Morality

About: Morality is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 22623 publications have been published within this topic receiving 545733 citations. The topic is also known as: moral & morals.

Sidetracked by trolleys: Why sacrificial moral dilemmas tell us little (or nothing) about utilitarian judgment.

Abstract: Research into moral decision-making has been dominated by sacrificial dilemmas where, in order to save several lives, it is necessary to sacrifice the life of another person It is widely assumed that these dilemmas draw a sharp contrast between utilitarian and deontological approaches to morality, and thereby enable us to study the psychological and neural basis of utilitarian judgment However, it has been previously shown that some sacrificial dilemmas fail to present a genuine contrast between utilitarian and deontological options Here, I raise deeper problems for this research paradigm Even when sacrificial dilemmas present a contrast between utilitarian and deontological options at a philosophical level, it is misleading to interpret the responses of ordinary folk in these terms What is currently classified as "utilitarian judgment" does not in fact share essential features of a genuine utilitarian outlook, and is better explained in terms of commonsensical moral notions When subjects deliberate about such dilemmas, they are not deciding between opposing utilitarian and deontological solutions, but engaging in a richer process of weighing opposing moral reasons Sacrificial dilemmas therefore tell us little about utilitarian decision-making An alternative approach to studying proto-utilitarian tendencies in everyday moral thinking is proposed

Durkheim, morality and modernity: collective effervescence, homo duplex and the sources of moral action

Abstract: The issue of morality has lost its position of importance within the discipline, yet a growing number of sociologists interested in the ambivalent character of (post) modernity have returned to this subject in recent years. This article examines the revival of interest in morality and suggests it would benefit by engaging creatively with Durkheim's writings on homo duplex, collective effervescence, and the social construction of moral orders. After examining this relatively neglected part of Durkheim's work, developed most fully in his «The Elementary Forms of Religious Life», the authors focus on two of the most influential contemporary commentators on morality, Z. Bauman and A. Giddens. Having evaluated the limitations of their respective approaches (which associate the sources of morality respectively with a methodologically individualistic bodily impulse of 'being for the other', and with an increasingly global cognitive reflexivity), they analyse recent writings which have attempted to transcend such difficulties by engaging with some of the tensions in Durkheim's account of sacred moral orders. These highlight those features of Durkheim's work which continue to offer a productive basis on which to develop further a thoroughly sociological appreciation of morality

Enemies of the People: The Moral Dimension to Public Health

Abstract: This essay explores the effects of morality on health policy. Moral images and stereotypes, I argue, have powerful political consequences. They are the differences between fighting poverty and fearing the poor, between expanding social welfare programs and cracking down on crime, between public health campaigns and drug wars. I begin by locating morality within traditional paradigms of American politics (which are designed to overlook the issue); I then suggest how moral stigmas are constructed; show how they are deployed in debates over public health issues, such as alcohol abuse and drug addiction; and briefly sketch an alternative approach to defining community and seeking public health.

Towards a phenomenology of ethical expertise

Abstract: ogy, in both its transcendental and existential versions, has made immense contributions to metaphysics, epistemology and the philosophy of action and mind. The same cannot be said of its contribution to ethics. With the exception of Sartre, phenomenologists have had little to say about ethics, and what Sartre has said has had little effect on the course of the subject, perhaps because Sartre takes following moral principles to be a form of inauthenticity. Our hypothesis is that if one returned to the phenomenon and tried to give a description of ethical experience one might find that phenomenology has a great deal to contribute to contemporary debate, particularly since the focus of discussion has shifted from interest in meta-ethical issues to a debate between those who demand a detached critical morality based on principles that tells us what is right and those who defend an ethics based on involvement in a tradition that defines what is good. This new confronta? tion between Kant and Hegel, between Moralit?t and Sittlichkeit, has produced two camps which can be identified with J?rgen Habermas and John Rawls on the one hand, and Bernard Williams and Charles Taylor on the other. The same polarity appears in feminism where the Kohlberg scale, which defines the highest stage of moral maturity as the ability to stand