Moral Ontology Research Articles

The Order of Evils: Toward an Ontology of Morals

The Order of Evils: Toward an Ontology of Morals

Scalar Properties, Binary Judgments

abstract In the moral realm, our deontic judgments are usually (always?) binary. An act (or omission) is either morally forbidden or morally permissible. 1 Yet the determination of an act's deontic status frequently turns on the existence of properties that are matters of degree. In what follows I shall give several examples of binary moral judgments that turn on scalar properties, and I shall claim that these examples should puzzle us. How can the existence of a property to a specific degree demarcate a boundary between an act's being morally forbidden and its not being morally forbidden? Why aren't our moral judgments of acts scalar in the way that the properties on which those judgments are based are scalar, so that acts, like states of affairs, can be morally better or worse rather than right or wrong? I conceive of this inquiry as operating primarily within the realm of normative theory. Presumably it will give aid and comfort to consequentialists, who have no trouble mapping their binary categories onto scalar properties. For example, a straightforward act utilitarian, for whom one act out of all possible acts is morally required (and hence permissible) and all others morally forbidden, can, in theory at least, provide an answer to every one of the puzzles I raise. And, in theory, so can all other types of act and rule consequentialists. They will find nothing of interest here beyond embarrassment for their deontological adversaries. The deontologists, however, must meet the challenges of these puzzles. And for them, the puzzles may raise not just normative questions, but questions of moral epistemology and moral ontology. Just how do we know that the act consequentialist's way of, say, trading off lives against lives is wrong? For example, do we merely intuit that taking one innocent, uninvolved person's life to save two others is wrong? Can our method of reflective equilibrium work if we have no theory by which to rationalize our intuitions? And what things in the world make it true, if it is true, that one may not make the act consequentialist's tradeoff? I do not provide any answers to these questions any more than I provide answers to the normative ones. But they surely lurk in the background.

The Order of Evils: Toward an Ontology of Morals

Philosophy and Phenomenological ResearchVolume 76, Issue 2 p. 497-501 The Order of Evils: Toward an Ontology of Morals ROBERTO POLI, ROBERTO POLI Trento University, ItalySearch for more papers by this author ROBERTO POLI, ROBERTO POLI Trento University, ItalySearch for more papers by this author First published: 26 February 2008 https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1933-1592.2007.00150.xRead the full textAboutPDF ToolsRequest permissionExport citationAdd to favoritesTrack citation ShareShare Give accessShare full text accessShare full-text accessPlease review our Terms and Conditions of Use and check box below to share full-text version of article.I have read and accept the Wiley Online Library Terms and Conditions of UseShareable LinkUse the link below to share a full-text version of this article with your friends and colleagues. Learn more.Copy URL Share a linkShare onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditWechat Volume76, Issue2March 2008Pages 497-501 RelatedInformation

OBJECTIVISM AND RELATIONAL GOOD

In his critique of egoism as a doctrine of ends, G. E. Moore famously challenges the idea that something can be “good for” someone. Donald Regan has recently revived and developed the Moorean challenge, making explicit its implications for the very idea of individual welfare. If the Moorean is right, there is no distinct, normative propertygood for, and so no plausible objectivism about ethics could be welfarist. In this essay, I undertake to address the Moorean challenge, clarifying our theoretical alternatives so that we may better decide what to admit into our moral ontology and better assess what may be at stake in whether objectivists treatgoodorgood for(or neither) as fundamental. I compare the Moorean and welfarist pictures of value, providing an account of the form and function ofgood for. According to this account “good for” expresses a distinctrelational valuethat has its source in the value of persons. Good for value is thus a form of extrinsic value that provides agent-neutral reasons for action, and it plays a pervasive normative role in regulating child rearing, guiding individual life choices, and shaping social policy formation.

Wie Geschöpfe Leben: Some Dogmatic Reflections

Hans Ulrich's Wie Geschöpfe leben is examined from the perspective of Christian dogmatics, in order to make explicit the conception of the Christian gospel upon which the book is based. Wie Geschöpfe leben focuses upon the economy of God's works in relation to creatures, laying particular emphasis upon the realisation of God's acts in time. Ulrich resists `static' or `general' anthropology, which he overcomes by attending to creaturely becoming, hearing and learning as aspects of the new creation which determines human being. Accordingly, the concern of theological ethics is exploration of human history with God. Ulrich's work offers a corrective to excessive claims about the significance of moral ontology in theological ethics. Dogmatic reflection upon the book's achievement might consider a number of topics: (1) the need for closer description of the identity of the triune God, both in se and pro nobis , since Trinitarian teaching plays little discernible role in the proposal; (2) the significance for Christian ethics of the relation of the work of Christ to his person, as conceptualised in incarnational teaching; (3) the relationship between original creation and new creation; (4) the absence of any extended discussion of soteriology.

A Prolegomenon to the Relation Between Accounting, Language and Ethics

This essay outlines the preliminary structure of a moral ontology of accounting understood as discourse. To speak of an ontology of accounting is to speak of the most general features of accounting, those features of its existence that are present irrespective of variations in observed “accountings,” of ways in which accounting manifests itself in lived experience. To speak of a moral ontology is to construe those general features as products of human choices and actions which follow from axiological (value-based) commitments to pursue the good and just life, however that life might be understood, and indeed understood differently by different persons. Thus a moral ontology stands in distinction from, for example, a naturalistic ontology, one “freed from the freedom” of axiological horizons. Within its embeddedness in a moral ontology, the enactment of accounting takes empirical form as discourse – as an act of someone saying (writing) something about something to someone else (Ricoeur, 1976; Arrington & Francis, 1993). Thus if we seek to understand accounting’s force in the world, a force that is always valued and evaluated in terms of consequences for the good and just life, we get our most general understandings from attending to the ethics of language and its use. My task in this essay is to introduce the structure of what the elements of accounting’s relation to the ethics of language and its use might be. Expanding upon that structure remains a task for future work.

Moral capacity and its dilemmas

The book contains an interesting collection of essays focusing on the definition of moral capacity and the problems involved in determining whether a particular individual or a particular category of individuals has moral capacity. The book is divided into three parts. Part one discusses problems with the definition of moral capacity and various challenges to the concept. Part two carries the title ‘‘Professional Morality and Criteria for Health Care Decision’’. Part three discusses categories of individuals whose moral capacity is in question. The book does not systematically discuss q\uestions of moral ontology and epistemology. These questions are, however, implicit in the various conceptualizations and criteria for moral capacity presented in the book. As is to be expected, the various authors in the book take different standpoints with regard to these basic issues. It would have helped the reader if these differences in fundamental starting points had been made more explicit and their implications pursued in more detail. There are two questions that crucially influence the issues under consideration. The first question deals with the moral realism – antirealism debate. Is there anything real in the fabric of the world that serves as the foundation for moral capacity? The second deals with the question of reductionism. Is morality a relatively autonomous aspect of human experience that can serve as the basis for explaining human behavior? Or are moral phenomena to be explained in terms of some other aspect? Reductive explanations of moral phenomena assume that moral phenomena are not ontologically basic but need to be explained in terms of nonmoral data and principles. The nonreductive view of morality assumes that

Care, gender and global social justice: Rethinking ‘ethical globalization’

This article develops an approach to ethical globalization based on a feminist, political ethic of care; this is achieved, in part, through a comparison with, and critique of, Thomas Pogge's World Poverty and Human Rights. In his book, Pogge makes the valid and important argument that the global economic order is currently organized such that developed countries have a huge advantage in terms of power and expertise, and that decisions are reached purely and exclusively through self-interest. Pogge uses an institutional rights framework to argue that direct responsibility for global poverty and inequality lies with the citizens of developed countries, since suffering and death are caused by global economic arrangements designed and imposed by our governments. While this argument is certainly compelling, I have argued that it tells us little about the actual effects of globalization on the real people of the South—including women, children and the elderly. As a result, it can offer little in the way of real alternatives or policy prescriptions. As a moral orientation, a care ethic relies on a relational moral ontology, and leads us to consider different values in terms of human flourishing. Moreover, it pushes us to consider the normative implications of aspects of the global political economy which are usually not ‘seen’ at all, including the global distribution of care work and the corresponding patterns of gender and racial inequality, the underprovision of care and resources for caring work in both the developed and developing world, and the ways in which unpaid or low-paid caring work helps to sustain a cycle of exploitation and inequality on a global scale.

Scalar Properties, Binary Judgments

In the moral realm, our deontic judgments are usually (always?) binary. An act (or omission) is either morally forbidden or morally permissible. Yet the determination of an act's deontic status frequently turns on the existence of properties that are matters of degree. In this paper, I give several examples of binary moral judgments that turn on scalar properties, and I claim that these examples should puzzle us. How can the existence of a property to a specific degree demarcate a boundary between an act's being morally forbidden and its not being morally forbidden? Why aren't our moral judgments of acts scalar in the way that the properties on which those judgments are based are scalar, so that acts, like states of affairs, can be morally better or worse rather than right or wrong? I conceive of this inquiry as operating primarily within the realm of normative theory. Presumably it will give aid and comfort to consequentialists, who have no trouble mapping their binary categories onto scalar properties. For example, a straightforward act utilitarian, for whom one act out of all possible acts is morally required (and hence permissible) and all others morally forbidden, can, in theory at least, provide an answer to every one of the puzzles I raise. And, in theory, so can all other types of act and rule consequentialists. They will find nothing of interest here beyond embarrassment for their deontological adversaries. The deontologists, however, must meet the challenges of these puzzles. And for them, the puzzles may raise not just normative questions, but questions of moral epistemology and moral ontology. Just how do we know that the act consequentialist's way of, say, trading off lives against lives is wrong? For example, do we merely intuit that taking one innocent, uninvolved person's life to save two others is wrong? Can our method of reflective equilibrium work if we have no theory to rationalize our intuitions? And what things in the world make it true, if it is true, that one may not make the act consequentialist's tradeoff? I do not provide any answers to these questions any more than I provide answers to the normative ones. But they surely lurk in the background.

A Moral Ontology for a Theistic Ethic: Gathering the Nations in Love and Justice. By Frank G. Kirkpatric. Ashgate Publishing Company, 2003. 197 pp. $29.95 paper

Journal Article A Moral Ontology for a Theistic Ethic: Gathering the Nations in Love and Justice. By Frank G. Kirkpatric. Ashgate Publishing Company, 2003. 197 pp. $29.95 paper Get access Manning Garrett Manning Garrett Lambuth UniversityJackson, Tennessee Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Journal of Church and State, Volume 47, Issue 4, Autumn 2005, Pages 864–866, https://doi.org/10.1093/jcs/47.4.864 Published: 01 October 2005

Human redemption in (and of) the matrix of technological modernity

Despite the indifferent responses to the second and third instalments of ‘The Matrix’ series, the trilogy is nevertheless a valuable contribution to popular debate about the human implications of a rapidly emerging technoculture. In this essay, I will develop a reading of the Matrix scenario, not so much as a cautionary warning about the folly of developing intelligent machines, but as a reflection on the moral meanings of becoming increasingly immersed in a technological milieu. I argue that whilst ‘The Matrix’, the first of the trilogy, depicts a simplisitic opposition between humans and machines, ‘Reloaded’ and ‘Revolutions’ open up a more dialectical understanding of human meaning in a technological world and instead explore the tension between two competing moral trajectories of technological existence: the first, the unfolding of a bleak, nihilistic instrumentalism, the second, a reflexive recovery of human relationship made possible by the renewal of a moral ontology of sacrificial self-giving.

Reconstructing public reason

Acknowledgments Abbreviations Introduction: The Task before Us 1. The Present Dilemma 2. What Pragmatism Is (and Is Not) 3. Overview PART I. TOWARD A PRAGMATIC THEORY OF POLITICAL JUSTIFICATION 1. The Tyranny of Minimalism 1. Does Justification Matter? 2. The Limits of Proceduralism 3. The Limits of Agonism 4. Pragmatic Justification 5. Beyond Minimalism 2. Prospectivism and the to 1. Scope of the Problem 2. Belief and Will 3. Belief and Evidence 4. Belief and Context 5. Pragmatism and the Will to Believe 3. Narrative and Moral Reasoning 1. Narrative and Moral Experience 2. Narrative and Moral Ontology 3. Narrative and Evidence 4. Narrative and Doubt 5. Narrative and Public Discourse PART II. PRAGMATISM AND DEMOCRACY 4. Against a Second Pragmatic Acquiescence 1. Acquiescent Pragmatism 2. The Problem of Context 3. Experience as Experiment 4. Science and Democracy 5. Pragmatism and Egalitarianism 5. Against Deweyan Democracy 1. The Deweyan Revival 2. The Hegelian Deposit 3. Individuality and Community 4. The Problem with the Public 5. Dewey's Enduring Contribution Part III. Political Liberalism 6. Political Liberalism and the Limits of the Political 1. Desiderata 2. Public Justifiability 3. Right and Reasonable 4. Right and Good 5. Public Reason and Reasonable Disagreement 6. Two Difficulties 7. Public Reason and Public Institutions 1. Embodying Public Reason 2. Disagreement, Consensus, and Respect 3. The Judicial Model 4. Insincerity Examined 5. The Federal Model 6. Is Injustice Justifiable? 8. The Fact of Reasonable Disagreement 1. The Pluralist Narrative 2. Is Pluralism Necessary? 3. Is Pluralism Permanent? 4. The Fallibilist Narrative 5. Fallibilism without Skepticism 6. Legitimacy without Neutrality Conclusion: Liberalism after Minimalism Index

A Moral Ontology for a Theistic Ethic: Gathering the Nations in Justice and Love

Books reviewed:Frank G. Kirkpatrick, A Moral Ontology for a Theistic Ethic: Gathering the Nations in Justice and Love Reviewed by Heidi Gehman

Review: A Moral Ontology for a Theistic Ethic. Gathering the Nations in Love and Justice

A Moral Ontology for a Theistic Ethic. Gathering the Nations in Love and Justice Frank G. Kirkpatrick Pp. xii + 201 (Heythrop Studies in Contemporary Philosophy, Religion and Theology.)Aldershot Ashgate 2003 0 7546 3156 7 and 3157 5. Hardback£47.50 ; paper£16.99

Harassment Issues in Sport Organizations: Utilitarian, Justice, Kantian, and Existential Approaches to Moral Ontology

The literature discussing harassment issues in sport primarily focuses on sexual harassment and abuse. Discussion of this topic is dominated by definitions of harassment in terms of the biological, psychological, cultural, and organizational rationale for its occurrence and a variety of educational methods to transmit the “facts” of this particular form of misconduct. What appears to be missing thus far in the literature is a comprehensive moral ontological argument regarding harassment. We argue that these issues transcend and subsume sociological, psychological, educational, and biological variables. The purpose of this paper is to consider the variety of forms harassment takes in sport organizations and to discuss harassment from the perspectives of four disparate approaches to moral ontology in order to critically examine this practice.

Moral Philosophy and the Ontology of Relations

The essay undertakes to explore the possibilities of mutually fruitful dialogue between moral philosophy and ontology, in particular, the ontology of relations. The latter copes with the question of how relations relate, whereas moral philosophy often ignores the ontological implications of such crucial relations as “love” and “interpersonality”. The paper proceeds as follows. First, the ontology of relations is discussed. Second, various examples are analysed. From this, a conception of relation instantiation emerges, according to which to determine which relation actually obtains, one has to take into account (a) the context, (b) the specific content or meaning of the relation, and (c) some “action” or “decision” or “mode of existence” of the relata. This conception suggests that relation instantiation cannot be explained by a single formula. By the help of this conception, Hume's thesis of the identity of “killing relations” between human and nonhuman beings is questioned. Then, the relation of love is analysed. It is shown that love as a moral relation is perfectly explicable in terms of ontology. Moreover, its essence is best captured by the interrelation of the particulars, the relation of love as a universal, and by the relating “action” of the particulars. Finally, the alleged relation of universal fraternity (“interpersonality” as such), linking up each human being to all other human beings, is discussed.

A moral ontology for a theistic ethic: gathering the nations in love and justice

This work develops a moral ontology for a theistic ethic that engages the work of contemporary moral and political philosophers, and reaffirms the relevance of a theistic tradition of God's relation to the world reflected in the fundamental teachings of Judaism, Christianity and Islam. Drawing on recent thought in the non-religious fields of psychology and political and moral philosophy, which build around the concept of human flourishing in community, Kirkpatrick argues that a theistic ethic need not be the captive of parochial or sectarian theological camps. He proposes a common or universal ethic that transcends the fashionable ethnocentric incommensurate differences in morality alleged by many post-modern deconstructionists. In the wake of ethnic religious strife post September 11th 2001, this book argues for a common morality built on the inclusivity of love, community, and justice that can transcend sectarian and parochial boundaries.

Socrates' Argument for Immortality: Socrates, Maritain, Grant and the Ontology of Morals

Socrates' Argument for Immortality: Socrates, Maritain, Grant and the Ontology of Morals

Moral Ontology in Kant: At What Cost Freedom and Perpetual Peace?

Passages of transition intrigue me greatly. We read and teach the great texts which mark the mountain tops of our cultural terrain, remaining ignorant of the years of gradual change which account for the arrival at a new horizon on which a striking figure appears. The passage from the late Middle Ages to high modernity is just such an intriguing journey. I am keenly aware that my few remarks on the towering figure of Immanuel Kant deserve the nuance which only an account of four centuries of "transition" could provide. I wish neither to denigrate the voice of genius which can bring about revolutions, Copernican or otherwise, nor to ignore the prophetic voice which accuses or reassures us beyond the evident. Nonetheless, I wish to raise a cautionary question concerning the challenges of violence and healing in our culture: To what extent do both our diagnoses and proposed solutions to the problem of violence themselves still originate in the discourse of violence which, harsh as it sounds, was the result of that "passage to modernity" and which crystalized in the powerful discourse of the Enlightenment?

God’s Call: Moral Realism, God’s Commands, and Human Autonomy by John E. Hare

BOOK REVIEWS 477 "'hypothesis"), while still holding that it would be ideally preferable for the one true religion to enjoy exclusive legitimacy in the political community wherever possible (the "thesis"). In a society where the desirable "thesis" prevailed, it would be appropriate and even obligatory for civil authority to restrict the religious freedom of those without the true faith; this would entail no injustice, for "error has no rights." This theory is now untenable according to the Vatican II teaching-in a document significantly titled Dignitatis humanae-which affirms religious freedom as a universal right inherent in the basic dignity of all human persons, including the many persons who are religiously in "error." It is not at all evident how Simpson's ideal thesis can accommodate this teaching. The developed Catholic understanding of universal human rights, and the affirmation of the universal right to religious freedom in particular, would not have been possible without the influence ofthat same modern Western liberalism which Simpson disdains. This is an attitude he shares with Macintyre (notwithstanding their other disagreements) and several other virtue theorists of a Christian persuasion. It has become commonplace-and, for this reviewer, wearisome-to hear these thinkers cavil at liberalism for its proneness to laissezfaire individualism and moral relativism. The "recovery of virtue" program is thereby in danger of taking on a reactionary coloring. The judicious retrieval of Aristotelian insights could indeed serve as a healthy corrective for liberalism's excesses; but such a project must also more generously acknowledge liberalism's positive contributions to human civilization, and incorporate these contributions more adequately into a renewed virtue-centered moral and political philosophy. Pontifical University ofSt. Thomas ('Angelicum") Rome, Italy BRUCE WILLIAMS, 0.P. God's Call: Moral Realism, God's Commands, and Human Autonomy. By JOHN E. HARE. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 2001. Pp. x + 122. $14.00 (doth). ISBN 0-8028-3903-7. In God's Call John E. Hare is seeking "an account of God's authority in human morality" (vii). The three chapters--one on each ofthe topics mentioned in the subtitle- range widely over a variety of philosophical topics, both systematic and historical. Kshall begin with a careful look at his first chapter, which is the longest and most complex, and then comment more briefly on the second and third chapters. Hare understands moral realism as "the view that moral properties such as moral goodness are real" and moral expressivism as "the view that moral judgments are ... orectic"-that is, that their role is to express some act or 478 BOOK REVIEWS disposition that belongs under the general heading of orexis, which "cover[s] the whole family of emotion, desire, and will" (viii). Hare's approach in the first chapter is to set forth the twentieth-century debate between realists and expressivists as a gradual convergence between the two positions, beginning with a statement of each view in its most unqualified form and proceeding through a series of "concessions" on each side. Each concession brings the two sides closer together, until in the end we are left with an intermediate position that Hare calls "prescriptive realism," which is meant to preserve the insights of both expressivism and realism. The first thing to be noted is that as Hare has defined realism and expressivism, they are not contradictories. They do not even belong to the same domain of questions. Moral realism, as he defines it, is a position in moral ontology; to deny it is to be, not an expressivist, but an anti-realist. It is less dear how we are to understand expressivism. It may be a claim about the meaning or use of moral judgments. In that case, it is a position in moral semantics; to deny it is to be, not a realist, but a descriptivist. On the other hand, it may be a claim about the causal function of moral judgments in guiding action. In that case, it is a position in moral psychology; to deny it is to be, not a realist, but a fool, since only a fool would deny that the making of moral judgments plays a role in guiding action. And there is a...