Sources of the Self and Moral Agency in The Lifted Veil, The Mill on the Floss and Silas Marner

2000 ◽  
pp. 40-68
Author(s):  
Hao Li
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
The Self ◽  
Mill On The Floss

Acknowledging and managing deep constraints on moral agency and the self

2018 ◽  
Vol 41 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Niemi ◽  
Jesse Graham
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
Traumatic Events ◽  
The Self ◽  
Collaborative Dialogue

AbstractDoris proposes that the exercise of morally responsible agency unfolds as a collaborative dialogue among selves expressing their values while being subject to ever-present constraints. We assess the fit of Doris's account with recent data from psychology and neuroscience related to how people make judgments about moral agency (responsibility, blame), and how they understand the self after traumatic events.

scholarly journals The Self-Other Divergence Effect for Doping Likelihood: Mediation by Guilt and Moderation by Moral Agency and Values

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (5) ◽  
pp. 417-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Ring ◽  
Maria Kavussanu ◽  
Benjamin Walters
Keyword(s):  
Repeated Measures ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
The Self ◽  
Repeated Measures Design ◽  
In Doping ◽  
Quasi Experimental ◽  
Divergence Effect ◽  
Independent Variable ◽  
Rugby Players

Objectives: Self–other divergence refers to individuals judging themselves to be different from others. The authors investigated doping-related self-other divergence.Design: The authors used a quasi-experimental repeated-measures design to compare the effects of an independent variable (perspective: self, other) on doping likelihood and guilt. Method: Rugby players rated doping likelihood and guilt in situations describing two perspectives: self (their own behavior and feelings) and other (another player’s behavior and feelings). They also completed measures of moral agency, identity, perfectionism, and values (moral traits). Results: Doping likelihood was lower and guilt was higher for self-based ratings compared with other-based ratings. The self–other difference in doping likelihood was mediated by guilt and moderated by moral traits (larger for athletes with higher agency and values). Agency and values were more strongly related to self than other doping likelihood. Conclusions: Other-referenced measures differed from self-referenced measures of doping likelihood and guilt, indicating that it is wrong to presume equivalence of measurement.

Kant on the Unity of Self-Consciousness and Moral Agency

2021 ◽  
pp. 240-266
Author(s):  
Patricia Kitcher
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Self ◽  
Self Concept ◽  
The Senses ◽  
The Mind

Kant agreed with Hume that humans have no impression of a self; the concept of the self does not enter the mind through the senses. It is, rather, an a priori representation that arises from the activities of the mind in cognizing objects. It is nonetheless a necessary representation for any creature capable of cognition. Even to be able to judge that some thing is some way, a creature must have and use the concept of a ‘self-conscious unified self.’ Kant also argued that the use of the I or self concept was possible only for creatures who were free in thought and action. In later writings, though, he seemed to differentiate the kinds of freedoms involved in thought and action.

scholarly journals Levinas and Løgstrup on the Phenomenology (and Metaphysics?) of Moral Agency

The Monist ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 103 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-62
Author(s):  
Irene McMullin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
Human Life ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Natural Conditions ◽  
Face To Face ◽  
Moral Force ◽  
The Face ◽  
Ethical Demand

Abstract For both Levinas and Løgstrup, the moral encounter is characterized by an asymmetrical prioritization of the other over the self. Some take Løgstrup’s account to be an improvement on Levinas’s, however, insofar as it appears to both foreswear the hyperbole of the latter’s view and ground the ethical claim in the natural conditions of human life (thereby avoiding Levinas’s alleged nominalism). This paper argues, in contrast, that Løgstrup’s own account is equally hyperbolic in its characterization of the self as fundamentally evil, and that his attempt to ground the ethical demand in structures of ‘life’ raises serious difficulties. I will argue that Levinas’s stronger commitment to phenomenology both rules out the problematic metaphysical claims on which Løgstrup’s ontological ethics depends and helps explain the methodological function of Levinas’s own hyperbole. Unlike Løgstrup, Levinas insists that the challenge is not eradicating the claims of the self, but rather resisting its pretention to a global normative priority. In making this case I refute the argument that Levinas, unlike Løgstrup, is committed to a ‘command’ view of morality—whereby it is the other person’s authoritative status that underwrites the moral force of the claim, not the content of the claim itself. But on Levinas’s view, ‘demand’ and ‘command’ accounts merge in his understanding of the face-to-face encounter because responding to the content of the demand—that I treat the other’s claim as reason-giving—just is to see the other person as an authority capable of making legitimate claims on me.

Conflicting Attitudes, Moral Agency, and Conceptions of the Self

2004 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 331-352 ◽  
Author(s):  
Angela M. Smith ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
The Self

Bodily Disorientation and Moral Change

Hypatia ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-280 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ami Harbin
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
The Self ◽  
Moral Change ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Complex Interactions

Neglect of the moral promise of disorientation is a persistent gap in even the most sophisticated philosophies of embodiment. In this article, I begin to correct this neglect by expanding our sense of the range and nature of disoriented experience and proposing new visions of disorientation as benefiting moral agency. Disorientations are experienced through complex interactions of corporeal, affective, and cognitive processes, and are characterized by feelings of shock, surprise, unease, and discomfort; felt disorientations almost always make us unsure of how to go on. I argue that experiences of disorientation can strengthen the moral agency of individuals. I begin by clarifying experiences of felt ease and orientation. I then characterize disoriented embodiment by investigating select experiences that often involve or accompany disorientation, focusing throughout on how disorientation prompts changes in motivation and action. I conclude by charting how disoriented embodiments can help individuals become better moral agents overall, in part by challenging norms that restrict embodiment and undermining dualistic conceptions of the self.

Truth, Agency and the Hutton Report: A Reply to Diana Coole

2006 ◽  
Vol 36 (4) ◽  
pp. 759-762
Author(s):  
SUSAN MENDUS
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Theoretical Analysis ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
The Self ◽  
Political Life ◽  
Political Inquiry

In her provocative article, ‘Agency, Truth and Meaning: Judging the Hutton Report’, Diana Coole makes two important claims: first, that ‘political inquiry is impoverished to the extent that theorists … ignore the more mundane reports and statements that help constitute everyday political life’; and secondly, that a theoretical analysis of the Hutton Report shows it to have been informed by a particular conception of truth (Lord Hutton's own conception) that largely guaranteed its conclusions and served to make Dr Kelly and the BBC ‘victims of a particular sense of truth’.I share Coole's belief that political theorists should contribute more to the analysis and understanding of ‘mundane’ texts, but I have grave reservations about the kind of analysis she favours, and about its implications in this particular case. It seems to me that her focus on truth is de-politicizing, while her conclusion that Dr David Kelly was a ‘victim’ rests upon a simplistic understanding of moral agency and responsibility. If we wish to bring the resources of theory to bear on everyday political texts, we do better, I suggest, to focus on moral and political philosophy than on epistemology.TRUTHCoole claims that the conclusions of the Hutton Report were informed (even determined) by a ‘positivist-juridical (empiricist-legalistic)’ conception of truth, one which displayed ‘antipathy towards the idea that truth is a matter of interpretation and hence dependent on subjective judgements’. As this conception worked its way through the inquiry it ‘guaranteed’ partisan conclusions that were at odds with the self-understanding of other protagonists in the affair, most notably that of Dr David Kelly.

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