Harnessing Moral Psychology to Reduce Meat Consumption

How can we make moral progress on factory farming? Part of the answer lies in human moral psychology. Meat consumption remains high, despite increased awareness of its negative impact on animal welfare. Weakness of will is part of the explanation: acceptance of the ethical arguments doesn’t always motivate changes in dietary habits. However, we draw on scientific evidence to argue that many consumers aren’t fully convinced that they morally ought to reduce their meat consumption. We then identify two key psychological mechanisms—motivated reasoning and social proof—that lead people to resist the ethical reasons. Finally, we show how to harness these psychological mechanisms to encourage reductions in meat consumption. A central lesson for moral progress generally is that durable social change requires socially-embedded reasoning.

LEGAL VIEW AT A DIGITAL HUMAN BEING

In continuation of previous research, the article offers a legal view at certain features of the digital human being and the formulation de lege ferenda of the special characteristics of a person of the offense. One of the problems is the question about delusion or weakness of will for digital human being, the decision was made by artificial intelligence, which may call into question the fact that there is a factual basis for legal liability. Regarding the digital person, the possibility of escalation of improved intelligence in all spheres of economic, political, corporate, information and military confrontation is argued. It has been proven that artificial intelligence can eliminate the need to think by human and digital human being, and then eliminate the ability to do it.

THE BEAUTY OF FAILURE: HAMARTIA IN ARISTOTLE'S POETICS

In Poetics 13, Aristotle claims that the protagonist in the most beautiful tragedies comes to ruin through some kind of ‘failure’—in Greek, ἁμαρτία. There has been notorious disagreement among scholars about the moral responsibility involved in ἁμαρτία. This article defends the old reading of ἁμαρτία as a character flaw, but with an important modification: rather than explaining the hero's weakness as general weakness of will (ἀκρασία), it argues that the tragic hero is blinded by temper (θυμός) or by a pursuit for fine, good and desirable things—that is, by what may be labelled ‘qualified’ weakness of will. The upshot is that ἁμαρτία ends up as being less blameworthy than ‘proper’ ἀκρασία, but still explains why morally outstanding people are unsuitable for the most beautiful tragedies.

Veganism, Moral Motivation and False Consciousness

Despite the strength of arguments for veganism in the animal rights literature, alongside environmental and other anthropocentric concerns posed by industrialised animal agriculture, veganism remains only a minority standpoint. In this paper, I explore the moral motivational problem of veganism from the perspectives of moral psychology and political false consciousness. I argue that a novel interpretation of the post-Marxist notion of political false consciousness may help to make sense of the widespread refusal to shift towards veganism. Specifically, the notion of false consciousness fills some explanatory gaps left by the moral psychological notion of akrasia, often understood to refer to a weakness of will. Central to my approach is the idea that animal exploitation is largely systemic and the assumption that moral motivation is inseparable from moral thinking. In this light, the primary obstacle to the adoption of veganism arises not so much from a failure to put genuine beliefs into action, but rather in a shared, distorted way of thinking about animals. Thus, common unreflective objections to veganism may be said to be manifestations of false consciousness.

The Low Road

In this chapter, I address the last constraint, asymmetric pressure. How is it that your inclination can put asymmetric pressure on your will? I argue that this is a deep and general problem, one that familiar theories of strength and weakness of will tend to elide. What, in principle, could pressure a free will? My Kantian claim is that the only thing that can pressure a free will is the burden of freedom itself. Inclinations, as such, cannot pressure the will. But if their nature is as I have described, they provide us with the opportunity to flee our freedom, by providing us with an animal mind to flee into. Instead of humanizing our incentive, we dehumanize ourselves. Similarly, I argue, we can be weak in relation to our social environment. Social scripts do not pressure us directly, but they give us the opportunity to flee into automaticity.

Disclaiming epistemic Akrasia: arguments and commentaries

In many ways one’s quest for knowledge can go wrong. Since the publication ofAmélie Rorty’s article “Akratic Believers”, in 1983, there has been a great deal of discussion asto one particular form of flaw in reasoning to which we, as less-than-perfect rational entities,are continuously prone to in our epistemic endeavors: “epistemicakrasia” (an analog, withintheoretical reason, of the weakness of will that is commonly thought to affect practical rea-son). The debate that article gave rise became, then, split between authors to whom the ideaof epistemicakrasiapromotes an interesting diagnosis of some of our intellectual imperfec-tions, and their opponents, those who disclaim the very possibility of the phenomenon. Inthis paper I’ll examine, and present original objections to, four of the main arguments put for-ward by the latter, showing that none of them have consistently ruled out all the legitimatelyconceivable forms of the phenomenon.

Non-psychological Weakness of Will: Self-control, Stereotypes, and Consequences

Recently philosophers have debated which theory best captures the ordinary concept of weakness of will. Some claim that weakness of will consists in action contrary to an agent's better judgments, while others claim it consists of action contrary to an agent’s intentions. In this paper, we show that the psychological focus on violated commitments — whether judgments, intentions, or both — is too narrow. We begin by showing that many people attribute weakness of will even in the absence of a violated commitment (Experiment 1). We then show that weakness of will attributions are sensitive to two important non-psychological factors. First, for actions stereotypically associated with weakness of will, the absence of certain commitments often triggers weakness of will attributions (Experiments 2-4). Second, and in line with other recent findings, the quality of an action’s outcome affects the extent to which an agent is viewed as weak-willed. More specifically, actions with bad consequences are more likely to be viewed as weak-willed (Experiment 5). So the ordinary concept of weakness of will is sensitive to two non-psychological factors and is thus broader than previous philosophical accounts have recognized. To explain our findings, we propose a two-tier model of weakness of will as a failure of self-control.

«European Home» Concept seen in French Art and Culture (on the Example of M. Houellebecq’s Work)

The literature of modern France vividly expresses the cultural element of the form of «métissage» the essential features of which are today conceptualized by the concept of «European home». Undoubtedly, its examination through the lens of cultural studies allows the tracing of not only the logicalconceptual but also the empirical content of the concept is of particular interest. In addition, our huge interest lies within the identification and the description of the contradictions between «general» and «special» in the private lives of individuals as well as in that of entire nations in the context of globalization, European integration, and technological revolution. The work of the famous French writer Michel Houellebecq provides rich material for the study of the above topic. In his books, M. Houellebecq identified several problems that, according to him, contribute to the accelerating decomposition of unique European cultures. Among them, one can distinguish the dominance of the European and national bureaucracies, the destruction of the historically established cultural and casual lifestyle, and their standardization. The writer also raises a more general issue about the causes of the modern man’s distorted identity. In his opinion, these problems basically originate from the loss of religious and moral values, leading to confusion and weakness of will, turning the daily existence of a demoralized individual to a routine of simulated consumption. Inevitably, such simulation destroys emotionality, depriving a person of proper human feelings, and prevents them from creating stable relationships with other people. Houellebecq describes the tectonic shifts in the cultural life of France along with the perception of a tragic change in the identity of the European people, whose home is «everywhere» and «nowhere».