This book draws on Iris Murdoch's philosophy to explore questions related to the importance of attention in ethics. In doing so, it also engages with Murdoch's ideas about the existence of a moral reality, the importance of love, and the necessity but also the difficulty, for most of us, of fighting against our natural self-centred tendencies. Why is attention important to morality? This book argues that many moral failures and moral achievements can be explained by attention. Not only our actions (...) and choices, but the possibilities we choose among, and even the meaning what we perceive, are to a large extent determined by whether we pay attention, and what we attend do. In this way, the book argues that attention is fundamental, though often overlooked, in morality. While the book's discussion of attention revolves primarily around Murdoch's thought, it also engages significantly with Simone Weil, who introduced the concept of attention in a spiritual context. The book also engages with contemporary debates concerning moral perception and motivation, empirical psychology, animal ethics, and Buddhist philosophy. The Ethics of Attention will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working on Iris Murdoch, Simone Weil, ethics and moral psychology, and the philosophy of attention. (shrink)

Among the possible ways of gaining moral knowledge, moral perception figures as a controversial yet fruitful option. If moral perception is possible, moral disagreement is addressed not by appealing to principles but to the process and the objects of perception, and moral progress occurs not through deliberation but by refining one’s perceptual faculties. The possibility of “seeing clearly and justly” is at the heart of Iris Murdoch’s thought, but Murdoch herself does not put forth a systematic argument for this view. (...) In this paper I propose an argument for moral perception based on Murdoch’s philosophy, while engaging with contemporary debates in moral perception. The key idea I take from Murdoch is that perception is conceptually laden, where concepts are understood as ways of grasping the world according to human concerns. Murdoch’s position enables us to solve a difficult tension: explaining the motivating force of perception while maintaining objectivity in ethics. This view of moral perception also constitutes a radical position in the debate, where even the most optimistic defenses appeal to the supervenience of values on facts. If Murdoch is right, however, we perceive complex properties, including values, directly, so that appeal to supervenience becomes unnecessary and some of the grounds for the very distinction between fact and value are put into question. (shrink)

As attention, in philosophy, is mainly discussed in the philosophy of mind, its ethical aspects have remained relatively unexplored. One notable exception is Iris Murdoch. Another philosopher, Maur...

An important yet often unacknowledged aspect of moral discourse is the phenomenon of moral impossibility, which challenges more widely accepted models of moral discussion and deliberation as a choice among possible options. Starting from observations of the new possibilities of anti immigrant attitudes and hate crimes which have been described by the press as something being “unleashed,” the paper asks what it means for something to enter or not the sphere of possibility in the moral sense, and whether it is (...) ever desirable for something to remain or be pushed back outside the realm of the morally possible. Three forms of moral impossibility are identified: the unconceived, the unthinkable, and moral incapacity. Through the discussion of a stark fictional example of moral impossibility, the paper concludes that while the category of moral impossibility cannot settle disagreement, it sheds light on some of the most fundamental aspects of moral life. (shrink)

Faced with current urgent calls for more trust in experts, especially in high impact and politically sensitive domains, such as climate science and COVID-19, the complex and problematic nature of public trust in experts and the need for a more critical approach to the topic are easy to overlook. Scepticism – at least in its Humean mitigated form that encourages independent, questioning attitudes – can prove valuable to democratic governance, but stands in opposition to the cognitive dependency entailed by epistemic (...) trust. In this paper, we investigate the tension between the value of mitigated scepticism – understood as the exercise of reason-based doubt in a particular domain – and the need for trust in experts. We offer four arguments in favour of mitigated scepticism: the argument from loss of intellectual autonomy; the argument from democratic deficit; the argument from the normative failures of science; and the argument from past and current injustices. These arguments highlight the tension between the requirements for trust and justified scepticism about the role of experts. One solution, which we reject, is the idea that reliance, rather than trust, is sufficient for the purposes of accommodating experts in policy matters. The solution we endorse is to create a ‘climate of trust’, where questioning experts and expertise is welcomed, but the epistemic trust necessary for action upon information which the public cannot obtain first-hand is enabled and encouraged through structural, institutional, and justice-based measures. (shrink)

This paper takes up Axel Honneth’s suggestion that we, in the 21st century Western world, should revisit the Marxian idea of reification; unlike Honneth, however, this paper applies reification to the ways in which humans relate to non-human animals, particularly in the context of scientific experiments. Thinking about these practices through the lens of reification, the paper argues, yields a more helpful understanding of what is regarded as problematic in those practices than the standard animal rights approaches. The second part (...) of the paper offers ways of overcoming reification that go beyond Honneth’s idea of recognition by introducing Iris Murdoch’s idea of attention. This proposed strategy makes the ethical relevance of reification more salient and makes it possible to counter reification through a practice such as attention which, unlike recognition, can be consciously established. (shrink)

This paper takes up Axel Honneth’s suggestion that we, in the 21st century Western world, should revisit the Marxian idea of reification; unlike Honneth, however, this paper applies reification to the ways in which humans relate to non-human animals, particularly in the context of scientific experiments. Thinking about these practices through the lens of reification, the paper argues, yields a more helpful understanding of what is regarded as problematic in those practices than the standard animal rights approaches. The second part (...) of the paper offers ways of overcoming reification that go beyond Honneth’s idea of recognition by introducing Iris Murdoch’s idea of attention. This proposed strategy makes the ethical relevance of reification more salient and makes it possible to counter reification through a practice such as attention which, unlike recognition, can be consciously established. (shrink)

In this paper I consider Simone Weil’s notion of attention as the fundamental and necessary condition for mystical experience, and investigate Iris Murdoch’s secular adaptation of attention as a moral attitude. After exploring the concept of attention in Weil and its relation to the mystical, I turn to Murdoch to address the following question: how does Murdoch manage to maintain Weil’s idea of attention, even keeping the importance of mysticism, without Weil’s religious metaphysical background? Simone Weil returns to the importance (...) of attention throughout her writing. To attend, for Weil, means to empty oneself of all that is personal, primarily one’s will, which Weil sees as the essence of the human individual. This act imitates God’s act of creation, considered as a withdrawal in order to let something other than himself exist. Since such withdrawal represents God’s supreme act of love, salvation for human beings lies in the attempt to do likewise. By giving up one’s will, while desiring God with all of one’s soul, one creates the conditions for God to descend into the soul. This ‘passive activity’ is attention. Weil’s writings had a deep impact on Iris Murdoch’s moral philosophy. In particular, Weil’s concept of attention is carried into Murdoch’s thought almost unchanged, with one striking exception: the absence of God in Murdoch’s system. Just as surprisingly, Murdoch at the same time maintains that mysticism and spirituality are crucial for morality, nor does she wish to sever the connection between attention and mysticism. Is Murdoch being inconsistent? I believe not. But the idea of attention as a mystical concept, within a metaphysics which has no room for God, requires further examination. For Murdoch, attention is the central capacity of the morally good person. Attention is, like in Weil, connected with an emptying of the self (for Murdoch the Ego) and a renunciation of will, in order to let something external make an impression in the subject. However, in Murdoch’s philosophy such external impression is not given by God, but by reality itself. Thus far, it appears, the notion of mysticism would be unnecessary. Yet for Murdoch reality is not something that we passively perceive, but something that requires a moral faculty – attention – made up of selflessness and desire for the good, in order to be apprehended. Two elements of mysticism then begin to surface: firstly, apprehension of reality requires a faculty that is not purely intellectual, but that involves the whole of the individual, including intuitions that one may be unable to explain (which Murdoch is happy to call ‘the soul’); secondly, the reality thus apprehended is considered as transcendent, insofar as its truth, infinitely distant, transcends the individual’s complete grasp. Thus the mystic, in Murdoch’s system, is regarded as an ideal moral person, not because s/he is guided by God, but because of his/her selfless ability to attend to the world beyond oneself and intuit its moral and metaphysical truth. (shrink)

In their daily practices, many ethical vegans choose what to eat, wear, and buy among a range that is limited to the exclusion of animal products. Rather than considering and then rejecting the idea of using such products, doing so often does not occur to them as a possibility at all. In other cases, when confronted with the possibility of consuming animal products, vegans have claimed to reject it by saying that it would be impossible for them to do so. (...) I refer to this phenomenon as ‘moral impossibility’. An analysis of moral impossibility in animal ethics shows that it arises when one’s conception of ‘what animals are’ shifts—say through encounter with other animals. It also arises when individuals learn more about animals and what happens to them in production facilities. This establishes a link between increased knowledge, understanding, and imaginative exploration on the one hand, and the exclusion of the possibility of using animals as resources on the other. Taking moral impossibility in veganism seriously has two important consequences: one is that the debate around veganism needs to shift from choice and decision, to a prior analysis of concepts and moral framing; the other is that moral psychology is no longer seen as empirical psychology plus ethical analysis, but the contents of psychological findings are understood as being influenced and framed by moral reflection. (shrink)

Attention, for Iris Murdoch, is a central concept in more than one sense. On the one hand, it appears to be one of the keys, if not the key, to goodness, the task of the moral subject, and the pre-requisite for right action. On the other, attention can function as the hinge around which Murdoch’s general ethical worldview (including psychology and metaphysics) can be made to revolve, and through which it turns away from the mainstream contemporary philosophy of her time. (...) Overwhelmingly inspired by Simone Weil, Murdoch presents attention as a truth-seeing and truth-discovering attitude and activity, animated by Platonic eros. (shrink)

Open peer commentary on the article “Loving the Earth by Loving a Place: A Situated Approach to the Love of Nature” by Laura Candiotto. Abstract: I reflect on the significance of our relationships with a natural place from the perspective of animal and environmental ethics. Connecting Candiotto’s article with other environmental thinkers, I explore the importance of particularity and of problematizing anthropocentrism, and end by raising three questions about the broader application of one’s love for a particular place.

In this commentary I reflect on the significance of our relationships with a natural place from the perspective of animal and environmental ethics. Connecting Candiotto’s article with other environmental thinkers, I explore the importance of particularity and of problematizing anthropocentrism, and end by raising three questions about the broader application of one’s love for a particular place.

This paper is a reflection on an experiment undertaken during a Medical Ethics lecture delivered to a group of medical students in the UK as part of a project for a programme in Higher Education Practice. The aim of the project, following Paulo Freire’s idea of ‘liberating education,’ was to identify students’ ethical assumptions and biases in relation to a problem of resource allocation in healthcare, and their role in decision-making. The experiment showed the importance placed by medical students on (...) disputed values such as free will, desert, social worth and body image, and highlighted the difficulty and importance of bringing students’ process of moral decision-making to awareness in ethics teaching, in order to a) decrease the role of implicit bias in students’ decision making and b) allow students to decide whether they in fact agree with assumed values and ethical frameworks that influence their thinking. (shrink)

The French philosopher Simone Weil worked on (but did not finish) Venice Saved, a tragedy about the conspiracy to overthrow the Republic of Venice in 1618. It has been largely ignored and has never been published in an English translation. Interest in Weil’s work has increased massively since her death and continues to grow, so that publishing this play in English will enable readers to expand their view of a writer whose work is in fragments. We have also translated the (...) notes that Weil wrote about Venice Saved and her sketches for the unwritten scenes, and have written four introductory chapters on: Weil’s life and significance; how the play came to be written and what it has to say; Weil’s view of tragedy; the issues raised by writing an English version of this play. There are endnotes, suggestions for further reading, and a bibliography of all works used in writing the introductory material. (shrink)

Wittgenstein is widely regarded as one of the most important philosophers of language; his insights into how language works can be applied to translation. This chapter is an overview of some ways of doing so, drawing on recent studies in Wittgenstein and translation. The focus is on the practice of translation rather than translation theory. I introduce Wittgenstein and explain some controversies around his method, particularly on the possibility of having theory of language. Wittgenstein’s method, which takes pragmatic aspects of (...) language to be of paramount importance, is discussed in relation to the ways in which translation can benefit from a clear focus on these aspects. Four key concepts are then discussed from Wittgenstein’s Philosophical Investigations, his later work: language-games; forms of life; aspect-seeing; and the surveyable representation. The first two are particularly crucial to Wittgenstein’s view of language and can help in the tasks of reading texts for translation and of writing texts in translation. Language-games are the different contexts in which we use language, with particular aims and rules which give the words their specific meaning. Forms of life tend to be broader than language games, and can be described as those special human concerns and practices within which the use of language makes sense. Rather than postulating a corresponding entity for each word, which the translator needs to find, a Wittgensteinian approach to translation suggests that we first need to understand which language-games texts are playing, and within what kinds of forms of life they fit. The task of translation is to recreate similar contexts and effects, rather than identifying an absolute referent. The chapter concludes with suggestions about how to evaluate different translations by appealing to Wittgenstein’s conception of language. (shrink)