Moral Sensitivity of Young People with Intellectual Disability – Its Role in The Process of Their Education

According to Heller and Życiński (1980) the primary regulator of human behaviour is the system of values therefore its development should be in the centre of all educational and upbringing measures. Our focus here is on moral sensitivity understood as the ability of an individual to see social situations from the perspective of moral good and moral evil that represent values embodied in moral norms adopted by the world and internalised by humans as the principles of conduct. The main research question was the following: How morally sensitive are persons with ID and how is their sensitivity associated with the degree of intellectual disability and gender? A non-probability sample 267 of Polish residents aged 16-30 years with mild (58.42%) or moderate (41.58%) intellectual disability was assembled. Men and women were almost in equal proportion. The Moral Sensitivity Inventory (MSI; Otrębski, Sudoł, 2020) has been used to measure the moral sensitivity of people with ID. It consists of 10 illustrated stories presenting typical social situations containing moral dilemmas, and an evaluation form. The tested person’s task is to answer the following question “Who, in this story, did something right or wrong, and what was that?” and to indicate as many moral elements in the story and the picture as they can. The results imply that the study participants had different ability to discern moral good and moral evil. They were more sensitive to the manifestations of good and evil bad associated with Understanding one’s behaviour and its impact on others (more than one-fourth of them had high scores) and less perceptive of those relating to Respect for others’ property and Conformance to principles and norms. The results of the study expand the knowledge of the overall moral sensitivity of persons with intellectual disabilities.

Genesis of Moral Freedom in Kant

In Kant’s writings, we can discover four key moments in the realization of moral freedom: i) The original possibility of being free, ii) The act described by Kant as radical evil, iii) The opposite act, that is, an inner conversion to good, and, finally, iv) The long process of the self-development of virtue extending to immortality. There are further issues such as the double concept of moral evil, and practical temporality. Moral freedom is originally located (and presupposed in Kant’s transcendental deduction) in the individual, her decisions, and the maxims or principles that guide her actions, even though a community (as both a „kingdom of ends” and social reality) provides the scope wherein all this takes place and its socially and historically-situated shapes. This paper tries to systematize these crucial stages of Kant’s moral philosophy with the focus on the concept of virtue.

Let's Play GOLF!

A central feature of the “free will defense” as developed by Alvin Plantinga is his response to the claim that God can create a world containing creatures with libertarian freedom that contains no moral evil. Plantinga’s response appeals to the notion of “morally significant freedom” according to which free creatures, in order to do moral good, must be capable of moral evil. In this paper, I argue, first, that morally significant freedom is not required for free creatures to do moral good and, second, that other recent attempts to necessitate a creaturely capability for evil likewise fail. The upshot of my paper is that the free will defense simply won’t work because it is possible and feasible for God to create a world containing libertarianly free creatures capable of moral good and yet containing no moral evil.

Le mal moral chez Avicenne : perspectives éthiques et politiques

Résumé La question du mal problème pose un problème aigu au sein de la doctrine de l’âme d’Avicenne. Comment l’âme humaine qui est une substance spirituelle inaltérable impassible peut-elle être affectée par le mal commis ? Répondre à cette question nécessite l’étude de l’eschatologie avicennienne de même que celle du statut des normes éthiques. Ces dernières ne sont, selon Avicenne, pas universelles et donc pas accessibles à l’intellect mais sont données par la révélation. On ne peut comprendre la question du mal moral chez Avicenne sans la replacer dans le système métaphysique et éthique du philosophe persan. The question of evil poses an acute problem within Avicenna’s doctrine of the soul. How can the human soul, which is an unalterable spiritual substance, be affected by the evil committed? Answering this question requires the study of Avicenna’s eschatology as well as the study of the status of ethical norms. The latter, according to Avicenna, are not universal and therefore not accessible to the intellect but are given by revelation. The question of moral evil in Avicenna cannot be understood without placing it in the metaphysical and ethical system of the Persian philosopher.

Cognitive Regeneration and the Noetic Effects of Sin: Why Theology and Cognitive Science May not be Compatible

Justin Barrett and Kelly James Clark have suggested that cognitive science of religion supports the existence of a god-faculty akin to sensus divinitatis. They propose that God may have given rise to the god-faculty via guided evolution. This suggestion raises two theological worries. First, our natural cognition seems to favor false god-beliefs over true ones. Second, it also makes us prone to tribalism. If God hates idolatry and moral evil, why would he give rise to mind with such biases? A Plantingian response would point to the noetic effects of sin. Such a response, however, would have to assume that God is restoring the minds of believers. This paper considers empirical reasons to doubt that such a process is taking place.

Radical Evil and the Nature of Virtue

This chapter situates Kant’s conception of virtue against the thesis of radical evil, according to which although human beings have a predisposition to virtue, they nevertheless have a propensity to moral evil. Section 1 of the chapter explains Kant’s conception of the “original predisposition to good” as presented in the Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. Section 2 discusses the predispositions to moral feeling, conscience, love of humanity, and respect that Kant posits as presuppositions of being subject to moral requirements. The thesis of radical evil is explained in section 3. Kant’s concept of virtue is the topic of section 4, the propensities to evil (frailty, impurity, and depravity) are discussed in section 5, and in section 6 the task of acquiring virtue by overcoming affects and passions leading to moral evil is explained. The chapter ends with a brief comparison of Kant’s conception of virtue with Aristotle’s.

Taking Soundings

This chapter introduces themes that are important throughout this work. Augustine’s doctrine of original sin continues to hold sway for many theologians and the chapter briefly discusses recent works that have taken his thinking seriously in the light of evolution. The chapter also begins to map the relationships between sin, evil, natural evil, and moral evil. This blurring between natural and moral evil represents the most recent example of why an adequate understanding of sin that takes account of humanity’s embedded relationship with the natural world is so important. The chapter begins with a very brief discussion of shame, conscience, and evolutionary explanations of religion in early human societies. Following this is a brief review of Western theological explanations for the persistence of evil through a review of current literature on original sin. The chapter then argues, following traditional sources, that sin is worth exploring in order to understand virtue; in other words, an exploration of vices helps to elucidate the meaning of virtues. The chapter then comments on the common dichotomy between natural and moral evil and argues for a much greater blurring of that boundary in thinking through the biocultural origins of sin and guilt. J.M. Coetze’s novel Disgrace captures the complex and ambiguous interlacing of human sin and animality. The rest of the present volume intends to show more clearly what that blurring signifies as well as the distinctive nature of human sin and its symbolic character, which has semiotic properties amounting to a grossly distorted form of wisdom, shadow sophia.

El mal y las técnicas de envilecimiento: Fenomenología del cuerpo torturado

El objetivo central de este artículo es exponer las herramientas que la fenomenología husserliana aporta a la definición, descripción y análisis del mal moral. Parto de la distinción Ricoeuriana entre mal moral y mal sufrimiento, con la intención de justificar la introducción del instrumental husserliano en ambas esferas. Me interesa analizar esta distinción en un marco de interpretación fenomenológico que nos permita explicar el mal sufrimiento como dolor y el mal moral como violencia y envilecimiento. En un primer momento expongo las limitaciones del análisis hermenéutico en relación con la descripción del dolor como pura pasividad; en un se-gundo momento analizo los desarrollos contemporáneos de la fenomenología del dolor a través de los conceptos centrales de la teoría husserliana de la constitución, concretamente, de la teoría de la corporalidad que aparece en este contexto; en un tercer momento trato de definir el mal moral (el mismo de la distinción ricoeuriana) como violencia, y la violencia como acción articulada a través de un conjunto de técnicas de envilecimiento o deshumanización, caracterizadas por la intención de un otro hostil, de dañar o alienar la identidad del yo mediante la manipulación de los sentimientos sensibles de la víctima, a través de la creación de escenarios y condiciones materiales consideradas infrahumanas.The main goal of this paper is to expose the tools offered by Husserlian phenomenology for the definition, description, and analysis of moral evil. My starting point is the Ricoeurian distinction between moral evil and suffering evil, in order to justify the insertion of the Husserlian analysis in both spheres. My purpose to highlight this distinction within a Husserlian interpretation frame so we can understand the suffering evil as pain, and the moral evil as violence and degradation. First, I expose the limitations of hermeneutical analysis in the assumption of pain as pure passivity. Second, I analyze the contemporary developements of the phenomenology of pain through the central concepts of the Husserlian theory of the constitution, specifically, the theory of corporeality. Third, I try to define moral evil–the same contemplated within the Ricoeurian distinction–as violence, and violence as an articulated action through an array of degradation techniques, or dehumanization, characterized by the hostile intention of the other to damage or alienate the identity of the ego by manipulating the sensible feelings of the victim, through the creation of scenarios and material conditions considered as infrahuman.