Non-moral Reasons Research Articles

The Non-Moral Basis for Eliminating Retributivism

While increasing numbers of philosophers have argued for eliminating the retributivist elements of criminal justice systems, their arguments often fall short due to internal inconsistency. Some of the best known of these arguments — such as those provided by Derk Pereboom and Gregg Caruso — rely on the claim that there are moral grounds for rejecting retributivism. In defending this claim, these philosophers typically provide arguments seeking to undermine the type of agent responsibility that they believe is needed to justify retributivism. This is usually followed by an assertion that since the excessive suffering caused by retributivist punishment cannot be justified, it is therefore immoral to preserve remnants of it in our criminal justice systems. This paper — which opposes the moral case against retributivism provided by Pereboom and Caruso, and favors non-moral reasons that recommend rejecting a retributivist approach — is divided into three parts. In part one, I discuss why Pereboom and Caruso are correct in thinking that free will skepticism undercuts the moral justification for retributivism. Part two sets out to explain why their moral case against retributivism fails insofar as it runs afoul of the folk intuitions that are called upon to defend Pereboom’s account of free will skepticism. In part three, I provide a non-moral case against the retributivism that is founded on considerations of self-interest and empathy.

Contractualism, exclusionary reasons and the moral argument for theism

AbstractMoral reasons take precedence over non-moral reasons either by outweighing non-moral practical reasons, or by excluding such reasons. Several prominent defenders of the moral argument for theism have incorporated the outweighing thesis. They claim we have categorically binding moral duties only if we always have most reason to be ethical. Furthermore, we always have most reason to be ethical only if theism is true. On the contrary, I argue that the excluding reasons thesis is correct and that this undermines a key premise in moral arguments developed by C. Stephen Evans, C. Stephen Layman, and William Lane Craig.

Erratum

European Journal of PhilosophyVolume 27, Issue 3 p. 818-818 ERRATUMFree Access Erratum First published: 16 November 2019 https://doi.org/10.1111/ejop.12496AboutSectionsPDF 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 onFacebookTwitterLinked InRedditWechat In Formosa, P. and Sticker, M., “Kant and the demandingness of the virtue of beneficence”, European Journal of Philosophy, ejop.12455, April 25 2019, the following was published on page 2: Passage 1) Both Kantianism and Consequentialism have been criticised along these lines by Wolf (1982) and Williams (1985) for being overly detached from our moral experiences and from what gives our lives meaning. Modern ethical theories, according to these critics, threaten to neglect or diminish the importance of personal ground projects, goals and values, and the weight of personal non-moral reasons. Passage 2) Kant himself acknowledges overdemandingness as a problem at several places. In the second Critique, Kant criticises the Stoics for “straining the moral capacities of a human being … far beyond all the limits of his nature” (KpV 5:127). The Stoic conception of virtue is unfit for human beings, since the ideal Stoic agent, the sage, is presented as a “divinity,” an entity “independent of nature” for whom happiness is of no special relevance (KpV 5:126–127). In The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant warns of the “fantastically virtuous” character who is “too virtuous” and thinks that duty has to be considered in every decision. This would turn virtue into a “tyranny” (MS 6:409). Kant thinks that a moral theory can be criticised if, due to an unrealistic conception of human capabilities, it prescribes that finite human beings achieve an impossible ideal or requires humans to give their own happiness no special relevance or to exhaust themselves thinking constantly about morally insignificant matters as if they constituted genuine moral quandaries. These sections were incorrectly referenced and formatted, and should have read: Passage 1) Both Kantianism and Consequentialism have been criticised along these lines by Wolf (1982) and Williams (1985) “for being overly detached from our moral experiences and from what gives our lives meaning” (van Ackeren & Sticker, 2018, 375). “Modern ethical theories,” according to these critics, “threaten to neglect or diminish the importance of personal ground projects, goals and values, … [and] the weight of personal non-moral reasons” (van Ackeren & Sticker, 2018, 375). Passage 2) Kant himself acknowledges overdemandingness as a problem at several places. In the second Critique, “Kant criticises the Stoics for ‘straining the moral capacities of a human being … far beyond all the limits of his nature’ (KpV 5:127). The Stoic conception of virtue is unfit for human beings, since the ideal Stoic agent, the sage, is presented as a ‘divinity,’ an entity ‘independent of nature’ for whom happiness is of no special relevance (KpV 5:126–127). In The Metaphysics of Morals, Kant warns of the ‘fantastically virtuous’ character who is ‘too virtuous’ and thinks that duty has to be considered in every decision. This would turn virtue into a ‘tyranny’ (MS 6:409). Kant thinks that a moral theory can be criticised if, due to an unrealistic conception of human capabilities, it prescribes that finite human beings achieve an impossible ideal.” (van Ackeren & Sticker, 2018, 373). We apologize for these errors. REFERENCE van Ackeren, M., & Sticker, M. (2018). Kant and the Problem of Demandingness: Introduction. Kantian Review, 23(3), 373– 378. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1369415418000195CrossrefWeb of Science®Google Scholar Volume27, Issue3September 2019Pages 818-818 ReferencesRelatedInformation

Demandingness and Public Health Ethics

Public health policies often require individuals to make personal sacrifices for the sake of protecting other individuals or the community at large. Such requirements can be more or less demanding for individuals. This paper examines the implications of demandingness for public health ethics and policy. It focuses on three possible public health policies that pose requirements that are differently demanding: vaccination policies, policy to contain antimicrobial resistance, and quarantine and isolation policies. Assuming the validity of the ‘demandingness objection’ in ethics, we argue that states should try to pose requirements that individuals would have an independent moral obligation to fulfil, and therefore that are not too demanding. In such cases, coercive measures are ethically justified, especially if the interventions also entail some benefits to the individuals; this is, for example, the case of vaccination policies. When public health policies need to require individuals to do something that is too demanding to constitute an independent moral obligation, states have an obligation to either provide incentives to give individuals non-moral reasons to fulfil a certain requirement – as in the case of policies that limit antibiotic prescriptions – or to compensate individuals for being forced to do something that is too demanding to constitute an independent moral obligation – as in the case of quarantine and isolation policies.

Are There Distinctively Moral Reasons?

A dogma of contemporary normative theorizing holds that some reasons are distinctively moral while others are not. Call this view Reasons Pluralism. This essay looks at four approaches to vindicating the apparent distinction between moral and non-moral reasons. In the end, however, all are found wanting. Though not dispositive, the failure of these approaches supplies strong evidence that the dogma of Reasons Pluralism is ill-founded.

Climate Change, Human Rights and the Problem of Motivation

In this paper, I discuss some of the human rights that are threatened by the impact of global warming and the problem of motivation to comply with the duties of climate justice. I explain in what sense human rights can be violated by climate change and try to show that there are not only moral reasons to address this problem, but also more prudential motives, which I refer to as quasi-moral and non-moral reasons. I also assess some implications of potentially catastrophic impacts driven by this ecological issue. My aim is to locate, by outlining a normative perspective based on sound empirical findings, urgent climate injustices, and explain why well-off citizens in developed countries have strong reasons to avert the potentially massive violation of the rights of present and future victims of climate change.

Moral Rationalism without Overridingness

AbstractMoral Rationalism is the view that if an act is morally required then it is what there is most reason to do. It is often assumed that the truth of Moral Rationalism is dependent on some version of The Overridingness Thesis, the view that moral reasons override nonmoral reasons. However, as Douglas Portmore has pointed out, the two can come apart; we can accept Moral Rationalism without accepting any version of The Overridingness Thesis. Nevertheless, The Overridingness Thesis serves as one of two possible explanations for Moral Rationalism. In this paper I will investigate which of these two explanations a moral rationalist should accept. I will argue that when we properly attend to the form of Moral Rationalism supported by the intuitions that motivate the view, we are left with no reason to accept The Overridingness Thesis.

The threat of moral refusers for one's self-concept and the protective function of physical cleansing

We investigated how people respond to moral threats and the consequences this has for one's moral self-concept. In two experiments, participants first tasted a sausage and were then confronted with a bogus participant who had refused to taste the sausage because of moral or non-moral reasons. People disliked the moral refuser more than the non-moral refuser. The self-threatening effect of having one's morals questioned was also reflected in specific patterns of cardiovascular responses and negatively affected participants' self-evaluations. We further show that the negative effects of a moral threat can be prevented by a simple intervention of physical cleansing: Participants who had cleansed their hands before being confronted with a moral refuser did not show the negative effects on self- and refuser evaluations. Importantly, the protective effects of physical cleansing were most pronounced for people with a strong moral identity. Taken together, these results underline the importance of one's self-concept when confronted with a moral refuser, and introduce an effective intervention to prevent these negative consequences.

Francis Hutcheson: Why Be Moral?

Like all theories that account for moral motivation, Francis Hutcheson's moral sense theory faces two related challenges. The skeptical challenge calls into question what reasons an agent has to be moral at all. The priority challenge asks why an agent's reasons to be moral tend to outweigh her non-moral reasons to act. I argue a defender of Hutcheson can respond to these challenges by building on unique features of his account. She can respond to skeptical challenge by drawing a direct parallel between an agent's reasons to pursue natural, self-directed goods and her reasons to pursue moral goods. This parallel, however, makes establishing the significance of morality difficult. Given this difficulty, a separate aspect of Hutcheson's account, the additional weight given to benevolence in our assessment of mixed actions, can be used to respond to the priority challenge.

Is Education for Patriotism Morally Required, Permitted or Unacceptable?

If patriotism is morally unacceptable, as some philosophers believe, then also education for patriotism cannot be tolerated, although some other non-moral reasons might be in favour of such education. However, it seems that not all types of patriotism can be convincingly rejected as morally unacceptable. Even more, if MacIntyre’s claim is correct that patriotism is not only a virtue but also the foundation of morality (since we can understand and adopt moral rules only in the particular version in which they are endorsed by our community), then schools ought to cultivate patriotism. For, in this context, patriotism (understood as a moral duty, a duty to show special concern for one’s country and compatriots) is morally required. But if this claim is mistaken and some sorts of patriotism are at best only morally allowed, as Primoratz argues, then schools are not obliged to cultivate patriotism. Although they are not required to cultivate it, they may promote morally acceptable types of patriotism such as “moderate patriotism” (Nathanson), “constitutional patriotism” (Habermas), “republican patriotism” (Viroli) and “cosmopolitan patriotism” (Appiah). And the contrary, extreme patriotism which leads to hostility towards other countries, international tensions and conflicts should not be promoted in schools. Therefore, the answer to the question as to whether education for patriotism is morally required, permitted or unacceptable depends on which kind of patriotism is being discussed.

Dismissive Replies to “Why Should I Be Moral?”

Replies to Why should I be moral? are generally of two kinds: those that purport to answer the question and those that dismiss it as spurious. Those of the first kind aim not to discredit the question but to show that everyone, including the why-be-moral skeptic, is required by reason to be moral. Either that or they aim, more modestly, at showing that most people, though perhaps not the skeptic, have good or decisive reasons to live morally. I find these replies unsatisfying when they are modest and unconvincing when they are not;1 so it is with interest that I examine the second, dismissive, kind of reply.2 I start with a dismissive reply, hereafter called DR, that has several adherents and often turns up in ethics texts. Roughly, DR asserts that Why should I be moral? is ill-conceived—ill-conceived if it solicits moral reasons to be moral, because such reasons are plain to see; ill conceived if it solicits nonmoral reasons to be moral, because no one can reasonably request such reasons. This reply is unsatisfactory; it commits a serious error. The error is worth exposing, for it infects not only DR but much of the literature on the justification of morals. Also, the steps taken to expose it undermine

Are Moral Reasons Morally Overriding?

In this paper, I argue that those moral theorists who wish to accommodate agent-centered options and supererogatory acts must accept both that the reason an agent has to promote her own interests is a nonmoral reason and that this nonmoral reason can prevent the moral reason she has to sacrifice those interests for the sake of doing more to promote the interests of others from generating a moral requirement to do so. These theorists must, then, deny that moral reasons morally override nonmoral reasons, such that even the weakest moral reason trumps the strongest nonmoral reason in the determination of an act’s moral status (e.g., morally permissible or impermissible). If this is right, then it seems that these theorists have their work cut out for them. It will not be enough for them to provide a criterion of rightness that accommodates agent-centered options and supererogatory acts, for, in doing so, they incur a debt. As I will show, in accommodating agent-centered options, they commit themselves to the view that moral reasons are not morally overriding, and so they owe us an account of how both moral reasons and nonmoral reasons come together to determine an act’s moral status.

Reasons and Character

The importance of character, both within philosophical ethics and within our lives, is not limited to the role that the virtues might play, or fail to play, in defining principles of right conduct or providing moral guidance of some other sort. Bernard Williams warned, in “Persons, Character and Morality,” of the problems that arise from “treating persons in abstraction from character.” One of these problems, as Williams presented it there, is that we might misrepresent the relative priority of moral and nonmoral reasons. Unless we keep in mind persons’ quite particular concerns and loyalties, we might underestimate the extent to which the demands we can legitimately make of a person in the name of morality are limited by her other attachments. This problem is primarily of interest for normative ethics: it raises the question of which reasons we have and how they are to be balanced against each other. But in the same paper, Williams suggested that neglect of character also has significant effects on our understanding of metaethics. In particular, neglect of character can lead us, even in cases where the demands we make upon someone in the name of morality are legitimate, to misunderstand the source of these claims on her. In Williams’s view, their

Legal Obligation and Aesthetic Ideals: A Renewed Legal Positivist Theory of Law's Normativity

This article supports H. L. A. Hart's “any reasons” thesis (defended consistently from the first edition of The Concept of Law in 1961 to the Postscript to the second edition of 1994) that legal officials may accept law for any reasons, including non‐moral reasons. I develop a conception of non‐moral aesthetic ideals of official conduct which may provide legal officials with reasons to accept and apply even morally iniquitous law. I use this conception in order to rebut Gerald Postema's and Joseph Raz's criticisms of Hart's view, and suggest that my revisions offer reasons for renewed confidence in Hart's account of law's normativity.

Government is Good for You

There is an argument that government cannot be good for individuals because it causes them to act through fear of punishment, hence for non-moral reasons. The obvious responses of accepting the conclusion (anarchism) and denying the premiss about moral motivation (utilitarianism) are first considered. Then the strategy of accepting the premiss but denying the conclusion is pursued at greater length. Some arguments of T. H. Green and B. Bosanquet which attempt to do this are considered before an independent resolution is proposed.

Tragic Dilemmas and the Priority of the Moral

My purpose in this paper is to argue that we are not vulnerableto inescapable wrongdoing occasioned by tragic dilemmas. I directmy argument to those who are most inclined to accept tragicdilemmas: those of broadly Nietzschean inclination who reject``modern moral philosophy'' in favor of the ethical ideas of theclassical Greeks. Two important features of their project are todeny the usefulness of the ``moral/nonmoral distinction,'' and todeny that what are usually classified as moral reasons always oreven characteristically ``trump'' nonmoral reasons in anadmirable agent's deliberations.I show critics of modern moral philosophy such as BernardWilliams that their acceptance of tragic dilemmas underminestheir project of denying the moral/nonmoral distinction and thepriority of moral reasons. The possibility of tragic dilemmasrequires an account of practical deliberation in which moralreasons appear as already in-force obligations, with blame andguilt ready to be invoked, while nonmoral reasons appear as merereasons. This makes moral reasons importantly different fromnonmoral reasons in how they achieve their deliberative weight,and also makes them characteristically weightier. Thus,accommodating tragic dilemmas reinforces the moral/nonmoraldistinction and the priority of moral reasons, the very thingsthese critics want to deny. By accepting the possibility oftragic dilemmas, these critics are undermining their own project.The standard normative theories are dead set against tragicdilemmas, and the critics of modern moral philosophy shouldreject tragic dilemmas for the good of their project. Thus we allshould reject tragic dilemmas.

Morality and the view from here

According to one influential conception of morality, being moral is a matter of acting from or in accordance with a moral point of view, a point of view which is arrived at by abstracting from a more natural, pre-ethical, personal point of view, and recognizing that each person's personal point of view has equal standing. The idea that, were it not for morality, rational persons would act from their respectively personal points of view is, however, simplistic and misleading. Because our nonmoral reasons cannot all be adequately captured as falling within any single, unified and coherent point of view, morality cannot be adequately understood as a matter of abstracting from such points of view and taking them all equally into account. After considering several ways of modifying the initial conception of morality in a way that accommodates the variety of nonmoral reasons that do not have their source in a personal point of view, the paper concludes with the suggestion that we free ourselves more thoroughly from the grip of the metaphor that takes morality as a whole to be a matter of acting in accordance with the judgments of a single unified and coherent point of view.

On the Possibility of a Criminal Law Defence for Conscientious Objection

In this paper, I will discuss the question of the response of the law to the social phenomenon of violation of the law from moral motives. This phenomenon is characterised by the fact that the motivation behind the violation of the law is the desire of the actor to act according to his moral beliefs. In the case of “normal” criminality, on the other hand, a person violates the law for non-moral reasons, e.g., to obtain an advantage, to release anger, etc. Within the category of morally-motivated violation, too, there are different types of breach. First, a distinction exists between “revolutionary disobedience” and other acts. “Revolutionary disobedience” might also be motivated by moral considerations, but it is differentiated in that it involves violations of the law which are intended to bring about a change in the existing regime. As opposed to this, there are violations of the law which are motivated by moral considerations, but which are perpetrated by people who are interested in the continuation of the existing regime and social structure in its entirety. I shall not deal with “revolutionary disobedience” in this paper.Secondly, even within the group of violations from moral motives which do not constitute “revolutionary disobedience”, the present practice is to identify two types of breach: civil disobedience and conscientious objection. The main thrust of the distinction is this: in essence, civil disobedience is a political act, an appeal to the public, and its aim is to bring about a change in the law or in policy which seem to the violator to be wrong or immoral. Conscientious objection is a personal act. The violator feels that should he submit to the law, in the circumstances, he will be committing a moral wrong. The objector’s act is not motivated by a desire to influence the whole polity, but rather, by a desire to stay clean, and not to perpetrate, with his own hands, a moral wrong. In effect this is an act of the individual defending himself against coercive pressures to perform what he regards as a moral wrong.

Rational Choice for Machines: A Research Program for Normative Philosophy

Why be moral? The question is very old. It takes many forms and is subject to many interpretations. On one interpretation, the question does not make sense (failed presupposition); to ask it is evidence of misunderstanding. This view is not as popular as it once was. The more fashionable answer today is that we have reasons to be moral. These reasons may themselves be moral, or they may be non-moral. In the first case, we may not have the answer we wanted to our question. If we think of reasons as considerations favouring a course of action, decisively in the absence of other reasons, then the fact that there are moral reasons to act morally merely tells us that there are moral considerations in favour of acts required or recommended by morality. It leaves open the question of whether we act against or contrary to reason simpliciter when we fail to act as we morally should. By contrast, if there are non-moral reasons to act morally, then to refrain from doing what is morally required of us is a failure of reason; it is to act contrary to the considerations relevant to the choices one faces.

Freedom, Frailty, and Impurity

Part I raises some questions concerning the extent of our freedom on the view that Henry Allison's Kant's Theory of Freedom attributes to Kant, and the possibility, on that view, of weakness of will. Allison is correct to attribute to Kant the ‘Incorporation Thesis’: one is never compelled to do x just because one has a desire (even a very intense desire) to do x; a desire moves one to action only if one allows it to. But while the attribution seems correct, there is a puzzle: how, given the Incorporation Thesis, is weakness of will, or ‘frailty’, possible? Part II considers Kant's claim in The Doctrine of Virtue that we have an indirect duty to cultivate our sympathetic feelings. Allison's interpretation is unsatisfactory because it fails to steer clear of the ‘impurity’ problem: the interpretation seems to foist on Kant an endorsement of impurity, i.e. the seeking out of nonmoral reasons to induce one to do one's duty. To seek out such reasons is to cultivate an impure will, something Kant warns against...