Problems In Moral Philosophy Research Articles

Covert Moral Enhancement: Are Dirty Hands Needed to Save the Planet?

ABSTRACT Michael Walzer’s article ‘Political action: the problem of dirty hands’ initiated a new wave of discussion over a persistent problem in moral philosophy: are there situations in which ethical rules must be relaxed so as to bring about a greater good? In this article, we consider whether this ‘dirty hands’ approach may be applied to our current climate crisis. One proposed solution to the problem of global warming is the administration of moral enhancements to the population. Assuming that the administration of moral enhancements is a necessary condition in the prevention of a climate crisis, Parker Crutchfield argues that this procedure ought to be covert. This implies lying to the public, and such dishonesty amounts to immoral behavior. We conclude that despite the severity of global warming, there is no justification for a dirty hands approach. Lying to the public in order to save the planet would probably create bigger problems, and it would ultimately be very counterproductive in trying to save the planet.

Problems of Moral Philosophy and Korean Democracy : T. W. Adorno, J. Shklar and Redefining S. Korean Democracy through Suffering

Problems of Moral Philosophy and Korean Democracy : T. W. Adorno, J. Shklar and Redefining S. Korean Democracy through Suffering

Hume’s guillotine - the ‘is-ought’ problem in property valuation theory

ABSTRACT This paper introduces Hume’s law (the fulcrum of the ‘is-ought’ problem of moral philosophy) into the property valuation literature, and uses it as a prism to reflect on the nature and limitations of standard valuation theory. The paper shows how a consideration of Hume’ thesis can help to clarify and solve some specific practical problems in property valuation. The opportunity presented by the subject of property valuation is, in turn, used to reflect back on Hume’s thesis itself, to show conditions under which Hume’s law may be said to be false. The paper makes important contributions both to the property valuation literature and to the literature on moral philosophy. With respect to property valuation, it proposes a change in the manner conclusions of valuations are reported, and the replacement of the notion of valuation accuracy by the wider and more socially appropriate concept of reasonableness.

Explicative-Existencial Justificacion of Human Rights Analysis of Robert Alexy's Argument in Context of Is-Ought Problem

This paper analyzes Robert Alexy's explicative-existential justification of human rights. According to the author, there are two problems connected with this concept. It cannot establish human rights universally and explain why we should accept them. In the paper, these questions are addressed in the context of the Is-Ought problem. Alexy's approach is compared with other theories that strive for human rights justification (basic needs approach, capability approach, and the foundationalism of Alan Gewirth). The author finds that in this respect all other theories have similar disadvantages. The inability to adequately elucidate the transition from Is to Ought is a general problem in moral philosophy, and therefore cannot diminish the position of Alexy's justification in this context. Although his approach does not really meet certain absolute requirements for good justification, if we evaluate it in relation to other available alternatives, we have to acknowledge its significant place in the philosophy of human rights. Even with Alexy's theory, however, the problem persists that it establishes rights of human persons rather than rights of human beings. It is therefore not able to fulfill some of its universalist aspirations.

Theodor W. Adorno e a dialética material da moral

Adorno pensou a filosofia moral em diversos momentos de sua carreira filosófica, notadamente em Minima Moralia (1951), Dialética Negativa (1966) e em seu curso publicado postumamente Probleme der Moralphilosophie (1996). Uma avaliação conjunta desses textos permite indicar a centralidade do que Adorno chamou de “dialética da moral” – entre impulso somático e racionalidade – na constituição da experiência do prático. Além disso, as reflexões sobre a moral são um momento privilegiado das análises metafilosóficas de Adorno, que identificam em boa parte da tradição filosófica ocidental sobre a moral a presença da dominação da natureza interna – processo que caberia à dialética materialista da moral criticar e ajudar a transformar.

Sobre la libre afirmación de nuestro ser

In this article an attempt is made to bring out the presuppositions of the first formulation of ethical realism held by Antonio Millán-Puelles in his recently published work, La libre afirmación de nuestro ser. Una fundamentacíon de la ética realista. These presuppositions show that the central problem in moral philosophy, known as the "Is-Ought" question, is dealt with in a very positive way by pointing out the intrinsic relation that there is between human nature and human freedom.

Phänomenologie braucht einen langen Atem

Abstract As a philosopher educated in the classics, as a crucial communicator of French thinking to the oftentimes heated German-language debates of the 1980s and 1990s, as the author of monographies on the questions of the strange, on answering and responsive rationality, on attentiveness, on “phenomenotechnology” and on problems of moral philosophy, Bernhard Waldenfels points out a direction to contemporary European philosophy that is entirely his own – all of it in the name of phenomenology, and first and foremost, the phenomenology of Maurice Merleau-Ponty. With a tight connection to the classical philosophical tradition as well as to contemporary scientific disciplines, literature, the arts and everyday life, Waldenfels has lent his own signature to phenomenology. In this interview, we ask Bernhard Waldenfels to situate himself with respect to the question: What is phenomenological philosophy and what does it accomplish?

THE EXCLUSION OF ETHICS

INTRODUCTION. This paper focuses especially on what has been called the fragmentation of ethics in the university – the pigeonholing of ethical questions in such a way that ethics is deprived of its critical purpose and its practical possibilities are curtailed. At its worst, the understanding of ethics in this way takes it to be a “bolt-on” component to curricula, with citizenship education a further tokenistic addition, alongside entrepreneurial and ICT skills. Where ethics is addressed more systematically, problems of a different order arise. Quite commonly — for example, in courses in medical ethics — the trend has been to outline the “major ethical positions” (utilitarianism and deontology) and to invite learners to choose between them, exploring how each is best “applied” to particular cases in a field that is otherwise understood in technical terms. The prevailing ethos is one of what works best, and this is conceived against background assumptions of more or less uncontroversial ends. This paper is against ethics understood in these ways. It asks how can there be any subject of university study, in fact any university at all, without some sense of the value of that subject’s content or of what the institution is about. METHOD. This is a philosophical enquiry, and its methodological approach is that of the essay — that is, an unsystematic exploration of the topic, a trying-out of ideas in relation to its central theme. It does this through assembling the views of a number of highly influential thinkers and through engaging with those views. RESULTS. It affirms the multiple ways in which values inhere across the range of human practice. The university, rightly conceived, becomes the place where those values, especially those by which a society orients itself, are questioned and tested in an exemplary manner. DISCUSSION. It calls into question prominent ways of formulating questions about the ethical, suggesting that the confusions that abound around this notion stem in part from problems in moral philosophy. It seeks to articulate a better way of addressing these matters and of thinking ethically.

O dever de realizar o mal

http://dx.doi.org/10.5007/1677-2954.2016v15n2p202O texto que se segue consiste na apresentação de um problema filosófico, no exame e crítica de algumas possíveis maneiras de tentar solucioná-lo e na apresentação do que julgo ser sua melhor solução (aristotélica). Trata-se de um problema em filosofia moral ou ética, como o titulo já deixa claro. Este, portanto, não é um texto exegético sobre a filosofia de Wittgenstein. Mas creio que ele deve muito à filosofia tardia de Wittgenstein por duas razões principais. O problema filosófico apresentado aqui é entendido como uma confusão gramatical envolvendo o uso de termos morais. Além disso, a solução aqui proposta é obtida por meio da análise do uso ordinário desses termos. (cf. Wittgenstein, Investigações Filosóficas, §§109-111)

The ethical demand in societal perspective

Zygmunt Bauman’s entire body of work has been dedicated to exploring sociological issues. However, problems of moral philosophy have come to play an increasingly crucial role for his understanding of social life in later works. In particular, the Danish philosopher Knud Ejler Løgstrup’s moral philosophy has shaped Bauman’s thinking. Løgstrup argued that there is an unconditional imperative in the ethical demand to take care of the Other, and this imperative cannot be superseded, rationalized, calculated, or strategically managed. Bauman is right in telling us that the personal ethics is the point of departure for a moral judgement. In this context it is very relevant to integrate Levinas’ and Løgstrup’s considerations. However, this perspective cannot stand alone. It is necessary to move forward to a form of Habermasian communicative ethics that can transmit the substantial moral judgement from a spontaneous communal perspective to a pragmatic societal perspective expressed in political terms. In other words, both perspectives are essential: on the one hand Bauman’s, Levinas’ and Løgstrup’s substantial phenomenological perspective, on the other hand Habermas’ pragmatic communicative perspective. Therefore, it would be more fruitful to consider these two perspectives as complementary instead of as in opposition, as is mostly done. They are both needed.

Diachronic Incontinence is a Problem in Moral Philosophy

Is there a rational requirement enjoining continence over time in the intentions one has formed, such that anyone going in for a certain form of agency has standing reason to conform to such a requirement? This paper suggests that there is not. I argue that Michael Bratman’s defense of such a requirement (‘Time, Rationality, and Self-Governance’. Philosophical Issues 22 [2012]: 73–88) succeeds in showing that many agents have a reason favoring default intention continence much of the time, but does not establish that all planning agents have such a reason in every case of intending. I then defend an account on which such a reason is grounded in the need to maintain the capacity to commit oneself to a practical option. But although I think this applies more widely than Bratman’s account, it is also not a reason that any planning agent has in every case. I tentatively conclude that although we have many good reasons to stick with our intentions once we have formed them, it is not required by rationality.

What Should I Do and What Was I Thinking? Philosophical Examples and the Uses of the Literary

Philosophers frequently attempt to achieve clarity about particular problems in moral philosophy both by modeling specific hypothetical cases very exactly and by turning to literature for examples. Ferguson here relies on some of the work of Bernard Williams, Donald Davidson, and Candace Vogler to treat their various suggestions about moral problems and how literature might serve them. In particular, she observes that each of these philosophers suggests how modern moral thought, which Williams sees as dominated by a progressivist account of its own history, arrives at less comprehensive clarity than it sometimes claims to do. She further notices how far their views take comfort from aspects of literature that do not revolve around the promulgation of readerly omniscience that attaches to the novel in modernity.

Moral Uncertainty and the Principle of Equity among Moral Theories1

Suppose your credence is divided between two moral theories – Theory T and Theory U. According to T, you have more reason to do Action A than you have to do Action B. According to U, you have more reason to do B than you have to do A. What is it rational to do in a situation in which A and B are the two possible actions? Many have argued that what it’s rational to do depends on two things: (a) how your credence is distributed between the theories, and (b) how the difference in moral value between A and B if T is true compares to the difference in moral value between B and A if U is true. But this answer prompts a further question: How do we make the intertheoretic comparisons of value differences mentioned in (b)? The theories themselves seem not to provide the resources required to do so. In Moral Uncertainty and Its Consequences, Ted Lockhart argues that intertheoretic comparisons of value differences are possible if we adopt a principle he calls the “Principle of Equity among Moral Theories”. I argue on several grounds that this principle is untenable, consider some rejoinders on Lockhart’s behalf, and conclude that these rejoinders do not succeed. Suppose your credence is divided between two moral theories – Theory T and Theory U. According to T, you have more reason to do Action A than you have to do Action B. According to U, you have more reason to do B than you have to do A. Many real-life cases fall under this schema. For example, I might have some credence in a retributive theory of punishment and some credence in a nonretributive theory of punishment. According to the first theory, it may be better to subject a criminal to very harsh treatment than to rehabilitate him. According to the second theory, the reverse may be true. Or I might have some credence in a traditional consequentialist theory, and some credence in a non-consequentialist 2 theory. The first theory might recommend killing one person to save five people, while the second theory might recommend against it What is it rational for you to do when you’re uncertain between conflicting moral theories? This is not the old question of what you should do, given some moral theory, when you are uncertain about the non-moral facts. The question I’m asking takes us back one step; what is it rational to do when you’re uncertain regarding the theories themselves? In this paper, I’m going to consider a problem that arises when we try to answer this question, and then evaluate one solution to that problem. One possible answer to the question is: Act in accordance with the theory in which you have the highest credence. That is, if your degree of belief is highest in a theory according to which Action A is better than Action B, then you should do A rather than B. But we should be suspicious of this answer, since the parallel answer in the non-moral case seems so clearly mistaken. For suppose that I am deciding whether to drink a cup of coffee. I have a degree of belief of .2 that the coffee is mixed with a deadly poison, and a degree of belief of .8 that it’s perfectly safe. If I act on the hypothesis in which I have the highest credence, I will drink the coffee. But this seems like a bad call, since the downside of death is so much greater than the 1 This is a very under-addressed problem in moral philosophy. The only recent publications to address the issue are Hudson (1989), Oddie (1995), Lockhart (2000), Weatherson (2002), Sepielli (2006), Ross (2006), Guerrero (2007), and Sepielli (2009). A very similar debate – about so-called ‘reflex principles’ – occupied a central place in Early Modern Catholic moral theology. The most notable contributors to this debate were Bartolome de Medina (1577), Blaise Pascal (1656-57), and St. Alphonsus Liguori (1755). The various positions are helpfully summarized in Prummer (1957), The Catholic Encyclopedia (1913), and The New Catholic

Kant and a Problem of Motivation

In The Moral Problem, Michael Smith argues that there is an on-going tension in discussions among moral philosophers between the putative objectivity of morality, the practicality of moral judgments, and Hume’s view of motivation. From an agent’s point of view, putatively objective claims imply cognitivism, the view that moral judgments express beliefs about the way the world is morally. But if moral judgments are practical and on Hume’s view of motivation dependent on the desires of an agent, then from a moral standpoint, we risk making claims that the agent cannot be motivated to act upon. In this sense the problem, which Smith calls the moral problem, is a problem of motivation. It is a problem of how beliefs about putatively objective morality considerations can universally motivate individuals with differing motivational psychologies. Smith considers the tension to be metaethical and that its resolution is the primary task of moral philosophers. Secondary to such problems, on his view, are problems of normative ethics. The tension is a meta-ethical problem, and it may be the primary problem of contemporary moral philosophy in the descriptive sense that it has garnered widespread attention. As with any philosophical problem, however, it is worth questioning whether it should receive the attention it does. To this end, we should consider what Kant maintains, in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, is the primary problem of moral philosophy. For Kant, the primary problem is not

Boulders and Trolleys

This discussion attempts to show that the elusive solution to the trolley problem lies hidden in the solution to another perennial problem in moral philosophy: the ducking puzzle. The key to solving the ducking puzzle is an important, but overlooked, exception to our obligation not to harm others, an exception for ‘fair competition’, which, it is argued here, is also the key to solving the trolley problem.

Reflections on contemporary business ethics and the ancient wisdom of Kalidasa

In the past two decades, multinational corporations have relied on laws, codes of ethics and in-house awareness programmes for managers to deal with the problems of corporate social responsibility and business ethics. The current global financial crisis and other corporate scandals have exposed the limited utility of these approaches and the glaring need for innovative solutions to the perennial problems of moral philosophy. This paper argues that the secular poetry of the renowned Sanskrit poet Kalidasa can motivate employees and managers to bring about a personal and organisational transformation required for solving the mounting problems of business ethics. Selected verses and aphorisms from two epic poems of Kalidasa – RaghuvaMsha and KumarasaMbhavaM – are examined and interpreted with proper context for their inspirational wisdom and its relevance to ethical behaviour in contemporary global business management.

Welfare without Happiness

Normative analysis asks how we (as a society) should make trade-offs between individuals. Behavioral welfare economics extends the scope of this analysis to a single individual, asking how the individual should trade off potential motives. We argue that any faith in economists’ (behavioral or otherwise) abilities to resolve such problems in moral philosophy cannot be based on past accomplishments of welfare economics, and that the best way to understand welfare economics is to view it as a part of positive economics with no normative content. We distinguish three types of welfare analysis. We refer to them as welfare I, II, and III. Welfare I identifies Pareto efficient outcomes within a particular model and relates those to equilibrium outcomes. Welfare I includes results such as the first theorem of welfare economics or the Myerson and Satterthwaite theorem on two-sided bargaining—results that show when an efficient outcome must, or cannot, be attained in equilibrium. Such results are used to explain the persistence of certain economic institutions (such as competitive markets) or derive limitations on what can be achieved within any institutional framework (such as bargaining or auctions). Welfare II posits an objective function for a policymaker and evaluates different policies or institutions according to that objective function. In other words, welfare II analyzes the implications of a policymaker’s preferences. Policymakers often pursue sophisticated objectives that cannot be captured by the standard functional forms used to describe simple, selfinterested economic agents. Moreover, evidence regarding policymakers’ preferences is typically limited. Hence, discussions of policymaker

Teoría y práctica de la ética en el siglo XXI (Undécimas Conferencias Aranguren, 2002)

This paper deals with the difficult link between ethical theory and moral practice. It is a recurrent problem of moral philosophy specially worsened because of the spread of economic, social and political liberalism. The three parts of the paper deal with three questions which, from the point of view of the author, bring about mistrust and skepticism about contemporary ethics. The first questions is the difficulty of constructing a public morality within our secular and plural societies. The second one refers to the little attention payed by ethical theories to the problem of moral motivation. The last question raise the problem represented nowadays by fanatism and fundamentalism. All three parts have to deal with a further question which lays at the core of contemporary ethics: the exercise of liberty in liberal democracies.

Self-Governance and Cooperation

Introduction: Two Problems in Moral Philosophy 1. Misgivings about Consequentialism and Contractualism 2. Cooperating to Promote the Good 3. Initial Counter-Arguments Supporting Value Monism 4. Self-Governance and Value Dualism Conclusion: Implications for the Question of Morality's Authority References Index

Problems of moral philosophy

Theodor W. Adorno (1903-1969), one of leading social thinkers of twentieth century, long concerned himself with problems of moral philosophy, or whether good life is genuine possibility in present. This book consists of course of seventeen lectures given in May-July 1963. Captured by tape recorder (which Adorno called the fingerprint of living mind), these lectures present somewhat different, and more accessible, Adorno from one who composed faultlessly articulated and almost forbiddingly perfect prose of works published in his lifetime. Here we can follow Adorno's thought in process of formation (he spoke from brief notes), endowed with spontaneity and energy of spoken word. The lectures focus largely on Kant, a thinker in whose work question of morality is most sharply contrasted with other spheres of existence. After discussing number of Kantian categories of moral philosophy, Adorno considers other, seemingly more immediate general problems, such as nature of moral norms, good life, and relation of relativism and nihilism. In course of lectures, Adorno addresses wide range of topics, including: theory and practice, ethics as bad conscience, repressive character, problem of freedom, dialectics in Kant and Hegel, nature of reason, moral law as given, psychoanalysis, element of Absurd, freedom and law, Protestant tradition of morality, Hamlet, self-determination, phenomenology, concept of will, idea of humanity, The Wild Duck, and Nietzsche's critique of morality.