The Broad Structure of Buddhist Ethics

This chapter argues that Buddhist ethics does not fit into any of the standard Western metaethical theories. It is neither an instance of a virtue theory, nor of a deontological theory, nor of a consequentialist theory. It is closer to a sentimentalist theory, but different from those as well. Instead, it defends a reading of Buddhist ethics as a moral phenomenology and as particularist, utilizing casuistic reasoning. That is, Buddhist ethics is concerned primarily with the transformation of experience, of the way we perceive ourselves and other moral agents and patients. This chapter also argues that the metaphor of path structures Buddhist ethical thought.

Reconciling the Irreconcilable: A Property Rights Approach to Resolving the Animal Rights Debate

Libertarianism is understood to be a “deontological theory of law” that purportedly applies exclusively to humans. According to some libertarians, however, “one of the greatest weaknesses of libertarian theory” is that there are no provisions outlawing the abuse and torture of animals even though this seems to be one of “the most heinous acts it is possible to do”. Moreover, a few of these libertarians go even further and claim that this legal philosophy of non-aggression should actually be extended to include other animals. The purpose of this paper is to reconcile this seemingly irreconcilable situation by arguing that it is a “continuum problem” and offering a principled, libertarian compromise that resolves the animal rights debate using the non-aggression principle (NAP) and private property rights.

Reflection of Education Administrators’ Ethical Values on Organizational Culture: Case of Plato and Kant

The purpose of this study is to reveal the views of administrators on the assessment of education administrators within the context of ethical values and their reflection on organizational culture. Ten administrators who were determined using convenience sampling which is one of purposeful sampling methods, participated in the study which was conducted using qualitative research method. Qualitative research technique was used in the research and it is used in one of the qualitative research designs, phenomenological design. Considering in terms of education administration; ethical rules to be possessed by today’s school administrators were tried to be revealed on the basis of key concepts such as Plato’s “wisdom, courage, moderation and justice” concepts and Kant’s “duty, principle, will power, liability, law and rule” concepts according to his deontological theory, in accordance with the results acquired during the interview based on the application. According to the results of the research, it is possible to say that Plato's four key concepts of “Wisdom, bravery (courage), measure and justice.” Are adopted more by school administrators. It is seen that the virtues of flour are generally adopted but in practice, Kant's Deontological theory is put into practice. In addition, it is considered that every step in the direct management of the characteristics of the school administrator and the effects of the administrator in the ethical context directly affect the organizational climate.

Articulating the Optimal Features of a Good Muslim Wife: Some Qur’anic expressions that Affiliate with the Woman’s Perfect, Metaphysical and Real Worlds

This small-scale study investigates the optimal features of good Muslim woman. It aims to describe, interpret, and explain the rhetorical features of the properties the Qur’anic discourse (QD) maintains for both sexes and those it excludes for the good Muslim woman. The study benefits from corpus, i.e. text, linguistics for data collection. It also applies a critical discourse analysis (CDA) approach to the Quotes collected from the Noble Qur’an (NQ). The paper builds on Van Dijk’s 1998 model of analysis at the syntactic, semantic and schematic levels of the properties identified for a good Muslim woman. It has been found that the QD assigns ten properties to describe a good Muslim man and woman; they include submission, belief, obedience, truthfulness, faithfulness, humbleness, alms giving, fasting, chastity, and turning to Allah. Among these, the QD exclusively and inclusively lists ‘being resigned, believing, always turning to Him, being devoted to worship, fasting’, and ‘being a widow or a virgin’ as general semantic features for a good Muslim wife. It has been concluded that the properties identified for a good Muslim woman have directive, informative, meta-linguistic and affective functions. They are part of the sociology of Islam which accommodates the ontological principle of creating women as a different sex having other roles to play with the deontological theory of moral obligation to obey freely the other sex. The Qur’anic engineering tactfully goes beyond reconciling both sexes’ needs and roles to repair some social norms established and entrenched against the woman who has already experienced marriage before.

The Good of Consequentialized Deontology

This chapter critically discusses the hitherto most radical and ambitious proposal for accommodating consequentialism with our commonsense moral intuitions. According to this proposal, which has been most forcefully developed by Douglas Portmore, it is possible to consequentialize every plausible deontological moral theory, i.e., to translate a deontological theory into a consequentialist theory that yields exactly the same moral verdicts as the original deontological theory. The hoped for result of this move is a moral theory that (i) retains the compelling idea of consequentialism, (ii) has no counterintuitive moral implications, and (iii) avoids the paradox of deontology. After describing some of the details of the consequentializing procedure the chapter mounts several objections that lead to the conclusion that the consequentializing project cannot achieve any of its goals.

Crucial Evidence: Hobbes on Contractual Obligation

In this paper, I will introduce the notions of crucial argument and crucial evidence in the philosophy of intellectual history (broadly construed, including the history of political thought). I will use these concepts and take sides in an important controversy in Hobbes studies, namely whether Hobbes holds a prudential or a deontological theory of contractual obligation. Though there is textual evidence for both readings, I will argue that there is especially relevant evidence – crucial evidence – for interpreting Hobbes’s account in a deontological fashion.

The price of your soul: neural evidence for the non-utilitarian representation of sacred values

Sacred values, such as those associated with religious or ethnic identity, underlie many important individual and group decisions in life, and individuals typically resist attempts to trade off their sacred values in exchange for material benefits. Deontological theory suggests that sacred values are processed based on rights and wrongs irrespective of outcomes, while utilitarian theory suggests that they are processed based on costs and benefits of potential outcomes, but which mode of processing an individual naturally uses is unknown. The study of decisions over sacred values is difficult because outcomes cannot typically be realized in a laboratory, and hence little is known about the neural representation and processing of sacred values. We used an experimental paradigm that used integrity as a proxy for sacredness and which paid real money to induce individuals to sell their personal values. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), we found that values that people refused to sell (sacred values) were associated with increased activity in the left temporoparietal junction and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, regions previously associated with semantic rule retrieval. This suggests that sacred values affect behaviour through the retrieval and processing of deontic rules and not through a utilitarian evaluation of costs and benefits.