The distinct moral importance of acting together

This review essay engages with Garrett Cullity’s argument that there is a fundamental moral norm of cooperation, as articulated in Concern, Respect, & Cooperation (2018). That is to say that there is moral reason to participatein collective endeavours that cannot be reduced to other moral reasons like promoting welfare. If this is plausible, all the better for solving collective action dilemmas like climate change. But how should we understand a reason of participation? I supplement Cullity’s own account by appealing to the notion of ‘team reasoning’ in game theory. Even if not an adequate notion of rationality, adopting the team stance—deriving individual reasonto act from what a group may together achieve—may well have distinct moral importance.

F.M. Dostoevsky on the Reasons for "Remarkable Dislike" Europe to Russia

The relevance of the article is due to the authors attempt to apply some of the philosophical concepts of F.M. Dostoevsky to the comprehension of contemporary sociocultural reality. The purpose of this study is to clarify the reasons for the historically unfriendly attitude of Europe towards Russia by analyzing the works of F.M. Dostoevsky dedicated to this problem. In the process of writing the article, the published Diaries of the writer were used; diary entries unpublished during the writer's life; philosophical reflections contained in works of art, as well as applied modern scientific and popular science literature dedicated to the work of F.M. Dostoevsky. In the course of the analysis, it was found that the writer considered historical, confessional and moral reasons to be the main factors in the rejection of Russia by Europe, while he especially singled out disinterestedness incomprehensible to Europe as a characteristic of the Russian people. The authors draws attention to the fact that all the reasons for Europe's "remarkable dislike" for Russia, about which F.M. Dostoevsky, directly or indirectly associated with the Orthodox faith. Therefore, an attempt to actualize the worldview heritage of the great writer will certainly lead us to a dilemma: either to move from thoughts and words to actions, to religiously enlighten both ourselves and Europe; or to enclose our Orthodox heritage in a historical and cultural framework, eliminating the source of the reasons for our rejection by the European public, with all the ensuing consequences.

The Ethics of Treaties: A Humean Account

<p>This thesis concerns the reasons that states have to comply with their treaty commitments. It aims to answer two questions. Firstly, what reason does signing a treaty give to a state to act in accordance with the treaty? Secondly, assuming that there is such a reason, how does entering into a treaty generate that reason? One answer to these questions is to say that treaties are kinds of promises between states. To enter into a treaty is to make a promise and promises should be kept. But promises are a puzzling way of generating reasons for action. It is not clear how it is possible to create a reason to do something merely by communicating an intention to create a reason. So, to say that treaties are promises seems merely to transpose this puzzle from the relations between individual persons to international affairs and the relations between states. In this thesis I endorse a view of treaty making that understands treaties as promises as the philosopher David Hume understands them. I argue that this provides a plausible account of treaty making. I suggest that the resulting view, which I label ‘Treaty as Humean Promise,’ provides plausible and appealing answers to the two questions mentioned above. Treaty as Humean Promise claims that states entering treaties create self-interested reasons to comply with those treaties. They do this by invoking an independent social convention of treaty making one of the rules of which is that treaties must be kept. Continued access to this social convention is important to states. They jeopardise this continued access by violating their treaties and giving their treaty partners, and potential treaty partners, reason to withdraw future trust in them. I set this out in chapters 1 and 2. In chapter 3 I claim that Treaty as Humean Promise can make sense of the intuition that there are moral reasons to comply with treaties. In chapter 4 I look at what Treaty as Humean Promise has to say about different types of treaty. In chapters 5 and 6 I discuss Hume’s own views on treaty making. I offer a charitable reading of some puzzling remarks by Hume from a section of A Treatise of Human Nature called ‘Of the laws of nations’. In doing so, I defend Hume against a number of his critics. In the final two chapters I discuss a ‘political realist’ account of treaties. I distinguish between ‘act’ and ‘rule’ variants of political realism. Political realists, I suggest, should be rule realists at least about treaties. This means that they should endorse and follow the rule that treaties should be kept all else being equal.</p>

The Ethics of Treaties: A Humean Account

<p>This thesis concerns the reasons that states have to comply with their treaty commitments. It aims to answer two questions. Firstly, what reason does signing a treaty give to a state to act in accordance with the treaty? Secondly, assuming that there is such a reason, how does entering into a treaty generate that reason? One answer to these questions is to say that treaties are kinds of promises between states. To enter into a treaty is to make a promise and promises should be kept. But promises are a puzzling way of generating reasons for action. It is not clear how it is possible to create a reason to do something merely by communicating an intention to create a reason. So, to say that treaties are promises seems merely to transpose this puzzle from the relations between individual persons to international affairs and the relations between states. In this thesis I endorse a view of treaty making that understands treaties as promises as the philosopher David Hume understands them. I argue that this provides a plausible account of treaty making. I suggest that the resulting view, which I label ‘Treaty as Humean Promise,’ provides plausible and appealing answers to the two questions mentioned above. Treaty as Humean Promise claims that states entering treaties create self-interested reasons to comply with those treaties. They do this by invoking an independent social convention of treaty making one of the rules of which is that treaties must be kept. Continued access to this social convention is important to states. They jeopardise this continued access by violating their treaties and giving their treaty partners, and potential treaty partners, reason to withdraw future trust in them. I set this out in chapters 1 and 2. In chapter 3 I claim that Treaty as Humean Promise can make sense of the intuition that there are moral reasons to comply with treaties. In chapter 4 I look at what Treaty as Humean Promise has to say about different types of treaty. In chapters 5 and 6 I discuss Hume’s own views on treaty making. I offer a charitable reading of some puzzling remarks by Hume from a section of A Treatise of Human Nature called ‘Of the laws of nations’. In doing so, I defend Hume against a number of his critics. In the final two chapters I discuss a ‘political realist’ account of treaties. I distinguish between ‘act’ and ‘rule’ variants of political realism. Political realists, I suggest, should be rule realists at least about treaties. This means that they should endorse and follow the rule that treaties should be kept all else being equal.</p>

Moral Foundations Theory and Attitudes Towards the Punishment and Criminalisation of Drug Offenders

<p>Research on punitive attitudes has generally found some level of consensus on the relative seriousness of different offence types. However, how to approach the issue of drug offending is often a heavily debated issue, with some portions of society supporting harsh punishments for drug offenders, and others arguing for no sanctions at all. The current study, using both a student and general population sample, aimed to identify the underlying moral reasons behind these attitudes. Participants completed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, a scale measuring the factors that influence a person’s moral judgment, as well as numerous other scales that measured their punishment responses towards a variety of drug, harm, and ‘taboo’ sexual offences and practices. The endorsement of binding moral foundations, those relating to group-based moral concerns, was found to be a predictor of increased overall levels of punitiveness, while the endorsement of the foundation of purity was found to predict punitive attitudes towards drug offences and ‘taboo’ sexual practices, but not harm offences. Additionally, there were significant links between participants’ levels of moral outrage, their preference for punishment, and their support for the criminalisation of the various offences. The results of this study suggest that punishment responses towards both drug offences and ‘taboo’ sexual practices rely on a similar moral reasoning process, one that relies on perceptions of impurity to inform the wrongfulness of an offence.</p>

Moral Foundations Theory and Attitudes Towards the Punishment and Criminalisation of Drug Offenders

<p>Research on punitive attitudes has generally found some level of consensus on the relative seriousness of different offence types. However, how to approach the issue of drug offending is often a heavily debated issue, with some portions of society supporting harsh punishments for drug offenders, and others arguing for no sanctions at all. The current study, using both a student and general population sample, aimed to identify the underlying moral reasons behind these attitudes. Participants completed the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, a scale measuring the factors that influence a person’s moral judgment, as well as numerous other scales that measured their punishment responses towards a variety of drug, harm, and ‘taboo’ sexual offences and practices. The endorsement of binding moral foundations, those relating to group-based moral concerns, was found to be a predictor of increased overall levels of punitiveness, while the endorsement of the foundation of purity was found to predict punitive attitudes towards drug offences and ‘taboo’ sexual practices, but not harm offences. Additionally, there were significant links between participants’ levels of moral outrage, their preference for punishment, and their support for the criminalisation of the various offences. The results of this study suggest that punishment responses towards both drug offences and ‘taboo’ sexual practices rely on a similar moral reasoning process, one that relies on perceptions of impurity to inform the wrongfulness of an offence.</p>

A Rough Account of Substantive Rationality

This chapter gives a rough account of substantive rationality, the kind of rationality that contrasts with the book’s main topic, structural rationality. On this account, which mirrors some recently popular accounts in the literature, substantive rationality consists in responding to evidence-relative, right-kind reasons. It also argues against further restrictions on the kinds of reasons relevant to structural rationality—such as a “practical condition” and a condition excluding moral reasons—and introduces the distinction between ex ante and ex post substantive rationality. Finally, it explores accounts of structural rationality that closely mirror the offered account of substantive rationality by understanding the former as responsiveness to “subjective” or belief-relative reasons and argues that these accounts fail.

What should relational egalitarians believe?

Many find that the objectionable nature of paternalism has something to do with belief. However, since it is commonly held that beliefs are directly governed by epistemic as opposed to moral norms, how could it be objectionable to hold paternalistic beliefs about others if they are supported by the evidence? Drawing on central elements of relational egalitarianism, this paper attempts to bridge this gap. In a first step, it argues that holding paternalistic beliefs about others implies a failure to regard them as equals in terms of their moral agency. In a second step, it shows that the fact that we should regard others as equals in this sense raises the threshold for sufficiency of evidence for paternalistic beliefs to be epistemically justified. That is, moral reasons of relational equality encroach on the epistemic. However, these reasons are not decisive. In cases where others are about to jeopardize critical goods such as their lives, mobility or future autonomy, relational equality sometimes calls for paternalistic action and, by extension, the formation of beliefs that render such action rational. The upshot is that in order to meet demands of relational equality we have a pro tanto reason to not hold paternalistic beliefs about others.

Beneficence, Non-Identity, and Responsibility: How Identity-Affecting Interventions in Nature can Generate Secondary Moral Duties

In chapter 3 of Wild Animal Ethics Johannsen argues for a collective obligation based on beneficence to intervene in nature in order to reduce the suffering of wild animals. In the same chapter he claims that the non-identity problem is merely a “theoretical puzzle” (p.32) which doesn’t affect our reasons for intervention. In this paper I argue that the non-identity problem affects both the strength and the nature of our reasons to intervene. By intervening in nature on a large scale we change which animals come into existence. In doing so, we enable harmful animals to inflict harms on other animals, and we put other animals in harm’s way. The harms that these animals will inflict and endure are foreseeable. Furthermore, since non-human animals aren’t moral agents, harmful animals cannot be morally responsible for their harmful actions. I argue therefore that by causing animals to exist, knowing that they will inflict and suffer harms, we become morally responsible for those harms. By engaging in identity-affecting actions then we take on secondary moral duties towards the animals we have thereby caused to exist, and these secondary moral duties may be extremely demanding, even more so than the initial costs of intervention. Finally, these duties are duties of justice rather than duties of beneficence, and as such are more stringent than purely beneficence-based moral reasons. Furthermore, this conclusion flows naturally from several plausible principles which Johannsen explicitly endorses.

Biases in Favour of the Negative

Contrary to Schopenhauer’s claim that positive feelings consist simply in the cessation of negative feelings, it is contended that positive feelings are feelings just like negative feelings. But there is a bias or asymmetry in favour of the negative to the effect that negative feelings can in general have a greater intensity: pain can be more intense than pleasure, depression than elation, etc. This is because negative feelings often signal losses that are irreversible, and that by themselves guarantee reductions of well-being, whereas this is not true of the improvements signalled by positive feelings. Due to this asymmetry, compassion can be stronger than sympathetic joy and, as these emotions provide moral reasons, this explains why, intuitively, it seems morally more urgent to prevent what is bad than to produce what is good as, e.g. negative utilitarianism maintains.