Epilogue

‘Epilogue’ traces the turn-of-the-twenty-first century interest in globalization and its implication for addressing intellectual problems in the United States. The perils and possibilities of globalization for American life vexed thinkers on how globalization intensified nationalism around the world. Globalization was a new framework and scale for long-standing and familiar ways of thinking about the boundaries of moral communities. It also refashioned identities in the face of a diverse world and uncertain future.

Artificial Agents in Natural Moral Communities: A Brief Clarification

What exactly is it that makes one morally responsible? Is it a set of facts which can be objectively discerned, or is it something more subjective, a reaction to the agent or context-sensitive interaction? This debate gets raised anew when we encounter newfound examples of potentially marginal agency. Accordingly, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) and the idea of “novel beings” represent exciting opportunities to revisit inquiries into the nature of moral responsibility. This paper expands upon my article “Artificial Moral Responsibility: How We Can and Cannot Hold Machines Responsible” and clarifies my reliance upon two competing views of responsibility. Although AI and novel beings are not close enough to us in kind to be considered candidates for the same sorts of responsibility we ascribe to our fellow human beings, contemporary theories show us the priority and adaptability of our moral attitudes and practices. This allows us to take seriously the social ontology of relationships that tie us together. In other words, moral responsibility is to be found primarily in the natural moral community, even if we admit that those communities now contain artificial agents.

Not Monsters After All: How Political Deliberation Can Build Moral Communities Amidst Deep Difference

Political deliberation typically aims to improve the legitimacy of collective decisions. This article proposes a different function for deliberation, which is both more modest but nevertheless critical in public life: the legitimation not of decisions, but of fellow citizens. This outcome is especially important in polarized societies, where what divides citizens is not only differences in conceptions of the good, but also the perception that the other side is not motivated by any good at all. Drawing on the work of Hans-Georg Gadamer and Charles Taylor as well as on an empirical study of political dialogue between university students after the 2016 election in the United States, I show how a particular form of political dialogue can help interlocuters recognize the conceptions of the good that motivate others’ views. Such learning can help create what Taylor suggests is necessary for diverse democracies: a shared understanding that does not obscure and in fact brings to the fore principled and significant divisions. Such recognition has the potential to diminish support for violence and the disenfranchisement of political opponents.

Religious Moral Communities or Secular Tolerance? Individual-, National-, and Regional-Level Explanations for Restrictive Refugee Policy Preferences in Europe

Religious communities can encourage generosity toward strangers. In these communities, such norms are high among religious individuals and nonadherents. It remains unclear how these norms inform policy. Recent refugee crises provide critical tests of how charitable values translate into political preferences. As Europe experiences turmoil over the acceptance and integration of Muslim refugees, I ask how religion affects preferences regarding refugee admissions. I find that marginalized religious groups among new immigrants offer the highest levels of support for admitting refugees. Catholics are more restrictive than religious nones regarding policy preferences, while there are mixed results comparing nones to other Christian denominations. However, for Catholics and most other Christians, generous policy preferences increase with higher rates of religious service attendance. Respondents offer more generous policy preferences in regions with higher rates of Protestant and Catholic affiliation and in nations with higher Protestant affiliation. Restrictive preferences increase with regional and national percent unaffiliated.

The Bangkok Blast as a finger-pointing blame game

This article sets out to explore the potential of journalistic attitudinal positioning in dis/aligning readers into different feeling and moral communities in traumatic news event. To do so, it utilises the appraisal framework to examine how the Bangkok Post and the New York Times present and represent ‘attitude’ of different news actors in the coverage of the Bangkok Blast. Analytical findings show that while journalistic attitudinal positioning constitutes a means of political empowerment through bringing in otherwise marginal and silenced voices, it also opens up a space for journalists to evaluate risks and negotiate responsibilities. News reports of the Bangkok Blast eventually construe the Thai society as divided by representing the event as a blame game. The findings also extend the conceptual scope of symbolic codes of victims, villain and hero by resorting to attitudinal resources.