Meanwhile, the authors' antidote to the American sicknessa quest for democratic community that draws on our diverse civic and religious traditionshas contributed to a vigorous scholarly and popular debate. Attention has been focused on forms of social organization, be it civil society, democratic communitarianism, or associative democracy, that can humanize the market and the administrative state. In their new Introduction the authors relate the argument of their book both to the current realities of American society and to the growing debate about the country's future. With this new edition one of the most influential books of recent times takes on a new immediacy.\

Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in American Life

The dramatic advances in DNA technology over the last few years are the stuff of science fiction. It is now not only possible to clone human beings it is happening. For the first time since the creation of the earth four billion years ago, or the emergence of mankind 10 million years ago, people will be able to choose their children's' sex, height, colour, personality traits and intelligence. It will even be possible to create 'superhumans' by mixing human genes with those of other animals for extra strength or longevity. But is this desirable? What are the moral and political consequences? Will it mean anything to talk about 'human nature' any more? Is this the end of human beings? Post Human Society is a passionate analysis of the greatest political and moral problem ever to face the human race.

The Problem with NatureOur Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution

Imagine a person making a call in a suburban shopping plaza. As the caller leaves the phone booth, along comes Alice, who drops a folder full of papers that scatter in the caller's path. Will the caller stop and help before the only copy of Alice's magnum opus is trampled by the bargain-hungry throngs? Perhaps it depends on the person: Jeff, an entrepreneur incessantly scheming about fattening his real estate holdings, probably won't, while Nina, a political activist who takes in stray cats, probably will. Nina is the compassionate type; Jeff isn't. In these circumstances we expect their true colors to show. But this may be a mistake, as an experiment conducted by Isen and Levin (1972) shows. There, the paper-dropper was an experimental confederate. For one group of callers, a dime was planted in the phone' s coin return slot; for the other, the slot was empty. Here are the results

https://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/2671873.pdf

Persons, Situations, and Virtue Ethics

I forgot a close friend’s birthday last year. A few days after the fact, I realized that this important date had come and gone without my so much as sending a card or giving her a call. I was mortified. What kind of a friend could forget such a thing? Within minutes I was on the phone to her, acknowledging my fault and offering my apologies. But what, exactly, was the nature of my fault in this case? After all, I did not consciously choose to forget this special day or deliberately decide to ignore it. I did not intend to hurt my friend’s feelings or even foresee that my conduct would have this effect. I just forgot. It didn’t occur to me. I failed to notice. And yet, despite the apparent involuntariness of this failure, there was no doubt in either of our minds that I was, indeed, responsible for it. Although my friend was quick to pardon my thoughtlessness and to dismiss it as trivial and unimportant, the act of pardoning itself is simply a way of renouncing certain critical responses which it is acknowledged would, in principle, be justified. Moments such as these—which for many of us, I imagine, are more common than we would like to admit—reveal a deep tension in our ordinary thinking about the conditions of moral responsibility. If asked, most of us would probably say that choice or voluntary control is a precondition of legitimate moral assessment. And yet, as the case above was meant to illustrate, we regularly do hold ourselves and others responsible for things that do not appear to reflect a conscious choice or decision. Indeed, we quite often respond to people’s spontaneous at-

https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/426957

Responsibility for Attitudes: Activity and Passivity in Mental Life*

Instructor: G. Jason Goddard Place: Distance Learning Format Time: Slides posted on Canvas each Monday at 6 PM Phone: (336) 732-8584 Email GJGoddar@uncg.edu Office Hours: By Appointment Only Course Textbook: Real Estate Investment: A Value Based Approach, by G.J. Goddard & B. Marcum, Springer Publishers, 2012. ISBN-10: 3642235263, ISBN-13: 978-3642235269 Calculator: Hewlett Packard 10B or 10B II Prerequisites: Admission into the Bryan MBA Program

The University of North Carolina at Greensboro

Moral Perception and Particularity

Recently it has been argued that there are genuine moral dilemmas and that any theory which does not account for this fact is an unrealistic one This represents a challenge to an assumption that most moral theorists have held: an adequate ethical theory must not allow for genuine moral quandaries John Stuart Mill, for example, in the last paragraph of the second chapter of Utilitarianism, seems to be committed to such an assumption Many others have also assented to this view The consensus among those who hold this view seems to be that if a theory allows for moral dilemmas then there is some sense in which it is incoherent or inconsistent Yet, oddly enough, the sense in which such a view would be incoherent is rarely, if ever, spelled out Put another way, there seem to be no arguments for the belief that genuine moral dilemmas must be ruled out W D Ross does suggest that if the same action were both morally required and forbidden, then "this would be to put an end to all ethical judgment"3 But how this would put an end to all ethical judgment, Ross does not explain Once one sees that few, if any, arguments have been advanced to support the commonly held assumption, one realizes that the recent challenges must be taken seriously
Thus the main questions to which this paper is addressed are these: Must an adequate ethical theory allow for genuine moral dilemmas? Or must an adequate theory rule out such cases in order to avoid incoherence? I shall approach these questions by first spelling out two different senses in which our ethical reasoning might be thought to be inconsistent if there are genuine moral dilemmas Discussing these two senses of inconsistency will cast light on the original questions The conclusion that I shall eventually argue for is that we have good grounds for supposing that an adequate moral theory must rule out genuine dilemmas

/pdf/moral-dilemmas-and-consistency-in-ethics-iez7fcn263.pdf

Moral Dilemmas and Consistency in Ethics

Characterizing conscience is difficult The way that this term is often used makes it sound as if it is a special power possessed by people Unlike Bishop Butler, however, and more like recent authors, I deny that conscience is a special faculty that is a source of moral knowledge Instead, when we speak of conscience, we speak of the act of applying one's moral beliefs to one's own conduct Conscience is not itself a standard; rather, appeals to conscience involve an agent reflecting on his own past or (projected) future behavior and assessing that behavior in light of his own standards A person who, in conversation with another, invokes conscience as an apparent justification of a proposed course of action has already made a judgment about that action Such an appeal borrows its effectiveness from the conviction that one ought (in some sense) to think for oneself about moral matters and then act on one's considered judgments

/pdf/the-inalienable-right-of-conscience-a-madisonian-argument-48nn9hectx.pdf

The inalienable right of conscience : A Madisonian argument

This paper has two purposes. One is primarily (but not exclusively) conceptual and the other is normative. The first aim is to say what inalienable rights are. To explain this, inalienable rights are contrasted with the notions of forfeitable rights and absolute rights. A recent novel analysis of inalienable rights by Feinberg is explained and criticized. The first task is concluded by discussing what duties inalienable rights imply. The second aim is to see what moral principles, if any, justify designating some rights as inalienable. The claim of Nozick and others that inalienable rights must be paternalistically grounded is examined and rejected. After a brief critical discussion of the Lockean and Hobbesean accounts of the basis of inalienable rights, it is argued that the harm principle can serve as an adequate ground for categorizing at least the right to life (and perhaps other rights) as inalienable.

The nature and basis of inalienable rights

McConnell presents the unusual and distinctive argument that inalienable rights differ from other types of rights in that, rather than restraining the behaviour of others, inalienable rights seem to put limits on the possessors themselves, because even the possessor's consent does not justify others in encroaching on them. He offers a full account of what it means for a right to be inalienable, distinguishing them from other kinds of rights in the contexts of moral and political issues in medicine and law: for example, the right to life, the right of conscience, and, in particular, the right of informed consent. McConnell's book is intended as a distinctive conception and persuasive defence of inalienable rights, which ties into current discussions of informed consent. It should appeal to applied ethicists and philosophers of law among others.

Terrance C. McConnell

Papers

Moral Perception and Particularity

Moral Dilemmas and Consistency in Ethics

The inalienable right of conscience : A Madisonian argument

The nature and basis of inalienable rights

Inalienable Rights: The Limits of Consent in Medicine and the Law