SCIENCE CANNOT DETERMINE HUMAN VALUES

Think ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 15 (43) ◽  
pp. 17-23 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brian D. Earp
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Empirical Information ◽  
Moral Landscape ◽  
A Chain

Sam Harris, in his book The Moral Landscape, argues that ‘science can determine human values.’ Against this view, I argue that while secular moral philosophy can certainly help us to determine our values, science – at least as that word is commonly understood – must play a subservient role. To the extent that science can ‘determine’ what we ought to do, it is only by providing us with empirical information, which can then be slotted into a chain of deductive (moral) reasoning. The premises of such reasoning, however, can in no way be derived from the scientific method: they come, instead, from philosophy – and common sense.

Introduction

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Subramanian Rangan
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Market Power ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Economic Paradigm ◽  
Modern Economic ◽  
Great Output

Our quest for prosperity has produced great output (i.e. performance) but not always great outcomes (i.e. progress). Despite mounting regulation when it comes to fairness, well-being, and the scope of our humanity, the modern economic system still leaves much to be desired. If practice is to evolve substantively and systematically, then we must help evolve an economic paradigm where mutuality is more systematically complemented by morality. The bases of this morality must rest, beyond the sympathetic sentiments envisaged by Adam Smith, on an expanded and intentional moral reasoning. Moral philosophy has a natural role in informing and influencing such a turn in our thinking, especially when education is the preferred vehicle of transformation. Indeed, rather than just regulate market power we must also better educate market power.

scholarly journals A Deeper Look at Autonomous Vehicle Ethics: An Integrative Ethical Decision-Making Framework to Explain Moral Pluralism

2021 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jimin Rhim ◽  
Ji-Hyun Lee ◽  
Mo Chen ◽  
Angelica Lim
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Ethical Decision ◽  
Ethical Decision Making ◽  
Autonomous Vehicle ◽  
Moral Dilemma ◽  
Individual Factors ◽  
Ethical Decisions ◽  
Ethical Behavioral Intentions

The autonomous vehicle (AV) is one of the first commercialized AI-embedded robots to make autonomous decisions. Despite technological advancements, unavoidable AV accidents that result in life-and-death consequences cannot be completely eliminated. The emerging social concern of how an AV should make ethical decisions during unavoidable accidents is referred to as the moral dilemma of AV, which has promoted heated discussions among various stakeholders. However, there are research gaps in explainable AV ethical decision-making processes that predict how AVs’ moral behaviors are made that are acceptable from the AV users’ perspectives. This study addresses the key question: What factors affect ethical behavioral intentions in the AV moral dilemma? To answer this question, this study draws theories from multidisciplinary research fields to propose the “Integrative ethical decision-making framework for the AV moral dilemma.” The framework includes four interdependent ethical decision-making stages: AV moral dilemma issue framing, intuitive moral reasoning, rational moral reasoning, and ethical behavioral intention making. Further, the framework includes variables (e.g., perceived moral intensity, individual factors, and personal moral philosophies) that influence the ethical decision-making process. For instance, the framework explains that AV users from Eastern cultures will tend to endorse a situationist ethics position (high idealism and high relativism), which views that ethical decisions are relative to context, compared to AV users from Western cultures. This proposition is derived from the link between individual factors and personal moral philosophy. Moreover, the framework proposes a dual-process theory, which explains that both intuitive and rational moral reasoning are integral processes of ethical decision-making during the AV moral dilemma. Further, this framework describes that ethical behavioral intentions that lead to decisions in the AV moral dilemma are not fixed, but are based on how an individual perceives the seriousness of the situation, which is shaped by their personal moral philosophy. This framework provides a step-by-step explanation of how pluralistic ethical decision-making occurs, reducing the abstractness of AV moral reasoning processes.

A Righteous Consensus, Whig Style

2021 ◽  
pp. 73-88
Author(s):  
George M. Marsden
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
State Universities ◽  
Reformed Tradition ◽  
Christian Morality ◽  
Protestant Denominations

Various Protestant denominations founded hundreds of colleges during the first half of the nineteenth century. Even two-thirds of presidents of state universities were clergymen. Though those in the Reformed tradition tended to be the leading educators, denominational diversity and necessities of attracting varieties of students weakened doctrinal distinctives. The prevailing “Whig” ideal emphasized combining building a modern civilization with Christian morality. Educators, such as Francis Wayland or Mark Hopkins, confidently assumed that the best of objective common sense and modern science would support traditional Christianity. Colleges still promoted the evangelical tradition, as in campus revivals. They taught the classics as a way of developing moral faculties, as the Yale Report of 1828 advocated. Specifically Christian perspectives were found in capstone moral philosophy courses.

The Trolley Method of Moral Philosophy

2012 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 243-256 ◽  
Author(s):  
James O’Connor ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Human Behavior ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Real Life ◽  
Trolley Problems ◽  
Trolley Cases

The hypothetical scenarios generally known as trolley problems have become widespread in recent moral philosophy. They invariably require an agent to choose one of a strictly limited number of options, all of them bad. Although they don’t always involve trolleys / trams, and are used to make a wide variety of points, what makes it justified to speak of a distinctive “trolley method” is the characteristic assumption that the intuitive reactions that all these artificial situations elicit constitute an appropriate guide to real-life moral reasoning. I dispute this assumption by arguing that trolley cases inevitably constrain the supposed rescuers into behaving in ways that clearly deviate from psychologically healthy, and morally defensible, human behavior. Through this focus on a generally overlooked aspect of trolley theorizing – namely, the highly impoverished role invariably allotted to the would-be rescuer in these scenarios – I aim to challenge the complacent twin assumptions of advocates of the trolley method that this approach to moral reasoning has practical value, and is in any case innocuous. Neither assumption is true.

Moral Philosophy of Global Peace

1998 ◽  
pp. 86-92
Author(s):  
Chhaya Rai
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Racial Discrimination ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Economic Inequality ◽  
Human Values ◽  
Social Injustice ◽  
Global Ethics ◽  
Religious Intolerance ◽  
Summum Bonum ◽  
Global Peace

Global Peace is the summum bonum, so we must know its negative as well as positive meanings. Simultaneously peace must be understood in all its interrelated but theoretically differentiated dimensions as personal, social, national, international and global. Today, humankind is suffering from multidimensional crises such as terrorism, population-explosion, denial of human rights, economic inequality, racial discrimination, ideological extremism, religious intolerance, social injustice, ecological imbalance, consumerism, oppression of weak, etc. These peace-related issues compel us to lay down the fundamental principles of a radical global ethics that expects us to realize our roles and duties regarding global peace. It includes the role and ideals of educationalists, the duties of scientists, philosophers, and thinkers, the inculcation of human values such as nonviolence, love, etc.

Women, Morality, and Fiction

Hypatia ◽  
1990 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 76-90
Author(s):  
Jenefer Robinson ◽  
Stephanie Ross
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Martha Nussbaum ◽  
Moral Concern

We apply Carol Gilligaris distinction between a “male” mode of moral reasoning, focussed on justice, and a “female” mode, focussed on caring, to the reading of literature. Martha Nussbaum suggests that certain novels are works of moral philosophy. We argue that what Nussbaum sees as the special ethical contribution of such novels is in fact training in the stereotypically female mode of moral concern. We show this kind of training is appropriate to all readers of these novels, not just to women. Finally, we explore what else is involved in distinctively feminist readings of traditional novels.

Beyond Caring: The De-Moralization of Gender

1987 ◽  
Vol 13 ◽  
pp. 87-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marilyn Friedman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Language ◽  
Carol Gilligan

Carol Gilligan heard a ‘distinct moral language’ in the voices of women who were subjects in her studies of moral reasoning. Though herself a developmental psychologist, Gilligan has put her mark on contemporary feminist moral philosophy by daring to claim the competence of this voice and the worth of its message. Her book, In a Different Voice, which one theorist has aptly described as a best-seller, explored the concern with care and relationships which Gilligan discerned in the moral reasoning of women and contrasted it with the orientation toward justice and rights which she found to typify the moral reasoning of men.

Kant and Anthropology

1974 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 36-45
Author(s):  
G. J. Warnock
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Empirical Information

The question that I want to debate a little in this paper could be put in this way: what, and how much, empirical information is required for, or relevant to, moral philosophy? That question may well strike one as somewhat vague and woolly. Rightly so. What is needed to get rather clearer about its answer or possible answers is chiefly, I believe, to get clearer about its sense.

Dugald Stewart on intellectual character

1997 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-320 ◽  
Author(s):  
JENNIFER TANNOCH-BLAND
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
Intellectual Culture ◽  
Thomas Reid ◽  
Early Nineteenth Century ◽  
Intellectual Character ◽  
History Of

Dugald Stewart (1753–1828) lectured in astronomy and political economy, held the chair of mathematics at Edinburgh University from 1775 to 1785, then the chair of moral philosophy from 1785 to 1810, and wrote extensively on metaphysics, political economy, ethics, philology, aesthetics, psychology and the history of philosophy and the experimental sciences. He is commonly regarded as the last voice of the Scottish Enlightenment, the articulate disciple of Thomas Reid, father of Scottish common sense philosophy. Recently some historians have begun to rediscover elements of the contribution Stewart made to early nineteenth-century British intellectual culture, and his Collected Works have been republished with a new introduction by Knud Haakonssen.

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