Ethical Roots Research Articles

A PERSON`S DIGNITY IN SECULAR AND ORTHODOX CONCEPTS

The article analyzes the dignity of a person in secular and Orthodox aspects. The authors argue that every phenomenon of the material and spiritual world is objectively inherent in internal contradictions, so it is not an exception and an idea of human dignity in secular and religious contexts. The research methods are comprehensive and based on the philosophical, anthropological and philosophical and cultural analysis of human dignity in secular and Orthodox dimensions. Discussion. The concepts of «secular» (universal) and «Christian» morality are characterized and distinguished. The authors argue that the latter comes from a supernatural source, from a moral law, the basis of which is the belief in the immortality of the human spirit. Christian morality provides such norms of behavior of people in which the biblical moral commandments are observed.The roots of the universal morality are in a culture that has produced a humanistic outlook, within which a person is recognized as self -sufficient value, capable of asserting his dignity, transforming himself and the world without the intervention of a transcendental super -sensory nature (God). The universal morality is the principles and norms that regulate the behavior of people, the activities of their communities, associations in terms of universally recognized ideas about good and evil, honesty and disobedience, honesty and dishonesty. Finally, the article suggests that, despite the differences, and sometimes contradictions in the understanding of the essential manifestations of human dignity between secular and Christian contexts, quite obvious to both aspects is the understanding that the leading place should be occupied by the personality that manifests itself manifestation and individual aspiration, in the depths of its own consciousness and in its desire for free self -determination and creativity, as a prerequisite for the affirmation of one’s dignity.

Animal Rights: A New Vista

The debate on animal rights has been influenced by changes in science, philosophy, nature, and social life over the last 40 years. These include (1) increased moral sensibility that gradually embraces creatures which are more and more distant from those closest to us; (2) environmental threats and their connection with people’s attitude towards animals; (3) scientific discoveries in the field of ethology and animal emotionality, which indicate evolutionary roots of morality; (4) new philosophical concepts (embodied, embedded, enactive and extended mind, and posthumanism) and revision of the concept of subjectivity; (5) exposing the vagueness of the notion of rights and how it is related to the concepts of duty and need. These changes suggest that the point of departure in discussions of the relations between humans and non-human animals has shifted from the traditional human perspective to a more inclusive approach that relies on the developments in science and the inclusion of environmental concerns.

The Problem of Purity in Moral Psychology

Academic The idea of “purity” transformed moral psychology. Here, we provide the first systematic review of this concept. Although often discussed as one construct, we reveal ~9 understandings of purity, ranging from respecting God to not eating gross things. This striking heterogeneity arises because purity—unlike other moral constructs—is not understood by what it is but what it isn’t: obvious interpersonal harm. This poses many problems for moral psychology and explains why purity lacks convergent and divergent validity and why purity is confounded with politics, religion, weirdness, and perceived harm. Because purity is not a coherent construct, it cannot be a distinct basis of moral judgment or specially tied to disgust. Rather than a specific moral domain, purity is best understood as a loose set of themes in moral rhetoric. These themes are scaffolded on cultural understandings of harm—the broad, pluralistic harm outlined by the Theory of Dyadic Morality. Public People are fascinated by morality—how do people make moral judgments and why do liberals and conservatives seem to frequently disagree? “Purity” is one moral concept often discussed when talking about morality—it has been suggested to capture moral differences across politics and to demonstrate the evolutionary roots of morality, especially the role of disgust in moral judgment. However, despite the many books and articles that mention purity, there is no systematic analysis of purity. Here, we review all existing academic articles focused on purity in morality. We find that purity is an especially messy concept that lacks scientific validity. Because it is so poorly defined and inconsistently measured, it should not be invoked to explain our moral minds or political differences.

Explicating the Moral Component of Moral Forms of Leadership

A leader’s morality is a starting point in the making of a leader. It is one of the oldest debates in the philosophy of management. Since many positive outcomes have been associated with leader morality, a host of moral forms of leadership have been suggested and implemented in the organizations. The 21st century has particularly seen a rise in the moral forms such as ethical leadership, servant leadership and authentic leadership. The paper attempts to integrate the overlapping literature in this domain, to offer clarity in the construct of ethical, authentic and servant leadership, especially on their foundational principle of morality. A review of literature, with an agenda to juxtapose it with moral theories and moral development, has been undertaken. Deeper delving helps in constructing parallels between consequentialism, virtue ethics and deontology with servant, authentic and ethical leadership respectively as points of distinction. Along with a discrete moral identity and moral sensitivities, moral motivation and moral action as other matter of differential outlook of the leaders. Despite these perceived differences, the moral forms of leadership converge on the aspect of care. So while we may see separate branches in the moral forms of leadership, they share a common root of morality.

Memaksimalkan Peran Orang Tua Dalam Menumbuhkan Empati Pada Anak Di Keluarga Kristiani

Empathy is the root of morality and should be taught to children. The best place to teach empathy is in the family. Parents are in the very right position to teach empathy to their children. This research article intends to maximize the role of parents in growing children's empathy in Christian families. By using the method of description and literature review to support the description of Bible stories related to empathy, the importance of empathy for children, and the role that parents can play in fostering empathy in children. It is concluded that parents are able to play a maximum role in fostering children's empathy when they understand that parents are the main system in educating children, being proactive, having sensitivity, and positioning themselves to act as coaches for children's empathy.

The Development of Giving in Forms of Object Exchange: Exploring the Roots of Communication and Morality in Early Interaction around Objects

Giving is an act of great social importance across cultures, with communicative as well as moral dimensions because it is linked to sharing and fairness. We critically evaluate various explanations for how this social process develops in infancy and take a process-relational approach, using naturalistic observations to illustrate forms of interaction involving the exchange of objects and possible developmental trajectories for the emergence of different forms of giving. Based on our data, we propose that the object becomes a pivot point for interaction, and through the process of such interaction the social actions of showing and giving emerge and take on diverse social meanings within the relations between infants and caregivers.

HUMAN MORALITY, MACHINE MORALITY: PROGRAMMING MACHINE ETHICS AS A LEGAL PROBLEM

Abstract This article begins with a contextualization of the artificial decision and of the fields of action of autonomous software and machines, considering the underlying need to establish ethical-legal programming standards. The fundamental problem of the text is to establish the biological root of human morality and the (im)possibility of mimicking it. In fact, a profound anthropological view of the origin of compassion and the processes of man's domestication by man make it possible to see an innate morality and also a biological substratum for the construction of moral patterns of conduct. In this way, the programming processes that take place in a prosthodox and "in silico" universe are far from configuring an authentic valorative programming. Making the artificial decision more adequate will imply formalizing the so-called ethical empowerment and the intrinsic motivation of automatons, through a principialist ethical-legalistic architecture. Keywords: artificial intelligence; moral; ethics; robotics

МОРАЛЬ И РАННЕЕ ХРИСТИАНСТВО. ЧАСТЬ 1

In the second part of the collection «Christianity and the Roots of Morality: Philosophical, Early Christian and Empirical Perspectives» the authors focus on the problems of early Christian morality, basing their research on the text of the New Testament.

Does Judaism Condone Violence? Holiness and Ethics in the Jewish Tradition

Does Judaism Condone Violence? Holiness and Ethics in the Jewish Tradition

The Aesthetics of Meaning and Thought: The Bodily Roots of Philosophy, Science, Morality, and Art, Mark Johnson (2018)

Review of: The Aesthetics of Meaning and Thought: The Bodily Roots of Philosophy, Science, Morality, and Art, Mark Johnson (2018)Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 304 pp.,ISBN 978-0-22653-894-5, p/bk, USD 30

Post-Religious Era: Reflections on the Legalization of Religious Ethics

Not only is the religion a spiritual belief, but also a general way of life. Traditional religions are questioned for lack of authenticity, and the death of God inevitably leads to the collapse of religion and its value system, which continues to weaken or even dissolve the meaning of the world and the meaning of life, etc. The secularization of religion is characterized by the separation of the transcendental elements of religion from the human knowledge structure or moral system. However, the removing process of religious factors may harm the morality itself. A feasible way is to translate moral elements by means of scientific language and to set the roots of morality within human reason or nature, that is, to find out the rational alternatives of religious ideas that carry morality for a long time. Law is the key element of post-religious society, and the overflow and migration of religious ethics to law will be conductive to create a new perfect order.

Human Vicegerency and the Golden Rule: The Islamic Case Against Exclusion

AbstractThe Islamic conception of social exclusion complements the Catholic perspective found in other contributions to this issue. The Islamic prohibitions of social exclusion are derived from theological principles that combine to provide a metaphysical basis for the golden rule that one should treat others as one wishes to be treated. This article examines the roots of a practical morality that enjoins us to treat other people as equals and prohibits exploitation of them in economic exchange. This philosophy is based on four principles found in the Qur'an and the hadith (teachings of the Prophet): vicegerency, commensurability, responsibility, and prophecy. These four principles combine to show how humans, as God's agents on earth, have the means to carry out the divine will. The practice of justice in Islamic thought does not rely on social conventions that are variable and contingent but on absolute principles revealed to us by the Prophet. That gives Islam an advantage over secular thought in establishing a strong foundation for social and ethical principles that give egalitarianism a transcendent basis. Thus, social inclusivity in Islamic thought is an integral part of a life governed by piety and prophecy.

Enkinaesthesia: Proto-moral value in action-enquiry and interaction

It is now generally accepted that human beings are naturally, possibly even essentially, intersubjective. This chapter offers a robust defence of an enhanced and extended intersubjectivity, criticising the paucity of individuating notions of agency and emphasising the community and reciprocity of our affective co-existence with other living organisms and things. I refer to this modified intersubjectivity, which most closely expresses the implicit intricacy of our pre-reflective neuro-muscular experiential entanglement, as ‘enkinaesthesia’. The community and reciprocity of this entanglement is characterised as dialogical, and in this dialogue, as part of our anticipatory preparedness, we have a capacity for intentional transgression, feeling our way with our world but, more particularly, co-feeling our way with the mind and intentions of the other. Thus we are, not so much ‘mind’-reading, as ‘mind’-feeling, and it is through this enkinaesthetic ‘mind’-feeling dialogue that values-realising activity originates and we uncover the deep roots of morality.

How Oxytocin Receptor (OXTR) Single Nucleotide Polymorphisms Act on Prosociality: The Mediation Role of Moral Evaluation.

Prosociality is related to numerous positive outcomes, and mechanisms underlying individual differences in prosociality have been widely discussed. Recently, research has found converging evidence on the influence of the oxytocin receptor (OXTR) gene on prosociality. Meanwhile, moral reasoning, a key precursor for social behavior, has also been associated with variability in OXTR gene, thus the relationship between OXTR and prosociality is assumed to be mediated by moral evaluation. The current study examines the relationship in question, and includes gender as a potential moderator. Self-reported prosociality on Prosocial Tendencies Measure and evaluation on the moral acceptability of behaviors in stories from 790 Chinese adolescents (32.4% boys) were analyzed for the influence of their OXTR single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Results showed that SNP at site rs2254298 was indirectly associated with prosocial behaviors via moral evaluation of behaviors, and this effect was moderated by gender. Our findings suggest an indirect association between genetic variations in OXTR and prosociality through moral evaluation, indicating the potential pathway from genetic variability to prosociality through level of moral development. We also provide some evidence that the role of oxytocin system may to some extent depend on gender. These findings may promote our understanding of the genetic and biological roots of prosociality and morality.

Psychological Root of Morality: A Proposal According to Nine Types Temperament Model

Researchers acknowledge individual differences about morality through concepts of temperament, character, personality, or values. The Nine Types of Temperament Model (NTTM), which explores human behaviors through individual differences, claims to explain the psychological organization of individuals through temperament, character, and personality concepts. This study investigates the relationship between morality, values, vices and individual differences in the context of temperament and proposes a method that discusses whether a temperament-based approach offers a new conceptualization, perspective, and approach to morality, as presented by NTTM. Firstly, this study examines the relationship between concepts of temperament, character, personality, values and morality. Subsequently, it suggests that temperament constitutes the primary root of virtues and vices and that temperament types offer society bipolar morality traits (positive and negative). Moreover, it suggests that traits that are accepted as virtues or vices could be embraced at two levels, a conceptual and individual one. The conceptual approach that this study proposes can be the main useful resource that explains the conditions of the approach, development, and methodology for being a moral person at an individual level.

Moral Parochialism and the Limits of Impartiality

One of the central problems of contemporary political and moral thought is how to reconcile the cultural and social roots of morality with its objectivity or rational warrant, whether in the personal or political sphere. David Golemboski's reconstruction of Adam Smith's impartial spectator (European Journal of Political Theory, onlinefirst February 23rd 2015) provides a useful first approximation to this problem. What interests me is not whether Golemboski's critique of Smith's impartial spectator hits the mark, but rather, to what extent Golemboski's reconstruction of Smith's impartial spectator succeeds at addressing the problem of moral parochialism, as Golemboski claims. I shall argue in what follows that upon examination, Golemboski's reconstructed impartial spectator, far from resolving the problem of moral parochialism, actually exposes the limits of the value of impartiality as a resource for overcoming parochial prejudice, and the necessity of framing the problem of parochialism less as a matter of social and cultural bias than as a matter of the conditions of possibility of sound moral judgment.

Intimacy and Family Consent: A Confucian Ideal.

In the West, mainstream bioethicists tend to appreciate intimate relationships as a hindrance to individual autonomy. Scholars have even argued against approaching a mother to donate a kidney to save the life of her child; the request, they claim, is too manipulative and, thereby, violates her autonomy. For Chinese bioethicists, such a moral analysis is absurd. The intimate relationship between mother and child establishes strong mutual obligations. It creates mutual moral responsibilities that often require sacrifices for each other. This paper argues that while aiding others is a moral duty, helping one's family is a much stronger duty and poses no threat to one's autonomy. For Confucianism, empathetic intimate feelings, the heart and mind of ren, rest at the root of morality. It requires that we, as moral beings, assume duties to relieve the suffering of others. The more intimate the relationship the stronger the obligation to assist. The family is a closely knitted moral community. Family members often share living resources, mutual experiences, and a sense of identity. Family members act as a social unit, and, ordinarily, mutual obligations among members have priority over duties to those outside of the family. For Confucian bioethics, family-based consent to medical treatment is regarded as natural and reasonable. Family-based decision making is a taken-for-granted norm of social life. While close family members have priority, Confucianism extends such obligations outward toward members of the extended family and the society at large. There is a general principle of gradation of love, which reflects different degrees of personal intimacy and, therefore, of moral obligation. In this fashion, Confucianism seeks to treat the whole of society as one extended family. Hence, in bioethics, mutual responsibility and family-based consent are regarded as basic principles. Through a series of case discussions, this paper illustrates that atomistic individual-based autonomy offers but a poor response to bioethical issues.

Opposing effects of oxytocin on moral judgment in males and females.

Current perspectives on the evolutionary roots of human morality suggest it arose to incentivize social cooperation by promoting feelings of disgust toward selfish behavior, although the underlying neural mechanisms remain unclear. To investigate whether the ancient mammalian neuropeptide oxytocin (OXT) influences self-referential processing in the domains of emotion evaluation and moral decision making, we conducted a pharmaco-functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) and a behavioral experiment involving 157 healthy women and men who were treated with either OXT (24 IU) or placebo (PLC) intranasally. Our results show that OXT facilitated cortical midline responses during self-processing of disgust and selectively promoted self-interest moral judgments in men. In contrast, in women OXT increased the reaction time difference between accepted and rejected moral dilemmas and led them to suppress their self-interest and respond more altruistically for the benefit of others. Taken together, these findings suggest an OXT-related sexual dimorphism in human moral behavior which evolved adaptively to optimize both protection and nurturing of offspring by promoting selfish behavior in men and altruistic behavior in women.

Is Confucianism a Source of Corruption in Chinese Society? A New Round of Debate in Mainland China

The debate on whether Confucianism is a source of corruption or root of morality, which initiated about ten years ago in China and was mainly between Liu Qingping 劉清平 and Guo Qiyong 郭齊勇, entered a second stage when Deng Xiaomang 鄧曉芒 criticized Confucian ethics based on filial piety, and Guo Qiyong and (mainly) his (former) students persistently defended their points of view. This essay is a review of the main theme of the debate at this second stage.

HUMAN NATURE AND THE NATURE ITSELF: NATURAL AND SOCIAL ASPECTS OF THE HUMAN NATURE / ŽMOGAUS PRIGIMTIS IR NATŪRA KAIP TOKIA: GAMTINIAI IR SOCIALINIAI ŽMOGAUS PRIGIMTIES ASPEKTAI

This paper offers a historical contribution for understanding of the relationship between nature and culture, based on an analysis of a highly influential text of the European philosophical tradition, About the Ends of Goods and Evils of Cicero. Human morality has three different roots on the Ciceronian pages: 1) a human can be an animal – a part of the live nature – in the concept of oikeiōsis; 2) a human has obligations as a cosmopolitēs, a part of the cosmos; and 3) social obligations rooted in human rationality, in other words – human being is a part of the society. Analyzing these three roots of the Stoic ethics in a Roman interpretation, we can understand their contradictory consequences. By the analysis of the relevant texts it will be demonstrated that the Stoic philosophers and their interpreters were unconscious of the ambiguity of the roots of human morality offered by them. A tension in our anthropological thinking about the human nature as a natural or a social phenomenon has its roots partly in this ancient ambiguity, hidden and unconscious. The rise of this conceptually confused ambiguity has several consequences in our today thought as well. Santrauka Šiame straipsnyje pateiktas istorinis indėlis suprasti gamtos ir kultūros santykį, pagrįstą labai įtakingo europietiškosios filosofinės tradicijos Cicerono teksto Apie gėrio ir blogio ribas analize. Žmogiškoji moralė Cicerono puslapiuose turi tris skirtingas šaknis: 1) oikeiōsis sampratoje žmogus gali būti gyvūnas – gyvosios gamtos dalis; 2) žmogus kaip cosmopolitēs, kaip kosmo dalis, turi įsipareigojimų; 3) socialiniai įsipareigojimai yra įšaknyti žmogiškajame racionalume, kitais žodžiais tariant, žmogiškoji būtybė yra visuomenės dalis. Analizuodami šias tris stoikų etikos šaknis romėniškojoje interpretacijoje, galime suprasti prieštaringas jų pasekmes. Remdamiesi svarbių tekstų analize parodysime, kad stoikų filosofai ir jų interpretatoriai nesuvokė savo pasiūlytosios žmogiškosios moralės šaknų dviprasmiškumo. Mūsų antropologinio mąstymo apie žmogaus prigimtį kaip gamtinį ar socialinį fenomeną įtampa turi savąsias šaknis iš dalies šiame paslėptame ir nesuvoktame antikiniame dviprasmiškume. Šio konceptualiai painaus dviprasmiškumo iškilimas turi tam tikrų pasekmių taip pat ir mūsų nūdienėje mintyje.