Reason and Emotion: Essays on Ancient Moral Psychology and Ethical Theory

2001 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 88
Author(s):  
Daryl M. Tress ◽  
John M. Cooper
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Ethical Theory

Demanding the Demanding

2019 ◽  
pp. 137-149
Author(s):  
Ben Sachs
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Empirical Studies ◽  
Act Consequentialism ◽  
Moral Requirements

Several authors have worried, or anyway assumed, that confronting people with highly demanding moral requirements would be counterproductive, in the sense of causing people to turn away from morality, and thus actually decreasing (for instance) amounts donated. In this chapter, Ben Sachs notes that whether or not such behaviour would be counterproductive is a non-obvious empirical matter. After reviewing the available evidence, Sachs concludes that we should not be at all confident that “demanding the demanding” would be counterproductive. Sachs argues that more empirical studies are needed, but tentatively defends a theory of moral psychology according to which, when people are confronted with a demanding ethical theory (like act-consequentialism) they will, if they accept the theory, respond by coming close to conforming to it.

Recognition and Resentment in the Confucian Analects

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 287-306
Author(s):  
Eric S. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Negative Emotions ◽  
Basic Element ◽  
Social Conditions ◽  
Confucian Ethics ◽  
Negative Affects ◽  
Confucian Moral

Early Confucian “moral psychology” developed in the context of undoing reactive emotions in order to promote relationships of reciprocal recognition. Early Confucian texts diagnose the pervasiveness of reactive emotions under specific social conditions and respond with the ethical-psychological mandate to counter them in self-cultivation. Undoing negative affects is a basic element of becoming ethically noble, while the ignoble person is fixated on limited self-interested concerns and feelings of being unrecognized. Western ethical theory typically accepts equality and symmetry as conditions of disentangling resentment; yet this task requires the asymmetrical recognition of others. Confucian ethics integrates a nuanced and realistic moral psychology with the normatively oriented project of self-cultivation necessary for dismantling complex negative emotions in promoting a condition of humane benevolence that is oriented toward others and achieved through self-cultivation.

Playing with Intoxication: On the Cultivation of Shame and Virtue in Plato’s Laws

Apeiron ◽  
2018 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 345-370 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicholas R. Baima
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Sense Of Shame

Abstract This paper examines Plato’s conception of shame and the role intoxication plays in cultivating it in the Laws. Ultimately, this paper argues that there are two accounts of shame in the Laws. There is a public sense of shame that is more closely tied to the rational faculties and a private sense of shame that is more closely tied to the non-rational faculties. Understanding this division between public and private shame not only informs our understanding of Plato’s moral psychology, but his political and ethical theory as well.

The Social Turn in Moral Psychology

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Fedyk
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Social ◽  
Philosophical Ethics ◽  
Methodological Problems ◽  
The Relationship

In this book, Mark Fedyk offers a novel analysis of the relationship between moral psychology and allied fields in the social sciences. Fedyk shows how the social sciences can be integrated with moral philosophy, argues for the benefits of such an integration, and offers a new ethical theory that can be used to bridge research between the two. Fedyk argues that moral psychology should take a social turn, investigating the psychological processes that motivate patterns of social behavior defined as ethical using normative information extracted from the social sciences. He points out methodological problems in conventional moral psychology, particularly the increasing methodological and conceptual inconsilience with both philosophical ethics and evolutionary biology. Fedyk's "causal theory of ethics" is designed to provide moral psychology with an ethical theory that can be used without creating tension between its scientific practice and the conceptual vocabulary of philosophical ethics. His account aims both to redirect moral psychology toward more socially realistic questions about human life and to introduce philosophers to a new form of ethical naturalism—a way of thinking about how to use different fields of scientific research to answer some of the traditional questions that are at the heart of ethics.

How Ecological Collectives are Morally Considerable

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. Baird Callicott
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Environmental Ethics ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Human Microbiome ◽  
First Century ◽  
Moral Considerability ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Evolutionary Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Ontology

Populations, species, biotic communities, ecosystems, landscapes, biomes, and the biosphere are the referents of “ecological collectives.” The essence-accident moral ontology prevailing in twentieth-century moral philosophy cannot, while the theory of moral sentiments originating with Hume, biologized by Darwin, and ecologized by Leopold can, endow ecological collectives with moral considerability. The Hume-Darwin-Leopold approach to environmental ethics has been validated by twenty-first-century evolutionary moral psychology, while the twenty-first-century analysis of the human microbiome has revealed that erstwhile human “individuals” are themselves ecological collectives, thus rendering future ethical theory exclusively concerned with ecological collectives. To reconceptualize ourselves as moral beings in relational, communal, and collective terms is a matter of the greatest urgency for twenty-first century moral philosophy.

Simplicity and Authority: Reflections on Theory and Practice in Kant's Moral Philosophy

2007 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jens Timmermann
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Moral Philosopher ◽  
The Voice ◽  
Ethical Systems

AbstractWhat is the proper task of Kantian ethical theory? This paper seeks to answer this question with reference to Kant's reply to Christian Garve in Section I of his 1793 essay on Theory and Practice. Kant reasserts the distinctness and natural authority of our consciousness of the moral law. Every mature human being is a moral professional—even philosophers like Garve, if only they forget about their ill-conceived ethical systems and listen to the voice of pure practical reason. Normative theory, Kant argues, cannot be refuted with reference to alleged experience. It is the proper task of the moral philosopher to emphasize this fact. The paper also discusses Kant's attempts to clarify his moral psychology, philosophy of value and conception of the highest good in the course of replying to Garve's challenge.

A Common Subject for Ethics

Mind ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Schroeder
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Normative Theory ◽  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Twin Earth ◽  
History Of ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
The Common ◽  
Moral Twin Earth ◽  
Normative Ethical Theory

Abstract The purpose of this paper is to conceptualize and explore what I shall call the Common Subject Problem for ethics. The problem is that there seems to be no good answer to what property everyone who makes moral claims could be talking and thinking about. The Common Subject Problem is not a new problem; on the contrary, I will argue that it is one of the central animating concerns in the history of both metaethics and normative theory. But despite its importance, the Common Subject Problem is essentially invisible on many contemporary ways of carving up the problems of metaethics and normative ethical theory. My aim, therefore, is to make progress – in part by naming the problem, but also by beginning to sketch out the contours of what gives the problem its force, by distinguishing between different paths of response to the problem and assessing some of their chief merits, and finally, by distinguishing the Common Subject Problem from another problem with which it has come to be conflated. This nearby problem is the Moral Twin Earth Problem. Whereas the Common Subject Problem is a problem about what property ‘wrong’ could refer to, the Moral Twin Earth Problem is a problem about how ‘wrong’ could refer to it. The upshot of the paper, therefore, is to rescue one of the historically significant problems in normative ethics and metaethics – a problem that is essentially about normative semantics – from the illusion that has persisted over the last twenty years that it is really, somehow, a problem about metasemantics. Once we have reclaimed this problem, we can see that it could still be a problem even if there are no distinctively metasemantic problems in metaethics at all, that it is a problem faced by a wider variety of views, and that the space of possible solutions is much wider and more interesting for normative theory, moral psychology, and moral epistemology.

The Causal Theory of Ethics

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Fedyk
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Causal Theory ◽  
The Social ◽  
Ethical Norms

This chapter introduces a novel ethical theory that is designed to help bridge research in the social sciences with research in moral psychology. According to the causal theory of ethics, what makes certain norms ethical norms is that they are realized in the behaviour of different population, and their realization tends to produce outcomes that are good and valuable for the relevant population.

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