Moral Truth Research Articles

Human Rights, Peace, and the Relationship of Moral and Legal Rights

The central issue that the author ponders is the question of whether law in its normative power depends on morality. In searching for an answer, the author turns to an analysis of theapproaches proposed by famous theorists and philosophers of law in their works, representing various currents of law understanding. Among them: J. Waldron, H. L. A. Hart, M. Greenberg,H. Kelsen, G. Radbruch, J. Raz, J. Rawls, A. Sen, J. Finnis and others. The author concludes that law purports to prohibit, require, and authorize even when its normsare unenforced, selectively enforced, or in some other way under-enforced. Legal reasons, or legal obligations, where they exist and apply, apply equally to all norms and rules valid in the legalsystem in question, regardless of how strenuously or laxly they are enforced. Legal normativity in general, and legal propositions in particular, do not, by their nature, reduceto or equate to propositions of another type, nor do legal propositions, by their nature, purport to be propositions of another type. The contrast is with views that propositions of what the law requires is just a prediction ofwhat courts will do, or purports to be a claim of what morality requires, or is in fact a statement of a certain kind of moral truth. For the person who accepts the law, the sort of reason the law givesis a legal reason – a reason that derives from law, just as one might have reasons that derive from etiquette, fashion, the game of chess, or a certain kind of cooking. There are reasons internal toa particular practice or normative system.

Vir Romanus – probus, honestus, benevolus? Postulowane cechy Rzymianina a wizerunki władców dynastii julijsko-klaudyjskiej w wybranych passusach dzieł antycznych

The aim of the article is an attempt to present a dichotomic image of the Roman ruler. It is concentrated on traditional features, understood as postulated in relation to person in power, such as justice, honesty, modesty and self-control. All of them belong to the canon of virtutes Romanae, and obedience toward them was characteristic of Roman society until the fall of Carthage. Along with its fall, the disappearance of true morality can be observed. The important turning point there is the reign of Augustus who, by undertaking the revival of old values, introduces a new order to the state. The article describes the rulers of the Julio-Claudian dynasty, and the emphasis is placed on a dualistic image of their behaviour (positive versus negative) presented in ancient texts by Tacitus, Suetonius, Velleius Paterculus and Florus.

On the way to eliminating theoretical difficulties of sociology of morality

The article aims at presenting theoretical difficulties of sociology of morality and possible ways to overcome them. The importance of this issue is determined by the necessity of the scientific study of moral elements of the contemporary society in order to prevent its dehumanization. Sociology of morality focuses on the empirical study of various moral phenomena (justice, duty, conscience) in the social space. At the first stage of such a study, sociologists conduct observations and collect data, and at the second stage, they generalize moral facts to identify moral patterns. In sociology, morality is considered as an element of society; therefore, it is not analyzed by itself but within a system of social relations. One of the difficulties of such studies is the ambivalent nature of morality, i.e. its existence in both public and individual consciousness: if sociologists ignore the individual mode of morality, they misrepresent the content of moral facts. Another reason for theoretical difficulties in the study of morality is that sociologists use outdated ideas about the nature of moral truths and researchers impartiality - moral judgments are considered as not being true or false, and the researcher should ignore his value attitudes when collecting and analyzing data. The elimination of these difficulties can lead to the loss of the sociological research specifics and to the merger of sociology and moral philosophy. Representatives of the new sociology of morality have to reform this field but ensure its status of an independent scientific discipline. One of the ways to solve this task is to use ideas of analytic philosophy, in particular, of moral realism that defines moral qualities as qualities of real things, and moral truths as having the same status as scientific truths.

Od redaktorów: Analiza dyskursu a prawda o dyskursie

Celem artykułu jest wprowadzenie w tematykę numeru poświęconego interdyscyplinarnym badaniom dyskursu. Redaktorzy tomu umiejscawiają tytułową problematykę w kontekście wyzwań, jakie w XXI wieku stoją przed analizą dyskursu jako perspektywą badawczą. Po pierwsze, chodzi o wyeksplikowanie poznawczego celu analizy, związanego z odsłanianiem mechanizmów forsowania różnych i konstruowanych dyskursywnie faktów oraz prawd moralnych. Po drugie, dylematem zarówno ideologicznym, jak i metodologicznym jest opowiedzenie się badaczy i badaczek dyskursu za analizą neutralną wobec swojego przedmiotu lub zaangażowaną w projekt zmiany rzeczywistości komunikacyjnej i społecznej. Po trzecie, wyzwaniem jest wybór między dyscyplinarnie jednorodnym a różnorodnym postępowaniem badawczym i wykorzystanie tego drugiego do wzmacniania wrażliwości krytycznej w badaniach dyskursu. W końcowej części artykułu prezentowane są teksty zebrane w tym tomie i ich główne przesłanki metodologiczne.

Ethical Ambiguity in the Hebrew Bible: Philosophical Analysis of Scriptural Narrative

Ethical Ambiguity in the Hebrew Bible: Philosophical Analysis of Scriptural Narrative

Writing Philosophy from the Periphery: Lixing as Foundational Empty Signifier in Tang Junyi\u2019s Cultural Consciousness and Moral Reason

This article adopts Ernesto Laclau’s notion of empty signifier to discuss Tang Junyi’s uses of the concept of lixing (‘reason’ or ‘rationality’) in his seminal work Cultural Consciousness and Moral Reason (文化意識與道德理性; 1958). My dual goal, in doing so, is to bring to light the relations of power constitutive of the text’s discourse on lixing and relate them to the problematic of writing philosophy from the periphery. I argue that in this work, lixing’s dual referents—as a translation of ‘reason’ and as denoting a Neo-Confucian faculty to intuit moral truths—allow Tang to inscribe himself in a philosophical field designed to exclude non-Western philosophies, while at the same time enabling him to symbolically relegate Euro-American philosophy to a peripheral position by filling in the notion of lixing with a content that legitimizes his own agenda. Tang could thus authorize his Confucian metaphysics by presenting it as the true content of lixing, understood not only as a universal faculty enabling humanity’s access to all that is universal, but also as a condition sine qua non of for one’s inclusion in the philosophical game. By attempting to co-opt the empty signifier (lixing/reason) for his own purposes, I argue Tang employs one of two possible strategies that can be adopted by those situated at the periphery in order to oppose the hegemon; one that leaves the structure of power relations intact but working in favor of the periphery.

ALETHIC PLURALISM AND TRUTH-ATTRIBUTIONS

Abstract The core of alethic pluralism is the idea that truth is a different property in some discourses from others. Orthodox pluralists such as Crispin Wright and Michael Lynch share three commitments that motivate their view. One is Ecumenicalism, the view that scientific and moral claims are both truth-apt. The second is Occasional Realism, the view that truth in science is a matter of justificationindependent, accurate representation, while truth in ethics is a matter of ideal epistemic justifiability. The third is Normativism, the view that truth-attributions are normative in a way deflationary theories cannot accommodate. This paper articulates the “aletheiological dilemma” for orthodox pluralists. The dilemma arises when we ask whether the truth-property relevant to truth-attributions is epistemic. Occasional Realism requires it not be, but Normativism and the pluralists’ other commitments require truth for truth-attributions to be a matter of ideal justifiability. The paper also considers some ways around the dilemma, none of which looks very promising for pluralists.

Where Can We Find an Ethics for Scale? How to Define an Ethical Infrastructure for the Development of Future Technologies at Global Scale

Despite companies facing real consequences for getting ethics wrong, basic ethical questions in emerging technologies remain unresolved. Companies have begun trying to answer these tough questions, but their techniques are often hindered by the classical approach of moral philosophy and ethics – namely normative philosophy – which prescribe an approach to resolving ethical dilemmas from the outset, based on assumed moral truths. In contrast, we propose that a key foundation for ‘getting ethics right’ is to do the opposite: to discover them, by going out into the world to study how relevant people resolve similar ethical dilemmas in their daily lives – a project we term ‘grounded ethics'. Building from Durkheim's theory of moral facts and more recent developments in the anthropology of morals and ethics, this paper explores the methods and theory useful to such a mission – synthesizing these into a framework to guide future ‘grounded ethics’ practice.

BENJAMIN FRANKLIN’S RELIGIOUS VIEWS MANIFESTED IN HIS AUTOBIOGRAPHY

The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (hereafter referred to as Autobiography) by Benjamin Franklin is really recognized as an American spiritual book that highlights the struggle course of the American dream and shows meaningful moral truths. Within the work, Franklin’s unique experiences towards RELIGION and his deep reflections on it are surly “on display”. By a close reading of his Autobiography, this paper delves into and analyzes those religious statements contained in it, trying to help readers sort out Franklin’s complex religious complex. By paying special attention to certain narrative strategies used by Franklin, the present paper believes that Franklin’s religious, moral and ethical thoughts are full of contradictions and conflicts. However, Franklin’s organic absorption of puritanism, dialectical use of deism, and rational speculations of all religions enable him to form kind and tolerant religious ideas, and rational moral values, thus realizing the self-consummation of moral under religious philosophy.

Defusing the Regress Challenge to Debunking Arguments

AbstractsA debunking argument contends that some target moral judgments were produced by unreliable processes and concludes that such judgments are unjustified. Debunking arguments face a regress challenge: to show that a process is unreliable at tracking the moral truth, we need to rely on other moral judgments. But we must show that these relied-upon judgments are also reliable, which requires yet a further set of judgments, whose reliability needs to be confirmed too, and so on. Some argue that the debunker faces an insurmountable regress, which disables the debunking conclusion. In this paper, I explore and defuse this regress challenge.

An empirical argument against moral non-cognitivism

ABSTRACT According to non-cognitivism, moral sentences and judgements do not aim to represent how things morally are. This paper presents an empirical argument against this view. We begin by showing that non-cognitivism entails the prediction that after some reflection competent ordinary speakers’ semantic intuitions favor that moral sentences and judgements do not aim to represent how things morally are. At first sight, this prediction may seem to have been confirmed by previous research on folk metaethics. However, a number of methodological worries lead us to doubt this interpretation. We, therefore, conducted a psychological study that alleviates these worries as far as possible. It turned out that competent ordinary speakers’ reflective semantic intuitions dominantly fail to favor that moral sentences do not aim to represent how things morally are. This challenge to non-cognitivism is defended and supplemented by considering deflationary theories of moral truth and middle ground theories in the cognitivism/non-cognitivism debate.

New Rhetoric and the Socio-Rhetorical Method: As a Modern Approach to Biblical Literary Criticism

The new rhetoric studies the discursive practices present in a text and tries to understand them as a literary method to persuade a specific audience to accept a new law or change their behavior, assuming a worthy moral, philosophical or religious truth. The new rhetoric covers the literary or rhetorical analysis of discourse while analyzing the elements proper to the social and cultural milieu of its intended audience. The aid of the human sciences, especially cultural anthropology and the sociology of religion, is necessary to capture better the world the loci of the speaker and the audience of the text. The method, which combines social and anthropological analysis with the new rhetorical analysis, is called social rhetoric. The social rhetoric analysis aims to hit the socio-cultural context in which the texts were conceived, especially when the text does not give any clues of it. In Biblical interpretation, these two forms of literary analysis will help to understand the relationships existent between the author of a discourse and its readers (the intended audience). Such an approach will not only study the social history and social aspects where the books of the Bible were born, but will also see the rhetoric of the texts as an essential component of the text’s social, political, cultural, and ideological context. After all, the Word of God became flesh and dwelt in a particular culture, with a specific language and in a precise historical time.

Opera for children-performers in the work of contemporary choir conductors

Opera for children-performers in the work of contemporary choir conductors

Against overgeneralisation objections to the argument from moral disagreement

According to the argument from moral disagreement, the existence of widespread or persistent moral disagreement is best explained by, and thus supports, the view that there are no objective moral truths. One of the most common charges against this argument is that it “overgeneralises”: it implausibly forces its proponents to also deny the existence of objective truths about certain matters of physics, history, philosophy, etc. (“companions in guilt” objections) or even about the argument’s own conclusion or its own soundness (“self-defeat” objections). My aim in this article is to provide a detailed clarification and assessment of this overgeneralisation charge. Various (mostly empirical) issues relevant to assessing the above objections have so far not been sufficiently investigated. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to believe that realists have exaggerated the significance of their overgeneralisation charge. Both its companions in guilt and its self-defeat versions likely fail.

Moral tribalism and its discontents: How intuitive theories of ethics shape consumers' deference to experts

AbstractWe study the psychology at the intersection of two social trends. First, as markets become increasingly specialized, consumers must increasingly defer to outside experts to decide among complex products. Second, people divide themselves increasingly into moral tribes, defining themselves in terms of shared values with their group and often seeing these values as being objectively right or wrong. We tested how and why these tribalistic tendencies affect consumers' willingness to defer to experts. We find that consumers are indeed tribalistic in which experts they find convincing, preferring products advocated by experts who share their moral values (Study 1), with this effect generalizing across product categories (books and electronics) and measures (purchase intentions, information‐seeking, willingness‐to‐pay, product attitudes, and consequential choices). We also establish the mechanisms underlying these effects: because many consumers believe moral matters to be objective facts, experts who disagree with those values are seen as less competent and therefore less believable (Studies 2 and 3), with this effect strongest among consumers who are high in their belief in objective moral truth (Study 4). Overall, these studies seek not only to establish dynamics of tribalistic deference to experts but also to identify which consumers are more or less likely to fall prey to these tribalistic tendencies.

A genealogia da vontade de verdade:

No início da década de 1970, a preocupação com uma melhor definição de práticas discursivas permeia o horizonte de pesquisas do filósofo francês Michel Foucault. A noção de acontecimento discursivo ganha proeminência em seu primeiro curso no Collège de France, Aulas sobre a vontade de saber. Apropriando-se daquilo que denomina “sistema Nietzsche”, Foucault volta-se para a emergência de uma ética da verdade na Grécia clássica que não teria sua origem em um sistema filosófico como o de Aristóteles. Nessa perspectiva, o discurso verdadeiro seria um efeito de práticas muito diversas e teria sua conformação a partir de exigências político-econômicas e jurídico-religiosas. Com isso, a exclusão do raciocínio sofístico empreendida por Aristóteles seria o efeito último de uma série de transformações que permeiam os séculos VII e VI a.C. na Grécia, e não um acontecimento discursivo único e lapidar deste tipo de relação para com o discurso verdadeiro. Foucault quer mostrar que “um acontecimento é sempre uma dispersão; uma multiplicidade. É o que passa aqui e ali; é policéfalo”.

Rawlsian Constructivism: A Practical Guide to Reflective Equilibrium

Many normative theorists want to contribute to making the world a better place. In recent years, it has been suggested that to realise this ambition one must start with an adequate description of real-life practices. To determine what should be done, however, one must also fundamentally criticise existing moral beliefs. The method of reflective equilibrium offers a way of doing both. Yet, its practical usefulness has been doubted and it has been largely ignored in the recent practical turn of normative theorising. This paper offers a complementary methodology to the method of reflective equilibrium, referred to as Rawlsian constructivism, which brings forth its practical merits. With the support of Rawlsian constructivism, the method of reflective equilibrium becomes a tool for public reasoning about practical problems which aims to facilitate shared solutions. The process of reflective scrutiny is used, not in the search of moral truth, but rather to highlight what stands in the way of solutions to problems agents face in different domains of social life. The practical value lies in scrutinising reasons for action that are taken for granted, explicating new rationales for action and highlighting neglected points of agreement. The paper exemplifies this approach with a process of justifying individual obligations to combat climate change. Normative theorists who share the practical agenda have correctly noted the importance of bottom-up investigations of subject domains. This paper argues that the next step should be to utilise this version of the method of reflective equilibrium to explore the potential for morally progressive solutions to these problems.

Assembling Styles of Truth in Rwanda’s Gacaca Process

The gacaca process was introduced in Rwandan society to deal with the legacy of the 1994 genocide against Tutsi. Empirically informed research points to the ambiguous and ambivalent attitudes of participants regarding testimonial activities, namely the search for the truth. Hence the questions: what does the gacaca experience reveal about this elusive and multidimensional notion called ‘the truth’? And, what does ‘the truth’ as experienced by Rwandans reveal about the nature of the gacaca process? This article aims to answer these questions by identifying and qualifying the different styles of truth at work in the gacaca process, namely the forensic truth, the moral truth, the effectual truth and, the Truth-with-a-Capital-T. The first is a consequence of the design of the court system, the second is derived from the socio-cultural context, the third is a consequence of the decentralised milieu in which the gacaca courts were inserted, the fourth is the result of the overall political context in which the gacaca activities took place. This process of assembling these different styles of truths is conceptualised through the notion of agencement that captures the intricate interplay of agency and structure, contingency and structuration, change and organisation shaping the gacaca process.

The Blackness in The Bluest Eye

Novels, of any time, carry certain stories related to reality. The earlier forms of the Novel, Allegory and Romance, contained religious, philosophical facts. These literary genres took the shape of Novels, which continue to carry moral, philosophical and historical truths. George Meredith, a Victorian novelist, defined Novel as the ‘summary of actual life’. According to William Henry Hudson, an English writer, Novel is an effective medium of the portrayal of human thoughts and actions.
 The English word, Novel derived from the Italian term, Novelle, which means ‘a fresh story’. It was in 1350 that the Italian writer, Giovanny Boccassio, wrote his world famous collection of love stories in prose, named Decameron. Such stories in prose were called ‘novelle’ and a story in verse was known as ‘romance’. It meant a story of the legendary past. Malory’s Morte d’Arthur is an example. Some experts gave various definitions for a ‘Novel’. According to an American novelist, F. Marion Crawford, a Novel is a pocket theatre; a novel contained all accessories of a drama without requiring to be staged before an audience. George Meredith, an English novelist, called it a ‘summary of actual life’ including both ‘the within and the without’. According to W.H Hudson, Novel is an effective medium of the portrayal of human thought and action, ‘combining in itself the creations of poetry, the details of history and generalised experience of philosophy’.

Free emotional expression as a strategy for trauma resistance in Kalatozov’s The Cranes Are Flying (1957) and Zarkhi’s Anna Karenina (1967)

ABSTRACTDrawing on Thomas Elsaesser and Malte Hagener’s idea that film is capable of interacting with the spectator on the bodily, unconscious level, I explore how two Soviet films with Tat’iana Samoilova in the lead role, The Cranes Are Flying (dir. Mikhail Kalatozov, 1957) and Anna Karenina (dir. Aleksandr Zarkhi, 1967), communicate strategies for free emotional expression as well as anticipation of meaningfulness and ‘enlightenment’ beyond trauma and suffering. The technical means employed to educate the spectator on how to cope with trauma include Samoilova’s exaggerated manner of play, the actors’ body language, an experimental soundtrack and the novelistic mode of representation characterised by a discrepancy between the characters’ limited perspectives and the omniscient narrator’s outlook. By celebrating vulnerability as a path to true morality, understood by Emmanuel Levinas as ‘stepping in for the other’, both films communicate the ethical ideals of the intelligentsia during the Thaw era, which linked authenticity in emotional expression with morality and finding meaning beyond trauma. ‘Enlightenment’ beyond trauma, as it is imagined by the two films under discussion, includes representing vulnerability as a path to self-awareness and a support for the vulnerable as a way to reunite with one’s true self.