Expressing Gratitude as What ’s Morally Expected: A Phenomenological Approach
AbstractThis paper addresses an alleged paradox regarding gratitude —that aduty of gratitude is odd or puzzling if not paradoxical. The gist of our position is that in prototypical cases, gratitude expression falls under a distinctive deontic category we callmorally expected—which has a corresponding contrary deontic category we callmorally offensive. These categories, we maintain, need recognition in normative ethics to make proper sense of the moral status of gratitude expression and other morally charged restrictions on action, and likewise to make proper sense of the moral status of failures to abide by such restri...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - January 14, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
The Phenomenology of Moral Intuition
AbstractMoral judgment commonly depends on intuition. It is also true, though less widely agreed, that ethical theory depends on it. The nature and epistemic status of intuition have long been concerns of philosophy, and, with the increasing importance of ethical intuitionism as a major position in ethics, they are receiving much philosophical attention. There is growing agreement that intuition conceived as a kind of seeming is essential for both the justification of moral judgment and the confirmation of ethical theories. This paper describes several importantly different kinds of intuition, particularly the episodic kin...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - January 7, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Disagreement and Doubts About Darwinian Debunking
AbstractEvolutionary debunking arguments draw on claims about the biological origins of our moral beliefs to undermine moral realism. In this paper, I argue that moral disagreement gives us reason to doubt the evolutionary explanations of moral judgment on which such arguments rely. The extent of cross-cultural and historical moral diversity suggests that evolution can ’t explain the content of moral norms. Nor can it explain the capacity to make moral judgment in the way the debunker requires: empirical studies of folk moral judgments show that they lack the kind of objectivity debunkers point to as an evolutionary cont...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - January 3, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Appreciation as an Epistemic Emotion
AbstractIn this paper, I develop an account of appreciation. I argue that appreciation is an epistemic emotion in which the subject grasps the object in an affective way. The “grasping” and “feeling” components implies that in appreciation, we make sense of the object by having cognitive control over it, are motivated to maintain the valuable epistemic state of understanding, and experience the “aha” or “eureka” moment. This account offers a unified accou nt of the many types of appreciation, including the aesthetic, the moral, and the epistemic. In all these cases, appreciation requires some other first-or...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - January 3, 2022 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Unjust History and Its New Reproduction A Reply to My Critics
AbstractDemands calling for reparations for historical injustices injustices whose original victims and perpetrators are now deadconstitute an important component of contemporary struggles for social and transnational justice. Reparations are only one way in which the unjust past is salient in contemporary politics. In my book,Injustice and the Reproduction of History: Structural Inequalities, Gender and Redress, I put forward a framework to conceptualise the normative significance of the unjust past. In this article, I will engage with the insightful comments and try to address the concerns of the contributors to the sy...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - December 14, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Unjust History and Its New Reproduction —A Reply to My Critics
AbstractDemands calling for reparations for historical injustices —injustices whose original victims and perpetrators are now dead—constitute an important component of contemporary struggles for social and transnational justice. Reparations are only one way in which the unjust past is salient in contemporary politics. In my book,Injustice and the Reproduction of History: Structural Inequalities, Gender and Redress, I put forward a framework to conceptualise the normative significance of the unjust past. In this article, I will engage with the insightful comments and try to address the concerns of the contributors to th...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - December 14, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Solidarity and The Politics of Redress: Structural Injustice, History and Counter-Finalities
AbstractThis paper examines Nuti ’s accounts of structural injustice and historical injustice in the light of a political dilemma that confronted Young’s work on structure injustice. The dilemma emerges from a paradox that can be stated simply: justly addressing structural injustice would require that those subject to structura l injustice enjoy the kind of privileged position of decision-making power that their being subject to structural injustice denies them. The dilemma thus concerns how to justly address structural injustice. I argue that Nuti’s account is currently unable to provide an adequate theorization of ...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - December 10, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Reproducing (Historical) Structural Injustice: On and Beyond Alasia Nuti s Injustice and the Reproduction of History: Structural Inequalities, Gender and Redress
(Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice)
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - December 2, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Sorry if! On Conditional Apologies
AbstractUsually, apologies are made by using non-conditional utterances: “I apologize for ruining your evening!” Very little, if any, attention has been given so far to conditional apologies which typically use utterances such as “If I have ruined your evening, I apologize!” This paper argues that such conditional utterances can constitute genuine apologies and p lay important moral roles in situations of uncertainty. It also proposes a closer analysis of such conditional apologies (rejecting some alternative accounts) and contrasts them with unconditional apologies. (Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice)
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - December 2, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Reproducing (Historical) Structural Injustice: On and Beyond Alasia Nuti ’s Injustice and the Reproduction of History: Structural Inequalities, Gender and Redress
(Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice)
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - December 2, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Correction to: The Sources of Political Normativity: the Case for Instrumental and Epistemic Normativity in Political Realism
(Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice)
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - November 29, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Correction to: Editorial
(Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice)
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - November 25, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Kant, Vice, and Global Poverty
AbstractIn this paper, I argue that within Kantianism, widespread indifference of the global rich to the suffering of the global poor should be understood as resulting at least partly from vice. Kant had much more to say about vice than is often recognized, and it forms a crucial part of his moral anthropology. Kantians should thus attend to the ways in which vice functions as a practical obstacle to fulfilling duties of beneficence. In vice-fueled indifference, inclinations associated with self-love and self-conceit work their way into our wills, interfering with our moral commitments by impeding our ability to recognize ...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - November 25, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
Feeling Wronged: The Value and Deontic Power of Moral Distress
AbstractThis paper argues that moral distress is a distinctive category of reactive attitudes that are taken to be part and parcel of the social dynamics for recognition. While moral distress does not demonstrate evidence of wrongdoing, it does emotionally articulate a demand for normative attention that is addressed to others as moral providers. The argument for this characterization of the deontic power of moral distress builds upon two examples in which the cognitive value of the victim ’s emotional experience is controversial: the case of micro-aggression, and the case of misplaced distress. In contrast to appraisal ...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - November 24, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
A Diachronic Consistency Argument for Minimizing One s Own Rights Violations
AbstractDeontologists are united in asserting that there are side-constraints on permissible action, prohibiting acts of murder, theft, infidelity, etc., even in cases where performing such acts would make things better overall from an impartial standpoint. These constraints are enshrined in the vocabulary of rights apply even when violating those constraints would lead to fewer constraint-violations overall: I am prohibited from killing an innocent even when doing so is the only way to prevent you from killing five. However, deontologists are divided over whether we have a duty to violate a smaller number of rights when t...
Source: Ethical Theory and Moral Practice - November 17, 2021 Category: Medical Ethics Source Type: research
