Evil

Even if the new interpretation of Fichte’s theory of conscience presented in Chapter 5 is correct, it remains unclear why he believes we all have a tendency to render our conscience obscure. This brings us to his theory of evil in §16 and the appendix to §16 in the System of Ethics. The aim of the present chapter is to show that Fichte’s effort to link evil and ‘laziness’ (Trägheit) does not run the risk of rendering immoral action unfree. On the contrary, there is evidence to show that Fichte understood laziness as a form of culpable self-deception, whereby we avoid the demands that morality places upon us. A secondary aim of this chapter is to show that Fichte’s remarks about the dominion of the I over the not-I, or of our striving for independence from nature, give voice to an incomplete (and ultimately pathological) step in the dialectic of agency.

Freedom

This chapter introduces a constellation of thinkers who had a major influence on Fichte: Kant, Reinhold, and Maimon. It begins with Kant’s effort to defend the coexistence of freedom and causal mechanism, leading up to his thesis that a free will and a will under moral laws are ‘reciprocal concepts.’ Reinhold criticizes this thesis on the grounds that it renders free yet immoral action impossible, and he proposes a new definition of freedom as our capacity to choose between our ‘selfish drive’ and our ‘unselfish drive.’ However, as Maimon observes, this new definition gives rise to the question of what, if anything, determines the agent to act one way or the other. The solution Fichte proposes in §10 of the System of Ethics comes in the form of his Genetic Model of freedom: the idea that indeterminacy and determinacy of choice are but stages in the emergence of freedom.

Artificial Beings Worthy of Moral Consideration in Virtual Environments: An Analysis of Ethical Viability

This article explores whether and under which circumstances it is ethically viable to include artificial beings worthy of moral consideration in virtual environments. In particular, the article focuses on virtual environments such as those in digital games and training simulations – interactive and persistent digital artifacts designed to fulfill specific purposes, such as entertainment, education, training, or persuasion.The article introduces the criteria for moral consideration that serve as a framework for this analysis. Adopting this framework, the article tackles the question of whether including artificial intelligences that are entitled to moral consideration in virtual environments constitutes an immoral action on the part of human creators. To address this problem, the article draws on three conceptual lenses from the philosophical branch of ethics: the problem of parenthood and procreation, the question concerning the moral status of animals, and the classical problem of evil.Using a thought experiment, the concluding section proposes a contractualist answer to the question posed in this article. The same section also emphasizes the potential need to reframe our understanding of the design of virtual environments and their future stakeholders.

Better the Two Devils You Know, Than the One You Don’t: Predictability Influences Moral Judgment

Across five studies (N = 2,408), we demonstrate the role that perceptions of predictability play in judgments of moral character, finding that people demonstrate a moral preference for predictable, as opposed to unpredictable, immoral actors. Participants judged agents performing an immoral action (e.g., assault) for an unintelligible reason as less predictable and less moral than agents performing the same immoral action, along with an additional immoral action (e.g., theft), for a well-understood immoral reason (Studies 1-4). Additionally, agents performing immoral actions in an unusual way were judged as less predictable and less moral than those performing the same immoral actions in a more common manner (Study 5). The current study demonstrates how immoral actions performed without a clear motive or in an unpredictable way are perceived to be especially indicative of poor moral character. In revealing peoples’ moral preference for predictable immoral actors, we propose that perceptions of predictability play an important, yet overlooked, role in judgments of moral character. Furthermore, we propose that predictability influences judgments of moral character for its ultimate role in reducing social uncertainty and facilitating cooperation with trustworthy individuals and discuss how these findings may be accommodated by person-centered theories of moral judgment and theories of morality-as-cooperation.

Critique of Personal Autonomy

This chapter provides a detailed critique of personal autonomy. It distinguishes several hazards affecting agents who are personally autonomous, moving beyond received understandings and critiques. The chapter explains how personal autonomy offers normatively inadequate boundaries with respect to deliberation, volition, capabilities, and the generation of options, respectively. Included in this chapter is discussion of extreme actions, and of evil, to serve to establish the central points of argumentation. The critique presented here is robust even granting that theories of personal autonomy do not countenance immoral action, much less egregious law-breaking or terrible rights violations, on the part of personally autonomous agents.

Deactivating economic motives in green consumption through social and moral salience

Purpose This paper aims to examine how social and moral salience influences the activation/deactivation of consumer motives and how this in turn affects costly pro-environmental consumer behavior. Design/methodology/approach In two experiments involving real purchases, it was tested whether social salience (private vs public choice) and moral salience (recall of neutral vs immoral action) lead to the activation of normative motives, and/or the deactivation of economic motives, and whether this facilitated the purchase of a costlier green product. Findings Participants were motivated by both economic and normative motives, and they actively made trade-offs between these motives as the choice environment changed. Green consumption was positively influenced by social and moral salience but only when both salience conditions were present simultaneously. However, salience did not lead to the activation of normative motives, as was expected, but to a deactivation of the motive to save money. This may suggest that while the importance of norms was not altered by salience, the perceived value of the green option likely changed in such a way that participants became more inclined to choose the costlier green option. Originality/value The present research sheds light on how and why social and moral salience influences green consumption. It was demonstrated that social and moral salience influences the tendency to purchase costlier green products, however, only when both are combined. Also, the effects of social and moral salience may not rely on the activation of facilitating social and moral motives but rather on the deactivation of conflicting economic motives.

Censorship and Patriarchal Ideology

This chapter begins by examining theoretical models for the study of narrative provided by anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss and Tzvetan Todorov. For a period from the early 1930s until the mid-1950s, Hollywood films were subject to regulation by censors who had the power to alter the cause–effect logic of the narrative in order to make it comply with their patriarchal moral ideology. This included the rule of ‘compensating moral values’, which assured that a character who committed an immoral action had to be either punished or redeemed within the narrative. Melodramas position the central female character as a victim, and are narrated from her perspective. The melodrama narrates a female predicament and offers female viewers a lesson in how (or how not) to behave. Meanwhile, films noir are typically narrated from the male perspective and position the male detective/hero as a victim of female manipulation or betrayal. The ‘femme fatale’ is a male construct; she represents male anxieties about women's changing roles in society, especially her sexual and economic independence. Neo-noir films deliberately subvert the rule of ‘compensating moral values’ and offer female viewers a rare opportunity to derive pleasure from narcissistic identification with the femme fatale.

A CASE OF BAIQ NURIL IN MEDIA: SARA MILLS’ CRITICAL DISCOURSE ANALYSIS

Writing in the media, a journalist can create his/her own framing, to be in favor or bias. The framing created will show the subject, the object, the victim or the perpetrator of a case from the point of view of the journalist. This study focuses on the position of subject, object, reader, and the ideology in PRI media and The Sydney Morning Herald media in the case of Baiq Nuril Makmun. The research uses a descriptive qualitative method and analyzed by using discourse analysis framework of Sara Mills. The result of data analysis in the articles show that Jokowi and Nuril are mostly put as subject. On the other side, Nuril is also written as object. Furthermore, based on reader position, the authors mostly use pronoun ‘he’, ‘her’, and ‘she‘. By using third person pronoun, readers are in the position of outsiders which can follow the storyline objectively from both of subject and object position. The ideology of the articles show that a leader uphold justice and solve injustice case that is received by Nuril because she becomes a victim two times, of the immoral action and the violation of Electronic Information and Transactions law.

Virtue, Well-being, and the Good Life

Inspired by Aristotle, Paul Bloomfield holds that all genuine reasons for action are explained in terms of one basic goal: to live a Good Life. But living morally—choosing and performing brave, temperate, just, and wise actions—is necessary (though not sufficient) for the Good Life. Using ideas from Kant and Sidgwick, Bloomfield argues that immorality is inherently self-defeating: in disrespecting others, one disrespects oneself. Moreover, immoralists—who believe that immoral action often conduces to self-interest—operate with a self-defeating conception of happiness. Bloomfield succeeds in explaining why moral virtue and personal well-being are not completely opposed to one another. However, his main arguments against immoralism are unconvincing, because they require controversial claims about essential properties and the logic of attitudes taken towards them. Other arguments against immoralism attribute inessential views to immoralists, or else require controversial assumptions about the relation between valuing and believing good.