Moral Wrongdoing Research Articles

Affluence, Vividness, and Blame

Abstract Most affluent people do little to aid those living in severe poverty. In this paper, we consider the extent to which such people are blameworthy for their inaction. We argue for three main claims. First, we cannot convincingly appeal to the phenomenon of non-culpable moral ignorance to argue that the affluent are not seriously blameworthy for their inaction: affluent people are either not ignorant, or else they are culpably ignorant. Second, however, a parallel phenomenon of non-culpable lack of vivid awareness does have some purchase in mitigating blame. Although this diminishes blame to some degree, significant blame is still appropriate, given that vivid awareness is to some extent under our control. Thirdly, there is good reason to believe that expressions of appropriate blame, which could alert us to moral wrongdoing, are systematically suppressed regarding global poverty. Therefore, the absence of blame doesn’t indicate the absence of blameworthy behaviour.

Not a Negation, but a Position: Kierkegaard on Evil and Sin

Abstract For Kierkegaard, the problem of evil is the existential challenge of our entanglement in evil, suffering, and sin. Sin is not a “negation” but a “position,” not a moral wrongdoing or lack of virtue, but a distinctive condition in which humans live. Nor is evil simply a lack or absence of good, but the weakening, obstruction, and destruction of good. This paper traces Kierkegaard’s account of evil and sin in his major writings in terms of despair, boredom, and fear. Sin and evil do not question God’s love, but rather become the occasion for God to create good out of evil, life out of death, being out of nothing.

Selling Who You Know: How We Justify Sharing Others’ Data

AbstractMany apps request access to users’ contacts or photos and many consumers agree to these requests. However, agreeing is ethically questionable as it also gives apps access to others’ data. People thus regularly infringe each other’s information privacy. This behavior is at odds with offline practices and still poorly understood. Introducing a novel application of the theory of neutralization, we explore how people justify the giving away of others’ data and the emerging norms surrounding this behavior. To obtain a deeper understanding of the potentially ambiguous norms surrounding the behavior, we investigate how people justify, i.e., neutralize, the behavior from both offender and victim perspectives. Across four studies, offenders appear more likely to admit to moral wrongdoing than victims assume. This suggests moral disagreement between offenders and victims. The discrepancy appears to be reasonably robust across different samples, apps and whether the other is identified, but diminishes when people learn how easily others’ data could be protected. These insights offer suggestions for businesses, consumers and public policy.

منہج دعوت کے جدید تقاضے

Da'wat is one of the most important duties of religion. It is the way of the Prophets to preach the religion and to teach the rules of the Shari’ah. The superiority of the Muslim Ummah over other Ummahs is due to this duty of Da'wat. Therefore, it is necessary for every Muslim to convey as much knowledge of Sharia, as much as he knows about Shari’ah. In the light of the strategy of Da'wat and Tabligh of the Holy Prophet Muhammad(PBUH), we need to seriously reconsider our situation and adopt the modern requirements for Da'wat. Scholars, nobles and preachers have a further responsibility to consider the duty of Da’wat as a religious and Shari’ah responsibility and to perform the work of Da’wat in a better way, to take into account the modern requirements that are helpful and supportive in Da’wat.As Muslims, it is our duty to be the cause of salvation for humanity and adopt the modern requirements to bring it to the valleys of civility and decency. It is very important to follow the modern requirements of our times for the propagation of religion, in which there is no Shari’ah or moral wrongdoing. The modern requirements of our time in teaching and preaching have become very necessary because with their help the work of years can be done in months and the work of months in days with a much higher quality than ever before. Therefore, it is a requirement of Da'wat in modern era that to make Da'wat efficient and fast, the work of Da'wat should be done keeping in mind the modern requirements of this era. This article discusses the modern requirements of Da’wat methods.

ON TRUSTS, HYPOCRISY AND CONSCIENCE

AbstractIn this paper, I suggest that taking seriously the way in which the trust is founded on a duty of conscience has far-reaching ramifications for the appropriate attitude towards new forms of trusts that are designed to allow people to enjoy the benefits of ownership without incurring the duties that come with it. The morally freighted concept of conscience that lies at the heart of trust law means that every claim against trustees invokes a demand that the trustee abide by the requirements of their conscience. The conditions on the right to blame others for a moral wrongdoing, and the relationship between blaming and suing in the context of trust law, lead to the conclusion that, in novel forms of trust that are geared towards the creation of a morally bankrupt “orphan property”, beneficiaries do not have moral standing to sue the trustee for a breach of trust.

The deflationary model of harm and moral wrongdoing: A rejoinder to Royzman & Borislow

With a series of studies, Royzman and Borislow (2022) purport to show that extant models about the conditions under which harmful actions are deemed morally wrong do not have explanatory power—for any proposed condition, various harmful actions meet the condition but are not deemed immoral. And they reach the following conclusion: judgments of moral wrongdoing in the context of harmful actions (or judgments of moral wrongdoing more generally) are not reducible to an explanatory template. However, they did not address the main claim of the deflationary model of harm and moral wrongdoing, which is that intuitions of injustice connect harmful actions to judgments of moral wrongdoing (Sousa & Piazza, 2014). Our first study adjusts Royzman and Borislow’ design to include a measure of perceived injustice, while our second elaborates their design to manipulate perceived injustice. The results undermine their conclusion and support the deflationary model, which we further refine here in light of the results of Royzman and Borislow's studies and ours.

A Critical Appraisal of The Role of Retribution in Aníkúlápó: The Movie

This study examines Aníkúlápó, a Yoruba historical movie, to elucidate cultural perspectives on retributive justice. The study is grounded in the Yoruba worldview, which frames retribution as essential for restoring cosmic and social equilibrium when moral norms are violated. The data analysis used textual analysis of Aníkúlápó’s narrative depictions of crime and punishment as insights into traditional Yoruba principles of retributive justice. The findings reveal that the movie accurately portrays customary public punishment processes in precolonial Yoruba society aimed at communal justice and harmony. Beliefs in supernatural forces dispensing divine retribution are also authentically represented. While punishments seek to deter crime and rehabilitate offenders, scholarly critiques note occasional unfairness and excess. Overall, the analysis of the movie illuminates the pivotal role of retribution in Yoruba's cultural identity and moral philosophy. The key themes in the study relate to retribution's links to cosmic balance, supernatural dimensions, and functions as deterrence and rehabilitation. By situating the analysis of Aníkúlápó within scholarship on African jurisprudence, the study elucidates Yoruba perspectives on fate, choice, proportionality, and pragmatism when responding to moral complexities and wrongdoing. This study contributes original humanistic insight into indigenous African philosophies of social harmony beyond punitive justice. This study recommends comparing diverse narratives and contemporary attitudes to enrich the understanding retribution's nuanced cultural significance.

Hard Work and Fun: Collective Online Interaction in a Case of Photo Fraud

Online platforms devoted to investigating criminal cases or mysteries are often seen as reaching outwards to identify suspects, promote punishment, and try to solve cases. Simultaneously, internal interactions between posters motivate them to contribute, even to outdo one another, and so a team spirit emerges. This article analyzes a lengthy thread on a Swedish Internet discussion forum, Flashback, in which a wildlife photographer was exposed for manipulating photographs. We explore how the online interaction is characterized by both competition and collaboration, as well as hard work and displayed expertise, and is framed in terms of the morally right and an underdog perspective. The posters' activities are largely directed at the photographer's moral wrongdoing and take the form of an internal process between the participants, where work and play merge. We analyzed the case with the help of Randall Collins' interaction rituals, Erving Goffman's frames, and the concept of playbour.

An error of punishment defences in the context of schooling

Abstract Whenever justification of classroom punishment has been attempted it has usually been on grounds that punishment acts either appropriately pedagogically, teaching students how to behave morally, or is a necessary evil that enables the practical running of the school so that it may carry out its educational business. By itself the first justification leaves punishment in schools as only an extension of wider social attitudes about the virtue of punishing perceived moral wrongdoing, rather than providing any distinct argument for punishment specific to the special circumstances of the school. By highlighting an entanglement between the moral and the conventional, and between discipline and punishment, within the context of the school, I shall argue that the essentially contested nature of education and its purpose, and the related question of the school’s suitability as a venue for it, means that the school’s most promising defence of its use of punishment—that punishment of students might somehow be necessary for enabling the important educative business of the school—becomes undone. Schooling and education are not necessarily synonymous, and as schools provide only one vision of education—and this vision is contestable—then upholding the business of any one school in order for it to achieve its particular unsettled and disputed purpose is not a morally sufficient reason to coerce a student’s compliance through regimes of ‘harm intended as harm’.

Moral Uncertainty and Our Relationships with Unknown Minds.

We are sometimes unsure of the moral status of our relationships with other entities. Recent case studies in this uncertainty include our relationships with artificial agents (robots, assistant AI, etc.), animals, and patients with "locked-in" syndrome. Do these entities have basic moral standing? Could they count as true friends or lovers? What should we do when we do not know the answer to these questions? An influential line of reasoning suggests that, in such cases of moral uncertainty, we need meta-moral decision rules that allow us to either minimize the risks of moral wrongdoing or improve the choice-worthiness of our actions. One particular argument adopted in this literature is the "risk asymmetry argument," which claims that the risks associated with accepting or rejecting some moral facts may be sufficiently asymmetrical as to warrant favoring a particular practical resolution of this uncertainty. Focusing on the case study of artificial beings, this article argues that this is best understood as an ethical-epistemic challenge. The article argues that taking potential risk asymmetries seriously can help resolve disputes about the status of human-AI relationships, at least in practical terms (philosophical debates will, no doubt, continue); however, the resolution depends on a proper, empirically grounded assessment of the risks involved. Being skeptical about basic moral status, but more open to the possibility of meaningful relationships with such entities, may be the most sensible approach to take.

Values Sub Ratione Boni: A Thomistic Defense of Values Work in Psychotherapy

The concept of values and its place in psychotherapy are once again under attack. I examine some new and old critiques of values work in psychotherapy, and of values language more generally. I argue that charges of moral relativism are unfounded from a Thomistic perspective. This is because Thomists have reasons to conceive of values as genuine human goods. I develop this argument on the basis of two Thomistic principles: (1) the principle of desire, that human moral agents can desire and choose only under the aspect of good; and (2) the principle of finality, that the goods to which agents are ordered are determined by nature and therefore are nonarbitrary. Given these principles, values work cannot produce the kinds of deleterious results that values critics allege. I address concerns about moral wrongdoing and the problem of rank ordering, and conclude by offering two additional reasons Thomists have for finding values work not only benign, but salutary.

The Internal Morality of Criminal Law.

According to a popular picture, criminal law lives up to the demands of its internal morality when its norms have counterparts with the same content in morality-when it conforms to what we call the mirror principle. This article argues that the popular picture must be redrawn by relying on a second principle, which we call the instrumental principle. Criminal law conforms to the instrumental principle when the existence of its norms helps to prevent or ameliorate moral wrongdoing. Our argument is that the instrumental principle forms part of the internal morality of criminal law, and supplies a justification for criminal laws that depart from the mirror principle. We further suggest that criminal law's internal morality is asymmetrical: though departures from the mirror principle are sometimes justified by the instrumental principle, departures from the latter are not justified by the former.

Offences against Status.

Philosophical accounts of status understand it either pejoratively, as social rank, or laudatorily, as the dignity possessed by all in virtue of our shared humanity. Status is considered to be something either we all have or no one should have. This article aims to show that there is a third, neglected, sense of status. It refers to the moral rights and duties one holds in virtue of one's social position or role. Employees, refugees, doctors, teachers and judges all hold social roles in virtue of which they have distinctive obligations, rights, privileges, powers and the like. This article aims to do two things: first, to distinguish the role-based notion of status from ideas of social rank, and to identify the various ways in which it constitutes a distinct category of moral wrongdoing; and second, to show that status, thus understood, is justified on egalitarian grounds even though, unlike dignity, not everyone has it. The moral point of status, I argue, is to regulate asymmetrical relations in which one of the parties suffers from background vulnerabilities and dependencies. Status as a moral idea vests both parties with a complex set of rights and duties, whose aim is to restore moral equality between the parties.

Moral Injury, Moral Identity, and "Dirty Hands" in War Fighting and Police Work.

In this article, I undertake three main tasks. First, I argue that, contrary to the standard view, moral injury is not a species of PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) but rather, on the most coherent conception of moral injury, PTSD is (in effect) a species of moral injury. In doing so, I make use of the notion of caring deeply about something or someone worthy of being cared deeply about. Second, I consider so-called "dirty hands" actions in police work and in war, and distinguish these from the morally legitimate, but harmful, actions of police officers and of war fighters, such as the morally legitimate use of coercive force and lethal force (respectively). While the morally legitimate use of harmful methods is constitutive of these occupational roles, "dirty hands" methods are not. Roughly speaking, a "dirty hands" action is one that is morally wrong and (typically) unlawful but done for the sake of a good outcome. Both categories of action are conducive to moral injury, but "dirty hands" actions much more so, especially given the slippery moral slope from "dirty hands" actions to egregious moral wrongdoing. Third, I offer some recommendations for reducing moral injury among police officers and war fighters.

Blameless Moral Criticism – the Case of Moral Disappointment

In discussing the ways in which we hold each other accountable for immoral conduct, philosophers have often focused on blame, aiming to specify adequate responses to wrongdoing. In contrast, theorizing about the ways we can appropriately respond to minor moral mistakes – i.e., criticizable conduct that is bad but not wrong – has largely been neglected. My first goal in this paper is, thus, to draw attention to this blind spot and argue that a separate account of blameless moral criticism is desirable. My second goal is to propose one way to explicate the contrast between blaming and blameless moral criticism in terms of the contrast between moral anger and moral disappointment: while moral anger, as many argue, is an appropriate response to moral wrongdoing, moral disappointment, but not moral anger, is an appropriate response to these minor moral mistakes.

Are ‘Dirty Hands’ Possible?

This paper argues that ‘dirty hands’ (DH) scenarios, where an agent is forced to do wrong in order to do right, are conceptually coherent. The charge of incoherence is a widespread and common criticism made by deontologists and consequentialists alike. They argue that DH theorists erroneously assume the existence of real moral dilemmas and then compound this error by claiming that it is possible to engage in justified moral wrongdoing. However, such critics argue that there are only prima facie moral dilemmas and hence it is not only irrational and obtuse to argue for DH scenarios, but also undermines our search for sound moral judgments in very difficult situations. Given the gravity of these charges, surprisingly little has been written in defence of DH as a coherent and necessary part of our moral vocabulary. If there can be no successful defence of the possibility of DH, then all talk of such scenarios become futile. This paper responds to two influential and what initially appear to be strongly plausible arguments used by critics of DH. I call these the ‘Arguments from Deontic Logic’ and the ‘All-Things-Considered Argument’. I present three responses which seek to raise serious doubts about their efficacy. I then support the possibility of DH by exploring what we can learn about our moral reality from the moral emotion of ‘tragic remorse’. This approach endorses the role of emotions in determining moral knowledge. It also rejects the view that ethical theories ought to dismiss DH experiences as incoherent in favour of questionable theoretical a priori assumptions, which seek a reductionist account of our moral reality.

Private liability without wrongdoing

Rights-based theories of private law tend to be wrongs based and defendant focused. But many private law wrongs do not seem like genuine wrongs, at least when the background distribution of resources is unjust. A very poor person, for example, may be held legally liable for breaching a one-sided contract with a very rich person. When such a contract reflects and reproduces existing injustice, it is hard to view the poor person’s breach of such a contract as a genuine wrong against the rich person. Conversely, some obvious moral wrongs do not generate legal liability. There is, for example, no private law duty of rescue in the absence of a prior relationship in many situations in which most would agree that there is a moral duty of rescue. Thus, private legal liability seems not to track moral wrongdoing in significant respects, raising the question what instead justifies such liability. Instead of justifying private liability in terms of the defendant’s wrongdoing, as corrective justice and civil recourse theorists do, we should seek a justification in terms of the plaintiff’s moral permission to enforce her apparent rights. Switching our gaze from the defendant’s wrongdoing to the plaintiff’s moral permission to enforce her rights will not be normatively consequential if the plaintiff’s moral permission arises when and only when the defendant has wronged her. But, I argue, background injustice can drive a wedge between genuine wrongdoing and the plaintiff’s moral permission. Thus, by reconceptualizing private liability in terms of a plaintiff’s moral permission to enforce her apparent rights, private law may be justified by the essential role it plays in constituting non-ideal political morality.

Attachment Theory and the Cry of Dereliction

Recent discussions in analytic theology and philosophy have explored how traumatic events can interrupt a person’s experience of union with God. Sparked by Eleonore Stump’s book Atonement, this problem has been treated as a type of “stain on the soul” relating to morally lamentable leftovers in human psyches after horrendous sin has been committed. While Stump deploys a science-engaged model of atonement to address many kinds of stains on the soul, one kind remains unaccounted for, namely, stains on the soul caused by trauma in which the survivor is innocent of any moral wrongdoing. How might such “posttraumatic stains on the soul” (PTSS) be healed through atonement? In this paper we offer the beginnings of a science-engaged model of atonement to fill this recent lacuna. We zero in on one particular kind of PTSS, namely, the experience trauma survivors can have of blaming God for their suffering. Drawing insights in psychological science from attachment theory and interpersonal neurobiology on the role of empathy for human flourishing, we sketch a model of atonement to explain how it might be that God, without being morally culpable, nevertheless makes reparation for persons who feel angry at God and/or alienated from God as a result of suffering trauma.

The puzzle of wrongless harms: Some potential concerns for dyadic morality and related accounts

There is wide-ranging consensus that harm or perceptions of harm play a significant role in judgments of moral wrongdoing. On one prominent view, the pattern that makes up the “essence” (Gray, Waytz, & Young, 2012) of acts of moral wrongdoing is “harm caused by an agent” (Schein, Goranson, & Gray, 2015, p. 983). According to Gray, Schein, and colleagues, events matching this pattern—a thinking/intentional agent inflicting some manner of harm (i.e., emotional/physical pain) upon a suffering patient—will be perceived as immoral. With this proposal in mind, we argue two basic points: (1) the current specification of the dyadic template would need to be further refined or “fortified” to withstand some obvious counter-examples; (2) this “fortified” formulation is still unfit to address the underlying concern: for any general pattern that is supposed to link perceptions of harm and wrongdoing, there are a number of cases (the “wrongless harms” of the title) that match the pattern quite well but are not viewed as immoral. We show this in four studies and one supplementary study. In our original study, we find, across six vignettes, that people may judge a behavior to be intended, self-serving, as well as foreseeably harmful and yet not judge it immoral. In our subsequent studies, we replicate these results with further checks and controls. With these findings in mind, we argue that moral cognition is far too complex and capricious to be reduced to a template.

Ethics of Strategic Voting in Popular Elections

Misreporting of preferences is a common behavior among voters but still considered as moral wrongdoing. I propose the conceptual framework of its dilemmas and argue that tactical voting may NOT be regarded as a moral wrong if implemented in a popular election. I examine the relationship between strategic voting and its moral burden in correspondence to particular moral doubts possible to found in respective literature. Thanks to voting paradoxes revealed by mathematicians and economists gathered around a movement called social choice theory I challenge 1) “the consequentialistic argument” and 2) the “express value argument” which eventually is regarded as non-conclusive whereas it presupposes not commonly accepted view on the role of election in democracy itself. In answer to 3) “sincere argument” which suggests manipulation since the agent does not express one's profound preference, so to say, does not vote naively, I distinguish sincere and insincere manipulations. Then, I challenge five of Sattherwaite's “transparency arguments”: 4) inequality of skills, 5) inefficiency, 6) non-transparency of voters' preferences, 7) non-transparency of representatives' preferences, and 8) randomness, which I treat by and large as a valid with minor comments added. However, I believe that some of the “transparency arguments” can be adopted as a virtue rather than a vice of democracy, because encourage cooperation and induce to actualize ongoing coalitions. Finally, I distinguish a weak and a strong position against treating strategic voting as moral wrongdoing. Former one argues that strategic voting may be “sincere”, therefore morally acceptable according to argument 3). However, the latter rejects the election’s claim to bear any moral burden and persuades that voting itself should be perceived as an ethics-free decision-making device.