scholarly journals Motivated moral judgments about freedom of speech are constrained by a need to appear consistent

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolai Haahjem Eftedal ◽  
Lotte Thomsen

Speech is a critical means of negotiating political, adaptive interests in human society. Prior research on motivated political cognition has found that support for freedom of speech depends on whether one agrees with its ideological content. However, it remains unclear if people (A) openly hold that some speech should be more free than other speech; or (B) want to appear as if speech content does not affect their judgments. Here, we find support for (B) over (A), using social dominance orientation and political alignment to predict support for speech. Study 1 demonstrates that if people have previously judged restrictions of speech which they oppose, they are less harsh in condemning restrictions of speech which they support, and vice versa. Study 2 finds that when participants judge two versions of the same scenario, with only the ideological direction of speech being reversed, their answers are strongly affected by the ordering of conditions: While the first judgment is made in accordance with one’s political attitudes, the second opposing judgment is made so as to remain consistent with the first. Study 3 is a preregistered replication and elaboration on Study 2. Study 4 suggests that this effort to appear consistent functions to oblige the opposition to (also) protect one's own speech: We find that support for equal protection of all speech is stronger if a member of the opposition proposes it, rather than a member of one's own political coalition. These results are consistent with notions of an evolutionary arms race of social manipulation, and suggest that although people selectively endorse universal moral principles depending on their own political agenda, they conceal their bias from others and, perhaps, themselves.

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
João Carlos Brum Torres

O artigo tem por objeto o exame de três registros de gritantes e distintos paradoxos na Doutrina do Direito de Kant. Registros feitos em tempos e contextos históricos diferentes por Friedrich Bouterwek, Marcus Willaschek e Balthazar Barbosa Filho. Bouterwek atribuiu a Kant a mais paradoxal das proposições jamais enunciadas por qualquer autor, a de que a mera ideia de soberania deve obrigar-nos a obedecer como a nosso inquestionável senhor a quem quer que se haja estabelecido como tal, sem que caiba indagar quem lhe deu o direito de comandar-nos. Willaschek aponta a incompatibilidade de duas teses centrais da doutrina kantiana: a do caráter externo dos vínculos jurídicos e a da incondicionalidade obrigacional do direito positivo, pois não é possível entender como é possível termo-nos como obrigados por imperativos jurídicos e, ao mesmo, vermo-nos internamente isentados do dever de obedecê-los. O ponto crítico de Balthazar é alegar que não pode haver na filosofia kantiana uma crítica da razão político e jurídica, simplesmente porque o conceito de imputação, base da normatividade própria dessas esferas, pressupõe uma pluralidade de agentes livres que, justamente, só pode ser uma pressuposição, pois nosso acesso à normatividade prática só pode ter lugar em primeira pessoa. No exame a que o artigo submete essas alegações, o artigo argumenta, em objeção à tese de Balthazar, que o caráter universal e categórico da força que vincula o sujeito quando confrontado com a lei moral em primeira pessoa necessariamente se desvaneceria se, ao mesmo tempo, ele não fosse tomado pela evidência de que a realidade objetiva dos princípios morais é não só instanciável, mas assegurada pela múltipla instanciação. Com relação às dificuldades levantadas por Willaschek e Bouterwek, o artigo argumenta que o princípio exeundum e statu naturali, enquanto norma metapositiva, anterior à divisão do domínio prático entre doutrina do direito e doutrina da virtude, permite ao mesmo tempo compreender a exigência de obediência ao poder constituído e a restrição das obrigações jurídico-políticas exclusivamente ao foro externo.AbstractThe object of the article is to examine three claims about three distinct and allegedly blatant paradoxes in Kant's Doctrine of Right. These three critical points had been made in distinct times and contexts by Friedrich Bouterwek, Marcus Willaschek e Balthazar Barbosa Filho. Bouterwek attributed to Kant the most paradoxical of all paradoxical propositions, the statement that by the mere idea of sovereignty we are obliged to obey as our lord who has imposed himself upon us, without questioning from where he got such right. Willaschek points out the incompatibility of two main theses of Kantian doctrine of right: the claims that the legal bounds are of external character and that they are the source of unconditional obligations, since it seems impossible to understand how it would be possible to be obliged by juridical norms and decisions and at the same time to be exempted of the internal duty of compliance. The radical objection of Professor Balthazar is the claim that in the context of Kantian Philosophy it is impossible to admit a critique of the juridical and political reason because the concept of imputation, ground of the normativity in these domains, requires not only the presupposition of free agents, but a true and secure epistemic access to them, which is, according to him, impossible considering that the moral law and the other practical principles are accessible for us only in the first person. In the course of the appraisal of such claims, the article contest that objection arguing that the universal and categorical force of the normative bound experienced by the subject when confronted with the moral law in the first person would ineluctably vanish if, at the same time, he had not been taken by the evidence that the objective reality of the moral principles is secured by multiple instancing. Regarding the difficulties raised by Willaschek and Bouterwek, the article argues that the principle exeundum e statu naturali, as a norm of meta-positive character, prior to the division of practical domains between the doctrine of right and the doctrine of virtue, is the cue both to the understanding of the requirement of unquestioning obedience to the constituted power and to the restriction of the validity of this requirement only in foro externo.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 64
Author(s):  
Bruce R. Reichenbach

In his recent book Is a Good God Logically Possible? and article by the same name, James Sterba argued that the existence of significant and horrendous evils, both moral and natural, is incompatible with the existence of God. He advances the discussion by invoking three moral requirements and by creating an analogy with how the just state would address such evils, while protecting significant freedoms and rights to which all are entitled. I respond that his argument has important ambiguities and that consistent application of his moral principles will require that God remove all moral and natural evils. This would deleteriously restrict not only human moral decision making, but also the knowledge necessary to make moral judgments. He replies to this critique by appealing to the possibility of limited divine intervention, to which I rejoin with reasons why his middle ground is not viable.


Episteme ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 367-383
Author(s):  
Paul Boghossian

AbstractI argue for the claim that there are instances of a priori justified belief – in particular, justified belief in moral principles – that are not analytic, i.e., that cannot be explained solely by the understanding we have of their propositions. §1–2 provides the background necessary for understanding this claim: in particular, it distinguishes between two ways a proposition can be analytic, Basis and Constitutive, and provides the general form of a moral principle. §§3–5 consider whether Hume's Law, properly interpreted, can be established by Moore's Open Question Argument, and concludes that it cannot: while Moore's argument – appropriately modified – is effective against the idea that moral judgments are either (i) reductively analyzable or (ii) Constitutive-analytic, a different argument is needed to show that they are not (iii) Basis-analytic. Such an argument is supplied in §6. §§7–8 conclude by considering how these considerations bear on recent discussions of “alternative normative concepts”, on the epistemology of intuitions, and on the differences between disagreement in moral domains and in other a priori domains such as logic and mathematics.


2021 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Siziwe Mandubu

Living in an egalitarian society has resulted in the corrosion of the moral base among certain sectors in the community. Some people misconstrue egalitarianism as an authorisation to act as they see fit. Young people, in particular, are gradually losing touch with reality in relation to acceptable behavioral norms in the South African society. Based on the functionalist theory of balancing the social equilibrium among people, the article delineates moral standards as the most fundamental and general principles of behaviour and reflects on how the society expects one to act in certain situations. The article, therefore, explores the primary concepts within functionalism and attempts to outline that the society is a system of interconnected parts that work together in harmony to maintain a state of stability and social cohesion. The article will use the folktale “uDyakalashe noMvolofu” (“The Jackal and the Wolf”) to reflect on the expected societal norms. It demonstrates that folktales, which used to transfer values, morals and shape the conduct of people in the olden days are still appropriate in reshaping the outlook and perceptions of today’s generation. As such, the shrewd nature of folklore in the moral regeneration of the current generation of young people is exposed. While there are many folktales in this category, “uDyakalashe noMvolofu” (“The Jackal and the Wolf”) provides the theme relevant for the analysis of the topic to highlight that moral standards generate moral principles and moral judgments.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nikolai Haahjem Eftedal ◽  
Thomas Haarklau Kleppestø ◽  
Nikolai Olavi Czajkowski ◽  
Jennifer Sheehy-Skeffington ◽  
Espen Røysamb ◽  
...  

AbstractMoral judgments may be driven by both principled and opportunistic motivations. Being morally principled is to consistently adhere to a single set of rules about morality and justice. Opportunistic morality rather involves selectively enforcing rules when they are beneficial to one’s interests. These two kinds of motivations sometimes pull in the same direction, other times not. Prior studies on moral motivations have mostly focused on principled morality. Opportunistic morality, along with its phenotypic and genetic correlates, remains largely unexamined. Here, utilizing a sample from the Norwegian Twin Registry, consisting of 312 monozygotic-and 298 dizygotic twin pairs (N = 1220), we measure people’s propensity to react to injustice as victims, observers, beneficiaries, and perpetrators of injustice, using the Justice Sensitivity scale. Our genetically informative sample allows a biometric modeling approach that provides increased stringency in inferring latent psychological traits. We find evidence for two substantially heritable traits explaining correlations between Justice Sensitivity facets, which we interpret as a principled justice sensitivity (h2 = .45) leading to increased sensitivity to injustices of all categories, and an opportunistic justice sensitivity (h2 = .69) associated with increased victim sensitivity and a decreased propensity to feel guilt from being a perpetrator. These heritable justice traits share a genetic substrate with broad strategies for cooperation (as measured by altruism and trust) and for selectively benefitting oneself over the adaptive interests of others (as measured by social dominance orientation and support for monopolizing territory and resources), and differ genetically and phenotypically from Big Five personality traits.


2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Sackris

I argue that the debate concerning the nature of first-person moral judgment, namely, whether such moral judgments are inherently motivating (internalism) or whether moral judgments can be made in the absence of motivation (externalism), may be founded on a faulty assumption: that moral judgments form a distinct kind that must have some shared, essential features in regards to motivation to act. I argue that there is little reason to suppose that first-person moral judgments form a homogenous class in this respect by considering an ordinary case: student readers of Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”. Neither internalists nor externalists can provide a satisfying account as to why our students fail to act in this particular case, but are motivated to act by their moral judgments in most cases. I argue that the inability to provide a satisfying account is rooted in this shared assumption about the nature of moral judgments. Once we consider rejecting the notion that first-person moral decision- making forms a distinct kind in the way it is typically assumed, the internalist/externalist debate may be rendered moot.


Author(s):  
Е. В. Яковлева

В статье рассматриваются проблемы, связанные с современным уровнем развития науки и техники. Ставится вопрос о рисках, связанных с интенсивным технологическим развитием человеческого общества. Рассматриваются экологический, социальный, геополитический уровни приложения проблемы. Анализируется концепция Э. Фромма о балансе между техническим и духовным развитием, рассматривается теория А. П. Назаретяна о техно-гуманитарном балансе как условии выживания социальной системы. На основании проведенной в статье классификации исследовательских подходов оценивается роль современных исследований в области научной этики в разрешении проблемы и делается вывод о необходимости выхода на уровень практического ее разрешения. Consideration of the problems connected with the modern level of development of science and technology is made in the article. The question of the risks connected with intensive technological development of human society is raised. Ecological, social, geopolitical aspects of a problem are considered. Fromm’s concept about balance between technical and spiritual development is analyzed, A. P. Nazaretyan’s theory about technical and humanitarian balance as a condition of survival of social system is considered. On the basis of the classification of research approaches which is carried out in article the role of modern researches in the field of scientific ethics in solution of the problem is estimated and the conclusion about need of an exit to the level of her practical permission is drawn.


2021 ◽  
pp. 002190962110491
Author(s):  
Abbas Keshavarz Shokri ◽  
Jabbar Shojaei

The collapse of the Mubarak regime on 25 January 2011 marked the beginning of profound discursive challenges in Egypt. Following the January Revolution, the political forces and discourses long suppressed by Mubarak finally felt free to participate in the political struggles of the time, and attempted to lead the charge in the rebuilding and reorganizing process of Egyptian society. To shed light on the origin and characteristics of these discourses, attempts have been made in this paper to explain through discourse analysis the four major political discourses in today’s Egypt: democratic Islamism, authoritarian Islamism, secular democracy, and secular authoritarianism, and also to identify the political groups representing each discourse, their target groups, the method of their argumentation, and finally their proposed political agenda. To explain these discourses, the a posteriori discourse method is used, i.e. identifying the history of the formation of components and features of discourses. To this end, the discourse analysis of theorists such as Foucault and Van Dyke has been used to examine political discourses in Egypt. The factors used to examine the discourses are: discourse producers, discourse audiences, discourse content, and discourse actions.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document