Moral Progress: Improvement of Moral Concepts, Refinements of Moral Motivation

2020 ◽  
Vol 42 (1) ◽  
pp. 171-190
Author(s):  
Gertrud Nunner-Winkler
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Data ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Moral Concepts ◽  
Moral Intuitionism ◽  
Explanatory Factors ◽  
Ethics Of Responsibility

AbstractIn their recent book Buchanan and Powell claim that there is moral progress. Their analysis focuses on increasing inclusiveness, yet they also suggest other dimensions as possible indicators-improvements in the concept of morality and refinements in moral motivation. In the following I present empirical data on changes in moral understanding that occurred during the second half of the 20th century in Germany. These changes concern an increasing delimitation of the moral realm, the rise of an ethics of responsibility, the displacement of an orientation to super ego dictates by a more ego-syntonic type of moral motivation. This research largely follows the ‘cognitivist’ paradigm which I start off defending against Haidt’s counter proposal of moral intuitionism. Feasible explanatory factors for the changes documented are put forward-processes of secularization and changes in socialization styles-and their interpretation as indicators of moral progress is discussed. The paper ends with brief speculations concerning possible reasons for current moral regressions.

Moral Failure

2019 ◽  
Vol 16 (5) ◽  
pp. 645-659
Author(s):  
Hanno Sauer
Keyword(s):  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Psychological Theory ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Moral Integrity ◽  
Immoral Behavior ◽  
Moral Failure ◽  
Situational Pressures ◽  
Favorable Conditions ◽  
Moral Philosophers

In his most recent book, Daniel Batson develops a psychological theory of moral motivation by looking at moral failure. Even under favorable conditions, Batson argues, people frequently behave immorally. In addition to defects of character or judgment and situational pressures, a lack of moral integrity plays an important role in explaining moral failure. Batson’s book sheds light on the most common sources of immoral behavior, providing moral philosophers with the resources to properly target their reasons to be moral.

Improvements in Moral Concepts and the Human Rights Movement

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Buchanan
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Modern Human ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
States Of Affairs ◽  
Profound Change ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Moral Concepts ◽  
Basic Rights ◽  
Human Rights Movement

This chapter examines several momentous improvements in moral understanding, all of which represent impressive gains in inclusiveness. These changes—all of which are embodied in the modern human rights movement—include expansions in understandings of the domain of justice (the class of beings to whom justice is owed) and in the territory of justice (the kinds of actions and states of affairs that can be just or unjust), a redrawing of the distinction between justice and charity, the extension of a broad set of rights to all human beings, the recognition that some basic rights cannot be forfeited, and a profound change in how morality itself is conceived.

scholarly journals Moral Progress and Evolution: Knowledge Versus Understanding

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleonora Severini
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Promising Strategy ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Strategy I ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Realist View

AbstractThe paper explores the interplay among moral progress, evolution and moral realism. Although it is nearly uncontroversial to note that morality makes progress of one sort or another, it is far from uncontroversial to define what constitutes moral progress. In a minimal sense, moral progress occurs when a subsequent state of affairs is better than a preceding one. Moral realists conceive “it is better than” as something like “it more adequately reflects moral facts”; therefore, on a realist view, moral progress can be associated with accumulations of moral knowledge. From an evolutionary perspective, on the contrary, since there cannot be something like moral knowledge, one might conclude there cannot even be such a thing as moral progress. More precisely, evolutionism urges us to ask whether we can acknowledge the existence of moral progress without being committed to moral realism. A promising strategy, I will argue, is to develop an account of moral progress based on moral understanding rather than moral knowledge. On this view, moral progress follows increases in moral understanding rather than accumulations of moral knowledge. Whether an understanding-based account of moral progress is feasible and what its implications for the notion itself of moral progress are, will be discussed.

scholarly journals On the Very Idea of a Just Wage

2018 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Heath
Keyword(s):  
Market Economy ◽  
Moral Principle ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Moral Concepts ◽  
Cooperative Interactions ◽  
The Way

The way that wages are determined in a market economy produces results that strike most people as morally counterintuitive, if not positively unjust. I argue that there is an important and easily defensible principle underlying the system—it is designed to channel labour to its best employment, the way that it does any other resource. But many consider this defence too minimal, and so strive to find a thicker, more robust moral principle that can be used to defend the market, using concepts like ‘contribution’, ‘effort’, ‘laziness’, ‘skill’ or ‘talent’—all of which combine to provide a concept of ‘desert’, or ‘fairness’ in compensation. The objective of this paper is to caution against such overreach. I begin by articulating what I take to be the central principle underlying the determination of wages. I go on to discuss three different ways that both critics and defenders of the market have sought to go further than this, by introducing thicker moral concepts to the discussion, and why each of these initiatives fails. My central contention will be that markets are structurally unable to deliver ‘just’ wages, according to any everyday-moral understanding of what justice requires in cooperative interactions.

scholarly journals Imagining Others

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-49
Author(s):  
Heidi L. Maibom
Keyword(s):  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Mental States ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Moral Functioning

It is often argued that the ability to imagine what others think and feel is central to moral functioning. In this paper, I consider to what extent this is true. I argue that neither the ability to think of others as having representational mental states, nor the ability to imagine being in their position, is necessary for moral understanding or moral motivation. I go on to argue that the area in which thinking about others’ thoughts and feelings appears to play the largest role is that of supererogatory actions. Being able to get on well with others seems to be importantly predicated on our ability to think about their thoughts and feelings and being able to take up their perspective. However, when it comes to grosser moral norms and restrictions, such as harm norms, there is little reason to think that thinking about others’ thoughts and feelings plays a central role in understanding such norms or being motivated by them.

scholarly journals Contributing to Historical-Structural Injustice via Morally Wrong Acts

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer M. Page
Keyword(s):  
Moral Responsibility ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Structural Effects ◽  
Moral Concepts ◽  
Structural Patterns ◽  
Structural Injustice ◽  
Moral Ignorance ◽  
Past Injustice ◽  
Group Agents ◽  
Powerful Group

AbstractAlasia Nuti’s important recent book, Injustice and the Reproduction of History: Structural Inequalities, Gender and Redress (2019), makes many persuasive interventions. Nuti shows how structural injustice theory is enriched by being explicitly historical; in theorizing historical-structural injustice, she lays bare the mechanisms of how the injustices of history reproduce themselves. For Nuti, historical-structural patterns are not only shaped by habitual behaviors that are or appear to be morally permissible, but also by individual wrongdoing and wrongdoing by powerful group agents like states. In this article, I extend Nuti’s rich analysis, focusing on two questions that arise from her theory of historical-structural injustice: (1) Beyond being blameworthy for wrongful acts themselves, are culpable wrongdoers blameworthy for contributing to structural injustice? (2) Does historical moral ignorance mitigate moral responsibility for past injustice? Regarding (1), I distinguish between the local and societal structural effects of wrongdoing. Though I think this distinction is well-founded, it ultimately leads to tensions with structural injustice theory’s idea of ordinary individuals being blameless for reproducing unjust structures. Regarding (2), I argue that even though it is natural for the question of historical moral ignorance to arise in considering past wrongdoing, at least in the case of powerful group agents, we should not overlook forms of cruelty which present-day moral concepts are not needed to condemn.

Active Powers and Powerful Actors

2001 ◽  
Vol 48 ◽  
pp. 91-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rom Harré
Keyword(s):  
Human Life ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Agent Causation ◽  
Moral Concepts

The usual context for raising the issue of ‘agent-causation’ is that of human action. Cf. the excellent recent book by Fred Vollmer (1999). And a long list of articles. The motivation for mounting a defence of the propriety of agent causation might be to restore moral concepts to a place in human life, via responsibility of actors for their actions, threatened by event (internal or external) causality explanation formats.

Making the Ideal Real: Publicity and Morality in Kant

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-259 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melissa Zinkin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Duty ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Moral Concepts ◽  
Ideal World ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Ideal

AbstractThis article discusses the concept of publicity in Kant’s moral philosophy. Insofar as the concepts of ‘public’ and ‘private’ can describe our relations with others, they can be considered to be moral concepts. I argue that we can find in Kant a moral duty not to keep our maxims of action private, or secret. Whereas Korsgaard argues that sometimes in the face of evil it is permissible to sidestep the moral law, I argue that it is rather through publicity that we can deal with evil in the non-ideal world. Moreover, by being open with our maxims, moral progress is possible.

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