Non-moral Values Research Articles

Hip to Be Square: Moral Saints Revisited

I defend the continuing importance, and attraction of, moral saints. The objective of this paper is twofold; firstly, to critique Wolf’s definition of sainthood, and secondly, to argue against her view that one should not desire to be a moral saint, nor emulate them. In section 1, I argue that moral saints are highly complex moral agents, and that Wolf’s definition does not capture this complexity. My second argument is that Wolf’s account that there are two kinds of saints, loving and rational, leads to a tension. Either: (1) the distinction between loving and rational saints is justifiable; but then arguments against the benefits of sainthood ought to be directed independently against each kind of saint which, Wolf does not do; or (2) the distinction is not justifiable, in which case the division is explanatorily impotent. In section 2, I will present Wolf’s argument for why one should not want to be a moral saint, nor even know one. I counter that Wolf over-emphasises non-moral values, to the point that these values have a monopoly on what constitutes a well-rounded life. Wolf must provide a more definitive scope for non-moral values, as the distinction between moral and non-moral values is ambiguous. Finally, I argue that moral saints can serve as moral exemplars and visionaries. By admiring and emulating them, we can adapt our own moral behavior, and by example, moral saints can discover new and better ways of pursuing moral goods.

Who attributes what to whom? Moral values and relational context shape causal attribution to the person or the situation

Eight preregistered studies (total N = 3,758) investigate the role of values and relational context in attributions for moral violations, focusing on the following questions: (1) Do people’s values influence their attributions? (2) Do people’s relationships with the violator (self, close other, distant other) influence their attributions? (3) Do the principles intrinsic to the violated values (e.g., loyalty to close others) further influence their attributions? We found that participants were more likely to attribute violations by distant others to the person committing the violation, rather than the situation in which the violation occurred, when participants endorsed the violated values themselves. The tendency to make dispositional attributions did not obtain for violations of participants’ less highly endorsed moral values or non-moral values. Relationship with the violator also influenced participants’ attributions—participants were more likely to attribute their own and close others’ moral violations to situational factors, relative to distant others’ violations. This relational pattern was pronounced for violations of “binding” moral values, in which protection of personal relationships and groups is primary. Collectively, these results support a relational-values account of causal attribution for moral violations, whereby attributions systematically vary based on (1) the relevance of the violated values to the attributor’s moral values, (2) the attributor’s personal relationship to the violator, and (3) an interaction between (1) and (2) such that the principles intrinsic to the violated values influence the effects of one’s relationship to the violator.

Beauty Makes Humanity: The Application of Kant’s Aesthetic Power of Judgment in Value Choice

Abstract In this paper, I use Kant’s theory of the aesthetic power of judgment to solve the problem of nonmoral value choice, which Kant himself did not deal with, and prove that my reconstruction can fit into Kant’s philosophy and function as a harmonization and unification of morality and happiness. First, I revisit Kant’s early view of intellectualized happiness to establish the feasibility of this project in Kant’s ethics. Second, by analogy with the contemplative judgment of taste and practical artistic creation, I argue for the universal communicability of pleasure in value choice from the transcendental perspective, on the one hand, and explain the various choices by individuals in reality from the empirical perspective, on the other. Ultimately, I connect the pursuit of intellectual happiness with the fulfillment of the imperfect duty of one’s own perfection, through which a transition from nature to freedom can be accomplished in Kant’s philosophy.

Morality on holiday: inspiring ethical behaviour in animal-based tourism through nonmoral values

ABSTRACT Despite the progression of animal welfare within the tourism literature and the industry itself, a significant change in public behaviour remains to be seen. Anthropocentric views of animals as objects are still widespread. This paper proposes a new approach to engaging the public in ethical behaviours by meeting visitors where they are in terms of their values and priorities. Drawing on Susan Wolf’s work, we propose a realistic line of attack to ethics that offers an opportunity for researchers and advocates to think more critically about the many ways that people might relate to morality, particularly regarding animals encountered in travel. We suggest that this approach may serve to better the lives of the animals by appealing to tourists’ nuanced ethical stances regarding animals.

Subjectivity does not necessarily entail arbitrariness

The thesis of the paper is that both non-moral and moral values are subjective and also objective. Non-moral values are objective because they are subjected to commensurability and have a price. They are subjective because they depend for their existence on the fact that somebody has decided to realize an end, the realization of which is a non-moral value (if the process of realization was successful); there are indefinitely many criteria of non-moral values. Moral values are objective because the criterion of moral evaluation is one and invariable. They are subjective because their existence depends on the fact of our being interested in their existence: interest in being able to be interested. That is possible only because subjectivity does not necessarily imply arbitrariness.

Scheler’s Reflections on “What is Good?”

In Max Scheler’s non-formal ethics of value, “good” is a value but by no means a “non-moral value”; rather, it is a second-order “moral value,” always appearing in the realization of first-order non-moral values. According to the relevant notion of the a priori of phenomenology, whilst all the non-moral values are given in “value cognition,” the moral value of good is self-given in “moral cognition”. The reflections and answers offered by Scheler’s non-formal ethics of value on “What is good?” constitute the foundation of a phenomenological “meta-ethics”.

Consequentialism and the boundary of morality

ABSTRACTA series of our experimental studies show that some actions which consequentialists would treat as morally right or wrong were not regarded by ordinary people as a matter of morality. These results suggest that there is a divide between the moral and the non-moral that ordinary people intuitively believe in but that consequentialism seems unable to accommodate. We argue that the root of this conflict lies in the inclusion of non-moral value in the consequentialist theory of the good, which causes consequentialism to deny, in all cases involving primarily non-moral value, a moral/non-moral divide. We argue further that there is no good theoretical reason (other than that which motivates consequentialism) to think that such a divide is unjustified. Therefore, consequentialism faces a problem: any version of consequentialism that allows non-moral value into the theory of the good will be at odds with a substantial number of seemingly justified intuitions.

Clive Beck: A Philosophical Appraisal

The foc us of this essay is philosophical. Arguments are offered stating that the Reflective Approach to Clive Beck's values education is either logically inconsistent or incoherent insofar as Beck muddles the theoretical distinction which needs to be made between moral and non-moral values , and between ultimate life goals andcorresponding means values which may be either specific or intermediate. Criticisms are also offered suggesting that the Reflective Approach is relativistic and inadequate to deal with interpersonal conflict, an important aspect of moral value experience.

True happiness: The role of morality in the folk concept of happiness.

Recent scientific research has settled on a purely descriptive definition of happiness that is focused solely on agents' psychological states (high positive affect, low negative affect, high life satisfaction). In contrast to this understanding, recent research has suggested that the ordinary concept of happiness is also sensitive to the moral value of agents' lives. Five studies systematically investigate and explain the impact of morality on ordinary assessments of happiness. Study 1 demonstrates that moral judgments influence assessments of happiness not only for untrained participants, but also for academic researchers and even in those who study happiness specifically. Studies 2 and 3 then respectively ask whether this effect may be explained by general motivational biases or beliefs in a just world. In both cases, we find evidence against these explanations. Study 4 shows that the impact of moral judgments cannot be explained by changes in the perception of descriptive psychological states. Finally, Study 5 compares the impact of moral and nonmoral value, and provides evidence that unlike nonmoral value, moral value is part of the criteria that govern the ordinary concept of happiness. Taken together, these studies provide a specific explanation of how and why the ordinary concept of happiness deviates from the definition used by researchers studying happiness. (PsycINFO Database Record

Respect for personhood in medical and psychiatric ethics

Summary This paper considers a number of questions concerning a central principle of modern liberal medical ethics – that of respect for patient autonomy. This principle is generally interpreted as a consequence of the more fundamental ethical requirement of respect for personhood, defined in terms of the ‘autonomy’ of a rational being. In the context of medical ethics, this is taken to imply that patients, as persons, have the right to make decisions about their own medical treatment or non-treatment. This, it is argued, involves a misuse of the essentially Kantian concept of ‘autonomy’. For Kant, to be autonomous is to be capable of making universal moral judgements, based on impersonal reason alone. In liberal medical ethics, however, autonomy means the capacity to make decisions about non-moral matters such as one's own interests, on the basis of values which one has arrived at by free and independent thought. These are clearly different conceptions, so that a definition of personhood in terms of autonomy in the Kantian sense will be different from one in terms of liberal autonomy. This casts doubt on whether respect for patient autonomy in the liberal sense is an implication of respect for personhood. It is not clear why a patient's decisions about treatment ought to be respected simply because they are based on the patient's own (non-moral) values. There is a further difficulty. ‘Autonomy’, in the liberal conception, seems to be equivalent to ‘decision-making competence’. The elements of this are said to be: 1. The capacity to understand; 2. The capacity to reason; and 3. Possession of one's own developed structure of values. Decision-making competence in this sense is not found in all human beings, or in any human being all the time. For example, small children, adults with learning difficulties, and people with brain damage seem to lack all three elements, or to have them only to a limited extent. People with a serious illness may lack all three temporarily. And people with certain kinds of mental disorder may, just because of their disorder, deviate from their own normal structure of values. It seems to follow that not all human beings are fully persons worthy of respect in the liberal sense of personhood. This has morally undesirable implications, which suggests problems in the liberal conceptions both of personhood and of respect. It is argued that a satisfactory conception of personhood can be arrived at only by considering the use of terms such as ‘person’ in everyday, non-technical, contexts. It is argued that ‘person’, in such contexts, is almost synonymous with ‘human being’, though with particular reference to the non-biological characteristics of human beings – those in virtue of which we recognize each other as fellow-humans (as ‘one of us’). A human being does not necessarily possess decision-making competence as defined above: so respect for persons cannot depend on such competence, or require us always to accept a person's own presently expressed decisions about what is best for themselves. It does, however, require us to recognize others as separate selves, with interests of their own, which may differ from ours. A doctor is therefore morally required to give the patient's interests priority over his or her own, or those of the health care system. If doctors consider the patient's expressed decision about treatment to be not in the patient's own interests, they are morally required to engage in dialogue with the patient, in an effort to arrive at a decision which will be acceptable both to the doctor and to the patient. If the patient is unable to engage in such dialogue, because of impaired decision-making competence, then other methods of establishing the patient's interests must be tried: examples would be proxy decision-making, by someone who is close enough to the patient to be aware of, and concerned for, the patient's interests; or appeal to the patient's own advance directives, where available. The most difficult case is that of patients with certain kinds of mental disorder, where the patient's own sense of his or her interests has become distorted by the very disorder which needs treatment. Only by following an appropriate course of treatment, which the patient may currently reject, is it possible to restore the patient to a condition in which he or she can genuinely engage in dialogue. This, it is argued, makes it morally justifiable in such cases simply to override the patient's expressed wishes.

Human Nature and Good Lives: Etzioni’s Elisions

In “Happiness Is the Wrong Metric,” Amitai Etzioni argues against the self-satisfier conception of human nature: the view that humans are exclusively motivated by a pursuit of their happiness, where happiness is defined in terms of their satisfactions. The self-satisfier conception is reductionistic and harmful in thinking about good lives, good societies, and sound social policy. In its place Etzioni recommends a moral-wrestler conception of human nature that highlights the pursuit of moral values, especially duties to promote the common good, highlighted in his communitarian ethics, along with the pursuit of happiness. Unfortunately, his dichotomy between the self-satisfier and moral-wrestler conceptions is itself reductionistic. The moral-wrester conception needs to be broadened into a value-seeker (and value-wrestler) conception of human nature that takes seriously non-moral values, widens morality to include virtues as well as duties, and adopts a more plausible view of happiness.

Emociones, valores y moral

En los debates metaéticos actuales, numerosos autores creen que existe una estrecha relación entre las emociones y los valores. Algunos piensan que las emociones ayudan en la constitución de los valores morales y no morales. Otros ven las emociones como instrumentos epistémicos para adquirir conocimiento sobre los valores. Ambas perspectivas tienen raíces que se adentran bien atrás en la historia de la filosofía, y las dos pueden ser desarrolladas tanto para apoyar como para socavar las teorías realistas y anti-realistas de los valores. Este artículo pretende esclarecer una complicada situación dialéctica. Adicionalmente, se realiza una propuesta constructiva encaminada hacia una mejor comprensión de la conexión entre emociones y valores. La propuesta, aunque es anti-realista en espíritu, ha sido diseñada para integrar también algunas importantes intuiciones realistas.

Zarathustra's metaethics

Nietzsche takes moral judgments to be false beliefs, and encourages us to pursue subjective nonmoral value arising from our passions. His view that strong and unified passions make one virtuous is mathematically derivable from this subjectivism and a conceptual analysis of virtue, explaining his evaluations of character and the nature of the Overman.

Doing: Self-discovery and Empowerment through Clarity of Purpose

In the previous chapter we ended with a discussion of morality and ethics and we addressed the emotional content to moral judgement whether the moral obligation to act and to take action in a social framework or moral value when we make reference to character, motives, or intentions. However, there are also judgements of nonmoral value or simply value judgements. In those we evaluate, not so much actions, persons, motives, and the like, but all sorts of other things: cars, paintings, experiences, forms of government, and what not. We say they are good, bad desirable, undesirable, and so on, but we do not mean that they are morally good or morally bad, since they are generally not the kinds of things that can be morally good or bad. This chapter will focus on doing as it pertains to increasing value. One typical use of the term value pertains to quantity of one good that is exchangeable for the quantity of another good. In this context we refer to value not in terms of personal utility satisfying human wants as it relates to time, place or the possession of something that gives satisfaction. We also are not addressing here use value that is the usefulness to the individual directly. We are referring to value that persons have in a network of exchange. Let's be quite clear that we are not about to embark on a discussion

Ideology‐Specific Patterns of Moral Indifference Predict Intentions Not to Vote

Results from a nationally representative survey (N = 1, 341) provide evidence that self‐reported nonvoting behavior is associated with lower endorsement of moral concerns and values (Study 1). Across three studies, five large samples (total N = 27,038), and two presidential elections, we replicate this pattern and show that the explicit intention not to vote is associated with lower endorsement of moral concerns and values (Studies 2–4). This pattern was not found for endorsement of nonmoral values. Separate analyses for liberals, conservatives, libertarians, and Tea Party supporters reveal that the intention not to vote is specifically associated with low endorsement of the moral concerns most associated with one's ideological group: Care and Fairness concerns predicted voting intentions for liberals, while Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity concerns predicted voting intentions for conservatives and members of the Tea Party group FreedomWorks.

Neuroethics and philosophy

Neuro-ethics is probably fastest growing part of applied ethics. The main thesis is that certain natural processes in brain and nerves produce certain moral, and immoral, behaviors. All these processes can be explained causally, and (if this is so) neuro-ethics might be the final result of neuroscience. There are some metaphysical and ethical pitfalls to be considered, however, like the (incorrect) conflation of causal explanation and rational justification in definingvalues, not only non-moral values but moral values as well. Certainly, the knowledge of how neurological processes function could help to enhance the quality of human life, not only in coping with defects but also in improving the so-called ?normal life?. This implies that neuroethics is instrumental, dealing with values which are instrumental as well. However, neuroethics, it seems, aspires to go further than that: to explain how goals come into existence and what their articulation should look like. All of this should be causally explained, or at least explainable; and the main focus of the paper is an analysis of this aspiration. The analysis refers to some important distinctions like the distinction between causes and reasons, explanation and justification, or the one between means and ends. At the end of the paper there is a section about applications, where some of the benefits and risks are summarily indicated, with a conclusion that neuroethics surely might help in advancing the overall quality of human life, individual and social.

Who Shall Live When Not All Can Live?

shall live when not all can live? Although this question has been urgently forced upon us by the dramatic use of artificial internal organs and organ transplantations, it is hardly new. George Bernard Shaw dealt with it in "The Doctor's Dilemma": Sir Patrick. Well, Mr. Savior of Lives: which is it to be? that honest decent man Blenkinsop, or that rotten blackguard of an artist, eh? Ridgeon. It's not an easy case to judge, is it? Blenkinsop's an honest decent man; but is he any use? Dubedaťs a rotten blackguard; but he's a genuine source of pretty and pleasant and good things. Sir Patrick. What will he be a source of for that poor innocent wife of his, when she finds him out? Ridgeon. That's true. Her life will be a hell. Sir Patrick. And tell me this. Suppose you had this choice put before you: either to go through life and find all the pictures bad but all the men and women good, or go through life and find all the pictures good and all the men and women rotten. Which would you choose?1

Justice, Reason, and Luck in Rationing Lifesaving Medical Resources

Justice, Reason, and Luck in Rationing Lifesaving Medical Resources

TOWARD A RESOLUTION OF ANTINOMIES IN MAX SCHELER’S VALUE THEORY

Two problems in Scheler’s thought are (1) his reason/feeling dualism, which artificially limits his classification of values, undermining the coherence of experience and its rational intelligibility; and (2) his restriction of moral value to a by-product of realizing non-moral values, which leads him to misidentify the value attaching to personal agency exclusively with moral value. To resolve these problems, I enlist Herman Dooyeweerd’s analysis of experiential aspects, analogical concepts, and subject-object relations, which illumine both Scheler’s insights and his oversights.

Value Commitments and the Balanced Life

According to critics such as Bernard Williams, traditional ethical theories render it impossible to lead good and meaningful lives because they emphasize moral duty or the promotion of external values at the expense of the personal commitments that make our lives worth living from our own perspective. Responses to this criticism have not addressed the fundamental question about the proper relationship between a person's commitments to moral values and her commitments to non-moral or personal values. In this article, I suggest that we think about this relationship by reflecting on the way that a prudentially virtuous person who has commitments to both moral and non-moral values would regard these commitments. I argue that people with the virtue of balance do have reasons to act in accordance with their moral commitments, but that whether or not these reasons are overriding depends on the type of commitment in question.