Moral Constraints Research Articles

Counterterrorism, Dignity, and the Rule of Law

Counterterrorism, Dignity, and the Rule of Law

Did the Irish Save Civilization?: The Secret History of Constitutional Dignity

In their 1937 constitution, the Irish gave human dignity foundational placement, as a religiously-inspired root concept connected (as in the later West German case of 1949) to the subordination of the otherwise sovereign democratic polity to God, and for many to the moral constraints of his natural law. This essay takes up this neglected but revealing fact. It is critical that dignity came to the world as part of the establishment of an alternative, religious constitutionalism; this newer constitutionalism crystallized precisely in the 1930s when it seemed to many as if secular liberalism had no future. To understand the original meaning of constitutional dignity, in summary, it is necessary to attend to the confusing years just before war and genocide, for it was a response to different circumstances. The most illuminating context for the move to constitutional dignity, it turns out, is not in the shocked conscience “after Auschwitz” but in political Catholicism before it, which remained its dominant framework for decades, when the Holocaust still did not figure in moral consciousness. Focusing on dignity's Irish constitutionalization shows why this matters.

Challenging environments: Danger, resilience and the aid industry

Despite the widespread perception of danger, the aid industry continues to expand within challenging political environments. As a way of reducing risk, this expansion has been accompanied by the ‘bunkerization’ of international aid workers. While this development is largely viewed by the industry as an unfortunate response to a decline in external security, a more holistic approach is used here to explain the consequent paradox of liberal interventionism: an expansion that is simultaneously a remoteness of international aid workers from the societies in which they operate. The demise of modernist legal, moral and political constraints, together with a decline in the political patronage that aid agencies enjoy, has been important in shaping the new risk terrain. At the same time, these changes embody a profound change in the way contingency is approached. Earlier modernist forms of protection have been replaced by postmodernist calls for resilience and the acceptance of risk as an opportunity for enterprise and reinvention. Within the aid industry, however, field-security training represents a countervailing attempt to govern aid workers through anxiety. Resilience, in the form of ‘care of the self’ techniques, becomes a therapeutic response to the fears induced in this way. Viewed from this perspective, apart from reducing risk, the bunker has important therapeutic functions in a world that aid workers no longer understand or feel safe in.

Moral Status and the Direction of Duties

Gopal Sreenivasan’s “hybrid theory” states that a moral duty is directed toward an individual because her interests justify the assignment of control over the duty. An alternative “plain theory” states that the individual’s interests justify the duty itself. I argue that a strong moral status constraint explains Sreenivasan’s instrumentalization objection to a Razian plain theory but that his own model violates this constraint. I suggest how both approaches can be reformulated to satisfy the constraint, and I argue that a reformulated plain theory can also avoid an insufficiency objection. The hybrid approach consequently has no clear advantage over the plain approach.

Responsible negotiation: exploring the forest beyond the tree

PurposeExploring responsible negotiation is like discovering the forest beyond the tree. The purpose of this paper is to develop seven steps that might be needed for negotiators to become more responsible. These steps take into account the people at the table, but also those behind and beyond the table, and those needed to sign, ratify and also implement the deal. A broad responsibility should also integrate legal, moral, systemic and environmental constraints, as well as the future of the next generation.Design/methodology/approachNegotiation techniques may serve any goal, and therefore lead to irresponsible processes and outcomes. A selected review of the literature on negotiation theory is explored, and its current concepts are complemented to integrate responsibility.FindingsIn total, seven levels of responsibility can be identified for negotiation: towards oneself, the other, respective principals, implementers, absentees, legal compliance, moral norms and values, and the next generation.Research limitations/implicationsIt is not clear if responsibility for negotiators should be studied in terms of degrees on a continuum towards heightened responsibility, or if a negotiator should pass the seven‐step test to be considered responsible.Practical implicationsNegotiation skills are essential for leaders, who negotiate every day. Too often, however, negotiators' measure of success does not integrate responsibility.Social implicationsNegotiation involves social interactions, but is often conceived as a self‐centered process, and at best as a dual or two‐level game. It is essential to show how negotiations have social implications that go much beyond these close interpersonal interactions.Originality/valueThere is no other structured article on “responsible negotiation” – which means the paper fills a gap in the management literature. It is indispensable to launch a reflection on this topic, in the same way as there are reflections on “responsible leadership”, “responsible finance”, etc.

Teaching Skeptical Inquiry

Teaching Skeptical Inquiry

THE CLASSICAL CONFUCIAN POSITION ON THE LEGITIMATE USE OF MILITARY FORCE

ABSTRACTFocusing on the thought of Mencius and Xunzi, this essay reconstructs and examines the classical Confucian position on the legitimate use of military force. It begins by sketching historically important political concepts, such as types of political leaders, politics of the kingly way versus politics of the hegemonic way, and the controversial role of lords‐protector. It then moves on to explore Confucian criteria for justifying resort to the use of force, giving special attention to undertaking punitive expeditions to interdict and punish aggression and tyranny. Following this discussion, the essay then attends to important Confucian moral constraints on how military force is properly employed, including prohibitions on attacking the defenseless, indiscriminate slaughter of enemy forces, destruction of civilian infrastructure, prisoner abuse, and non‐consensual annexation of territory. The essay concludes by first discussing an illustrative case from Mencius and then comparing its reconstruction of the Confucian position to those offered by other scholars.

Is there unity within the discipline?

This paper will examine a claim that nursing is united by its moral stance. The claim is that there are moral constraints on nurses' actions as people practising nursing (nurses qua nurses) and that they are in some way different from both what for now can be called standard morality and also different from the person's own moral views who also happens to be a nurse, hence the defining and unifying factor for nursing. I will begin by situating the claim within the broader area about the need for a definition to state features that are essential to all and only members of its class. This will highlight the fact that there are two distinct types of definition used by authors seeking to find a unity for nursing. One type of definition has to do with goals or purposes given to nursing and the other with ends discovered as nursing. But even if there are ends waiting to be discovered a particular practical concern is how we can have knowledge of them. I will suggest that knowledge by intuition is plausible but that as things currently stand in moral epistemology it will not provide the unifying ground for nursing. Then I will argue that in the latter approach to definition a certain account of human nature has been advanced in order to provide features that are there to be discovered and so not dependent on human beings for the definition or classification. However, such an attempt to define nursing cannot do what is wanted. Rather than the account of human nature grounding morality and doing so for nursing, the account of human nature itself relies upon a prior account of morality. Because of this it loses its supposed ground of unity for the profession. Nursing is not united by its moral stance especially if this is understood in a strong sense as unique moral stance, but as things currently stand in moral epistemology this is not necessarily a bad thing for practitioners or patients.

Moral Permissibility Constraints on Voluntary Obligations

Moral Permissibility Constraints on Voluntary Obligations

Priority-setting in international non-governmental organizations: it is not as easy as ABCD

Recently theorists have demonstrated a growing interest in the ethical aspects of resource allocation in international non-governmental humanitarian, development and human rights organizations (INGOs). This article provides an analysis of Thomas Pogge's proposal for how international human rights organizations ought to choose which projects to fund. Pogge's allocation principle states that ‘an INGO should govern its decision making about candidate projects by such rules and procedures as are expected to maximize its long-run cost-effectiveness, defined as the expected aggregate moral value of the projects it undertakes divided by the expected aggregate cost of these projects’ (2007. Moral priorities for international human rights NGOs. In Ethics in action, ed. D. Bell and J. Coicaud, 218–56. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 241). I critique Pogge's argument on two fronts: (1) I demonstrate that his view is problematic on his own terms, even if we accept the cost-effectiveness framework he employs. (2) I take issue with his overall approach because it generates results which can undermine the integrity of INGOs. Further, his approach mis-characterizes the nature of INGOs, and this mistake is at the root of his problematic view of INGO priority-setting. Ultimately, I argue for a conception of INGOs in which they are understood as ‘organizations of principle’, in the sense that they are independent moral agents and so should be permitted a fairly wide sphere of autonomy within reasonable moral constraints.

Research ethics and Institutional Review Boards: The influence of moral constraints on emotion research

Researchers in the twenty-first century face a set of challenges unknown to researchers a half century ago--the need to justify the moral acceptability of their research methods through formal review processes. However, the role that moral constraints play in the development and demise of scientific theories has largely gone unappreciated. The rise of Institutional Review Boards (IRB) in the 1960s compounded the impact of moral constraints on scientific research and on the theories that develop out of such highly monitored research. To demonstrate the effects of moral constraints on scientific theory and research, this paper offers a history and analysis of the interaction between evolving moral standards and twentieth century emotion theory. Recommendations regarding IRB reform are also reviewed. The paper concludes by arguing that, while appropriate IRB reform is important, it cannot eliminate the need for careful reflection on the broader forces that shape scientific practice and understanding.

Research ethics and Institutional Review Boards: The influence of moral constraints on emotion research

Researchers in the twenty-first century face a set of challenges unknown to researchers a half century ago—the need to justify the moral acceptability of their research methods through formal review processes. However, the role that moral constraints play in the development and demise of scientific theories has largely gone unappreciated. The rise of Institutional Review Boards (IRB) in the 1960s compounded the impact of moral constraints on scientific research and on the theories that develop out of such highly monitored research. To demonstrate the effects of moral constraints on scientific theory and research, this paper offers a history and analysis of the interaction between evolving moral standards and twentieth century emotion theory. Recommendations regarding IRB reform are also reviewed. The paper concludes by arguing that, while appropriate IRB reform is important, it cannot eliminate the need for careful reflection on the broader forces that shape scientific practice and understanding.

Studying Mass Violence: Pitfalls, Problems, and Promises

This article examines some of the main pitfalls, problems, and promises of genocide research. It argues that genocide is a viable academic concept if protected from moral, legal, political, and emotional constraints. It should be approached in a dispassionate, amoral, non-juridical, and apolitical way. The article further discusses a model for understanding genocide that identifies three levels of analysis: the interstate pressures of the global state system and the influence of crises and war; the intrastate context of radical ideology, state power, and the dynamic of the genocidal process; and the micro-level conditions that enable the involvement of individual actors in violence.

Democratic Politics between the Market and the Forum

Economic analyses of democracy often draw an analogy between democratic procedures and the ‘consumer sovereignty’ of the marketplace. In contrast, normative ideals of democracy often propose that voters should aim at the common good or justice. It is suggested that there is a fundamental difference between the appropriate norms of the market, in which self-interest is permitted, and those of the political forum, in which self-interest is prohibited. These ideals are apt, however, to invite charges of utopianism. While I accept that morality may sometimes be demanding, my aim in this article is to argue that the appropriate norms of the democratic forum are not as demanding as sometimes suggested; the market/forum contrast is often exaggerated. The market is not a state of nature, so some moral constraints apply even there. More importantly, self-interest is allowed some place in the political arena, at least where justice or the common good is indeterminate. There is no need for agents to set aside their private interests entirely in the political arena. Thus, the ultimate guiding principles of the market and the forum are the same: agents are free to promote their self-interest within the constraints established by justice or the rights of other agents. It may be that these constraints are more restrictive in politics than in the marketplace, but the difference between the two arenas is one of degree rather than kind. Unless we think that even constrained pursuit of self-interest is too demanding, we have no reason to regard these norms as utopian.

Foreword: Moral panics in the contemporary world

The papers in this special issue stem from the conference ‘Moral Panics in the Contemporary World’, held at Brunel University in December 2010 – nearly 40 years since the landmark publication of Stan Cohen’s Folk Devils and Moral Panics (1972) and Jock Young’s The Drugtakers (1971) and ‘The role of the police as amplifiers of deviancy, negotiators of reality and translators of fantasy’ (1971). Over 150 international delegates from a variety of disciplines came together to discuss the continuing relevance of the concept of moral panic to analysing a range of contemporary phenomena. The aim of the conference was to explore and evaluate how the concept has developed and continues to develop, and how relevant and useful it remains to the analysis and understanding of current fears, risks, social problems and controversies. Speakers from the plenary sessions included the key progenitors of the moral panic concept, Stan Cohen and Jock Young, and current central figures in moral panic (re)conceptualizing, Chas Critcher and Sean Hier; the academic Catharine Lumby and the journalist James Oliver offered their reflections on being involved and implicated in specific moral panics. This issue includes: papers featuring four of the six speakers from the plenary sessions; a paper authored by Chris Jenks, who gave the opening address at the conference; and two papers from the thematic strands, the first by Julia M. Pearce and Elizabeth Charman, the second by Ragnar Lundstrom. The conference began with an opening address from Brunel University’s Vice-Chancellor and Professor of Sociology, Chris Jenks. In his paper here, ‘The context of an emergent and enduring concept’, Jenks traces the genesis of the concept of moral panic against the backdrop of the social and intellectual upheaval that accompanied its development. He then goes on to explore some of the subsequent developments since its initial formulation, in particular how the possibilities for breaking free of moral constraints have, in contemporary culture, become increasingly individualized and privatized – a process which has accompanied a more general shift in which questions of liminality and transgression have effectively moved to centre stage. Jenks discusses how transgression can be understood as at once a component of, and a counterpoint to, moral panics. He shows how transgressive behaviour is intimately tied up with the continual drawing and redrawing of limits on behaviour, with moral panics a means simultaneously to secure and redefine the

Is the Market Moral? Protestant Assessments of Market Society

Is the market moral? Do different Protestant traditions have competing views of “market society”? Despite the increasing diffusion of market logics in American society, scholars of religion have little empirical data on these questions. Employing discourse analysis of market-related topics in two prominent Christian periodicals over a twenty-year period, this paper compares evangelical and mainline Protestant evaluations of markets. We find that neither group views markets as redeeming, self-regulating, or value neutral, and both groups argue that markets require constraints. Evangelicals prioritize moral constraints on markets, while mainline Protestants prioritize governmental and democratic constraints. The degree of difference between the groups varies considerably by topic, however, depending on the degree of potential state intervention. We close by discussing our findings in light of recent debates over the relationship between religious conservatism and economic conservatism. We find that economic conservatism among evangelicals is driven at least as much by a commitment to collective voluntarism as by atomized individualism or free market ideology.

Trust and Privacy in Our Networked World

Remarking on the relationship between the concepts of trust and privacy, Charles Fried (1990, p. 56) [1] writes: Trust is the attitude of expectation that another will behave according to the constraints of morality… There can be no trust where there is no possibility of error. More specifically, man cannot know that he is trusted unless he has the right to act without constant surveillance so that he knows he can betray the trust. Privacy confers that essential right… Without privacy and the possibility of error which it protects that aspect of his humanity is denied to him. The important relationship between trust and privacy that Fried describes is often overlooked in the contemporary literature on privacy, as well in the recent publications that focus on trust and trust-related topics. The six essays included in this special issue of Information, however, give us some additional insights into certain conceptual and practical connections involving the notions of trust and privacy. In this respect, the contributing authors expand upon the insight in Fried’s classic work on the interconnection between the two concepts.[...]

Differentiation of human umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells into dermal fibroblasts in vitro

Tissue-derived umbilical cord mesenchymal stem cells (UCMSCs) can be readily obtained, avoid ethical or moral constraints, and show excellent pluripotency and proliferation potential. UCMSCs are considered to be a promising source of stem cells in regenerative medicine. In this study, we collected newborn umbilical cord tissue under sterile conditions and isolated UCMSCs through a tissue attachment method. UCMSC cell surface markers were examined using flow cytometry. On the third passage, UCMSCs were induced to differentiate into dermal fibroblasts in conditioned induction media. The induction results were detected using immunofluorescence with a fibroblast-specific monoclonal antibody and real time PCR for type I and type III collagen. UCMSCs exhibited a fibroblast-like morphology and reached 90% confluency 14 to 18days after primary culture. Cultured UCMSCs showed strong positive staining for CD73, CD29, CD44, CD105, and HLA-I, but not CD34, CD45, CD31, or HLA-DR. After differentiation, immunostaining for collagen type I, type III, fibroblast-specific protein, vimentin, and desmin were all strongly positive in induced cells, and staining was weak or negative in non-induced cells; total transcript production of collagen type I and collagen type III mRNA was higher in induced cells than in non-induced cells. These results demonstrate that UCMSCs can be induced to differentiate into fibroblasts with conditioned induction media and, in turn, could be used as seed cells for tissue-engineered dermis.

Law, Economics, and Morality: Response to Critiques

In our book, Law, Economics, and Morality (OUP, 2010), we proposed to combine economic methodology and deontological morality through explicit incorporation of moral constraints into economic models. We argued that the normative flaws of economic analysis can be rectified without relinquishing its methodological advantages and that moral constraints can be formalized so as to make their analysis more rigorous. We then illustrated the implementation of constrained CBA in several legal fields, including contract law, freedom of speech, the fight against terrorism, and legal paternalism. In this paper, we respond to critical reviews of the book written by Professors Larry Alexander, Ariel Porat, and Avihay Dorfman. Among other things, we clarify the scope and goals of the book, elucidate the relationships between deontology and consequentialism, discuss the relationships between deontological constraints and options, and address various issues in contract law and remedies.

The Social Network

Just shy of one hundred years ago, in his 1912 novel The Financier, Theodore Dreiser created a nineteenth-century moneyman named Frank Cowperwood. The young Cowperwood was a Progressive Era hustler: where other men made useful things, Cowperwood made his way in the world by buying low and selling high. Others might succumb to the moral constraints of church and public opinion, but not Cowperwood. He followed his appetites where they took him, from the bedroom of his business partner's buxom daughter to the backrooms of Philadelphia's corrupt politicos. As a result, he rose quickly, fell hard, and in the end moved west to Chicago to rise again as the hero of a sequel called The Titan (1914). Dreiser's Cowperwood was such a creature of his time that it is a shock to find him alive and well in our own era, living as an Asperger Syndrome–ish computer programmer named Mark Zuckerberg. The Social Network purports to tell the true story of the founding of one of the most widely used World Wide Web services of all time and, in the best tradition of the corporate exposé, to reveal the personalities behind the business phenomenon. Thanks to the writers Aaron Sorkin (of West Wing fame) and Ben Mezrich (on whose 2009 book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook; A Tale of Sex, Money, Genius, and Betrayal the film is based), The Social Network does indeed get its facts straight; indeed, it recounts who did what to whom with a grace and a level of narrative invention that most historians can only envy. At the same time, however, the film retails Zuckerberg and the rise of Facebook as emblems of a deeper historical transformation. In Frank Cowperwood's time, endlessly circulating capital transformed an economy built on farming and craft. Now, the film reveals, the ability of computers to amass and distribute information instantly is rewriting the rules of sociability and with them, the parameters of power.