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 intelligence of the moral intuitions: comment on Haidt (2001).

Abstract: The social intuitionist model (J. Haidt, 2001) posits that fast and automatic intuitions are the primary source of moral judgments. Conscious deliberations play little causal role; they are used mostly to construct post hoc justifications for judgments that have already occurred. In this article, the authors present evidence that fast and automatic moral intuitions are actually shaped and informed by prior reasoning. More generally, there is considerable evidence from outside the laboratory that people actively engage in reasoning when faced with real-world moral dilemmas. Together, these facts limit the strong claims of the social intuitionist model concerning the irrelevance of conscious deliberation.

Twilight Of The Idols and The Anti-Christ

Abstract: "Twilight of the Idols", an attack on all the prevalent ideas of his time, offers a lightning tour of his whole philosophy. It also prepares the way for "The Anti-Christ", a final assault on institutional Christianity. Both works show Nietzsche lashing out at self-deception, astounded at how often morality is based on vengefulness and resentment. Both reveal a profound understanding of human mean-spiritedness which still cannot destroy the underlying optimism of Nietzsche, the supreme affirmer among the great philosophers.

The Morality of Pluralism

Abstract: Controversies about abortion, the environment, pornography, AIDS, and similar issues naturally lead to the question of whether there are any values that can be ultimately justified, or whether values are simply conventional John Kekes argues that the present moral and political uncertainties are due to a deep change in our society from a dogmatic to a pluralistic view of values Dogmatism is committed to there being only one justifiable system of values Pluralism recognizes many such systems, and yet it avoids a chaotic relativism according to which all values are in the end arbitrary Maintaining that good lives must be reasonable, but denying that they must conform to one true pattern, Kekes develops and justifies a pluralistic account of good lives and values, and works out its political, moral, and personal implicationsControversies about abortion, the environment, pornography, AIDS, and similar issues naturally lead to the question of whether there are any values that can be ultimately justified, or whether values are simply conventional John Kekes argues that the present moral and political uncertainties are due to a deep change in our society from a dogmatic to a pluralistic view of values Dogmatism is committed to there being only one justifiable system of values Pluralism recognizes many such systems, and yet it avoids a chaotic relativism according to which all values are in the end arbitrary Maintaining that good lives must be reasonable, but denying that they must conform to one true pattern, Kekes develops and justifies a pluralistic account of good lives and values, and works out its political, moral, and personal implications

On the Basis of Morality

Abstract: entirely unsubstantial conceptions, floating in the air equally with ourselves. It is from these, or, more correctly, from the mere form of their connection with judgments made, that a Law is declared to proceed, which by so-called absolute necessity is supposed to be valid, and to be strong enough to lay bit and bridle on the surging throng of human desires, on the storm of passion, on the giant might of egoism. We shall see if such be the case. With this preconceived notion that the basis of Morals must be necessarily and strictly a priori, and entirely free from everything empirical, another of OH THE BASIS OF THE KANTIAN ETHICS. 45 Kant’s favourite ideas is closely connected. The moral principle that he seeks to establish is, he says, a synthetic proposition a priori, of merely formal contents, and hence exclusively a matter of Pure Reason ; and accordingly, as such, to be regarded as valid not only for men, but for all possible rational beings ; indeed he declares it to hold good for man “ on this account alone,” i.e., because per accidens man comes under the category of rational beings. Here lies the cause of his basing the Moral principle not on any feeling, but on pure Reason (which knows nothing but itself and the statement of its antithesis). So that this pure Reason is taken, not as it really and exclusively is—an intellectual faculty of man— but as a self-existent hypostatic essence, yet with¬ out the smallest authority; the pernicious effects of such example and precedent being sufficiently shown in the pitiful philosophy of the present day. Indeed, this view of Morals as existing not for men, as men, but for all rational beings, as such, is with Kant a principle so firmly established, an idea so favourite, that he is never tired of repeating it at every opportunity. I, on the contrary, maintain that we are never entitled to raise into a genus that which we only know of in a single species. For we could bring nothing into our idea of the genus but what we had abstracted from this one species ; so that what we should predicate of the genus could after all only be understood of the single species. While, if we should attempt to think away (without any warrant) the particular attributes of the Bpecies, in order to form 46 THE BASIS OF MORALITY. our genus, we should perhaps remove the exact condition whereby the remaining attributes, hypostatised as a genus, are made possible. Just as we recognise intelligence in general to be an attribute of animal beings alone, and are therefore never justified in thinking of it as existing outside, and independent, of animal nature ; so we recognise Reason as the exclusive attribute of the human race, and have not the smallest right to suppose that Reason exists externally to it, and then proceed to set up a genus called “ Rational Beings,” differing from its single known species “ Man ” ; still less are we warranted in laying down laws for such imaginary rational beings in the abstract. To talk of rational beings external to men is like talking of heavy beings external to bodies. One cannot help suspecting that Kant was thinking a little of the dear cherubim, or at any rate counted on their presence in the conviction of the reader. In any case this doctrine contains a tacit assumption of an anima rationalis, which as being entirely different from the anima sensitiva, and the anima vegetativa, is supposed to persist after death, and then to be indeed nothing else but rationalis. But in the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft Kant himself has expressly and elabor¬ ately made an end of this most transcendent hypo¬ stasis. Nevertheless, in his ethics generally, and in the Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft especially, there seems always to hover in the background the thought that the inner and eternal essence of man consists of Reason. In this connection, where the matter only occurs incidentally, I must content myself with ON THE BASIS OF THE KANTIAN ETHICS. 47 simply asserting the contrary. Keason, as indeed the intellectual faculty as a whole, is secondary, is an attribute of phaenomena, being in point of fact conditioned by the organism; whereas it is the Will in man which is his very self, the only part of him which is metaphysical, and therefore indestructible. The success with which Kant had applied his method to the theoretical side of philosophy led him on to extend it to the practical. Here also he endeavoured to separate pure a priori from empirical a posteriori knowledge. For this purpose he assumed that just as we know a priori the laws of Space, of Time, and of Causality, so in like manner, or at any rate analogously, we have the moral plumbline for our conduct given us prior to all experience, and revealed in a Categorical Imperative, an absolute “ Ought.” But how wide is the difference between this alleged moral law a priori, and our theoretical knowledge a priori of Space, Time, and Causality ! The latter are nothing but the expression of the forms, i.e., the functions of our intellect, whereby alone we are capable of grasping an objective world, and wherein alone it can be mirrored ; so that the world (as we know it) is absolutely conditioned by these forms, and all experience must invariably and exactly correspond to them—just as everything that I see through a blue glass must appear blue. While the former, the so-called moral law, is something that experience pours ridicule on at every step; indeed, as Kant himself says, it is doubtful whether in practice it has ever really been followed on any single occasion. How completely unlike are the things 48 THE BASIS OF MORALITY. which are here classed together under the conception of apriority! Moreover, Kant overlooked the fact that, according to his own teaching, in theoretical philosophy, it is exactly the Apriority of our know¬ ledge of Time, Space, and Causality—independent as this is of experience—that limits it strictly to phaenomena, i.e., to the picture of the world as re¬ flected in our consciousness, and makes it entirely invalid as regards the real nature of things, i.e., as regards whatever exists independently of our capacity to grasp it. Similarly, when we turn to practical philosophy, his alleged moral law, if it have an a priori origin in ourselves, must also be only phaenomenal, and leave entirely untouched the essential nature of things. Only this conclusion would stand in the sharpest contradiction as much to the facts themselves, as to Kant’s view of them. For it is precisely the moral principle in us that he everywhere (e.g., Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft, p. 175 ; R., p. 228) represents as being in the closest connection with the real essence of things, indeed, as directly in contact with it; and in all passages in the Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, where the mysterious Thing in itself comes forward a little more clearly, it shows itself as the moral principle in us, as Will. But of this he failed to take account. In Chapter II. of this Part, I explained how Kant took over bodily from theological Morals the imperative form of Ethics, i.e., the conception of obligation, of law, and of duty ; and how at the same time he was constrained to leave behind that which in the realm ON THE BASIS OF THE KANTIAN ETHICS. 49 of theology alone lends force and significance to these ideas. But he felt the need of some basis for them, and accordingly went so far as to require that the conception of duty itself should be also the ground of its fulfilment; in other words, that it should itself be its own enforcement. An action, he says (p. 11; R., p. 18), has no genuine moral worth, unless it be done simply as a matter of duty, and for duty’s sake, without any liking for it being felt; and the character only begins to have value, if a man, who has no sympathy in his heart, and is cold and indifferent to others’ sufferings, and who is not by nature a lover of his kind, is nevertheless a doer of good actions, solely out of a pitiful sense of duty. This assertion, which is revolting to true moral sentiment ; this apotheosis of lovelessness, the exact opposite, as it is, of the Christian doctrine of Morals, which places love before everything else, and teaches that without it nothing profiteth (1 Cor. xiii. 3) ; this stupid moral pedantry has been ridicnled by Schiller in two apposite epigrams, entitled Gewissenssknipel (Scruples of Conscience) and Entscheidung (Decision).1 It appears that some passages in the Kritik der Praktischen Vernunft, which exactly suit this connection, were the immediate occasion of the verses. Thus, for instance, on p. 150 (R., p. 211) we find: “Obedience to the moral law, which a man feels incumbent on him, is based not on voluntary inclination, nor on en¬ deavour willingly put forth, without any authoritative 1 These epigrams form the close of Schiller’s poem “Die Philosophen,” which is worth reading in this connection.— (Translator.)

Social Motivation, Justice, and the Moral Emotions: An Attributional Approach

Abstract: Contents: Preface. Prologue. A Theory of Social Motivation and Justice: Logic and Development. Testing the Theory and Incorporating Cultural and Individual Differences. The Moral Emotions and Creating Positive Moral Impressions. Reward and Punishment. A Visit to the Courtroom Settings: Is the Theory Useful? Epilogue.