense, the agent's own. Harry Frankfurt's metaphors are among the most vivid and compelling. A person who acts autonomously genuinely “participates” in the operation of her will, as opposed to being “estranged” from herself or being “a helpless or passive bystander to the forces that move” her. Agents who act intentionally but without autonomy do not do what they “really want” to do; their effective volitions are “external to” or “outside” them. The pervasive notion in this literature that persons who are autonomous in acting act upon wills that are fully their own or that really belong to them suggests an initial answer to the questions with which the chapter opened. I am autonomous in acting just when I take ownership of my actions, or at least have the unimpeded capability to take ownership of what I do and regularly exercise that capability. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction The Challenge to the Distinctiveness and the Coherence of Contract Four Autonomy‐Based Theories Three Teleological Theories Concluding Remarks References.

This article examines methodological and ethical issues of ethnographic research through the lens of Emmanuel Levinas's philosophy. Levinas is relevant to a critical analysis of ethnographic methods because his philosophy turns on the problematic relationship between self and other, among other important problems that define and guide contemporary anthropological research, including questions of responsibility, justice, and solidarity. This article utilizes Levinas's philosophy to outline a phenomenology of the “doing” of fieldwork, emphasizing the contingency of face-to-face encounters over controlled research design. (...) This account provides a basis for going beyond the polarized opposition between objective and subjective ethnographic approaches. Levinas allows for an ethically informed ethnography premised upon an acknowledgement of risk and uncertainity over researcher control or reflexivity. Providing a handful of concrete examples, the article argues that critical self-reflection about the fundamental face-to-face dimension of fieldwork is central to ethnography's ethical possibilities. (shrink)

I want to deal in this essay with the group of philosophers that G.E.M. Anscombe includes under the term ‘modern moral philosophy’ in her essay by that name. The stars of this group are Hobbes, Hume, Adam Smith, Mill, Sidgwick, Moore. I mean to include as well generally the last hundred years of emotivists, utilitarians, and those theorists who have emphasized universalizability in its various versions. For reasons which I hope will soon become clear, I will refer to this broad (...) group as the ‘atomistic tradition.’ I will be assuming, though not often saying, that the most forthright and thorough spokesman of the tradition is David Hume who, in his purely skeptical moments, was so atomistic and extensionalist that he even denied personal identity over time. Anything less than that is not purely atomistic. (shrink)

It is worth considering whether particular behavioral measures from observers are ever consciously transformed a priori so as to render inferences about them indistinguishable. This is unlikely, but recent experiments indicating color sensitivity and selectivity without visual awareness suggest that the distinction between what can and cannot be explained about color experience using behavioral responses may not be as obvious as Palmer concluded.

This essay attempts to develop an account of the abilities which free action involves. I argue that the notion of ability which is especially relevant for the purpose of understanding free action is correctly given a compatibilist interpretation. More importantly, it turns out that persons who act freely have the ability to do otherwise than they do. Acting with the ability to do otherwise is not a distinctive mark of free action, however, since anyone who merely acts intentionally possesses that (...) ability. The central idea of this essay emerges as a result of this conclusion: I suggest that we will better understand free action if we abandon the traditional emphasis on free agents' ability to do otherwise and look instead to their ability to criticize courses of action in light of applicable normative standards. ;This suggestion yields two conditions of freedom. The first is that persons act freely only if they competently criticize the courses of action they perform or have control over their failure to do so. The second condition states that persons act freely only if they have control over whether or not they act as they do. They have this control just in case their conduct is counterfactually controllable through certain practical judgments they might arrive at were they to reflect critically on their actions. ;The first condition of freedom is particularly interesting because it shows freedom of action to be a normative notion. The second condition and the accompanying account of control are of especial interest in virture of the challenges which the possibilities of overdetermined action and weak-willed action pose for them. I use the notion of linked counterfactual dependence to address the challenge of overdetermination. The necessarily exceptional character of weak-willed action allows my account to distinguish weakness of will from psychological compulsion. ;I further propose that the two conditions of freedom afford a fruitful characterization of responsibility as liability to one sort of criticism. (shrink)

Physiological evidence predicts a model of concept categorisation that evolves through direct interaction with object feature selection. The requirement stated by Schyns et al. for feature plasticity is supported, but important caveats raise a question about the level at which feature identification can occur. Visual attribute selection for feature creation is likely to be directed by top-down and attentional processes.

We can understand much, perhaps most, of our thinking and speaking about persons’ powers, capabilities, capacities, skills, and competences to act as employing a particular concept of ability. This concept is so pervasive in discourse about these matters that it is appropriately called the ordinary notion of ability. However, the pervasiveness of this concept does not mean that we clearly comprehend its content or readily distinguish it from the many other senses of ability with which we can be concerned.The ordinary (...) notion of ability is properly distinguished by two features. First, one's performing an action intentionally at a certain time is sufficient for one's having the ordinary ability at that time to perform that action. The ordinary ability to do something is an ability to do it intentionally. (shrink)

We can understand much, perhaps most, of our thinking and speaking about persons’ powers, capabilities, capacities, skills, and competences to act as employing a particular concept of ability. This concept is so pervasive in discourse about these matters that it is appropriately called the ordinary notion of ability. However, the pervasiveness of this concept does not mean that we clearly comprehend its content or readily distinguish it from the many other senses of ability with which we can be concerned.The ordinary (...) notion of ability is properly distinguished by two features. First, one's performing an action intentionally at a certain time is sufficient for one's having the ordinary ability at that time to perform that action. The ordinary ability to do something is an ability to do it intentionally. (shrink)