Moral Status and the Consciousness Criterion

The Consciousness Criterion is the claim that moral status requires consciousness, or that being conscious is a necessary condition for being a person. The idea that consciousness imbues an entity with special value, or moral status, is widely accepted in Western cultures. So much so that it is hardly questioned. It should be questioned. This chapter shows that the Consciousness Criterion fails for two reasons: 1) consciousness is not a moral property, and consciousness alone is not sufficient to ground moral properties (like being autonomous, or being a moral agent), and 2) conscious creatures cannot be identified with certainty, so consciousness is not epistemically robust enough to undergird personhood or moral status. Thus consciousness cannot be a necessary condition for being a person. The moral status project of deciding who is and is not a person is rejected as uninformative concerning what is ethically permissible.

Priestorové disparity socio-patologického javu kvality života na príklade kriminality v Bratislavskom samosprávnom kraji

The quality of life of the people is a broad spectrum area of scientific research. It is measured through 9 indicators, which include an indicator of physical and economic security, which includes a negative phenomenon - criminality. The aim of the paper is spatial analysis of criminality as one of the elements of quality of life in the Bratislava self-governing region (BSR) in four areas (violent, moral, property and economic), as well as a comparison of the crimes of the capital cities Bratislava and Prague. The basic tool of data processing is comparative analysis and techniques in GIS and Excel programs. Most criminal acts in Slovakia are committed in BSR and in Bratislava. The highest number is recorded in property crime, especially car robbery committed and car theft. 18.6% of all criminal offences in Slovakia were committed in BSR (69,635 in 2016). 56.7% were cleared up and only 43% in BSR. Although the Czech capital, Prague, has a population three times bigger than Bratislava, it has only two times larger amount of crimes per 1,000 inhabitants. In recount of 1,000 inhabitants Bratislava exceeds Prague in violent crime, which we consider to be a serious socio-pathological phenomenon of society which reflects in the quality of life of its inhabitants.

State policy in the field of the judiciary formation in Russia in the second half of the 19th – early 20th century

We study the mechanism of judiciary formation in Russia in the second half of the 19th – early 20th century. We consider the system of requirements for judges of crown and magistrates courts, their practical internship, as well as the procedures for selection and appointment to posts. Special attention is paid to the system of qualification, we consider the educational qualification, experience qualification, moral, property, age qualifications. We draw conclusion that the requirements for judges introduced in 1864 are consistent with the general principles of building the justice system in Russia in the post-reform period. On the other hand, we conclude that the judicial service has just begun to be separated from the general civil service, which has resulted in the extension to judges of individual claims of civil servants. On the basis of the normative legal acts of the second half of the 19th and early 20th century, as well as archival materials, we reconstruct the procedure of granting powers to magistrates and crown judges, and model the most typical judicial career. In general, we draw conclusion that the state policy is effective in the implementation of judicial statutes in the sphere of judiciary formation in Russia of the second half of the 19th – early 20th century.

The Puzzle of Pure Moral Motivation

People engage in pure moral inquiry whenever they inquire into the moral features of some act, agent, or state of affairs without inquiring into the non-moral features of that act, agent, or state of affairs. The first section of this chapter argues that ordinary people act rationally when they engage in pure moral inquiry, and so any adequate view in metaethics ought to be able to explain this fact. The Puzzle of Pure Moral Motivation is to provide such an explanation. The remaining sections of the chapter argue that each of the standard views in metaethics has trouble providing such an explanation. A metaethical view can provide such an explanation only if it meets two constraints: it allows ordinary moral inquirers to know the essences of moral properties, and the essence of each moral property makes it rational to care for its own sake whether that property is instantiated.

ARE MORAL FUNCTIONALISM’S MORAL A PRIORI COMMITMENTS REALLY A PRIORI?

Moral functionalism, a metaethical theory developed by Frank Jackson and Philip Pettit, claims that we can attain moral knowledge by ascertaining the commonplaces about morality that are typically accepted by actual agents. It has important a priori commitments; whilst we may discover a posteriori that a particular descriptive property is identical to a particular moral property, it is a priori that the thing that is identical to the moral property, whatever that thing actually is, plays a particular role. Jackson holds a particular metaphysical position, and moral functionalism is a development of that position as it applies to ethics. In this paper I adapt an objection made by D.H. Mellor against Jackson’s metaphysics to show that moral functionalism’s a priori commitments are actually a posteriori. We can only discover if moral functionalism’s purportedly a priori claims are true through a posteriori investigation.

What is a Moral Law?

This chapter explores bridge-law non-naturalism: the view that when a particular thing possesses a moral property or stands in a moral relation, this fact is metaphysically grounded in non-normative features of the thing in question together with a general moral law. Any view of this sort faces two challenges, analogous to familiar challenges in the philosophy of science: to specify the form of the explanatory laws, and to say when a fact of that form qualifies as a law. The chapter explores three strategies for answering these questions, all of which maintain that a moral law is a true generalization of the form [It is normatively necessary that whatever ϕ‎s is (thereby) F].

Ren 仁 as a Heavy Concept in the Analects

In this article, I shall try to argue that some existing interpretations of the Analects cannot provide a satisfactory understanding of the concept of ren, on the one hand, and the relation between ren and li, on the other. Ren is not a thin concept such as right and wrong, good and bad, because it is not a non-substantive concept whose descriptive content has to be identified by a specific criterion which is not included in the concept itself. It is also not or not merely a thick concept such as courage, cruelty, truthfulness, and kindliness. In comparison with a thick concept, ren like courage, but unlike right, has substantive content. Nevertheless, unlike courage and other thick concepts, ren is not only about the ideal quality of a virtuous agent and the moral property of the agent’s actions; it is also about the internal capacity of the agent and the principle believed by the agent for making moral actions. Since the meaning of the term is not only related to the external behavior but also related to the internal mind and the relevant principle, here, I call ren a ‘‘heavy’’ concept. It is ‘‘heavy’’ in the sense that it is not a concept of observable or substantive entity, but a theoretical construct which is used to explain the complicated relational property of morality, that is emerged from the internal realm and exhibited in the external realm of an agent.