Moral Strangers, Proceduralism, and Moral Consensus

2015 ◽  
pp. 201-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fabrice Jotterand
Keyword(s):  
Moral Strangers

Readdressing Our Moral Relationship to Nonhuman Creatures: Commentary on “A Dialogue on Species-Specific Rights: Humans and Animals in Bioethics”

1997 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 445-448 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter J. Whitehouse
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Common Ground ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
The Future ◽  
Moral Strangers ◽  
Ethical Thinking ◽  
Moral Relationship ◽  
Moral Status Of Animals ◽  
Species Specific ◽  
Negative Tone

Community discourse about the moral status of animals is critical to the future of bioethics and, indeed, to the future of modern society. Thomasma and Loewy are to be commended for sharing thoughts and trying to attain some common ground. I am grateful to them for fostering discussion and allowing me to respond. I cannot endorse the negative tone of the end of their conversation, however. They end with serious concerns about the possibility of any agreement between themselves. Even though I perceive some moral differences between them, I do not believe that they are moral strangers. In this commentary I review the ways in which I agree and disagree with Thomasma and Loewy and conclude with some thoughts about the kind of broad ethical thinking we need to do to address our moral relationship to nonhuman, living creatures.

Proceduralism and implicatures in dialogue

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 122-139
Author(s):  
Luciana Garbayo
Keyword(s):  
Relevance Theory ◽  
Discourse Ethics ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Conversational Implicatures ◽  
Moral Point ◽  
Moral Point Of View ◽  
Moral Strangers ◽  
Bounded Reasoning

This article aims at discussing some of the problems for the construction of a shared moral point of view in dialogical context, through a revision of both Habermas’ proceduralistic discourse ethics and Grice’s pragmatist conversational implicatures project. I claim that a) by discounting the undue idealization of both projects, supported by their Kantian underpinnings, and b) by refreshing them with a consequentialist approach to rationality in a fallibilistic bounded reasoning approach, one could achieve a more realistic understanding of the dialogical problems between moral strangers. By following such a revision, I suggest to be then possible to operate c) a reversal of the principle of rational cooperation in Grice, in convergence with Sperber & Wilson’s relevance theory, while also considering the role of other additional mechanisms in interaction, such as empathy (in Alvin Goldman’s sense). These modifications result in a fallibilistic understanding of the process of the dialogical construction of a shared moral point of view among moral strangers, with the aid of a non-idealized use of procedures and implicatures.

Biological Nihilism and Modern Moral and Political Theory

1988 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-205
Author(s):  
H. Tristram Engelhardt
Keyword(s):  
Political Theory ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Human Biology ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Human Conduct ◽  
Moral Strangers ◽  
Intellectual Challenge ◽  
Biological Nature

As Arnhart acknowledges, the major intellectual challenge of the 20th century is to justify moral judgments rationally and to provide moral authority for political action when individuals meet as moral strangers who do not share common moral assumptions. This is the task of a secular morality that aspires to transcend particular religious or ideological commitments. The arguments for nihilism suggest that such a task cannot be successfully completed. There are three ways one might attempt to escape the threat of nihilism. First, one might endeavor to show that the Aristotelian project to read human moral goals and the lineaments of proper political structure from the characteristics of human biology can be successful, despite the skepticism of authors who have articulated the naturalistic fallacy: from what is the case, one cannot conclude what ought to be the case. A neo-Aristotelian approach would need to derive from the biological nature of humans a proper code for human conduct and morally justified guidelines for human political action. Second, one might attempt to discover, as Kant had hoped, content in the very nature of reason. Here the “nature” at stake is not an external biological nature, but the characteristics of reason or reasoning itself. A contemporary example of the Kantian undertaking is found in Rawls' Theory of Justice (1971). The Aristotelian and Kantian traditions provide two quite different senses of “natural,” from which Western thinkers have attempted (in different ways) to establish the content of natural law and to justify moral and political rules.

Natural Law among Moral Strangers

2014 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 283-300 ◽  
Author(s):  
B. Goss ◽  
R. Vitz
Keyword(s):  
Natural Law ◽  
Moral Strangers
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