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.

The Possibility of Administrative Ethics

Abstract: The most serious objections to administrative ethics arise from two common conceptions of the role of individuals in organizations—what may be called the ethic of neutrality and the ethic of structure. Administrative ethics involves the application of moral principles to the conduct of officials in organizations. The most general challenge to administrative ethics would be to deny the possibility of ethics at all or the possibility of political ethics. The more direct challenge to administrative ethics comes from those who admit that morality is perfectly possible in private life but deny that it is possible in organizational life. The conventional theory and practice of administrative ethics holds that administrators should carry out the orders of their superiors and the policies of the agency and the government they serve. The ethic of neutrality does not deny that administrators often must use their own judgment in the formulation of policy.

Do cultural values predict individuals' moral attitudes? A cross-cultural multilevel approach

Abstract: This study examined whether cultural values predict individuals’ moral attitudes The main objective was to shed light on the moral universalism and relativism debate by showing that the answer depends on the moral issues studied Using items from the Morally Debatable Behaviours Scale (MDBS) fielded in the World Value Survey (WVS), we found that moral issues can be differentiated cross-culturally into attitudes towards (1) dishonest–illegal and (2) personal–sexual issues Drawing upon evolutionary and cultural theories, we expected that the former moral domain is not related to cultural values, whereas the latter is influenced by cultural conceptions of the self (ie independent versus interdependent selves) We used multilevel modelling with Schwartz’ cultural values as the independent variables and the two moral domains as assessed through the MDBS as dependent variables to test our hypothesis After controlling for individual-level differences in moral attitudes as well as the socio-economic development of countries, our findings confirmed that attitudes towards dishonest–illegal issues were not related to cultural values whereas attitudes towards personal–sexual issues were predicted by the Autonomy–Embeddedness value dimension We conclude that our study sheds not only light on the universalism and relativism debate, but also on the discriminant validity of cultural values Copyright # 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

On the Evolutionary Debunking of Morality

Abstract: Many claim that the availability of evolutionary explanations for human moral beliefs threatens the view that humans have moral knowledge. Peter Singer suggests that evolutionary explanations can debunk moral claims. Michael Ruse declares: “Morality is a collective illusion foisted upon us by our genes.” Sharon Street and Richard Joyce have recently offered sustained evolutionary debunkings of morality. Proponents of such debunkings endorse the following thesis:

Social intuitionists answer six questions about morality

Abstract: We review the state of the art in moral psychology to answer 6 questions: 1) Where do moral beliefs and motivations come from? 2) How does moral judgment work? 3) What is the evidence for the social intuitionist model? 4) What exactly are the moral intuitions? 5) How does morality develop? And 6) Why do people vary in their morality? We describe the intuitionist approach to moral psychology. The mind makes rapid affective evaluations of everything it encounters, and these evaluations (intuitions) shape and push subsequent moral reasoning. This approach to moral judgment has a variety of implications for moral philosophy and for the law in that it questions common assumptions about the reliability and causal efficacy of private, conscious reasoning.