scholarly journals Toward a Theory of Offense: Should You Feel Offended?

Philosophy ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-25
Author(s):  
Chang Liu
Keyword(s):  
Moral Emotion ◽  
Adequate Theory ◽  
Norm Theory ◽  
Offense Principle

Abstract The feeling of being offended, as a moral emotion, plays a key role in issues such as slurs, the offense principle, ethics of humor, etc. However, no adequate theory of offense has been developed in the literature, and it remains unclear what questions such a theory should answer. This paper attempts to fill the gap by performing two tasks. The first task is to clarify and summarize the questions of offense into two kinds, the descriptive questions (e.g., what features differentiate offense from similar moral states like anger?) and the normative questions (e.g., what are the conditions for taking offense to be apt?). The second task is to answer these questions by developing what I call ‘the violated norm theory of offense’. According to this theory, feeling offended entails that the norm one endorses is judged to be violated by the offender. Appealing to the violated norm enables this theory to answer the descriptive questions (e.g., taking offense differs from anger because of features like not requiring victims and the difficulty of animal offense) and the normative questions of offense (e.g., taking offense is apt only if the violated norm is universalizable).

Naked

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krista K. Thomason
Keyword(s):  
Moral Emotion ◽  
Dark Side ◽  
Virtuous Life ◽  
Moral Philosophers

Moral philosophers have long argued that shame can be a morally valuable emotion that helps people realize when they fail to be the kinds of people they aspire to be. According to these arguments, people feel shame when they fail to live up to the norms, standards, and ideals that are valued as part of a virtuous life. But lurking in the shadows is the dark side of shame. People might feel shame when they fail to live up to their values, but they also feel shame about sex, nudity, being ugly, fat, stupid, or low-class. What is worse, people often respond to shame with violence and self-destruction. This book argues for a unified account of shame that embraces shame’s dark side. Rather than try to explain away the troubling cases as irrational or misguided, it presents an account of shame that makes sense of both its good and bad side. Shame is the experience of a tension between two aspects of one’s self: one’s self-conception and one’s identity. People are liable to feelings of shame because they are not always who they take themselves to be. Shame is a valuable moral emotion, and even though it has a dark side, people would not be better off without it.

scholarly journals Subversive compliance and embodiment in remedial interchanges

2020 ◽  
Vol 40 (5) ◽  
pp. 669-693
Author(s):  
Asta Cekaite
Keyword(s):  
Primary School ◽  
Adult Child ◽  
First Grade ◽  
Moral Emotion ◽  
Multiple Modalities ◽  
Temporal Duration ◽  
One Year

AbstractThis study examines normativity of affect and the affective embeddedness of normativity, instantiated as verbal and embodied stances taken by the participants in adult-child remedial interchanges. The data are based on one year of video fieldwork in a first-grade class at a Swedish primary school. An ethnographically informed analysis of talk and multimodal action is adopted. The findings show that the children’s affective and normative transgressions provided discursive spaces for adult moral instructions and socialization. However, the children’s compliant responses were resistant and subversive. They were designed as embodied double-voiced acts that indexed incongruent affective and moral stances. The findings further revealed several ways of configuring embodied double-voiced responses. The children juxtaposed multiple modalities and exploited the expectations of what constitutes appropriate temporal duration, timing, and shape of nonverbal responses. They (i) combined up-scaled verbal and embodied hyperbolic rhetoric when the teachers’ talk required but minimal responses, and (ii) configured antithetical affect displays, e.g., crying and smiling, or overlaid bodily displays of moral emotion (sadness, seriousness, and smiling) with aligning but exaggerated gestures and movements. Subversive, embodied double-voiced responses simultaneously acquiesced with and deflected the responsibility and effectively derailed a successful closure of remedial interchange.

Gratitude affects moral disgust: From the perspective of social norm theory

PsyCh Journal ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Qionghua He ◽  
Yanhui Xiang ◽  
Xia Dong ◽  
Jiaxu Zhao
Keyword(s):  
Social Norm ◽  
Moral Disgust ◽  
Norm Theory

Being moral and doing good to others

2017 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 180-191 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Septianto ◽  
Bambang Soegianto
Keyword(s):  
Prosocial Behavior ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Cultural Context ◽  
Moral Identity ◽  
Qualitative Comparative Analysis ◽  
Marketing Strategies ◽  
Moral Emotion ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Judgment Process ◽  
Nuanced Understanding

Purpose Although previous research has established that moral emotion, moral judgment, and moral identity influence consumer intention to engage in prosocial behavior (e.g. donating, volunteering) under some circumstances, these factors, in reality, can concurrently influence judgment process. Therefore, it is important to get a more nuanced understanding of how the combinations of each factor can lead to a high intention to engage in prosocial behavior. The paper aims to discuss these issues. Design/methodology/approach This research employs fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis to explore different configurations of moral emotion, judgment, and identity that lead to a high consumer intention to engage in prosocial behavior. Findings Findings indicate four configurations of moral emotion, moral judgment, and moral identity that lead to a high intention to engage in prosocial behavior. Research limitations/implications This research focuses on the case of a hospital in Indonesia; thus, it is important not to overgeneralize the findings. Nonetheless, from a methodological standpoint, opportunity emerges to broaden the examinations in other service and cultural contexts. Practical implications The findings of this research can help the hospital to develop effective combinations of advertising and marketing strategies to promote prosocial behavior among its customers. Originality/value This paper provides the first empirical evidence on the existence of multiple pathways of moral emotion, judgment, and identity that lead to a high consumer intention to engage in prosocial behavior. The implications of this research also highlight the importance of cultural context in understanding consumer behavior.

The High Mounted Brake Lamp: A Cause without a Theory

1993 ◽  
Vol 37 (14) ◽  
pp. 955-959 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rudolf G. Mortimer
Keyword(s):  
Field Studies ◽  
Adequate Theory ◽  
Experimental Field ◽  
Brake Light ◽  
Driver Performance

Studies are described that formed the basis for the Federal high mounted brake light standard and some that have been done since. One purpose of this paper is to show how some details of the new Standard are hard to derive based on the underlying research. In addition, there was no adequate theory of driver performance upon which the standard was based. Although experimental field studies forecast reductions in rear-end crashes of about 50%, analyses of actual reductions in rear-end crashes since the standard took effect estimated them to be 22% to 3.5%.

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