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.

Moral Reasoning as Perception: A Reading of Carol Gilligan

Hypatia ◽  
1996 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 97-113
Author(s):  
Richard Kyte
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Carol Gilligan

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.

Descriptive Moral Theories

2020 ◽  
pp. 45-72
Author(s):  
Anne-Marie Søndergaard Christensen
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Problem ◽  
Moral Language ◽  
Moral Theories ◽  
Moral Problems ◽  
Insight Into ◽  
Moral Philosophers

This chapter develops an alternative, descriptive understanding of moral theory in order to reconcile two apparently conflicting insights; the insight of the critics of moral theory into the problems of the dominant conception of moral theory and the insight into the relevance that we still attribute to the positions traditionally conceived as theories such as Kantianism and utilitarianism. Building on the work of theory-critics, but without giving up the notion of moral theory, the chapter presents a view according to which theories are descriptive rather than prescriptive and serve heuristic and elucidatory purposes. Inspired by the notion of grammar found in the later work of Ludwig Wittgenstein, it is furthermore claimed that theories are descriptions which provide overviews of various normative structures of concerns—or moral grammars—and which may serve two different purposes, providing either general descriptions of the logic of our moral language or descriptions that elucidate a specific moral problem. According to this view, moral philosophers must accept the co-existence of a plurality of moral theories that describe a plurality of moral grammars, and they must give up the idea that moral theories are mutually exclusive. Moreover, the development of the second purpose reveals that theories cannot be the sole tool of moral philosophy, they need to be supplemented with grammatical investigations of the particularities involved in moral problems. Moral theories can be helpful, but they are never sufficient when addressing a problem in moral philosophy.

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.

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.

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.

Repression and Moral Reasoning: An Outline of a New Approach in Ethical Understanding

SATS ◽  
2015 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Hannes Nykänen
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Principle ◽  
Moral Problem ◽  
Related Phenomenon ◽  
New Approach ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Essential Aspect

AbstractThe aim of the paper is to show that moral reasoning is not really reasoning in the sense usually assumed in moral philosophy. Instead, moral reasoning is one aspect of repressing conscience. The formal dimensions of moral reasoning function as a repressive depersonalisation of our sense of being an I who stands in a relationship to a you. For instance, “moral principle” invokes a formal and hence impersonal understanding of a moral problem. The thinking person loses her sense of being a particular person related to another particular person and focuses instead on the moral principles with their inherent, systematic implications. However, and as I will show in connection to so-called moral dilemmas, the thinking person does not actually act in the rational manner that is presupposed by reasoning. Instead, moral reasoning will reveal itself as a discourse for repressing conscience. Part of the aim of the paper is to show that, contrary to what is generally assumed, repression is a morally related phenomenon that arises as a result of a person’s difficulties with acknowledging the character of a moral difficulty; an acknowledgement that is an essential aspect of moral understanding.

Learning from Evil

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Diane Jeske
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Virtue ◽  
Thought Experiments ◽  
Thomas Jefferson ◽  
Cultural Norms ◽  
Moral Deliberation ◽  
Moral Self

The actions of Thomas Jefferson, slaveholder, and Edward Coles, emancipator of slaves, pose critical questions about how people justify their complicity in evil practices. In this introductory chapter, the author lays out how she will examine four significant impediments to good moral deliberation: cultural norms and pressures, the complexity of consequences, emotions, and self-deception. She explains how she will illuminate the errors of bad people and show how they mirror errors that we ourselves commonly make. Thus, the moral philosophy presented here is an important tool in identifying such errors and can assist in fulfilling our duties of due care in moral deliberation, moral self-scrutiny, and the development of moral virtue. The author previews the case studies of bad people, such as Nazis and slaveholders, that she cites in later chapters, and she shows how the studies can act as extended thought experiments about the nature of moral reasoning and of effective moral education.

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