Showing papers on "Morality published in 1990"

Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action

Abstract: Introduction by Thomas McCarthy. Philosophy as Stand--In and Interpreter. Reconstruction and Interpretation in the Social Sciences. Discourse Ethics: Notes on a Program of Philosophical Justification. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action. Morality and Ethical Life: Does Hegela s Critique of Kant Apply to Discourse Ethics?. Index.

The use of pleasure

Abstract: Part 1 Introduction: modifications forms of problematization morality and practice of the self. Part 2 The moral problematization of pleasures: "Aphrodisia" "Chresis" "Enkrateia" freedom and truth. Part 3 Dietetics: regimen in general the diet of pleasures risks and dangers act, expenditure, death. Part 4 Economics: the wisdom of marriage Ischomachus' household three policies of moderation. Part 5 Erotics: a problematic relation a boy's honour the object of pleasure. Part 6 True love.

Moral Exclusion and Injustice: An Introduction

Abstract: Moral exclusion occurs when individuals or groups are perceived as outside the boundary in which moral values, rules, and considerations of fairness apply. Those who are morally excluded are perceived as nonentities, expendable, or undeserving. Consequently, harming or exploiting them appears to be appropriate, acceptable, or just. This broad definition encompasses both severe and mild forms of moral exclusion, from genocide to discrimination. The paper discusses the antecedents and symptoms of moral exclusion, and the interaction between the psychological and social factors that foster its development. Empirical research on moral exclusion is needed to pinpoint its causes, to predict its progression, and to effect change in social issues that involve the removal of victims from our moral communities. The last section of the paper introduces the articles that follow.

Culture and moral development.

Abstract: This essay reports the results of a cross-cultural development study of ideas about the moral (its form) and ideas about what is moral (its content). The informants for the study are children, five to thirteen years of age, and adults, male and female, from Brahman and “Untouchable” families in the orthodox Hindu temple town of Bhubaneswar, Orissa, India; and from Judeo-Christian families in the secular university neighborhood of Hyde Park in Chicago, Illinois. One aim of the essay is to assess the strengths and limitations of two prominent and important theories about the origins and development of moral understandings: Kohlberg's “cognitive developmental” theory (Kohlberg 1969, 1981; Kohlberg, Levine, and Hewer 1983) and Turiel's “social interactional” theory (Turiel 1979, 1983; Nucci and Turiel 1978; Turiel and Smetana 1984). A second aim is to highlight the role of social communication processes in the ontogeny of moral understandings by outlining a “social communication” theory of moral development and using it to interpret the similarities and differences in the moral understandings of children and adults in the two cultures. Three theories of moral development The three theories to be discussed present different portraits and accounts of the ontogenetic origins of the idea of a moral obligation. Kohlberg's “cognitive developmental” theory hypothesizes that a genuine understanding of the idea of a moral obligation (stages five and six) has its origins in the idea of a conventional, or consensusbased, obligation (stages three and four).

Selective Activation and Disengagement of Moral Control

Abstract: Moral conduct is motivated and regulated mainly by the ongoing exercise of self-reactive influence. But self-regulatory mechanisms do not operate unless they are activated, and there are different psychological mechanisms by which moral control can be selectively activated or disengaged from inhumane conduct. Self-sanctions can be disengaged by reconstruing detrimental conduct through moral justification, euphemistic labeling, and advantageous contrast with other inhumanities; by obscuring personal agency in detrimental activities through diffusion and displacement of responsibility; by disregarding or misrepresenting the harmful consequences of inhumane conduct; and by blaming and dehumanizing the victims. These mechanisms of moral disengagement operate not only in the perpetration of inhumanities under extraordinary circumstances, but in everyday situations where people routinely perform activities that bring personal benefits at injurious costs to others. Given the many psychological devices for disengagement of moral control, societies cannot rely solely on individuals, however honorable their standards, to provide safeguards against inhumanities. To function humanely, societies must establish effective social safeguards against moral disengagement practices that foster exploitive and destructive conduct.

Perceptions of social responsibilities in India and in the United States: moral imperatives or personal decisions?

Abstract: Indian and American adults' and children's (N = 400) moral reasoning about hypothetical situations in which an agent failed to help someone experiencing either life-threatening, moderately serious, or minor need was compared. For 1/3 of Ss, the agent's relationship to the needy other was portrayed as that of parent; for another 1/3, as that of best friend; for the rest, as that of stranger. Indians tended to regard the failure to aid another in moral terms in all conditions. In contrast, Americans tended to view it in moral terms only in life-threatening cases or in cases of parents responding to the moderately serious needs of their children. The results imply that Indian culture forwards a broader and more stringent view of social responsibilities than does American culture. Discussion centers on theoretical implications of the various cultural, need, role, and developmental effects observed.

Created from Animals: The Moral Implications of Darwinism

Abstract: Darwin's discovery how evolution and ethics might be related must a Darwinian be sceptical about religion? how different are humans from other animals? morality without the idea that humans are special.

The Development of Toddlers' Moral and Conventional Judgments.

Abstract: The development of toddlers' (n = 108) moral and conventional judgments and the effects of language development on those judgments were examined. Equal numbers of 2634-, and 42-month-old boys and girls judged the permissibility, seriousness, generalizability, and rule and authority contingency of 10 familiar moral and conventional transgressions, and also responded to parallel language comprehension items. The youngest subjects did not distinguish morality and convention on any of the criteria, but 34-month-olds judged moral transgres sions to be more generalizably wrong than conventional transgressions. By age 42 months, morality and convention were distinguished on all the criteria. Chil dren who responded correctly to the corresponding language comprehension items differentiated moral and conventional transgressions on the basis of gener alizability, rule contingency, and authority contingency at earlier ages than when language ability was not considered. Thus, rudimentary distinctions between morality and conventionality emerge and become more consistently applied during the third year of life.

The morality of software piracy: A cross-cultural analysis

Abstract: Software piracy is a damaging and important moral issue, which is widely believed to be unchecked in particular areas of the globe. This cross-cultural study examines differences in morality and behavior toward software piracy in Singapore versus the United States, and reviews the cultural histories of Asia versus the United States to explore why these differences occur. The paper is based upon pilot data collected in the U.S. and Singapore, using a tradeoff analysis methodology and analysis. The data reveal some fascinating interactions between the level of ethical transgression and the rewards or consequences which they produce.

Corporate codes of conduct: A collective conscience and continuum

Abstract: This paper discusses the vast continuum between the letter of the law (legality) and the spirit of the law (ethics or morality). Further, the authors review the fiduciary duties owed by the firm to its various publics. These aspects must be considered in developing a corporate code of ethics. The underlying qualitative characteristics of a code include clarity, comprehensiveness and enforceability. While ethics is indigenous to a society, every code of ethics will necessarily reflect the corporate culture from which that code stems and be responsive to the innumerable situations for which it was created. Several examples have been provided to illustrate the ease of applicability of these concepts.

The Constitution of Poverty: Toward a Genealogy of Liberal Governance

Abstract: The discourse of the poor the problem of idleness the policing of the poor population, subsistence, poverty the Malthusian effect from morality to economy the moral economy of Adam Smith the condition of poverty pauperism and the labour-market pauper-land the mechanisms of prevention.

Plural and Conflicting Values

Abstract: SECTION I: Plurality and choice Monism, pluralism, and conflict Conflict Maximization Ought and can Act and agent evaluations SECTION II: Akrasia: The unity of the good, commensurability, and comparability Courage, the doctrine of the mean, and the possibility of emotional and evaluative coherence Dirty hands and ordinary life Dirty hands and conflicts of value and desires in Aristotle's ethics Friendship and morality: some difficult relations Some problems with counter-examples in ethics

The Science of Man and Wide Reflective Equilibrium

Abstract: The view that morality is a matter of divine commandments, and the view that both correct value judgments and moral principles can be derived from knowledge of the "function" of man are currently in eclipse. There have been "naturalist" writers who thought that the very meaning of value/moral statements can be expressed in an "empiricist" language and that such statements can be confirmed by the methods of empirical science. But, partly through the influence of Moore, this project has been abandoned. A recent proposal for solution of the problem of moral/value knowledge has been "ethical foundationalism," according to which ethical principles can be appraised either by appeal to self-evidence or a nonsensory form of intuition of some sort, or at least by coherence with the ethical beliefs we actually have. One recent writer says we "experience wrongness,"1 a view difficult to comprehend, the question what such an experience would be like being baffling. Some writers take the "basic data" of ethics to be just value or moral beliefs (exactly what is meant by "belief" is not specified), especially "spontaneous beliefs,"2 and say that "beliefs are our evidence."3 The beliefs, of course, are facts requiring to be explained. It has been suggested that a full explanation of them would require the postulation of "moral facts" in some sense. So it has been said that the belief "That's wrong," formed while observing a cat being doused with gasoline and then ignited, can only be explained by reference to the actual wrongness of the act. But, in fact, we need no such thing: the native sympathy of the judge, conjoined with his observation of an event of this kind, suffices. It may be held that while individual "ethical beliefs" are not evidence for ethical principles in the way in which observations are evidence for scientific theories, one can make such a claim for a whole coherent set

Moral conflict and political consensus

Abstract: When citizens reasonably disagree about the morality of a public policy, on what principles can they agree to conduct their public life? The hope of liberal political theory, and the basis of the most common solution to the problem of moral conflict in a pluralist society, is that citizens can still agree on principles that would remove decisions about the policy from the political agenda. Liberals typically invoke higher-order principles (such as neutrality or impartiality) that are intended to transcend disagreement on specific policies: these principles purport to determine which issues are appropriate subjects for public policy and which are not. When there is no reasonable basis for resolving the moral conflict on an issue of policy, the principles preclude state action on the issue and leave each citizen free to act on the basis of his or her own morality (to the extent possible without state action). A consensus on these principles thus insulates the political process from fundamental moral conflict. We want to challenge, at least in part, this familiar liberal way of dealing with moral conflict. The consensus on these higher-order principles that liberals propose is not sufficient to eliminate moral conflict from politics, and a more robust set of principles is necessary to govern the conflict that inevitably and legitimately remains. The higher-order principles that constitute the core of the consensus, we suggest, must permit greater moral disagreement about policy and greater moral agreement on how to disagree about policy. Two kinds of higher-order principles should be distinguished, corresponding to different purposes that the consensus is supposed to serve. First, there are what may be called principles of preclusion, which serve the more familiar purpose of determining which policies deserve a place on the political agenda in the sense of being a legitimate subject for legislation. These principles preclude fundamental moral conflict by denying certain

The Limits of Government: An Essay on the Public Goods Argument

Abstract: Justifying the state property rights the right to punish the prisoner's dilemma from prisoner's dilemma to public goods experimental philosophy the morality of a co-operative society.

Value and Justification: The Foundations of Liberal Theory

Abstract: This important new book takes as its points of departure two questions: What is the nature of valuing? and What morality can be justified in a society that deeply disagrees on what is truly valuable? In Part One, the author develops a theory of value that attempts to reconcile reason with passions. Part Two explores how this theory of value grounds our commitment to moral action. The author argues that rational moral action can neither be seen as a way of simply maximising one's own values, nor derived from reason independent of one's values. Rather, our commitment to the moral point of view is presupposed by our value systems. The book concludes with a defense of liberal political morality.

Identity, character, and morality : essays in moral psychology

Abstract: Many philosophers believe that normative ethics is in principle independent of psychology By contrast, the authors of these essays explore the interconnections between psychology and moral theory They investigate the psychological constraints on realizable ethical ideals and articulate the psychological assumptions behind traditional ethics They also examine the ways in which the basic architecture of the mind, core emotions, patterns of individual development, social psychology, and the limits on human capacities for rational deliberation affect morality

Marxism, Morality, and Social Justice

Abstract: The interpreter of Marx's writings faces the task of reconciling, on the one hand, Marx's frequent explicit condemnations and criticisms of morality and, on the other, the obvious way in which his world-view reflects substantive moral judgments. In this book R. G. Peffer tackles the challenges of finding in Marx's work an implicit moral theory, of answering claims that Marxism is incompatible with morality, and of developing the outlines of an adequate Marxist moral and social theory. Peffer analyzes the moral components of Marx's thought and considers all the major interpretations of his moral perspective; he concludes that Marx is a mixed deontologist who is most committed to a maximum system of equal freedoms, both positive and negative. He then utilizes contemporary metaethical theory to show that Marxism is compatible with morality in general and with the concepts of justice and rights in particular. Peffer proposes a radically egalitarian theory of social justice (which subsumes Marx's own moral theory) and a minimal set of Marxist empirical theses, which together entail the Marxist's basic normative political positions. This book demonstrates that contemporary analytic political philosophy is invaluable for coming to terms with Marxism and that it is only Marx's less abstract empirical theories about classes and class struggle, the dysfunctions of capitalism, and the possibility of creating democratic, self-managing postcapitalist societies that are needed for the development of an adequate Marxist moral and social theory. Originally published in 1990. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

Psychopathy and moral development: A comparative study of delinquent and nondelinquent youth

Abstract: Sixty male adjudicated juvenile delinquents between the ages 14–17, and 20 nondelinquent controls were administered measures of moral reasoning, social convention understanding, interpersonal awareness, socialization, empathy, autonomy, and psychopathy in an effort to explore the relations between moral reasoning, moral sentiment, and antisocial behavior. Not only did the delinquent group evidence developmental delays on all of these direct and indirect tests of morality functioning, but their performance on certain of these measures also differentiated those offenders who were more or less psychopathic. By demonstrating the special contribution of measures of moral will or sentiment to the study of antisocial behavior, these findings serve to underscore the multidimensional character of moral development, and the complexity of the relations between thought and action.

The Moral Dimension

Abstract: It is tempting and easy to regard Buchanan as a moral nihilist who finds no place in his intellectual system for absolute moral values and absolute moral obligations, who has as little time for God as he does for philosopher-rulers, who assigns hardly any importance to evolution and none at all to natural rights. It is certainly the case that more than one commentator has complained that the model is ethically under-determined, focusing as it does on voluntary agreement and absence of coercion and little else. Norman Barry, for instance, who reflects that Buchanan’s ‘procedural liberalism’ appears to him to be deficient in ‘some background morality that would define and validate just procedures’1 and who concludes that the approach is capable of generating outcomes which many observers would regard as absurd and unacceptable: it ‘allows slavery to masquerade as freedom and theft to constitute a title of property’.2 Or Scott Gordon, who expresses his concern that the centrality of revealed preference compels the system illegitimately to derive ought-ness from is-ness and who warns that contracting emanates purely from self-interest, rendering agreement per se ‘without any input of moral consideration’:3 ‘It seems to me that Buchanan is striving to commit what G.E. Moore called the “naturalistic fallacy”: deriving moral principles without the aid of any moral premise … The attempt cannot succeed.’4

Engineering Ethics and Political Imagination

Abstract: Recent attempts by American colleges and universities to teach ethics for scientists and engineers deserve strong praise. They represent a shift away from the idea that questions about ethics and morality are best left to humanists or to elder statesmen of science, a recognition that such matters ought to be an important part of education in the technical professions. One can hope that through these efforts a new generation of men and women will obtain a firm grounding in the ethical aspects of their vocations early enough to make a difference.

Patriotism is Like Racism

Abstract: Stephen Nathanson's "In Defense of 'Moderate Patriotism"' tries to show that there is a moderate patriotism that does not collapse into an unpatriotic universal morality or become an immoderate patriotism that no universalist could endorse.' It fails. I will argue this much in the first part of this note. In the second I will draw some more constructive lessons, arguing that, on the most plausible assumptions about our world, patriotism is no better than racism.

Children's Social Reasoning in Context: Reply to Gabennesch

Abstract: Children's social reasoning is multifaceted. Moral judgments of justice, welfare, and rights are an important aspect of domains of social reasoning that are not merely the arbitrary and relative products of social formations. In defining all social formations as conventions that are either reified or accurately perceived as arbitrary and relative human inventions, Gabennesch relegates the moral concepts of many philosophers, moral leaders, and laypersons to ethnocentrism and reification. In the process, he fails to distinguish between metaethics relating to the source of knowledge and the form of knowledge. He also fails to account for distinctions between conventionality and moral concepts that do not constitute realism or reification. His review of the evidence of moral realism in children is selective in that isolated findings are taken out of the context of a particular study and of the entire body of evidence. Moreover, he has incorrectly interpreted many of the findings he cites in support of childhood realism. We present a summary of 48 studies demonstrating that children distinguish morality and convention. Gabennesch's perceptual metaphors hinge on an exaggerated role for conventionality in social formations at the expense of other complex social phenomena.