“Des personnages de si près tenus”, TV Fiction and Moral Consensus

How can we understand the adaptations of literary classics made for French television? We simultaneously analyzed the works and the context in which they were produced in order to relate the moral configurations that emerge in the stories to activities carried out by identifiable members of the production team, in specific, empirically observable circumstances. This empirical approach to the constitution of the moral panorama in which characters evolve rejects the idea of the pure autonomy of ideological contents, suggesting instead a study of the way normative demands and professional ethics are combined in practice, thus combining a sociology of characters and a sociology of professionals and showing how professional priorities influence production choices. This detaches the moral question from the philosophical horizon it is associated with in order to make it an object of empirial study. Adopting this perspective produces unexpected findings. Observation shows that the moral landscape in which characters are located is neither stable, autonomous, transparent, or consensual. It is instead caught up in material logics, constrained by temporal dynamics, and dependent on professional coordination. It is traversed by tensions between professional logics, and logics of regulation.

Moral distress: Ethically appropriate actions

Andrew Jameton in 1984 coined the concept of moral distress as: “knowing what to do in an ethical situation, but not being allowed to do it” This original description presupposes that the right moral act can be identified and precludes situations of doubt and uncertainty. The 1984 definition emphasizes barriers that make it impossible for someone to do what they ought to do. Whereas Jameton in a revision in 2013 of his original concept emphasized reduction of the psychological dimensions, Peter& Liaschenko stress the element of moral agency. Moral distress then is a threat to the moral integrity of the professional. This requires three-step ananlysis: first, what is the moral question?; two, what are morally adeguate answers to this question?; three, what ethically appropriate actions are under pressure in the given situation? This will be illustrated with examples from the COVID-19 pandemic.

Integrated Moral Agency and the Practical Phenomenon of Moral Diversity

The practical phenomenon of moral diversity is a central feature of many contemporary societies and poses a distinct problem to moral theory building. Because of its goal to settle the moral question fully and exclusively and/or to provide better understanding of moral disagreement, traditional first-order moral theory often does not provide sufficient guidance to address this phenomenon and moral agency in deeply morally diverse societies. In this article, I move beyond traditional first-order moral theorizing and, based on multilevel social contract theory (Moehler 2018, 2020a), develop a practically sound notion of moral agency for morally diverse societies. The interrelational and dynamic notion of integrated moral agency developed in this article demands that agents actively exercise their rational and affective capacities, are receptive to the capacities of others, and are aware of the type of moral interaction in which they engage with others. The notion of integrated moral agency helps agents to reconcile conflicting first-order moral directives and to maximally protect agents’ autonomy in morally diverse societies.

The role of emotions in Moral Case Deliberation: Visions and experiences of facilitators

Moral Case Deliberation is intended to assist healthcare professionals faced with difficult dilemmas in their work. These are situations that involve emotions. During Moral Case Deliberation, participants are invited to reflect on moral views and deliberate on them. Emotions are not explicitly addressed. This article aims to elucidate the role of emotions in Moral Case Deliberation, by analysing experiences of Moral Case Deliberation facilitators. Our research shows the role of emotions varies according to the phase of the Moral Case Deliberation process. One negative aspect of emotions is that they can obstruct the Moral Case Deliberation discussion or distract from the moral question. A positive aspect is that they bring the dilemma into sharper focus. Devoting attention to emotions can help to ensure that responsible decisions are made, while also increasing the moral resilience of participants.

Laying One’s Cards on the Table: Experiencing Exile and Finding Our Feet in Moral Philosophical Encounters

Engaging with the philosophical writings of Iris Murdoch, we submit that there are difficulties associated with providing a good description of morality that are intimately connected with difficulties in understanding other human beings. We suggest three senses in which moral philosophical reflection needs to account for our understanding of others: (1) the failure to understand someone is not merely an intellectual failure, but also engages us morally; (2) the moral question of understanding is not limited to the extent to which we understand a particular person, but also presents itself in how we picture difficulties in understanding people; and (3) “philosophical pictures of morality” fundamentally shape the conceptual framework we use to investigate morality, as well as the analysis of morality we find illuminative and satisfactory. Exploring the implications of these claims, we ask what it means to think of others as the same, or as different, from ourselves. We then consider the ethical significance of finding, or not finding, our feet in our encounters with others, dwelling on how the metaphor of movement reveals one way in which we are never at peace in the exploration of morality.

In Search of the Context of a Question

How is the role of context in moral philosophy to be understood? Why is the consideration of context important here? This paper is a small contribution to answering these questions. The kind of context that is in focus does not help us answer moral questions but is essential for understanding what kind of moral question arises – indeed, if any question arises at all. For whom does the question arise? What form does the question have for him or her? What relation does the person for whom it arises have to the events in the example as described by the philosopher? In considering such issues, the importance of thinking from an existentially and morally engaged perspective becomes evident.

On Care Robots and the Ethics of Tracking

This paper establishes a transdisciplinary exploration of care robots and their tracking capacity as an ethical performance. It does this to highlight the concerns around the ubiquity and availability of data in care contexts. In my attempt to scrutinise care robots beyond being humanoid and sociable actors, but instead as data tracking technologies, I link robot ethics, media and surveillance studies with posthuman and performative ethics to redefine tracking as an ethical microcosm within care robots. I do this, first, by challenging how to look at care robots and robot interactivity, particularly in reference to tracking as an ethical, not necessarily moral, question of interactivity and relationality. This angle will challenge the ethical timing and evaluation around tracking as an inherently ethical relation. Second, by arguing that the common ethical views on tracking are about concerns of privacy intrusion and data infringement while overlooking that a main ethical issue might not be a robotic intention to spy but the availability of data because of robots. Consequently, what deserves more attention in the ethics of robots is the growing ubiquity of care robots, the sensitivity of care contexts, and the acknowledgement of data appropriation; the latter being especially important considering the vulnerability of health care environments, and the growing commercial value of health data.

Toward a Bold Agenda for Moral Education

In his 2006 essay, “Moral Education’s Modest Agenda,” Robin Barrow argues for a clearly bounded conception of morality; he presents the moral domain as concerned with moral principles, and moral education as the cultivation of moral understanding. Barrow rejects behaviourism, character education, values clarification, developmentalism, and what he calls “the insidious influence of political and moral correctness” as practices and ideas that are irrelevant and inappropriate for moral education. While I share some of Barrow’s concerns about some of these approaches, I believe he over-restricts the scope of legitimately moral concerns and what educators ought to do in the name of moral education. In this paper, I make a case for a broader and bolder agenda for moral education, putting the question of what constitutes a human life (which Barrow takes to be a non-moral question) at the very heart of morality and moral education.