Benevolence and Abhorrence of Incest (the Case of Francis Hutcheson)

В статье реконструированы представления Фрэнсиса Хатчесона об истоках и моральном статусе запрета на инцест. Интерпретация этого запрета создает затруднения для любой теории морали, которая отождествляет ее содержание с непричинением вреда и помощью другому человеку. Степень морального осуждения инцеста не соответствует его относительной безвредности для других (в категориях, используемых Хатчесоном, участники инцестуальных отношений не проявляют явного «недостатка благожелательности»). Автор показывает, как Хатчесон, обсуждая универсальность морального чувства и моральные препятствия для заключения брака, пытается редуцировать «отвращение к инцесту» к благожелательным переживаниям. The paper reconstructs Francis Hutcheson’s view on the moral status of incest and origins of the incest prohibition. The phenomenon of incest creates problems for every theory of morality that identifies its content with other-regarding requirements. The intensity of moral blame that incestuous behavior faces is not consistent with its relative harmlessness in comparison with violence or refusal to help (in Hutcheson’s terms, participants of incestuous relationships do not express ‘want of benevolence’). The author shows how Hutcheson reduces the ‘abhorrence of incest’ to benevolent affections in his discussions of the universality of moral sense and moral impediments of marriage.

Introduction

Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics features new work in normative ethical theory. This 11th volume includes chapters on the following topics: the significance of appreciation; the objective/subjective debate over wrongness; requests as a kind of wrong; the puzzle of taking comfort in the travails of others; finding meaning in one’s life; the boundaries of morality in light of the legitimacy of non-moral partialist pursuits; the value of moral testimony to those who testify; the category of “ordinary” wrongs that are not blameworthy; the practical role of Kant’s Categorical Imperative; the possibility of non-moral blame; reasons to reject the category of subjective obligation; how to understand the point of ethical theory; and the justification of social moral rules....

The Case against Non-Moral Blame

Non-moral blame seems to be widespread and widely accepted in everyday life—tolerated at least, but often embraced. We blame athletes for poor performance, artists for bad or boring art, scientists for faulty research, and voters for flawed reasoning. This chapter argues that non-moral blame is never justified, that is, it’s never a morally permissible response to a non-moral failure. Having explained what blame is and how non-moral blame differs from moral blame, the chapter presents the argument in four steps. First, it argues that many (perhaps most) apparent cases of non-moral blame are actually cases of moral blame. Second, it argues that even if non-moral blame is pro tanto permissible—because its target is blameworthy for their substandard performance—it often (perhaps usually) fails to meet other permissibility conditions, such as fairness or standing. Third, it goes further and challenges the claim that non-moral blame is ever even pro tanto permissible. Finally, it considers a number of arguments in support of non-moral obligations and argues that none of them succeeds.

The cost of attributing moral blame: Defensiveness and resistance to change when raising awareness to animal suffering in factory farming

Social change campaigns often entail raising awareness of harm caused by people’s behavior. For example, campaigns to reduce meat eating frequently highlight the suffering endured by animals. Such messages may simultaneously attribute moral blame to individuals for causing the harm described. Given people’s motivation to protect their moral self-image, we expected that information about the suffering of animals in the meat industry presented with a blaming (versus absolving) frame would generate greater defensiveness and correspondingly resistance to change in support of veg*nism (veganism/vegetarianism). We ran three studies to test this expectation. In two studies, we found that raising awareness of animal suffering using a blaming frame increased defensiveness, leading to lower veg*n-supporting attitudes and behavioral intentions. In one study, our hypothesis was not supported, however, a mini-meta analysis across the three studies suggests the overall pattern is robust. This work expands our understanding of the role of moral self-image preservation in defensiveness and resistance to change, and has applied relevance for the development of effective communication strategies in social and moral campaigns.

The Reprehensible (Makruh)

The reprehensible (makruh) is an in-between category that exists between the halal and haram, and it basically pertains to moral advice rather than a legal category. Makruh (lit. disliked, from the root word kariha) refers to an act, object, or conduct that should be avoided, but whose perpetrator is not liable to punishment and does not incur moral blame. Certain foodstuffs may be strictly halal but should be avoided if harmful to health, rotten, or presented in doubtful situations. The leading schools are in agreement that one who avoids makruh merits praise and gains closeness to God. Makruh is often described as the lowest degree of prohibition, and in this sense it is used as a convenient category the jurists have employed for matters that fall between the halal and haram.

Doing Right by Wrong

A striking contrast between Reasons and Persons and On What Matters is the vastly different attitude Parfit takes towards Act Consequentialism. Parfit’s defense of Act Consequentialism against a battery of criticisms in Reasons and Persons was legendary. In On What Matters, however, Parfit remarks that Sidgwick’s act-consequentialist principle of rational benevolence is best regarded, like egoism, as an ‘external rival to morality’. What lies behind this remarkable change in attitude, if not in view, is Parfit’s focus in On What Matters on deontic moral concepts, like wrongness, and their relation to accountability and reactive attitudes like moral blame. This essay explores the details of Parfit’s later views, arguing that he did not go far enough in pursuing this line of thought and that doing so is necessary to bring out the distinctive normativity of deontic moral concepts. Parfit’s claim that the ‘ordinary’ concept of wrongness is indefinable threatens to rob the concept of normativity in the ‘reason-involving sense’. If, however, we understand wrongness in terms of there being reason to blame, lacking excuse, we can account for its distinctive normative contours.

Direct and Indirect Freedom in Addiction: Folk free will and blame judgments are sensitive to the choice history of drug users

People view addiction as a source of diminished free will and free will as a requisite to moral responsibility. Accordingly, people should judge addicts as less blameworthy when they act immorally. Yet, people are also sensitive to the personal histories of moral actors, such that the way by which people became addicted may influence these judgments. That is, people’s intuitions may track two types of choices: directly free acts are volitionally unconstrained during the moment of action, whereas indirectly free acts result from temporally prior directly free acts. Across two studies (N=806), we compare people’s moral intuitions about cases in which the actor becomes addicted by force or by choice. We find that perceptions of reduced free will partially mediate an association between choice (vs. no choice) in addiction and moral blame for a bad act (Study 1). We replicate this pattern with another case, and show that blame judgments are stronger when the bad act is related (vs. unrelated) to obtaining the addictive substance (Study 2). Our work highlights that lay people evince relatively nuanced intuitions about the role of free will in addiction and morality, tracking direct and indirect freedom when doling out moral blame.

Criminal Blame, Exclusion and Moral Dialogue

In her recent book The Limits of Blame, Erin Kelly argues that we should rethink the nature of punishment because delivering blame is, contrary to the widely held view, not among the justifiable aims of a criminal justice system. In this paper, firstly, I discuss her case against criminal blame. Kelly argues that the emphasis on blame in the criminal justice system and in public discourse is one of the main causes of the stigma and exclusion faced by those convicted for a crime. This claim might appear puzzling and, while she provides other convincing arguments against criminal blame, Kelly does not extensively defend this particular argument. To offer support for this view, I reflect on the often overlooked distinction between moral blame and criminal blame to show how the latter, unlike the former, is exclusionary and stigmatising. Secondly, I address the claim put forth by Kelly that blame should play no role in the criminal justice system at all. In light of her argument about the optional nature of moral blame, I explore the possibility that the state should leave open to victims the option to blame criminal wrongdoers in restorative justice conferences. I argue that in such contexts blame would not have the same exclusionary features of criminal blame in traditional settings and that it could serve some valuable aims articulated by communicative theories of punishment, such as the restoration of moral relationships.

Psychopaths and Symmetry: A Reply to Nelkin

An agent is morally competent if she can respond to moral considerations. There is a debate about whether agents are open to moral blame only if they are morally competent, and Dana Nelkin’s “Psychopaths, Incorrigible Racists, and the Faces of Responsibility” is an important contribution to this debate. Like others involved in this dispute, Nelkin takes the case of the psychopath to be instructive. This is because psychopaths are similar to responsible agents insofar as they act deliberately and on judgments about reasons, and yet psychopaths lack moral competence. Nelkin argues that, because of their moral incompetence, vices such as cruelty are not attributable to psychopaths. It follows that psychopaths are not open to moral blame since their behavior is only seemingly vicious. I have three aims in this reply to Nelkin. First, I respond to her claim that psychopaths are not capable of cruelty. Second, I respond to the related proposal—embedded in Nelkin’s “symmetry argument”—that a “pro-social psychopath” would not be capable of kindness. My responses to these claims are unified: even if the psychopath is not capable of “cruelty,” and the pro-social psychopath is not capable of “kindness,” the actions of these agents can have a significance for us that properly engages our blaming and praising practices. Finally, I argue that Nelkin’s strategy for showing that moral competence is required for cruelty supports a stronger conclusion than she anticipates: it supports the conclusion that blameworthiness requires not just moral competence, but actual moral understanding.