This article evaluates communicative approaches to responsibility within the Strawsonian tradition. These approaches consider reactive attitudes to be forms of moral address and consider responsiveness to moral address a condition on responsible agency. The article consists of a critical and a positive part. In the first part, I identify a risk for these theories. They often provide an overly narrow account of how we can communicate with others about perceived moral disregard. I argue that, when read this (...) way, a conversational approach has implausible implications and falls prey to a familiar objection to Strawsonian theory: it would incorporate social injustices inherent to our responsibility practices. In particular, it would affirm ableist attitudes towards autistic individuals, by exempting them as moral agents on the basis of irrelevant criteria. In the second part, I propose an inclusive reading of the communicative approach. This inclusive account steers clear of ableism towards autistic individuals and accommodates diversity. Although it is also derived from our practices and psychologies, it does not incorporate the biases and injustices that are part of those practices, and instead it provides us with a means to criticize them. (shrink)

In moral psychology, it has long been argued that empathy is a necessary capacity of both properly developing moral agents and developed moral agency . This view stands in tension with the belief that some individuals diagnosed with autism—which is typically characterized as a deficiency in social reciprocity —are moral agents. In this paper we propose to explore this tension and perhaps trouble how we commonly see those with autism. To make this task manageable, we (...) will consider whether high functioning individuals diagnosed with an autism spectrum disorder are capable of empathetic responses. If they are, then they possess a capacity that, on the view above, is required for moral agency. If they are not so capable, and yet sometimes engage in moral behaviour, this casts some doubt on the claim that empathy is required for moral agency. This second possibility will necessitate an exploration of the capacity of some individuals with autism to engage in moral behaviour, giving us further grounds to re-see these individuals as moral agents. (shrink)

Whether to treat autism as exculpatory in any given circumstance appears to be influenced both by models of autism and by theories of moral responsibility. This article looks at one particular combination of theories: autism as theory of mind challenges and moral responsibility as requiring appropriate experience of the reactive attitudes. In pursuing this particular combination of ideas, we do not intend to endorse them. Our goal is, instead, to explore the implications of this combination of especially prominent (...) ideas about autism and about moral responsibility. These implications can be quite serious and practical for autists and those who interact directly with autists, as well as for broader communities as they attend to the fair, compassionate, and respectful treatment of increasing numbers of autistic adults. We find that these theories point to a limited range of situations in which autists should not be blamed for transgressive actions for which neurotypical individuals should be blamed. We build on what others have written on these issues by bringing in a recent cognitive model of the role theory of mind plays in empathy, by discussing the social implications of the theoretical findings, and by raising questions about the compatibility of reactive attitude theories of moral responsibility with the neurodiversity approach to autism. (shrink)

This paper attempts to provide a more plausible theory of moral accountability and the crucial role in it of moral address by taking seriously four "marginal" cases of agency: psychopaths, moral fetishists, and individuals with autism and mild intellectual disabilities. Each case motivates the addition of another key accountability capacity.

As a neurodevelopmental condition that affects cognitive functioning, autism has been used as a test case for theories of moral responsibility. Most of the relevant literature focuses on autism’s impact on theory of mind and empathy. Here I examine aspects of autism related to executive function. I apply an account of how we might fail to be reasons responsive to argue that autism can increase the frequency of excuses for transgressive behavior, but will rarely make anyone completely exempt (...) from moral responsibility in general. On this account, although excuses may apply more often to autists than to others, the excuses that apply to autists are just the same excuses that can apply to anyone. (shrink)

In recent years, philosophers have looked to empirical findings about psychopaths to help determine whether moral agency is underwritten by reason, or by some affective capacity, such as empathy. Since one of psychopaths’ most glaring deficits is a lack of empathy, and they are widely considered to be amoral, psychopaths are often taken as a test case for the hypothesis that empathy is necessary for moral agency. However, people with autism also lack empathy, so (...) it is reasonable to think that any empirically-informed attempt to answer the question of whether empathy is necessary for moral agency should give due attention to autism as well as psychopathy. Jeanette Kennett’s thought-provoking paper ‘Autism, Empathy and Moral Agency’ (2002) is an early and arguably the most notable example of such an attempt. Kennett argues that although autistic people and psychopaths both lack empathy, autistic people possess a ‘reverence for reason’ that enables them to become capable moral agents. By contrast, psychopaths lack this rational capacity, and it is this defect of reason rather than an empathic impairment that explains why they are amoral. Kennett thus concludes that empathy is not necessary for moral agency. In this chapter, I challenge Kennett’s argument. First, I review the empirical evidence in order to demonstrate that there is a component of empathy called affective empathy that is impaired in psychopaths but largely preserved in autistics. As such, the claim that psychopaths and autistics share a common lack of empathy is unjustified. Second, I challenge Kennett’s claim that empathy plays no role in explaining the moral difference between psychopaths and autistics. Instead, I contend that the intact affective empathy of autistic people is a crucial component of their capacity to act from reverence for reason. (shrink)

This article challenges the pessimistic view that empathy and other fellow feelings are biased and erratic motivation for morality. By discussing Mencius’ account on how to develop empathy from its biased and erratic beginnings, I argue that empathy can be extended to less common objects, such as non-kin, the faraway, the unfamiliar, and the abstract. The extension facilitated by empathy in turn enhances one’s moral cognition toward the sufferings of less common objects; the extension also (...) helps to include less common objects into one’s circle of care. I respond to critics of empathy such as Prinz by highlighting the dynamic cultivational process of empathy that they overlook, and further point out that empathy can be cultivated so as to provide a remedy for the biases that no emotion is immune to. This article contributes to the ongoing discussion on moral cultivation in the Chinese philosophy community and the dispute over empathy’s role in morality in contemporary ethics. (shrink)

The ability of a group of adults with high functioning autism (HFA) or Asperger Syndrome (AS) to distinguish moral, conventional and disgust transgressions was investigated using a set of six transgression scenarios, each of which was followed by questions about permissibility, seriousness, authority contingency and justification. The results showed that although individuals with HFA or AS (HFA/AS) were able to distinguish affect-backed norms from conventional affect-neutral norms along the dimensions of permissibility, seriousness and authority-dependence, they failed to distinguish (...) class='Hi'>moral and disgust transgressions along the seriousness dimension and were unable to provide appropriate welfare-based moral justifications. Moreover, they judged conventional and disgust transgressions to be more serious than did the comparison group, and the correlation analysis revealed that the seriousness rating was related to their ToM impairment. We concluded that difficulties providing appropriate moral justifications and evaluating the seriousness of transgressions in individuals with HFA/AS may be explained by an impaired cognitive appraisal system that, while responsive to rule violations, fails to use relevant information about the agent’s intentions and the affective impact of the action outcome in conscious moral reasoning. (shrink)

Psychopaths have long been of interest to moral philosophers, since a careful examination of their peculiar deficiencies may reveal what features are normally critical to the development of moral agency. What underlies the psychopath's amoralism? A common and plausible answer to this question is that the psychopath lacks empathy. Lack of empathy is also claimed to be a critical impairment in autism, yet it is not at all clear that autistic individuals share the psychopath's amoralism. How (...) is empathy characterized in the literature, and how crucial is empathy, so described, to moral understanding and agency? I argue that an examination of moral thinking in high-functioning autistic people supports a Kantian rather than a Humean account of moral agency. (shrink)

Maria Morales’s striking and thought-provoking argument in Perfect Equality is that John Stuart Mill’s egalitarianism unifies his practical philosophy and that this element of his thought has been neglected in recent revisionary scholarship. Placing Mill’s arguments for the substantive value of “perfect equality” in The Subjection of Women at the center of her analysis, Morales develops a distinctive interpretation of Mill as an egalitarian liberal. Morales also aims to counter many recent communitarian critiques of liberalism as founded upon a conception (...) of the self as atomistic and individualistic. Like other Mill scholars, Morales sees Mill’s liberalism as an appealing alternative to the dominant Rawlsian theory, and she offers Mill’s approach as a response to “the still popular view that liberalism is structurally incompatible with a rich conception of the human good, particularly with a substantive commitment to equality”. Mill’s theory is not “doggedly individualistic,” and it rejects the model of liberal social life as atomistic and abstract. The well-constituted communities of the title are based upon “sympathetic, cooperative, and egalitarian values”. (shrink)

With a new understanding of the deficits of psychopaths, many have argued that psychopaths are not morally accountable for their actions because they seem to lack any capacity for fundamental moral understanding. And yet, a lack of capacity for empathy, which has been seen as the root of this incapacity, has also been attributed to subjects with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). But there is much evidence that at least many with ASD have moral understanding and are rightly (...) treated as morally accountable agents. Is it possible to explain how those diagnosed in the first group might lack, while those in the second group possess, moral accountability? If so, how? In this paper, I argue that there is an explanation that requires distinguishing between different kinds of empathy and that brings to bear a “fine cuts” approach at the neural and psychological level of explanation. (shrink)

Collaborative economy emerged as a response to the need of people to exchange, produce and share in a more humane and cooperative manner. However, the growth of collaborative economy organizations and the terminological confusion have led to debates about their possible effects, both positive and negative. In this study, we have created a guideline that can be used to evaluate the contribution of organizations considered within collaborative economy to common good. We used the conceptualization of common good, which, from its (...) Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy, was developed by the personalist-humanist perspective of management. Our analysis leads us to conclude that the evaluation of the contribution of any organization to the common good must take into account how the participants develop their virtues, the creation of the community and its impact on the common good of society. At the end of the article, we present the aspects that society must take into account regarding collaborative economy. Firstly, society, in general, must approach collaborative economy as a tool that must complement others in the search for solutions to economic and social problems and, secondly, the governance of the platform-network is essential to foster organizational models that favour the common good. (shrink)

According to an influential view, empathy has, and should have, a role in ethics, but it is by no means clear what is meant by 'empathy', and why exactly it is supposed to be morally good. Recently, Peter Goldie has challenged that view. He shows how problematic empathy is, and argues that taking an external perspective is morally superior: we should focus on the other, rather than ourselves. But this argument is misguided in several ways. If we (...) consider conversation, there is no need to see an opposition between a focus on the other and on ourselves. I propose to shift the perspective of the discussion towards the needs of those who are supposed to benefit from empathy, and to study how people communicate their imaginative processes towards their receivers. I end with an exploration of theoretical resources for an account of mutual perspective- shifting. (shrink)

Animals are often presumed to lack moral agency insofar as they lack the capacities for reflection or the ability to understand their motivating reasons for acting. In this paper, I argue that animals are in some cases morally responsible. First, I outline conditions of moral action, drawing from a quality of will account of moral responsibility. Second, I review recent empirical research on the capacities needed for moral action in humans and show that animals also have (...) such capacities. I conclude that though it may be difficult to engage in the practice of holding animals morally responsible, given the communication barrier and lack of mutual understanding, some animals nevertheless act in ways for which they are morally responsible. (shrink)

David Shoemaker has argued that autistic persons cannot be held accountable and are not members of the moral community. Arguing against this conclusion, this article both corrects the view of autism contained in Shoemaker’s paper and resituates his theory of accountability within a Christian virtue ethic based on the gift of friendship. The call to be accountable to God for one’s life contains within it the gift of God’s friendship and does not require the capacity for empathy or (...) joint attention as a prerequisite. Instead, the inclusion of autistic people within the moral community created by the call of God highlights that accountability is a grace given for the flourishing of all persons. (shrink)

This essay explores the boundaries of the moral community—the collection of agents eligible for moral responsibility—by focusing on those just inside it and those just outside it. In particular, it contrasts mild mental retardation with psychopathy, specifically among adults. For those who work with and know them, adults with mild mental retardation are thought to be obvious members of the moral community (albeit not full-fledged members). For those who work with and theorize about adult psychopaths, by contrast, (...) they are not members of the moral community (albeit not in such a full-fledged fashion as the insane). Both psychopaths and adults with MMR have a disability, and the essay is interested in how disability sometimes exempts one from the moral community and sometimes doesn't. It will be through two associated puzzles that we will eventually come to see the complicated tripartite relation between disability, responsibility, and moral community. (shrink)

Many philosophers endorse the idea that there can be no moral responsibility without a moral community and thus hold that such responsibility is essentially interpersonal. In this paper, various interpretations of this idea are distinguished, and it is argued that no interpretation of it captures a significant truth. The popular view that moral responsibility consists in answerability is discussed and dismissed. The even more popular view that such responsibility consists in susceptibility to the reactive attitudes is also (...) discussed, and it is argued that this view at best supports only an etiolated interpretation of the idea that moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal. (shrink)

This article argues that Bowers and Paternoster’s emphasis on a moral community marks an important step towards a more ethical and effective approach to anti-doping. However, it also argues that the authors’ proposed strategies undermine their stated goal of effectively engaging athletes as partners in anti-doping efforts and raise ethical concerns. Their proposed emphasis on exploiting shaming as a punishment and their general view of athletes as adversaries fosters mistrust between athletes and those who enforce the anti-doping rules. Instead, (...) this article describes a model for empowering athletes as stakeholders in anti-doping policy as a means to provide anti-doping rules with increased moral legitimacy among athletes. (shrink)

Michael Zimmerman has recently argued against the twofold Strawsonian claim that there can be no moral responsibility without a moral community and that, as a result, moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal. I offered a number of objections to Zimmerman’s view, to which Zimmerman responded. In this article, I respond to Zimmerman’s responses to my criticisms.

Often, when we are angry, we are angry at someone who has hurt us, and our anger is a protest against our perceived mistreatment. In these cases, its function is to hold the abuser accountable for their offense. The anger involves a demand for some sort of change or response: that the hurt be acknowledged, that the relationship be repaired, that the offending party reform in some way. In this paper, I develop and defend an account of a different form (...) of anger, called "outrage anger". Outrage anger does not aim to hold an abuser accountable, nor to demand repair or reform. Drawing on the work of Maria Lugones, I argue that outrage anger is directed at the state of affairs in which a violation is unintelligible to the dominant moral community. The central function of outrage anger is a psychological boundary setting: it closes off the victim’s ability to feel empathy for their abuser. Outrage has an important role to play in the context of political injustice, but that it also comes with significant costs. (shrink)

Once a term used primarily by moral philosophers, “moral distress” is increasingly used by health professionals to name experiences of frustration and failure in fulfilling moral obligations inherent to their fiduciary relationship with the public. Although such challenges have always been present, as has discord regarding the right thing to do in particular situations, there is a radical change in the degree and intensity of moral distress being expressed. Has the plight of professionals in healthcare practice (...) changed? “Plight” encompasses not only the act of pledging, but that of predicament and peril. The author claims that health professionals are increasingly put in peril by healthcare reform that undermines their efficacy and jeopardizes ethical engagement with those in their care. The re-engineering of healthcare to give precedence to corporate and commercial values and strategies of commodification, service rationing, streamlining, and measuring of “efficiency,” is literally demoralizing health professionals. Healthcare practice needs to be grounded in a capacity for compassion and empathy, as is evident in standards of practice and codes of ethics, and in the understanding of what it means to be a professional. Such grounding allows for humane response to the availability of unprecedented advances in biotechnological treatments, for genuine dialogue and the raising of difficult, necessary ethical questions, and for the mutual support of health professionals themselves. If healthcare environments are not understood as moral communities but rather as simulated marketplaces, then health professionals’ moral agency is diminished and their vulnerability to moral distress is exacerbated. Research in moral distress and relational ethics is used to support this claim. (shrink)

Lying is a common phenomenon amongst human beings. It seems to play a role in making social interactions run more smoothly. Too much honesty can be regarded as impolite or downright rude. Remarkably, lying is not a common phenomenon amongst normally intelligent human beings who are on the autism spectrum. They appear to be ‘attractively morally innocent’ and seem to have an above average moral conscientious objection against deception. In this paper, the behavior of persons with autism with regard (...) to deception and truthfulness will be discussed in the light of two different ethical theories, illustrated by fragments from autobiographies of persons with autism. A systemizing ‘Kantian’ and an empathizing ‘ethics of care’ perspective reveal insights on high-functioning autism, truthfulness and moral behavior. Both perspectives are problematic from the point of view of a moral agent with autism. High-functioning persons with autism are, generally speaking, strong systemizes and weak empathizers. Particularly, they lack ‘cognitive empathy’ which would allow them to understand the position of the other person. Instead, some tend to invent a set of rules that makes their behavior compatible with the expectations of others. From a Kantian point of view, the autistic tendency to always tell the truth appears praiseworthy and should not be changed, though it creates problems in the social life of persons with autism. From a care ethics perspective, on the other hand, a way should be found to allow the high-functioning persons with autism to respect the feelings and needs of other persons as sometimes overruling the duty of truthfulness. We suggest this may even entail ‘morally educating’ children and adolescents with autism to become socially skilled empathic ‘liars’. (shrink)

Empathy has become a common point of debate in moral psychology. Recent developments in psychiatry, neurosciences and social psychology have led to the revival of sentimentalism, and the ‘empathy thesis’ has suggested that affective empathy, in particular, is a necessary criterion of moral agency. The case of psychopaths – individuals incapable of affective empathy and moral agency, yet capable of rationality – has been utilised in support of this case. Critics, however, have been (...) vocal. They have asserted that the case of autism proves the empathy thesis wrong; that psychopathy centres on rational rather than empathic limitations; that empathy is not relevant to many common normative behaviours; and that rationality is required when empathy fails. The present paper analyses these four criticisms. It will be claimed that they each face severe difficulties, and that moral agency ought to be approached via a multi-tier model, with affective empathy as a baseline. (shrink)

In a recent article in this journal, I argued against the popular twofold Strawsonian claim that there can be no moral responsibility without a moral community and that, as a result, moral responsibility is essentially interpersonal. Benjamin De Mesel has offered a number of objections to my argument, including in particular the objection that I mischaracterized Strawson’s view. In this article, I respond to De Mesel’s criticisms.

Participation in victim-offender mediation can reduce the risk of reoffending. However, relatively little is known about how VOM affects the intermediate psychological changes underlying this effect. It was hypothesized that VOM increases feelings of responsibility, guilt, and shame among offenders as well as empathy toward the victim. It was also expected that VOM leads to feelings of moral failure among offenders, increasing their intention to desist, and improving their relation with the victim, relatives, and community. Lastly, it was (...) hypothesized that offenders may experience reduced rejection, concerns about condemnation, threat to their social moral identity, and victim blame following VOM. To this end, we compared psychological changes in offenders who participated in a VOM program in the Netherlands with those of offenders who were willing to but did not participate. A quasi-experimental, pre- and postmeasure research design was used to compare these groups. Our findings tentatively suggest that offenders who participate in VOM have more responsibility-taking and victim empathy, feel more guilt and shame, and experience higher moral failure than offenders who do not participate in VOM do. Offenders also reported feeling significantly less awkward about meeting the victim again after VOM. Future research should address how and to what degree these psychological changes translate into a lower risk of reoffending. (shrink)

Morally contoured empathy is a form of reasonable partiality essential to the healthy care of dependents. It is critical as an epistemic aid in determining proper moral responsiveness; it is also, within certain richly normative roles and relationships, itself a crucial constitutive mode of moral connection. Yet the achievement of empathy is no easy feat. Patterns of incuriosity imperil connection, impeding empathic engagement; inappropriate empathic engagement, on the other hand, can result in self-effacement. Impartial moral (...) principles and constraints offer at best meager protection against these perils, and hence serve poorly in securing morally contoured empathy. More nuanced and practical guidance should be sought in normatively substantive conceptions of our roles and relationships and their defining moral stakes. These, joined with more abstract moral tools, can facilitate rich, narratively textured interpretations of moralitys demands. While the content of our normative conceptions must be continually debated, engaging in this debate is vital to the achievement of proper empathy, and thus to effective, respectful, morally healthy care of dependents. (shrink)

Some of the greatest harms perpetrated by human beings—mass murders, for example—are directly caused by a small number of individuals, yet the full force of the transgressions would not obtain without the indirect contributions of many others. To combat such evils, Larry May argues that we ought to cultivate a sense of shared responsibility within communities. More specifically, we ought to develop a propensity to feel ashamed of ourselves when we choose to be associated with others who transgress. Grant that (...) we ought to assume greater moral responsibility for contributing to harms that we do not directly commit. My goal is to challenge May’s claim that we should move towards a shame culture, and to argue that we ought to focus on cultivating empathy-based care and guilt instead. An established research program spearheaded by June Tangney has shown that individuals who are disposed to feel shame are more likely to hide from scrutiny, blame others, get angry, and become aggressive. Cultivating shame, in short, is a recipe for increasing antisocial behavior. Policies that promote feelings of empathy-based care and guilt, however, seem better designed to achieve the desired result, namely, minimizing the harms caused by groups. (shrink)

The golden rule of most religions assumes that the cognitive abilities of perspective-taking and empathy are the basis of morality. One would therefore predict that people that display difficulties in those abilities, such as people with psychopathy and autism, are impaired in morality. But then why do autistics have a sense of morality while psychopaths do not, given that they both display a deficit of empathy? We would like here to refine some of the views on autism and (...) morality. In order to do so, we will investigate whether autism really challenges a Humean view of morality. We will then provide a new conceptual framework based on the distinction between egocentric and allocentric stances, which may help us to make some predictions about the autistic sense of morality. (shrink)

In this paper, I consider a novel challenge to John Martin Fischer and Mark Ravizza’s reasons-responsiveness theory of moral responsibility. According to their view, agents possess the control necessary for moral responsibility if their actions proceed from a mechanism that is moderately reasons-responsive. I argue that their account of moderate reasons-responsiveness fails to provide necessary and sufficient conditions for moral responsibility since it cannot give an adequate account of the responsibility of individuals with autism spectrum disorder. Empirical (...) evidence suggests that autistic individuals demonstrate impairments in counterfactual thinking, and these impairments, I argue, are such that they cast doubt on Fischer and Ravizza’s construal of moderate reasons-responsiveness. I then argue that modifying the view in order to accommodate individuals with ASD forces them to defend a strong reasons-responsive account despite the fact that they explicitly deny that such an account can adequately characterize what it is to be morally responsible for one’s actions. (shrink)

Using picture books to prompt philosophical conversations with children is an effective means to raise awareness of environmental issues and invite children to think creatively about their responsibility for their community and environment. In our Philosophy for Children (P4C) program at Kern County Public libraries in Bakersfield, we address environmental ethics issues as part of our regular curriculum as well as for Earth Day conversations. Children discuss how they may reuse and recycle objects that they ordinarily discard, how small acts (...) of care may have big consequences for their community, and how they share reciprocal relationships to other living creatures, even insects. Most importantly, during such conversations children reflect and deliberate on how they can act on their insights to expand their moral imagination and empower them as citizens of their community and the world. (shrink)

‘This class is so [insert expletive] depressing.’ I overheard a student communicating this to a friend upon exiting one of my ethics courses and I wondered how my classes could generate a sense of empowerment rather than depression, a sense of hope rather than despair. Drawing from David Hume's and Martin Hoffman's work on the psychology of empathy and sympathy, I contend that dominant Western philosophical pedagogy is inadequate for facilitating morally empowered students. Moreover, I stipulate that an adequate (...) analysis of the role emotion should play in pedagogy requires tending to the politics of emotional expression and how oppression functions. I argue that ethical educators have a moral responsibility to facilitate not only critical moral thinking but critical moral agency. Part of ethical education should involve the provision of tools for effective citizen engagement, and reasoning alone is insufficient for this goal. The role of emotion in ethical decision-making and action remains devalued and u.. (shrink)

Les problèmes de la vie commençante et ceux de la vie finissante déterminent deux secteurs importants de la bioéthique. La démarche éthique de toutes les personnes concernées par ces problèmes commence par une information sérieuse sur les données scientifiques, biologiques ou médicales, sur les situations des personnes et leurs implications anthropologiques et sociales. Elle requiert ensuite, mais toujours en lien étroit avec ces approches technologiques, l'analyse, principalement philosophique, des concepts de personne et de corps humain, de dignité et de respect (...) de la personne, analyse attentive à la fragilité de l'être humain et aux conflits qui peuvent surgir entre valeurs humaines et procédures médicales comme entre les situations individuelles et les impératifs de la loi. A la « morale commune », élaborée par le discours philosophique, la théologie ajoute son intuition propre de la gratuité de l'amour et de la responsabilité d'autrui, puisée dans la révélation de l'Alliance et de l'identification du Christ aux personnes les plus fragiles et aux conditions de plus grande précarité. Elle n'entre pas en concurrence avec la morale commune ni ne se substitue à la décision éthique qui incombe à chacun, mais elle apporte aux croyants des motivations plus pressantes et un regard plus ouvert et plus compréhensif sur le prochain et sur l'humain.Bioethics can be divided into two sectors, problems in the first stages of life and problems near the end of life . The etbical steps taken by the people concerned by these problems begin with a serious study of the scientific, biological, or medical facts. They must also consider the situation of the individual's case as well as the anthropological and social implications, The ethical steps to be taken require, but always in close connection with technological approaches, the analysis of the concepts of person and the human body. Tbey also require respect for the dignity elabored by pbilosopbical discourse, theology adds its own intuition on the gratuitousness of love and responsibility for the other. Its sources are found in the revelation of the Covenant and the identification of Christ with the weakest persons and to conditions that are the most precarious. Theology does not enter into competition witb common morality, nor put itself in the place of the ethical decision that eacb person must make. Rather it brings strong motives to believers and a more open and more understanding look at one’s neighbour and humanness. (shrink)

This article explores the consequences of failure to communicate early, as recommended in risk communication scholarship, during the first stage of the COVID-19 pandemic in Australia and the United Kingdom. We begin by observing that the principles of risk communication are regarded as basic best practices rather than as moral rules. We argue firstly, that they nonetheless encapsulate value commitments, and secondly, that these values should more explicitly underpin communication practices in a pandemic. Our focus is to explore the (...) values associated with the principle of communicating early and often and how use of this principle can signal respect for people’s self-determination whilst also conveying other values relevant to the circumstances. We suggest that doing this requires communication that explicitly acknowledges and addresses with empathy those who will be most directly impacted by any disease-control measures. We suggest further that communication in a pandemic should be more explicit about how values are expressed in response strategies and that doing so may improve the appraisal of new information as it becomes available. (shrink)

While we consider directive teaching to be detrimental to the Community of Inquiry, we nonetheless find ourselves in qualified agreement with Hand as he challenges certain norms of practice that support the common presumption in favour of nondirective teaching in the moral CoI. We agree with Hand that it is possible for teachers to impart their own moral beliefs without indoctrinating students, yet we argue that the risk of indoctrination remains present in the many realistic scenarios in which (...) teachers misjudge controversial standards as uncontroversial or in which teachers’ arguments bypass students’ reason. We agree with Hand that substantively closed questions can generate satisfying inquiries, with the caveat that in the absence of open inquiry there is a chronic risk of eroding the ethos of trust in a CoI. Similarly, we find qualified agreement with Hand regarding teachers’ philosophical self-effacement. We accept that teachers may judiciously suspend neutrality in order to ensure that sound arguments and objections are aired and understood, yet we caution teachers against endorsing any particular justification or rebuttal. We further raise three distinct concerns about Hand’s theory. Firstly, we argue that Hand’s theory is insensitive to the varieties of moral controversy that emerge within the CoI. We maintain that a nondirective approach is required for a proper exploration of controversy over conflicting justifications for shared moral standards grounded in diverse normative ethical theories, where the conative power of particular justifications may differ among individuals; controversy over the meaning, scope and significance of moral concepts; and controversy over the application of moral standards and concepts to actual cases. Secondly, we argue that in light of teachers’ susceptibility to motivated reasoning and myside bias, Hand’s theory places undue demands on teachers to exercise objective judgement. Where teachers unwittingly transmit biases to students, we are not assured that Hand’s proposal can safeguard against indoctrination. Thirdly, we do not share Hand’s conception of moral inquiry as concerned exclusively with argument over the content and justification of moral standards. The narrowness of this conception, together with available evidence that moral argument alone has little effect on moral behaviour, leads us to question Hand’s claim that a fundamental reason for engaging students in moral inquiry is to reinforce their moral formation. We suggest that the scope of the moral CoI should not be limited to argument over the content and justification of moral standards, but should also include the cultivation of virtues and dispositions that prepare students for complex moral decision-making, as well as the investigation of Aristotelian questions concerning what is worthwhile in human life. Given our broader conception of the CoI as both moral and ethical, and our emphasis on students having both the freedom and the responsibility to judge reasonableness for themselves, we conclude that nondirective teaching remains a beneficial regulatory principle for CoI practice. (shrink)

Christiane Bailey | : Distinguant deux sens de « communauté morale », cet article soutient que certains animaux appartiennent à la communauté morale dans les deux sens : ils sont des patients moraux dignes de considération morale directe et équivalente, mais également des agents moraux au sens où ils sont capables de reconnaître, d’assumer et d’adresser aux autres des exigences minimales de bonne conduite et de savoir-vivre. Au moyen de la notion d’« attitudes réactives » développée par Peter F. Strawson, (...) je soutiens que les animaux sociaux qui sont à la fois objets et sujets d’attitudes réactives forment des communautés morales au second sens, dans la mesure où ils se traitent mutuellement comme des individus ayant des obligations et tenus à des exigences de bonne volonté minimale dans leurs interactions interpersonnelles. Distinguant l’agentivité morale du raisonnement moral, je soutiens que la capacité de raisonner abstraitement sur les principes et les conséquences de nos actions nous imposent plus de responsabilités que n’en ont d’autres animaux, mais que cela ne fait pas nécessairement de nous des agents moraux plus compétents que d’autres animaux sociaux. Je termine en donnant un aperçu de quelques implications de ce changement de perspective en éthique animale. | : This article draws the distinction between two meanings of “moral community” and maintains that certain animals belong to moral communities in both senses of the term: these animals are moral patients worthy of direct and equivalent moral consideration, but also moral agents in the sense that they are capable of recognizing and respecting minimal requirements of good conduct and manners as well as expecting and demanding the same from other members of their community. By way of the notion of “reactive attitudes” developed by Peter F. Strawson, I maintain that social animals who are at once objects and subjects of reactive attitudes constitute moral communities in the second sense of the term, in that they treat each other as individuals who have obligations and who are bound by the demand for a minimum of good-will in their interpersonal interactions. Distinguishing between moral agency and moral reasoning, I maintain that the capacity to reason abstractly about the principles and consequences of our actions gives us more responsibilities than other animals have, but that this does not necessarily make us more competent moral agents than other social animals. I conclude with an overview of some of the implications that this change in perspective has for animal ethics. (shrink)

Margaret Walker's Moral Understandings offers an “expressive-collaborative,” culturally situated, practice—based picture of morality, critical of a “theoretical-juridical” picture in most prefeminist moral philosophy since Henry Sidgwick. This essay compares her approach to ethics with that of John Rawls, another exemplar of the “theoretical-juridical” model, and asks how Walker's approach would apply to several ethical issues, including interaction with animals, social reform and revolution, and basic human rights.

: Margaret Walker's Moral Understandings offers an "expressive-collaborative," culturally situated, practice-based picture of morality, critical of a "theoretical-juridical" picture in most prefeminist moral philosophy since Henry Sidgwick. This essay compares her approach to ethics with that of John Rawls, another exemplar of the "theoretical-juridical" model, and asks how Walker's approach would apply to several ethical issues, including interaction with (other) animals, social reform and revolution, and basic human rights.

Many important theorists – e.g., Gary Watson and Stephen Darwall – characterize blame as a communicative entity and argue that this entails that morally responsible agency requires not just rational but moral competence. In this paper, I defend this argument from communication against three objections found in the literature. The first two reject the argument’s characterization of the reactive attitudes. The third urges that the argument is committed to a false claim.

The paper reports our research aiming at utilization of human interactive communication modeling principles in application to a novel interaction paradigm designed for brain–computer/machine-interfacing (BCI/BMI) technologies as well as for socially aware intelligent environments or communication support systems. Automatic procedures for human affective responses or emotional states estimation are still a hot topic of contemporary research. We propose to utilize human brain and bodily physiological responses for affective/emotional as well as communicative interactivity estimation, which potentially could be used in the (...) future for human–machine/environment interaction design. As a test platform for such an intelligent human–machine communication application, an emotional stimuli paradigm was chosen to evaluate brain responses to various affective stimuli in an emotional empathy mode. Videos with moving faces expressing various emotional displays as well as speech stimuli with similarly emotionally articulated sentences are presented to the subjects in order to further analyze different affective responses. From information processing point of view, several challenges with multimodal signal conditioning and stimuli dynamic response extraction in time frequency domain are addressed. Emotions play an important role in human daily life and human-to-human communication. This is why involvement of affective stimuli principles to human–machine communication or machine-mediated communication with utilization of multichannel neurophysiological and periphery physiological signals monitoring techniques, allowing real-time subjective brain responses evaluation, is discussed. We present our preliminary results and discuss potential applications of brain/body affective responses estimation for future interactive/smart environments. (shrink)

This book has three goals. The first is to demonstrate that the modern, distinctly Kantian, notion of moral responsibility is incoherent by virtue of the way it fuses free will and blameworthiness. The second is to develop an alternative notion of moral responsibility that separates causal responsibility from blameworthiness and views both as relative to the boundaries of our moral community. The third is to establish a framework for arguing openly about our moral responsibility for particular (...) kinds of harm. (shrink)

This article examines the responses of two communities to hate crimes in their cities. In particular it explores how community understandings of responsibility shape collective responses to hate crimes. I use the case of Bridesberg, Pennsylvania to explore how anti-racist work is restricted by backward-looking conceptions of moral responsibility (e.g. being responsible). Using recent writings in feminist ethics.(1) I argue for a forward-looking notion that advocates an active view: taking responsibility for attitudes and behaviors that foster climates in which (...) hate crimes are more likely to occur, even when a person's individual actions do not contribute directly to harms. Using the case of Billings, Montana, I explain how recent Not In Our Town campaigns take responsibility for hate crimes in the ways feminist literature suggests. -/- I take as my point of departure hate crimes committed against the family of Bridget Ward, an African American woman, who moved into the suburb of Bridesburg in 1996. When issues of responsibility for racism arose in the local press, most Bridesbergers insisted that their community was not racist; they blamed only the individual vandals. This narrow blame-assigning focus is in keeping with most Anglo-American definitions of responsibility as belonging essentially to individuals and not to communities. Traditionally, moral and legal theory construct responsibility from a perspective that looks downward and back. These perspectives are preoccupied with punishment and reward, praise and blame; they assume justice is done when guilty parties are found and tried. -/- This focus masks deeper community problems. As Elizabeth Spelman remarks, "tolerance is easy if those who are asked to express it need not change a whit." (2) Focus on praise and blame is, in part, a function of race privilege. Bridesberg is 98% white, and part of "the arrogance whitely behavior" is positioning one's self as a judge, expert, and problem solver. (3) The view from this particular subject position limits attention to individuals and their actions, rather than to communities and their practices; it shifts attention away from the fact that Bridesberger's collective practice of distrusting outsiders has lead to hate crimes in the past. Pointing to vandals and claiming "they are racist" does not free one's community of racism. It reinscribes a community spirit that is resistant to change. -/- The second part of this essay explores what communities like Bridesberg might have done to prevent violence. Often there is little individuals alone can do to stop racial violence, but that there is a sense in which community members are obligated to organize themselves. Strategies that focus community responsibility on retribution rather than long-term change, are short lived and ineffective. Anti-racist activism requires a forward-looking view of responsibility: one that aims at inoculating the community against increased risk of violence. This requires taking responsibility for the fact that one's town might foster climates in which hate crimes are more likely to occur. It requires that we begin inquiry in the lives of those harmed. -/- Collective citizen efforts to prevent Aryan groups from gaining a foothold in Billings, Montana offers a clear illustration of how to take responsibility for hate crimes using strategies designed consciously to prevent further hate crimes (e.g., when Black Churches were threatens, all community members attended services there; when a rock was thrown through a window with a menorah, many homes displayed menorahs). The community responses in Billings are a stark contrast to those of Bridesburg, and serve as a powerful example of how forward-looking notions of responsibility can translate into effective political strategy. Although, these strategies are not in and of themselves feminist, they are powerful illustrations of what feminists mean by forward-looking views. The success of resident's collective action and coalition building gave rise to a national Not In Our Town campaign used in about a dozen cities today. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Narcissism, Empathy and Moral ResponsibilityRonald W. Pies, MD (bio)Professor Fatic’s timely and wide-ranging essay demonstrates how the topic of narcissism has undergone a resurgence of interest in recent decades. This may owe, in part, to the controversial claim that narcissism is on the rise in the United States, at least among American college students (Twenge & Foster, 2010). As I discuss presently, the term “narcissism” is open (...) to many interpretations, and differs somewhat from the specific designation, Narcissistic Personality Disorder (NPD), as defined in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 5th edition (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). As Fatic rightly notes,Narcissism as a personality structure may or may not be diagnosed as NPD, depending on various criteria, perhaps most importantly on whether the narcissistic person actually encounters functional and emotional difficulties and shows up for diagnosis and evaluation.As Professor Fatic’s essay clearly shows, narcissism (variously defined) has important “ethical ramifications.” Fatic is primarily interested in exploring the relationship between what he calls the narcissist’s “emotional incompetence” and that person’s degree of moral responsibility. To oversimplify Fatic’s complex set of interlinked arguments, Fatic concludes that “emotional incompetence does not in fact reduce the moral responsibility of a narcissist person, whether diagnosed with Narcissistic Personality Disorder or not.” Drawing on the moral theories of Philip Pettit and Michael Slote—in particular, Slote’s “sentimentalist ethics” with its emphasis on empathy (Slote, 2004)—Fatic argues that narcissism is both “a moral failure and a psychopathology.” Nevertheless, for Fatic, narcissists remain “fully morally responsible for their insensitivity and interpersonal emotional incompetence.” Why? Because they have the moral duty “to acquire the moral and emotional competence required for the making of moral choices.”Some Philosophical ConcernsAs I understand Fatic’s argument, he is asserting that the narcissist ought to be held responsible for a kind of self-education process that will ameliorate his or her emotional incompetence. Fatic writes,[W]e develop our morality through constant moral education and testing, which we receive both through socialization and through our own efforts later in life, as autonomous human beings. [End Page 173]We are thus responsible for what kind of moral actors we are and are becoming based on our way of life, and have a moral duty to improve our own moral senses and sensibilities by constantly working on the development of virtues.It seems to me that this line of reasoning assumes that all, or most, narcissists possess the capacity to seek and acquire this “moral education.” Perhaps so—but I am not sure Fatic has demonstrated this. It seems at least plausible that, in virtue of the adverse developmental and perhaps even neurological factors that may generate the narcissistic personality (Fan et al., 2011), some narcissists may lack the capacity to modify their psychopathology by means of “moral education.” This leads me to wonder whether Professor Fatic has adequately explored the very heterogeneous nature of narcissism. Indeed, Fatic’s thesis seems to point toward a kind of Platonic “essence” of narcissism, conveyed by his frequent allusion to “the narcissist”—one of whose defining or essential features is said to be a lack of empathy.But, as I will suggest presently, this is at best an oversimplification of narcissism as psychiatrists understand the term. Indeed, there are degrees and varieties of narcissism, differing in their capacity for empathy—which is itself a psychologically complex term. Recent research suggests that “narcissistic personality disorder symptomatology does not reflect a “narcissist” category but rather a continuum of narcissistic pathology” (Aslinger, Manuck, S. Pilkonis, Simms, & Wright, 2018).Furthermore, Professor Fatic’s thesis seems to view “moral responsibility” as a binary construct; i.e., either one possesses, or does not possess, full moral responsibility. But as I have argued elsewhere, moral responsibility may be viewed as lying along a continuum that reflects varying degrees of voluntariness for any given individual (Pies, 2007).Consequently, in my view, any valid assessment of the “the narcissist’s” moral responsibility must consider both the heterogeneity of narcissism and the non-binary (i.e., continuous) nature of moral responsibility.One way of conceptualizing this “two-track” model is... (shrink)

Examines the social aspect of moral agency, building an account of critical engagement that focuses on the transformation of moral attention through communicative exchange, rather than on matters of judgment or on behavioral outcomes.

Colleges and universities have largely abandoned their traditional stance in loco parentis, as moral guardians over student life, and instead seek to promote toleration while preventing conflict. In this volume David A Hoekema argues that in doing so, they fail to provide an atmosphere conducive to the attainment of the kind of responsible independence that such goals presuppose.

Antony Duff argues that the criminal law’s characteristic function is to hold people responsible. It only has the authority to do this when the person who is called to account, and those who call her to account, share some prior relationship. In systems of domestic criminal law, this relationship is co-citizenship. The polity is the relevant community. In international criminal law, the relevant community is simply the moral community of humanity. I am sympathetic to his community-based analysis, but argue (...) that the moral community must play a greater role in the domestic case and that the collection of individual political communities must play a greater role in the international case. (shrink)

In this paper, I present a challenge for Michael McKenna’s conversational theory of moral responsibility. On his view, to be a responsible agent is to be able to engage in a type of moral conversation. I argue that individuals with autism spectrum disorder present a considerable problem for the conversational theory because empirical evidence on the disorder seems to suggest that there are individuals in the world who meet all of the conditions for responsible agency that the theory (...) lays out but who are nevertheless not responsible agents. Attending to the moral psychology of such individuals will, I think, help shed light on an important gap in the conversational theory. (shrink)

The question of responsibility plays a critical role not only in our attempts to resolve social and political problems, but in our very conceptions of what those problems are. Who, for example, is to blame for apartheid in South Africa? Is the South African government responsible? What about multinational corporations that do business there? Will uncovering the "true facts of the matter" lead us to the right answer? In an argument both compelling and provocative, Marion Smiley demonstrates how attributions of (...) blame—far from being based on an objective process of factual discovery—are instead judgments that we ourselves make on the basis of our own political and social points of view. She argues that our conception of responsibility is a singularly modern one that locates the source of blameworthiness in an individual's free will. After exploring the flaws inherent in this conception, she shows how our judgments of blame evolve out of our configuration of social roles, our conception of communal boundaries, and the distribution of power upon which both are based. The great strength of Smiley's study lies in the way in which it brings together both rigorous philosophical analysis and an appreciation of the dynamics of social and political practice. By developing a pragmatic conception of moral responsibility, this work illustrates both how moral philosophy can enhance our understanding of social and political practices and why reflection on these practices is necessary to the reconstruction of our moral concepts. (shrink)