Showing papers on "Moral psychology published in 1989"

Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics

Abstract: This book is a systematic and constructive treatment of a number of traditional issues at the foundation of ethics, the possibility and nature of moral knowledge, the relationship between the moral point of view and a scientific or naturalistic world view, the nature of moral value and obligation, and the role of morality in a person's rational life plan. In striking contrast to many traditional authors and to other recent writers in the field, David Brink offers an integrated defense of the objectivity of ethics.

Lawrence Kohlberg's Approach to Moral Education

Abstract: PrefaceAcknowledgementsIntroductionFrom Moral Discussion to Democratic Governance, with Joseph ReimerThe Just Community Approach: Democracy in a Communitarian Mode, with Joseph ReimerA Week in the Life of Cluster, with Joseph ReimerAssessing the Moral Culture of SchoolsThe Development of Cluster's Moral Culture, with Marvin BerkowitzThe Scarsdale Alternative High School, with Judy CoddingS.W.S.: A Second Perspective on Democratic SchoolingComparing Moral Cultures: Results and Case StudiesIndividual Moral Development as an Outcome of Democratic Schooling, with Marvin BerkowitzThe Just Community Approach in ProspectReferencesIndex

Business Ethics: A Kantian Perspective

Abstract: Introduction.1. The Self-Defeating Nature of Immoral Business Practice.Introduction Immoral Actions Are Based on Self-Defeating Maxims Inconsistency and Immorality Applications to BusinessIt Seems Right in Theory But Does It Work in Practice?Objections to the Application of Kantian Ethics to BusinessExtending the Reach of Categorical Imperatives: Pragmatically Inconsistent MaximsWhy Neither Being Trustworthy nor Not Trusting in Business Involves a Pragmatic Contradiction.Transition to Chapter 22. Treating the Humanity of Stakeholders as Ends rather than as Means Merely.IntroductionThe Respect for Persons PrincipleNot Using Employees: Neither Coercion nor DeceitBusiness Practices That Reduce or Remove Coercion and DeceptionAn Objection and RepliesPositive Freedom ad Meaningful Work: Respecting the Humanity in a PersonKant's Reflection s on WorkMeaningful Work and Contemporary Business3. The Firm as a Moral Community.IntroductionViewing Organizations and Human NatureCreating the Kantian Moral Firm: The Kingdom of Ends Formulation of the Categorical ImperativeThe Principles of a Moral FirmImplications for Organizational Studies4. Acting from Duty: How Pure a Motive.IntroductionKant's Position on the Purity of Moral MotivesStrategic Payoffs and Moral MotivesReasons and Emotions: A Brief AsideMultiple Moral Motives5. The Cosmopolitan Perspective.IntroductionThe Morality of the MarketInternational Business Can Contribute to World Peace, Universal Rights, and DemocracyObjections and RepliesConclusionBibliographyFurther ReadingIndex

Hobbesian Moral and Political Theory

Abstract: In recent years serious attempts have been made to systematize and develop the moral and political themes of great philosophers of the past. Kant, Locke, Marx, and the classical utilitarians all have their current defenders and arc taken seriously as expositors of sound moral and political views. It is the aim of this book to introduce Hobbes into this select group by presenting a plausible moral and political theory inspired by Leviathan. Using the techniques of analytic philosophy and elementary game theory, the author develops a Hobbesian argument that justifies the liberal State and reconciles the rights and interests of rational individuals with their obligations.Hobbes's case against anarchy, based on his notorious claim that life outside the political State would be a "war of all against all," is analyzed in detail, while his endorsement of the absolutist State is traced to certain false hypotheses about political sociology. With these eliminated, Hobbes's principles support a liberal redistributive (or "satisfactory") State and a limited right of revolution. Turning to normative issues, the book explains Hobbes's account of morality based on enlightened self-interest and shows how the Hobbesian version of social contract theory justifies the political obligations of citizens of satisfactory States.

Stories Told and Lessons Learned: Toward a Narrative Approach to Moral Development and Moral Education

Abstract: The telling of stories in moral education has a long and universal tradition. In the study of moral development, however, the uses and power of narrative in both forming and conveying a moral sense have been largely ignored. Mark Tappan and Lyn Brown argue that narrative is central to the study as well as to the teaching of morality, and that acknowledgment of authorship of moral choices, actions, and feelings marks the endpoint of the development of moral sensibility. Children's storytelling, they believe, creates authorship when the audience is responsive and the story told represents real experience. By presenting thoughtful and challenging evidence for the role of storytelling, these authors represent a perspective much needed in the field of moral development.

Responsibility and atonement

Abstract: Preface Introduction PART I: Responsibility: Moral goodness Moral responsibility and weakness of will The relevance of free will Merit and reward Guilt, atonement, and forgiveness Punishment Man's moral condition PART II: Its Theological Consequences: Morality under God Sin and original sin Redemption Sanctification and corruption Heaven and hell Additional notes

Immanuel Kant's Moral Theory

Abstract: 1. Introduction 2. The context for Kant's moral philosophy Part I. The Nature of Morality: 3. The nature of human action 4. Prudence: taking care of our own interests 5. Morality: living autonomously 6. Morally obligatory ends 7. The defense of morality 8. The primacy of morality Part II. The Moral Norm for Persons: 9. Moral character: part I 10. Moral character: part II Part III. The Norm for Moral Judgment: 11. The categorical imperative 12. The formula of autonomy or of universal law: part I 13. The formula of autonomy or of universal law: part II 14. The formula of respect for the dignity of persons 15. The formula of legislation for a moral community Part IV. Kant on History, Politics, and Religion: 16. Autonomy and the state 17. Civil justice and republicanism 18. Kant's philosophy of religion Appendixes: 1. Kant's two-viewpoints doctrine 2. Kant's philosophy of moral education.

Moral Understandings: Alternative “Epistemology” for a Feminist Ethics

Abstract: Work on representing women's voices in ethics has produced a vision of moral understanding profoundly subversive of the traditional philosophical conception of moral knowledge. 1 explicate this alternative moral “epistemology,” identify how it challenges the prevailing view, and indicate some of its resources for a liberatory feminist critique of philosophical ethics.

Practical reasoning and ethical decision

Abstract: Presenting the most comprehensive and lucid account of the topic currently available, Robert Audi's "Practical Reasoning and Ethical Decision" is essential reading for anyone interested in the role of reason in ethics or the nature of human action. The first part of the book is a detailed critical overview of the influential theories of practical reasoning found in Aristotle, Hume and Kant, whilst the second part examines practical reasoning in the light of important topics in moral psychology - weakness of will, self-deception, rationalization and others. In the third part, Audi describes the role of moral principles in practical reasoning and clarifies the way practical reasoning underlies ethical decisions. He formulates a comprehensive set of concrete ethical principles, explains how they apply to reasoning about what to do, and shows how practical reasoning guides moral conduct.

Friendship and trust as moral ideals: an historical approach

Abstract: It is not peculiar to modern society that ideals of friendship express some of the ‘noblest’ potentials of human association. But an ideal of friendship so contrary to the forms of association that dominate the larger society is distinctive to our times. Explicit contract, rational exchange, formal division of labor, and impersonal institutions define the Great Society; by inversion, they also define those ideals constituting friendship understood at its morally best. Especially in the urban core of Western society, particularly its more educated sectors, friendships are judged of high quality to the extent that they invert the ways of the larger society. In this ideal, friendships are voluntary, unspecialized, informal and private. They are grounded in open-ended commitments without explicit provision for their termination—unlike contractual relations, prior stipulation of the conditions that legitimately end a friendship cannot be constitutive of friendship. In such an ideal, friendships are diminished in moral quality if terms of exchange between friends are consciously or scrupulously monitored, for this implies that utilities derived from friendships are constitutive, as in market relations, rather than valued as expressions of personal intentions and commitments.

Who Cares?: Theory, Research, and Educational Implications of the Ethic of Care

Abstract: Introduction by Mary Brabeck: Who Cares? Defining and Re-Defining the Ethic of Care Twenty Three Hundred Years of Women Philosophers: Toward a Gender Undifferentiated Moral Theory by Mary Ellen Waithe The Liberation of Caring: A Different Voice for Gilligan's "Different Voice" by Bill Puka Sometimes I Feel Like a Motherless Child: The Call and Response for a Liberational Ethic of Care by Black Feminists by Toinette M Eugene Pragmatism, Feminism and Sensitivity to Context by Charlene Haddock Seigfried Prolegomena to Future Caring by Barbara Houston Empirical Studies of Those Who Care Ways of Knowing, Learning and Making Moral Choices by Nona Lyons Gender Differences in Empathy and Prosocial Moral Reasoning: Empirical Investigations by Nancy Eisenberg, Richard Fabes and Cindy Shea Ethical Sensitivity and Moral Reasoning among Men and Women in the Professions by Muriel Bebeau and Mary Brabeck The Caring Self: Social Experiences of Power and Powerlessness by M Brinton Lykes Educating for Care Transforming Moral Education by Jane Roland Martin The Just Community Educational Program: The Development of Moral Role-Taking as the Expression of Justice and Care by Ann Higgins Educating Moral People by Nel Noddings Selected Bibliography Index

On Moral Personhood: Philosophy, Literature, Criticism, and Self-Understanding

Abstract: In this remarkable blend of sophisticated philosophical analysis and close reading of literary texts, Richard Eldridge presents a convincing argument that literature is the most important and richest source of insights in favor of a historicized Kantian moral philosophy. He effectively demonstrates that only through the interpretation of narratives can we test our capacities as persons for acknowledging the moral laws as a formula of value and for acting according to it. Eldridge presents an extensive new interpretation of Kantian ethics that is deeply informed by Kant's aesthetics. He defends a revised version of Kantian universalism and a Kantian conception of the "content" of morality. Eldridge then turns to literature armed not with any "a priori "theory but with an interpretive stance inspired by Hegel's phenomenology of self-understanding, more or less naturalized, and by Wittgenstein's work on self-understanding as ongoing narrative-interpretive activity, a stance that yields Kantian results about the universal demands our nature places on itself. Eldridge goes on to present readings of novels by Conrad and Austen and poetry by Wordsworth and Coleridge. In each text protagonists are seen to be struggling with moral conflicts and for self-understanding as moral persons. The route toward partial resolution of their conflicts is seen to involve multiple and ongoing activities of reading and interpreting. The result of this kind of interpretation is that such literature literature that portrays protagonists as themselves readers and interpreters of human capacities for morality is a primary source for the development of morally significant self-understanding. We see in the careers of these protagonists that there can be genuine and fruitful moral deliberation and valuable action, while also seeing how situated and partial any understanding and achievement of value must remain. "On Moral Personhood" at once delineates the moral nature of persons; shows various conditions of the ongoing, contextualized, partial acknowledgment of that nature and of the exercise of the capacities that define it; and enacts an important way of reading literature in relation to moral problems. Eldridge's work will be important reading for moral philosophers (especially those concerned with Kant, Hegel, and issues dividing moral particularists from moral universalists), literary theorists (especially those concerned with the value of literature and its relation to philosophy and to moral problems), and readers and critics of Conrad, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Austen."

Kantian Constructivism in Ethics

Abstract: A Theory of Justice has stimulated so much useful discussion in political theory, economics, legal philosophy, moral psychology, and other areas that one tends to forget the hopes it initially stirred among those of us seeking alternatives to utilitarianism in ethical theory' At last, it seemed, we had a comprehensive, systematic model for nonutilitarian moral theory, rooted in the classics of the past but responsive to the best in modern thought Its monumental scope, elevated sentiments, richness of detail, and optimistic tone easily tempted followers to overlook the carefully circumscribed nature of its project Not surprisingly, then, Rawls's more recent papers have been disappointing to some sympathetic readers of his book, for these papers emphasize the limitations of Rawls's project and may seem to abandon earlier ambitions2 Critics of Rawls's book may read the later papers as a forced retreat and partial confession of failure, for, they may say, the theory ofjustice is now only a pragmatic compromise, designed for current political purposes, not even a working approximation to moral truth Earlier suggestions that it could be expanded into a neoKantian comprehensive theory of right conduct seem to have been abandoned, or postponed, for the sake of the more modest aim of achieving an overlapping political consensus for our times3 Although I am convinced of the immense importance of Rawls's project as he currently sees it, my concern here is not to defend that project or his contribution to it Nor do I wish to enter the controversies about how far the recent papers deviate from the theory and ambitions of the book, though I suspect that the degree of change has been exaggerated What I aim to do, instead, is to raise the question of whether

Hume's place in moral philosophy

Abstract: Contents: Hume and his predecessors - Distinguishing moral sentiment from moral judgment - The rejection of the traditional moral ought - How the Enquiry amended the Treatise.

Wittgenstein and Moral Philosophy

Abstract: Wittgenstein's philosophical achievement lies in the development of a new philosophical method rather than in the elaboration of a particular system. His method involves an approach to the examination of philosophical problems, a method which Paul Johnston applies in this book to the central problems of moral philosophy - questions such as whether there can be truth in ethics, or what objectivity might mean in this context. The text also attempts to shed new light both on Wittgenstein's philosophy of morals and on his entire oeuvre. Johnston argues for a reassessment of contemporary moral philosophy, showing that the conclusions generated by the application of Wittgenstein's method to moral philosophy differ radically from those that dominate modern discussions of ethics.

Voluntarism and realism in medieval ethics.

Abstract: In contrast to other articles in this series on the history of moral philosophy the present essay is not devoted to expounding the views of a single author, or to examining a particular moral theory. Instead it discusses an important dispute between two medieval accounts of the relation between theological and moral propositions. In addition to its historical interest this debate is important both because it connects earlier and later ethical thought--being influenced by Greek moral theories and influencing subsequent European philosophy--and because it concerns issues that remain important to philosophers and to those who claim that their ethical beliefs are dictated by religious convictions.

Why Be Moral

Abstract: Noted philosopher Kai Nielsen offers an answer to this fundamental question - a question that reaches in to grasp at the very heart of ethics itself. Essentially, this innocent inquiry masks a confusion that so many of us get caught in as we think about moral issues. We fail to realise that there is a difference between judging human behaviour within an ethical context, or set of moral principles, and justifying the principles themselves. According to Nielsen, it is precisely this basic muddle that has spawned all sorts of challenges to morality, from relativism and institutionism to egoism and scepticism.Nielsen first argues the case for these challenges in the strongest possible terms; then he shows that their failure to establish themselves demonstrates a fundamental flaw - an inability to understand what it means to have good reasons for the moral claims we make. In his search for "good reasons" Nielsen must face the innocent question "Why be moral?" He tries to show us that skirmishes among supporters of specific moral principles require a different sort of resolution than those that occur between groups of ethical principles. Justifying an action within a moral point of view is quite different from making the case for having a moral point of view in the first place.

Clinical Ethics: Theory and Practice

Abstract: Clinical Ethics, Applied Ethics, and Theory.- The Skeptical Critique of Clinical Ethics.- Moral Experts and Moral Expertise: Do Either Exist?.- Persons with Moral Expertise and Moral Experts: Wherein Lies the Difference?.- Ethical Theory and Applied Ethics: A Reply to the Skeptics.- Bringing Codes to Newcastle: Ethics for Clinical Ethicists.- Moral Problems, Moral Inquiry, and Consultation in Clinical Ethics.- Ethical Theory and Applied Ethics: Reflections on Connections.- Applied Ethics: Don't Change the Subject.- Philosophical Ethics and Practical Ethics: Never the Twain Shall Meet.

The Right Thing To Do: Basic Readings in Moral Philosophy

Abstract: This collection of readings in moral theory and moral issues from major Western philosophers is the ideal companion reader for James Rachels' text "The Elements of Moral Philosophy." The anthology explores further the theories and issues introduced in that volume, in their original and classic formulations. The collection can stand on its own as the text for a course in moral philosophy, or it can be used to supplement any introductory text. This fifth edition contains new essays about prostitution, monogamy, date rape, terrorism, torture, genetic engineering, and the atomic bombings of Japan.

Rethinking moral reasoning theory.

Abstract: Many nursing studies on moral reasoning and ethics have used Kohlberg's theory of moral development. The body of knowledge that resulted from these studies indicated that nurses and nursing students had consistently lower than expected levels of moral reasoning. Educational offerings were developed to assist nurses to improve their moral reasoning. This article explores the cognitive-developmental theory of moral development as one way of determining the moral development of nurses. Since this theory of moral reasoning focuses on the rational thought of the individual and does not consider the impact of the environment, it is of limited applicability in nursing. A new theory of morality needs to be developed--a more holistic one that will include both universal principles and contextual tissues.

Measuring Moral Judgment: A Review of ‘The Measurement of Moral Judgment' by Anne Colby and Lawrence Kohlberg

Abstract: Thirty years ago, in his 1958 dissertation, Lawrence Kohlberg published the outline of a new methodology for measuring moral judgment. He claimed to provide a (valid and reliable) measure of the structure of moral thought and behavior that was to revolutionize psychological assessment in the socio-moral domain. In the early 1970s, in preparation for a longitudinal cross-cultural study of the process and effects of higher education, we were searching for concepts and instruments for measuring socio-moral competencies in young adults. Most social-psychological measurement dealt solely with attitudes to-

Moral Leadership and Practical Wisdom

Abstract: Book VI of Aristotle′s Nicomachean Ethics is commented on, aimed at showing its relevance to some themes in contemporary moral philosophy. It is argued that the classical approach to morality (Aristotle) and the Enlightened approach (Kant) need not compose antinomy. Instead, the Aristotelian emphases on the development of virtuous character and the nature of practical wisdom coalesce with the Kantian emphasis on autonomy – what Falk calls “responsible self‐direction” – in the person of the moral leader. In particular, great moralists have recognised that moral wisdom is not mainly a matter of strict obedience to rules. While rules have their place, the subject matter of ethics cannot be determined by a quasi‐mathematical formalism. Over‐emphasis on the formalism of the categorical imperative obscures Kant′s more fundamental emphasis on autonomy. The autonomous person, able to exercise moral leadership, cultivates the Aristotelian virtue of phronēsis.