The Space of Moral Reasons

2011 ◽  
pp. 137-162
Author(s):  
Benedict Smith
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasons

Communicating moral reasoning in medicine as an expression of respect for patients and integrity among professionals

2014 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lauris Christopher Kaldjian
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Moral Pluralism ◽  
Moral Integrity ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Moral Framework ◽  
Beliefs And Values ◽  
Moral Frameworks ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Do So

The communication of moral reasoning in medicine can be understood as a means of showing respect for patients and colleagues through the giving of moral reasons for actions. This communication is especially important when disagreements arise. While moral reasoning should strive for impartiality, it also needs to acknowledge the individual moral beliefs and values that distinguish each person (moral particularity) and give rise to the challenge of contrasting moral frameworks (moral pluralism). Efforts to communicate moral reasoning should move beyond common approaches to principles-based reasoning in medical ethics by addressing the underlying beliefs and values that define our moral frameworks and guide our interpretations and applications of principles. Communicating about underlying beliefs and values requires a willingness to grapple with challenges of accessibility (the degree to which particular beliefs and values are intelligible between persons) and translatability (the degree to which particular beliefs and values can be transposed from one moral framework to another) as words and concepts are used to communicate beliefs and values. Moral dialogues between professionals and patients and among professionals themselves need to be handled carefully, and sometimes these dialogues invite reference to underlying beliefs and values. When professionals choose to articulate such beliefs and values, they can do so as an expression of respectful patient care and collaboration and as a means of promoting their own moral integrity by signalling the need for consistency between their own beliefs, words and actions.

Criminal Culpability

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gideon Yaffe
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Quality Of Will ◽  
Moral Culpability ◽  
Criminal Culpability

This chapter offers and defends a theory of criminal culpability according to which to be criminally culpable for a wrongful act is for the act to manifest faulty dispositions for recognizing, weighing, or responding to the legal reasons to refrain from the act. The chapter clarifies this position by explaining what such dispositions are, what it is for them to be faulty, and the conditions under which they are manifested in an act. Under the position presented here, there is a distinction between criminal culpability and moral culpability corresponding to the distinction between legal and moral reasons to refrain from an act. The chapter also distinguishes the view proposed from both character theories of responsibility and quality of will theories.

Semantics for Reasons

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bryan R. Weaver ◽  
Kevin Scharp
Keyword(s):  
Conceptual Analysis ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Special Place ◽  
Question Under Discussion ◽  
And Linguistics

The focus of the book is the semantics of reasons locutions, for example reasons for someone to do something or believe something or be a certain way. Given the leading role that talk of reasons plays in many different kinds of philosophy, the book addresses issues in the theory of reasons, metaethics, epistemology, the philosophies of language and perception, and linguistics. The primary aim of the book is to present and defend a contextualist semantics of reasons locutions. the book’s contextualism for reasons locutions is based on the idea that conversations have a particular question under discussion (QUD). The QUD in a conversation determines which meaning the word ‘reason’ has in that context. The book shows why reasons contextualism is preferable to four competing views on the topic: Simon Blackburn’s expressivism, Stephen Finlay’s conceptual analysis, Tim Henning’s alternative contextualism, and Niko Kolodny’s relativism. In addition, the work pursues secondary aims of consolidating insights about the nature of reasons from different philosophical subfields and establishing results about reasons in several debates ranging across philosophy. In particular, the book draws the implications of reasons contextualism for the ontology of reasons, indexical facts, whether there are reasons to be rational, the nature of moral reasons, and the idea that reasons have a special place in the realm of normative phenomena in general.

scholarly journals Grimy Heritage: Organic Bar Streets in Shanghai and Tokyo

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 76-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Farrer
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Community Formation ◽  
Ethnographic Research ◽  
Built Environments ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Commercial Sex ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Historical Sources ◽  
Social Functions

Abstract Every city has built environments that are largely regarded as eyesores, for aesthetic, social, or moral reasons. Urban nightlife streets are examples of such ‘grimy heritage’. Not only shabby and disorderly, they harbour forms of commercial sex, drinking cultures, and ephemeral nightlife cultures that many city residents and government officials consider undesirable. Sometimes their built forms are regarded as the enemy of genuine heritage architecture, since they obscure more solid, carefully designed structures around them. However, in many cities, organic nightlife streets—developing in such spaces precisely because they were derelict or poorly regulated—serve important social functions as spaces of creativity and community formation. This paper examines the ways that such ‘grimy heritage’ has developed in Shanghai and Tokyo, using examples from ethnographic research and historical sources, and addressing the question of the contribution of the ‘grimy heritage’ to authentic, urban social life.

scholarly journals Relationships, Authority, and Reasons: A Second-Personal Account of Corporate Moral Agency

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Alan D. Morrison ◽  
Rita Mota ◽  
William J. Wilhelm
Keyword(s):  
Corporate Culture ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Building Blocks ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Corporate Communications ◽  
Personal Account ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Corporate Moral Agency ◽  
Fresh Perspective ◽  
Corporate Punishment

We present a second-personal account of corporate moral agency. This approach is in contrast to the first-personal approach adopted in much of the existing literature, which concentrates on the corporation’s ability to identify moral reasons for itself. Our account treats relationships and communications as the fundamental building blocks of moral agency. The second-personal account rests on a framework developed by Darwall. Its central requirement is that corporations be capable of recognizing the authority relations that they have with other moral agents. We discuss the relevance of corporate affect, corporate communications, and corporate culture to the second-personal account. The second-personal account yields a new way to specify first-personal criteria for moral agency, and it generates fresh insights into the reasons those criteria matter. In addition, a second-personal analysis implies that moral agency is partly a matter of policy, and it provides a fresh perspective on corporate punishment.

scholarly journals Moral Appraisal for Everyone: Neurodiversity, Epistemic Limitations, and Responding to the Right Reasons

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Claire Field
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Alternative Account ◽  
De Re ◽  
Moral Appraisal ◽  
De Dicto ◽  
The Right

AbstractDe Re Significance accounts of moral appraisal consider an agent’s responsiveness to a particular kind of reason, normative moral reasons de re, to be of central significance for moral appraisal. Here, I argue that such accounts find it difficult to accommodate some neuroatypical agents. I offer an alternative account of how an agent’s responsiveness to normative moral reasons affects moral appraisal – the Reasonable Expectations Account. According to this account, what is significant for appraisal is not the content of the reasons an agent is responsive to (de re or de dicto), but rather whether she is responsive to the reasons it is reasonable to expect her to be responsive to, irrespective of their content. I argue that this account does a better job of dealing with neuroatypical agents, while agreeing with the De Re Significance accounts on more ordinary cases.

scholarly journals MORALITY, LAW AND CONFLICTING REASONS FOR ACTION

2012 ◽  
Vol 71 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-85 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Cane
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Broad Sense ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Human Conduct ◽  
Morality Plays ◽  
Moral Assessment ◽  
The Concept Of Law ◽  
The Relationship

AbstractIn The Concept of Law, H.L.A. Hart suggested that four formal features of morality distinguish it from law: importance, immunity from deliberate change, the nature of moral offences and the form of moral pressure. On closer examination, none of these supposed features clearly distinguishes morality from law, at least in the broad sense of ‘morality’ that Hart adopted. However, a fifth feature of morality mentioned by Hart – namely the role that morality plays in practical reasoning as a source of ultimate standards for assessing human conduct – does illuminate the relationship between law as conceptualised by Hart and morality variously understood. Because morality has this feature, law is always subject to moral assessment, and moral reasons trump legal reasons. It does not follow, however, that law is irrelevant to moral reasoning.

The Inescapability of Moral Reasons

1999 ◽  
Vol 59 (2) ◽  
pp. 281
Author(s):  
R. H. Myers
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasons

scholarly journals Prima facie duties and the structure of ethical explanations

2019 ◽  
Vol 62 (3) ◽  
pp. 53-64
Author(s):  
Monika Jovanovic
Keyword(s):  
Structural Characteristics ◽  
Prima Facie ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Problematic Case ◽  
Normative Implications

I begin with the thesis that the most appropriate classification of ethical theories pertains to their structural characteristics and give the advantage to the particularism/ generalism dichotomy over the deontological/teleological and act-centered/agent-centered classifications. Subsequently I use the example of Ross?s ethics of prima facie duties to illustrate how this distinction can be properly applied to a seemingly problematic case. In the first part of the paper I aim to show that Ross?s view is, in spite of its use of deontological terminology, essentially particularist. I then examine the specificities of Ross?s pluralism and explore the connection between prima facie duties and normative moral reasons. In the second part of the paper I criticize Audi?s interpretation of Ross?s ethics and show that Ross?s view doesn?t have the normative implications that Audi ascribes to it.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document