Is Moral Status Good for You?

2021 ◽  
pp. 139-156
Author(s):  
Thomas Douglas
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Good For ◽  
Fourth Way ◽  
Way Of Thinking

Is moral status good for you? Does getting more moral status benefit you? Does losing it harm you? These questions are relevant to the question of whether we should seek to enhance, or disenhance, the cognitive and moral capacities of non-human animals, since doing so might affect their moral status. On one way of thinking, to have moral status is to be the object of a prudentially valuable form of recognition. On another, moral status is good for us because it provides protection against certain forms of harmful treatment. On yet another way of thinking, moral status is like an expensive taste or vulnerable disposition. The more we have, the more difficult it is for others to satisfy our (moral) needs, so it is instrumentally bad for us. Finally, on a fourth way of thinking, moral status is noninstrumentally good for us; it contributes constitutively to our wellbeing, like pleasure and (perhaps) positive achievements. This chapter explores each of these approaches to the evaluation of moral status.

scholarly journals The Theory–Theory Approach to Ethics

2020 ◽  
pp. 261-273
Author(s):  
Frank Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Proper Names ◽  
Theory Theory ◽  
Theory Approach ◽  
Asking Questions ◽  
Functionalist Account ◽  
Good For ◽  
Way Of Thinking

One way to approach the theory of reference for proper names is by asking what proper names are good for in the sense of the valuable purposes they serve. Suppose we approach ethical terms and concepts in the same spirit, asking questions like: What purposes do they serve? How could we do something similar but do it better? This chapter explores the implications of this way of thinking about ethical terms and concepts, and explains why a theory–theory or moral functionalist account of them is so attractive when we approach matters from this perspective. The discussion is set inside an avowedly cognitivist, naturalist framework, and touches on the implications of this framework for how to adjudicate debates between rival views in ethics, and the relevance of evolutionary considerations.

scholarly journals Four Ways of Thinking about Information

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 322-331
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Hofkrichner
Keyword(s):  
Hard Science ◽  
Fourth Way ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
Way Of Thinking

There are four ways of thinking: reductionism, projectivism, disjunctivism, integrativism. The gap between the “hard” science perspective and the “soft” science perspective on information reflect these ways of thinking. The paper discusses how this gap might be bridged by applying the fourth way of thinking.

God as an All-Knowing Distributor of Happiness

2020 ◽  
pp. 321-338
Author(s):  
Christopher J. Insole
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reason ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Natural Evil ◽  
Divine Action ◽  
Highest Good ◽  
Moral World ◽  
Principle Of Parsimony ◽  
Way Of Thinking

This chapter investigates Lawrence Pasternack’s interpretation of God’s role in Kant’s philosophy, in relation to the concepts of morality, divine action, and grace. Pasternack praises what he finds to be a consistent strand of Kant’s soteriology, where God acts as a cognizer of our moral status, whereby God distributes happiness proportionately, when integrating and coordinating a moral world. It is conceded that such a role has two satisfactory features: it is something that God can do, consistent with our freedom, and it is something only God can do, it would seem, given God’s omniscience. Pasternack claims that even if Kant’s account departs from traditional Christianity, it nonetheless ‘offers us a coherent, consistent, unified, and intellectually mature way of thinking about sin, faith, salvation, and worship’. I argue that even if the coherence and significance of Kant’s soteriology is granted, we are still not yet presented with persuasive grounds for being required to believe in God, given all that is achieved by Kant’s noumenal intelligible realm, and given Kant’s principle of parsimony, which involves not believing in more than we need to, for the purposes of practical reason. For all we know, it still seems perfectly ‘thinkable’ that the noumenal moral realm of reasons, taken in itself and ‘without God’, is such that the highest good is possible. It is argued that this possibility could remain thinkable for Kant, even when reflecting upon natural evil.

scholarly journals O edukacji w zakresie praw zwierząt. Teoria Toma Regana

1970 ◽  
pp. 351-364
Author(s):  
Dorota Probucka
Keyword(s):  
Animal Rights ◽  
Moral Status ◽  
Educational Theory ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Animal Rights Movement ◽  
Inherent Value ◽  
Moral Duties ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
Tom Regan

The article concerns a new educational theory based on the idea of animal rights. It was presented and developed by the American ethicist Tom Regan, which drifted its axiological base and was the initiator of socio-educational movement called Animal Rights Movement, to which joined other ethicists, educators, layers, veterinarians, and even theologians. The article contains analysis of Tom Regan's views on the issue of moral status of non-human beings, and consists of two parts. The first part concerns the criticism of ethical theories based on the idea of direct and indirect moral duties to animals. In the second part are discussed the main concepts and principles of a new way of thinking such as: inherent value, a subject of a life criterion, the respect principle and its derivatives.

Democratic Secession from a Multinational State

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Patten
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
The Other ◽  
National Minorities ◽  
Equal Recognition ◽  
Way Of Thinking ◽  
The One

This chapter turns to the problem of self-government rights. To what extent do national minorities have a legitimate claim on some form of self-governing autonomy within a multinational state? When, if ever, does this claim—or its frustration—support a further claim to independent statehood? By drawing on the idea of equal recognition, the chapter develops a distinctive way of thinking about the justification of multinational federalism and other forms of autonomy for substate national groups. It explores this issue in the context of a further question that has been debated by normative political theorists in recent years—the moral status of secessionist claims. The two main views on this question have been the plebiscitary theory and the remedial rights only theory. The chapter charts a middle course between the democratic approach to secession, on the one hand, and the remedial approach, as formulated by Buchanan, on the other.

scholarly journals Four Ways of Thinking about Information

2011 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 322-331 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wolfgang Hofkrichner
Keyword(s):  
Hard Science ◽  
Fourth Way ◽  
Ways Of Thinking ◽  
Way Of Thinking

There are four ways of thinking: reductionism, projectivism, disjunctivism, integrativism. The gap between the “hard” science perspective and the “soft” science perspective on information reflect these ways of thinking. The paper discusses how this gap might be bridged by applying the fourth way of thinking.

Seti Figure of Merit

1997 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 711-717 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Dreher ◽  
D. Kent Cullers
Keyword(s):  
Figure Of Merit ◽  
Qualitative Difference ◽  
Current Generation ◽  
Detection Range ◽  
Sky Surveys ◽  
Independent Observations ◽  
Good For

AbstractWe develop a figure of merit for SETI observations which is anexplicitfunction of the EIRP of the transmitters, which allows us to treat sky surveys and targeted searches on the same footing. For each EIRP, we calculate the product of terms measuring the number of stars within detection range, the range of frequencies searched, and the number of independent observations for each star. For a given set of SETI observations, the result is a graph of merit versus transmitter EIRP. We apply this technique to several completed and ongoing SETI programs. The results provide a quantitative confirmation of the expected qualitative difference between sky surveys and targeted searches: the Project Phoenix targeted search is good for finding transmitters in the 109to 1014W range, while the sky surveys do their best at higher powers. Current generation optical SETI is not yet competitive with microwave SETI.

Lactamide-MEA Looks Good for Cradle Cap

2006 ◽  
Vol 40 (12) ◽  
pp. 53
Author(s):  
SHARON WORCESTER
Keyword(s):  
Good For

PDLs Equally Good for Scar Ablation

2005 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 26
Author(s):  
Michele G. Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Good For
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