Moral Obligation

Atheist moral philosopher Erik Wielenberg recently argued that Divine Command Theory is implausible as an explanation of objective morality because it fails to explain how psychopaths have moral obligations. In this paper I explain that everyone agrees the consciences of psychopaths don’t work as they should, but there’s disagreement among experts as to whether: A. The consciences of psychopaths don’t inform them of what’s right and wrong and that they should do what’s right or B. The consciences of psychopaths do inform them of these things but merely don’t generate the appropriate moral emotions. I argue that, based on the psychological research, a strong case can be made for B and thus under DCT psychopaths do have moral obligations because their consciences inform them of what’s right from wrong and that they should do what’s right. I also argue that even if A is true, God can, and does, make psychopaths aware of what’s right and wrong and that they should do what’s right through other means such as rationality, society, parents, culture, direct verbal commands, etc. Therefore, even if A is true, then psychopaths still have moral obligations under DCT because they do know what’s right from wrong and that they should do what’s right. Lastly, I turn the tables on Wielenberg and point out that his theory is even worse than DCT when it comes to providing an explanation for the moral rights and obligations of psychopaths

Although moral, social, and legal obligations are conceptually distinct, many theorists believe they are instances of the same general type. As Joseph Raz puts it: Normative terms like 'a right,' 'a duty,' 'ought' are used in the same sense in legal, moral, and other normative statements. If this correct, then legal and moral obligations have different properties, but both satisfy the application-conditions for the concept-term obligation in the following sense: Satisfaction of the application-conditions for obligation will be necessary (though not sufficient) for something to count as either a legal obligation or a moral obligation. The set of application-conditions for obligation will be, on this view, a subset of the set of application conditions for both moral obligation and legal obligation. In this essay I attempt to develop what I take to be the central elements of the general concept of obligation as a first step towards developing a comprehensive Hartian account of legal obligation.

Abstract. The fact that A has relied on B to do something is often taken to be a relevant factor in judging that B has a moral or legal obligation to do that thing. This paper investigates the relation between reliance and obligation. Specifically, the question is whether reliance and moral obligation are connected by some relation of conditionality. I consider four such relations—necessary condition, sufficient condition, necessary part of a sufficient condition, and independent necessary part of a sufficient condition. I argue that only the third one connects reliance and moral obligation, and that it does so in a trivial way. There are nevertheless two justifications for the prominence given to reliance in morality and law. First, reliance appears to be a sufficient condition of states of affairs involving concepts related to obligation. Second, reliance is a fairly reliable indicator of obligation.

The importance of remittances for economic development and the maintenance of transnational social relationships have been widely discussed. Based on data from Switzerland, we analyze the roles of transnational social relations and moral obligations for the likelihood of sending remittances among intra-European migrants from Germany, Great Britain, Italy, Portugal, Serbia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Our data shows high levels of remitting among these groups, with migrants from South-East European countries sending remittances primarily to family and friends and migrants from Portugal and Great Britain sending remittances primarily to their own bank account. Furthermore, by using differentiated and direct measures for social relations and moral obligations, we show that strong social ties as well as moral family obligations are relevant predictors of sending remittances, beyond measures of various desires and capacities to remit usually discussed in the literature. However, these effects also vary according to social relation and remittance type. Together, the results make a strong case for the social embeddedness of remittances and the importance of including migrants from western and southern Europe in empirical research.

The burden of this chapter is to sustain the view that the truth of judgments of both moral and prudential obligation are essentially associated with our having objective reasons. It is concluded that because objective reasons cannot be possessed without our having alternatives, moral and prudential obligation also require that we have alternatives.

To investigate the effect of villagers’ moral obligation and village cadres’ public leadership on villagers’ collective action for epidemic prevention and control, against the background of the corona virus disease 2019 (COVID-19) emergency in China, we constructed models based on the institutional analysis and development (IAD) framework and employed principal component analysis (PCA) and ordered probit regression, drawing on survey data from 533 villagers in Henan province adjacent to the COVID-19 origin province, Hubei, China. The results indicate that: (1) generally, both moral obligation and public leadership as well as their constituent indicators contributed positively to collective action for COVID-19 prevention and control; (2) moreover, moral obligation and public leadership can strengthen each other’s positive role in collective action for COVID-19 prevention and control. Based on the above findings, this paper suggests that villagers’ moral obligation can be perfected through internalizing epidemic prevention and control norms into the villagers’ moral norms by the way of villagers mastering the rural public health governance scheme. In addition, public leadership can be improved through professional training of village cadres and by motivating village elites to run for village cadres. With improved villagers’ moral obligation and village cadres’ public leadership, collective action for epidemic prevention and control could be more likely to be realized.

Critical care clinicians routinely encounter ethically complex situations. Ethical conflicts sometimes arise from different perspectives regarding goals of care and moral obligations. These conflicts contribute to providers' moral distress and burnout and can erode trust between patients, families, and clinicians. To explore the most disturbing and most frequent types of ethically complex situations; compare clinicians' perceptions of their own, each other's, and shared moral obligations for providing quality care in these situations; and examine perceptions of communication and teamwork. A national, web-based survey was made available to members of the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses and the Society for Critical Care Medicine. The survey included rank order, rating, and open-ended questions. Nurses and physicians ranked similarly the most frequent and disturbing ethical situations encountered during critical care practice. Nurses and physicians rated similarly physicians' moral obligations, but their ratings of nurses' moral obligations differed, with physicians giving lower ratings. Physicians also were more likely than nurses to report higher levels of trust (90.6% vs 66.8%) and more satisfaction with team communication (81.3% vs 66.9%). Narrative comments revealed embedded, entwined, and sometimes divergent expectations about moral obligations, which interfered with effective teamwork during ethically complex situations. Teamwork in critical care would benefit from acknowledgment of and clear communication about role-specific, interdependent, and shared moral obligations. Opportunities for routine, team-based dialogue about ethical aspects of care and moral obligations could reduce role ambiguity and ethical conflicts.

Stephen Darwall (2006, 2010) argues that a conceptual connection exists between second-personal reasons (explained below) and moral obligations. In particular, he claims that, ‘‘moral obligation is an irreducibly second-personal concept. That an action would violate a moral obligation is...a second-personal reason not to do it.’’ A second-personal reason, according to him, is ‘‘a distinctive kind of (normative) reason for acting,’’ a reason made on one’s will and purportedly given by an authority’s demand or address. This paper argues that Darwall fails to establish the above conceptual connection between second-personal reasons and moral obligations. The failure of Darwall’s construal of the second-person standpoint does not imply that there is no conceptual connection between second-personal reasons and moral obligations at all, since another construal might work. However, given that his construal is probably the best version, its failure suggests the absence of any conceptual connection between second-personal reasons and moral obligations. The implication is that second-personal reasons at best account for only interpersonal morality, the morality that is captured by autonomy-based rights theories. In other words, the second-person standpoint might amount to an autonomy-based rights theory in the end.

Contractual moralists, such as Bowie and Donaldson, have argued that contractual agreement explains why corporations have a moral obligation towards the society in which they operate. They argue that a corporation’s moral obligation emerges from a hypothetical social contract that establishes its legitimacy to operate in society. Their assumption appears to indicate a logically necessary relationship between a corporation’s moral obligation and contractual agreement that establishes the corporation. We argue that there is no such relationship: a corporation’s moral obligation does not necessarily emerge from a social contract. We suggest that instead of assuming that a corporation’s moral obligation emerges from a social contract, it should be said that a corporation’s moral obligation is sustained by a social contract. This helps answer the question of why corporations have a moral obligation towards the society where they operate in a better light.

In the context of maternal–fetal surgery (MFS), an attempt to justify pregnant women and physicians’ moral obligations toward the fetus has been made based on the concept of ‘the fetus as a patient’. Somewhere else, we have questioned the internal coherence and consistency of this position. Here, we propose an alternative to the concept of ‘the fetus as a patient’, as the foundation of physicians’ moral obligations in the context of MFS. In light of Deryck Beyleveld’s interpretation of the precautionary principle and in light of Alan Gewirth’s theory of human rights, we propose what we think is a morally and procedurally justified argument for the existence of physicians’ moral obligations toward the women and fetuses they care for in the context of MFS.

This study aims to investigates the effect of the tax authorities' attitude, and the effectiveness of the taxation system on tax compliance. This study also wants to investigates the moderating role of the tax authorities' moral obligations on the effect of the tax authorities' attitudes and the effectiveness of the taxation system on taxpayer compliance. The population in this study are non-employee individual taxpayers who are registered at the Primary Tax Service Office in Pekanbaru. The sampling technique in this study used purposive sampling. To test the direct effect of the tax authorities' attitude and the effectiveness of the taxation system, multiple regression analysis was used, while to test the moderating role of the tax authorities' morale obligation, moderated regression analysis was used. The results show that the attitude of the tax authorities and the effectiveness of the taxation system affect taxpayer compliance. This study also found that the tax authorities' morale obligations moderated the effect of the tax authorities' attitude and the effectiveness of the taxation system on taxpayer compliance.

This study examined the mediating effect of moral obligation and moderating effect of social value orientation on the relationship between empathy and fairness behavior in Chinese teachers. Seven hundred and twenty-six Chinese teachers completed self-reported questionnaires regarding empathy, moral obligation, social value orientation, and fairness behavior. The results revealed that moral obligation mediated the link between empathy and teachers’ fairness behavior. Teachers’ social value orientation moderated the associations between empathy and moral obligation and moral obligation and fairness behavior. The associations between empathy and moral obligation and moral obligation and fairness behavior were more robust for those with high SVO scores (i.e., prosocial). This study identified the critical factors associated with teachers’ fairness behavior, supplying empirical support for existing theories and providing practical implications for interventions designed to improve Chinese teachers’ classroom environment.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the determinants of Halal meat consumption within international Muslim students’ population in China using the theory of planned behaviour as a conceptual framework. The role of self-identity (SI) as a Muslim, dietary acculturation (DA) in the host culture, moral obligation (MO) to purchase Halal meat and trust on the authenticity of Halal meat is explored.Design/methodology/approachCross-sectional data were collected through a questionnaire survey with 436 international Muslim students mainly originating from Muslim countries and currently studying in China. Data were analysed by stepwise multiple regression analyses to test the model and the moderating effects of SI, DA, MO and trust on behavioural intention.FindingsThe results indicate that a positive personal attitude towards the consumption of Halal meat, personal conviction and the perceived control over consuming Halal meat predict the intention to eat Halal meat among Muslims.Research limitations/implicationsLimitations include the use of a snow-ball sampling technique and the focus on only four individual characteristics related to religious food consumption, namely, SI, DA, MO and trust.Practical implicationsPractical implications extend to dealing with food policymakers and food marketing managers in companies who might pursue identity-, acculturation-, MO- and trustworthiness-related strategies in their distribution and communication efforts targeted at the growing local as well as international market of Halal food.Originality/valueThis study is one of the first studies investigating the determinants of Halal meat consumption among international Muslim students in China and a first application of the theory of planned behaviour-related religious food consumption context by considering four individual characteristics, namely, SI, DA, MO and trust.

Richardson on moral innovation

ABSTRACTThe notion of uncommandability has been central to how we perceive our emotional lives, and particularly romantic love. According to this notion, while we can control how we treat people, we have little control over how we feel about them. The argument from uncommandability is often evoked as a way of sidestepping moral obligations regarding our romantic emotions. One challenge to uncommandability is the potential to manipulate our emotions through psychopharmaceuticals. Much of the debate on so‐called ‘love drugs’ has concerned the permissibility and worth of these interventions. By comparison, there has been less exploration of their implications for moral obligation and responsibility. How might the emergence of these interventions change what can be emotionally demanded of us? We ultimately suggest that it is necessary to view the complex morality of our emotional lives through different evaluative paradigms: one concerning moral duty and obligation, where we have no claim to each other's romantic love irrespective of its commandability, and the other concerning the appropriateness of our reactive attitudes, where we are at times justified in feeling morally injured by another person on account of their failure to love us, regardless of whether they had control in the matter.