Moral Testimony and Moral Understanding

2018 ◽  
Vol 15 (3) ◽  
pp. 245-271 ◽  
Author(s):  
McShane Paddy Jane
Keyword(s):  
Moral Agency ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
The Ideal

In this paper I argue against the charge that dependence on moral testimony is at odds with good moral agency, and moral specifically with the ideal of having moral understanding and using it to make moral judgments. My argument has four main strands. First, I contend that one of the grounds that is often adduced for the value of moral understanding—namely, that it is important for justifying ourselves to others—does not offer an adequate basis for criticizing dependence on moral testimony. Second, I show how dependence on moral testimony is not incompatible with moral understanding. Third, I argue that, in fact, dependence on moral testimony can be an important avenue for achieving moral understanding. Fourth, and finally, I contend that moral understanding is not always an ideal we have sufficient reason to seek. If my arguments are successful, they provide new resources for a defense of dependence on moral testimony.

Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility Volume 6

2019 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
Quality Of Will ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Standing To Blame

This is the sixth volume of Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility. The papers were drawn from the fourth biennial New Orleans Workshop in Agency and Responsibility (NOWAR), held November 2–4, 2017. The essays cover a wide range of topics relevant to agency and responsibility: the threat of neuroscience to free will; the relevance of resentment and guilt to responsibility; how control and self-control pertain to moral agency, oppression, and poverty; responsibility for joint agency; the role and conditions of shame in theories of attributability; how one might take responsibility without blameworthy quality of will; what it means to have standing to blame others; the relevance of moral testimony to moral responsibility; how to build a theory of attributabiity that captures all the relevant cases; and how thinking about blame better enables us to dissolve a dispute in moral philosophy between actualists and possibilists.

Books and Their Method

2021 ◽  
pp. 479-542
Author(s):  
Frank Griffel
Keyword(s):  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Careful Consideration ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Philosophical Inquiry ◽  
God's Will ◽  
Principle Of Sufficient Reason ◽  
Rational Explanation ◽  
The Ideal

This chapter deals with the method of philosophical books during the sixth/twelfth century. It begins with an analysis of Abu l-Barakat al-Baghdadi’s method of i’tibar (careful consideration) and highlights its departure from al-Farabi’s and Avicenna’s (Ibn Sina’s) demonstrative method as the ideal of philosophical inquiry. The chapter looks at how Fakhr al-Din al-Razi describes his own method in his philosophical books and it analyzes the method of “probing and dividing” (sabr wa-taqsim) used therein. Finally, the chapter zooms in on the methodical differences between Fakhr al-Din’s philosophical books and his books of kalam and focuses on the principle of sufficient reason. This philosophical principle requires that every event must have a rational explanation of its cause(s). The principle is universally valid in al-Razi’s philosophical books, yet in his books on kalam only insofar as God’s will is excluded from this requirement. This difference has far-reaching effects on the teachings put forward in these two genres of books.

Moral agents

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vinit Haksar
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Free Will ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Strong Version ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Moral Agents ◽  
Concern For Others

Moral agents are those agents expected to meet the demands of morality. Not all agents are moral agents. Young children and animals, being capable of performing actions, may be agents in the way that stones, plants and cars are not. But though they are agents they are not automatically considered moral agents. For a moral agent must also be capable of conforming to at least some of the demands of morality. This requirement can be interpreted in different ways. On the weakest interpretation it will suffice if the agent has the capacity to conform to some of the external requirements of morality. So if certain agents can obey moral laws such as ‘Murder is wrong’ or ‘Stealing is wrong’, then they are moral agents, even if they respond only to prudential reasons such as fear of punishment and even if they are incapable of acting for the sake of moral considerations. According to the strong version, the Kantian version, it is also essential that the agents should have the capacity to rise above their feelings and passions and act for the sake of the moral law. There is also a position in between which claims that it will suffice if the agent can perform the relevant act out of altruistic impulses. Other suggested conditions of moral agency are that agents should have: an enduring self with free will and an inner life; understanding of the relevant facts as well as moral understanding; and moral sentiments, such as capacity for remorse and concern for others. Philosophers often disagree about which of these and other conditions are vital; the term moral agency is used with different degrees of stringency depending upon what one regards as its qualifying conditions. The Kantian sense is the most stringent. Since there are different senses of moral agency, answers to questions like ‘Are collectives moral agents?’ depend upon which sense is being used. From the Kantian standpoint, agents such as psychopaths, rational egoists, collectives and robots are at best only quasi-moral, for they do not fulfil some of the essential conditions of moral agency.

Political Ramifications of Formal Ugliness in Kant’s Aesthetics

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (3) ◽  
pp. 195-209
Author(s):  
Christopher Buckman ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Change ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Social Forces ◽  
Human Community ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Ideal ◽  
The French Revolution

Kant’s theory of taste supports his political theory by providing the judgment of beauty as a symbol of the good and example of teleological experience, allowing us to imagine the otherwise obscure movement of nature and history toward the ideal human community. If interpreters are correct in believing that Kant should make room for pure judgments of ugliness in his theory of taste, we will have to consider the implications of such judgments for Kant’s political theory. It is here proposed that pure, formal ugliness symbolizes regressive, counter-teleological trends in nature and history. Kant’s paradoxical stance on the right to rebellion, both condemning and supporting the French Revolution, is interpreted as failing to take into account negative social forces signified by ugliness, and therefore neglecting the role of moral agency in social change.

Contracting under Pressure: A Theory of Duress

1997 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 343-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen A. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Contract Law ◽  
Sufficient Reason ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Individual Freedom ◽  
Adequate Account ◽  
Undue Influence ◽  
Core Value ◽  
The Law ◽  
The Ideal

In certain circumstances the fact that an agreement is made under pressure is sufficient reason to invalidate what would otherwise be a good contract. The rules providing for invalidation in such cases are found in the textbooks under the headings of duress and, to a less extent, undue influence and unconscionability. That the existence of pressure sometimes is and should be sufficient to invalidate a contract is not controversial. Few would argue that a contract entered at gunpoint ought to be enforced and the law is clear that such agreements are not enforceable. What is less clear are the principle(s) that underlie such decisions and the proper scope or reach of those principles. These questions are important for both the theory and practice of contract law. Theoretically, because any adequate account of contract law—a doctrine that in the orthodox understanding holds out the ideal of freedom as a core value—must explain that part of the lawin which individual freedom is most directly at issue. Practically, because the recognition in English courts over the last twenty-five years that the defence of duress may be invoked in situations other than threats to a person or even threats to a person's goods (in short, the acceptance of “economic duress”), together with the recent near-elimination of the rule that a promise to perform an existing duty is not good consideration, has meant that courts are regularly required to consider how far the scope of duress should extend.

scholarly journals Moral Advice and Joint Agency

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eric Wiland
Keyword(s):  
Moral Worth ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
Joint Agency ◽  
Right Reason ◽  
The Right ◽  
Do The Right Thing ◽  
Moral Advice

There are many alleged problems with trusting another person’s moral testimony, perhaps the most prominent of which is that it fails to deliver moral understanding. Without moral understanding, one cannot do the right thing for the right reason, and so acting on trusted moral testimony lacks moral worth. This chapter, however, argues that moral advice differs from moral testimony, differs from it in a way that enables a defender of moral advice to parry this worry about moral worth. The basic idea is that an advisor and an advisee can together constitute a joint agent, and that this joint agent’s action can indeed have moral worth. So while the advisee himself might not do the right thing for the right reason (this because all alone he lacks the right reason), and while the advisor herself might not do the right thing for the right reason (this because all alone she does not do the right thing), they together do the right thing for the right reason.

Introduction to OSAR 6

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
David Shoemaker
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
New Orleans ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Moral Emotions ◽  
Self Control ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
Quality Of Will ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Standing To Blame

This introduction to the sixth volume of Oxford Studies in Agency and Responsibility briefly discusses each of the new essays being published. They were drawn from the fourth biennial New Orleans Workshop in Agency and Responsibility (NOWAR), held November 2–4, 2017. The essays cover a wide range of topics relevant to agency and responsibility: the threat of neuroscience to free will; the relevance of moral emotions like shame, resentment, and guilt to responsibility; how control and self-control pertain to moral agency, oppression, and poverty; responsibility for joint agency; how one might take responsibility without blameworthy quality of will; what it means to have standing to blame others; the relevance of moral testimony to moral responsibility; and how thinking about blame better enables us to dissolve a dispute in moral philosophy between actualists and possibilists.

scholarly journals Moral Understanding and Cooperative Testimony

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (1) ◽  
pp. 18-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth Boyd
Keyword(s):  
Moral Worth ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Moral Testimony

AbstractIt is has been argued that there is a problem with moral testimony: testimony is deferential, and basing judgments and actions on deferentially acquired knowledge prevents them from having moral worth. What morality perhaps requires of us, then, is that we understand why a proposition is true, but this is something that cannot be acquired through testimony. I argue here that testimony can be both deferential as well as cooperative, and that one can acquire moral understanding through cooperative testimony. The problem of moral testimony is thus not a problem with testimony generally, but a problem of deferential testimony specifically.

An Ethics of Care

2019 ◽  
pp. 164-183
Author(s):  
Eva Feder Kittay
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Agency ◽  
Care Ethics ◽  
Ethics Of Care ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Deliberation ◽  
Moral Practice ◽  
Normative Concept ◽  
Moral Conduct ◽  
History Of

While care has been marginalized within much of the history of moral philosophy, care ethics insists that caring be understood as a form of moral conduct. Arguing that care is a normative rather than solely descriptive category, this chapter articulates care as a moral practice that, when performed in accordance with its regulative ideals, is morally good. This moral practice is unpacked via the normative concept of CARE, which includes care as labor, disposition, and virtue. This chapter articulates the features of what Kittay names an ETHICS OF CARE through its conceptions of moral agency, moral relations, moral deliberation, the particularity of some moral judgments, the aim of morality, and moral harm. This ETHICS OF CARE addresses the obligations and responsibilities that arise within asymmetrical relationships of situation and power between caregivers and those receiving care.

A Special Case

2021 ◽  
pp. 141-152
Author(s):  
Mona Simion
Keyword(s):  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Moral Testimony ◽  
Functionalist Account ◽  
In Virtue Of ◽  
Special Case

This chapter is concerned with moral assertion. In recent years, much attention has been given to the epistemic credentials of belief based on moral testimony. Some people think pure moral deference is wrong, others disagree. It comes as a surprise, however, that while the epistemic responsibilities of the receiver of moral testimony have been closely scrutinized, little discussion has focused on the epistemic duties of the speaker. This chapter defends a functionalist account of the normativity of moral assertion. According to this view, in virtue of its function of reliably generating moral understanding in the audience, a moral assertion that p needs be knowledgeable and accompanied by a contextually appropriate explanation why p.

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