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Moral Responsibility (moral + responsibility)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	72%
Medical Sciences	11%
Psychology	5%
Education	5%
2 Other Domains	7%

Distribution within Humanities and Social Sciences

General Philosophy	18%
Analytic Philosophy	11%

Selected Abstracts

Collective Moral Responsibility and Collective Intention

MIDWEST STUDIES IN PHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2006
TRACY ISAACS
First page of article [source]

TRansfer Principles and Moral Responsibility

NOUS, Issue 2000
Eleonore Stump
First page of article [source]

Legal and Moral Responsibility

PHILOSOPHY COMPASS (ELECTRONIC), Issue 6 2009
Antony Duff
The paper begins with the plausible view that criminal responsibility should track moral responsibility, and explains its plausibility. A necessary distinction is then drawn between liability and answerability as two dimensions of responsibility, and is shown to underpin the distinction in criminal law between offences and defences. This enables us to distinguish strict liability from strict answerability, and to see that whilst strict criminal liability seems inconsistent with the principle that criminal responsibility should track moral responsibility, strict criminal answerability is not. We must ask, therefore, whether, when and why strict criminal responsibility is unacceptable. [source]

Self-Deception and Moral Responsibility

RATIO, Issue 3 2004
Neil Levy
The self-deceived are usually held to be moral responsible for their state. I argue that this attribution of responsibility makes sense only against the background of the traditional conception of self-deception, a conception that is now widely rejected. In its place, a new conception of self-deception has been articulated, which requires neither intentional action by self-deceived agents, nor that they posses contradictory beliefs. This new conception has neither need nor place for attributions of moral responsibility to the self-deceived in paradigmatic cases. Accordingly, we should take the final step toward abandoning the traditional conception, and drop the automatic attribution of responsibility. Self-deception is simply a kind of mistake, and has no more necessary connection to culpability than have other intellectual errors. [source]

Moral responsibility to attain thorough pediatric drug labeling

PEDIATRIC ANESTHESIA, Issue 10 2009
DAVID B. WAISEL MD
Summary Many drugs used in children have not been labeled for pediatric use. While this was the standard for many years, recent regulations and incentives have improved the depth and breadth of pediatric drug labeling. Nonetheless, common pediatric drugs have not been adequately labeled, particularly generic and orphaned drugs and drugs that were approved for one age group but never tested in other age groups. Anesthesiologists have a moral responsibility to encourage government, pharmaceutical companies, and researchers to study drugs in children. [source]

WHEN GOOD ORGANS GO TO BAD PEOPLE

BIOETHICS, Issue 2 2008
DIEN HO
ABSTRACT A number of philosophers have argued that alcoholics should receive lower priority for liver transplantations because they are morally responsible for their medical conditions. In this paper, I argue that this conclusion is false. Moral responsibility should not be used as a criterion for the allocation of medical resources. The reason I advance goes further than the technical problem of assessing moral responsibility. The deeper problem is that using moral responsibility as an allocation criterion undermines the functioning of medicine. [source]

Exploring a Moral Landscape: Genetic Science and Ethics

HYPATIA, Issue 1 2001
BARBARA NICHOLAS
This project draws on scholarship of feminist and womanist scholars, and on results of interviews with scientists currently involved in molecular genetics. With reference to Margaret Urban Walker's "practices of moral responsibility," the social practices of molecular geneticists are exphred, and strategies identified through which scientists negotiate their moral responsibilities. The implications of this work for scientists and for feminists are discussed. [source]

Responsibilities of Criminal Justice Officials

JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHILOSOPHY, Issue 2 2010
KIMBERLEY BROWNLEE
abstract In recent years, political philosophers have hotly debated whether ordinary citizens have a general pro tanto moral obligation to follow the law. Contemporary philosophers have had less to say about the same question when applied to public officials. In this paper, I consider the latter question in the morally complex context of criminal justice. I argue that criminal justice officials have no general pro tanto moral obligation to adhere to the legal dictates and lawful rules of their offices. My claim diverges not only from the commonsense view about such officials, but also from the positions standardly taken in legal theory and political science debates, which presume there is some general obligation that must arise from legal norms and be reconciled with political realities. I defend my claim by highlighting the conceptual gap between the rigid, generalised, codified rules that define a criminal justice office and the special moral responsibilities of the various moral roles that may underpin that office (such as guard, guardian, healer, educator, mediator, counsellor, advocate, and carer). After addressing four objections to my view, I consider specific contexts in which criminal justice officials are obligated not to adhere to the demands of their offices. Amongst other things, the arguments advanced in this paper raise questions about both the distribution of formal discretion in the criminal justice system and the normative validity of some of the offices that presently exist in criminal justice systems. [source]

Archaeology and Respect for the Dead

JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHILOSOPHY, Issue 3 2003
Geoffrey Scarre
abstract,Contemporary archaeologists commonly acknowledge moral responsibilities to the descendants of the subjects whose remains they disturb. There has been comparatively little reflection within the professional community on whether they have duties to the dead themselves. I argue that doing wrong to the dead is not reducible to harming their successors; that there are ways in which archaeologists can wrong the dead qua the living persons they once were; and that nevertheless this may not have such radical implications for the practice of archaeology as might first be imagined. [source]

PHILOSOPHERS, THEIR CONTEXT, AND THEIR RESPONSIBILITIES

METAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 5 2006
WARD E. JONES
Abstract: It has at various times been said, both before and since the fall of apartheid, that philosophers in South Africa are neglecting to do certain sorts of work. Behind this accusation lies a general claim that philosophers have responsibilities to their contexts. This essay is dedicated to (i) defending this claim against objections, and (ii) offering a positive argument for there being moral pressure on philosophers to increase understanding. My aim is not to accuse any philosopher or community of philosophers of neglect. It is rather to defend an understanding of both philosophy and ethical responsibilities that makes room for philosophers to have moral responsibilities. Whether or not it has ever in fact been appropriate to accuse philosophers in South Africa, or indeed anywhere else, of neglect, philosophers do indeed have responsibilities to their contexts. [source]

Balancing Self-interest and Altruism: corporate governance alone is not enough

CORPORATE GOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2004
Sandra Dawson
Governance has become a topic of unprecedented emotional significance and fundamental importance in the boardrooms of companies, partly as a result of a confluence of early 21st century corporate scandals, stock market falls and public rage about senior executive remuneration. A simple adherence to formal systems of corporate governance, in terms of structures, rules, procedures and codes of practice, whilst a starting point, will not alone win back confidence in markets and corporations. Consideration needs to be given to how to release entrepreneurial self interest within a moral context. This focuses attention on the role of other major social institutions which may more naturally be able to nurture a moral framework as well as the role of individual citizens and the responsibility of all of us to enact a moral framework for business activities. There is no escape from individual moral responsibility, and our part in creating and sustaining social institutions beyond corporations. [source]

Libertarian Free Will and CNC Manipulation

DIALECTICA, Issue 3 2001
Ishtiyaque Haji
An agent who is the victim of covert and nonconstraining control (CNC) is unaware of being controlled and controllers get their way by manipulating the victims so that they willingly do what the controllers desire. Our primary objective is to argue that if cases of CNC manipulation undermine compatibilist accounts of the sort of control required for moral responsibility, they also undermine various agent-causal and non-agent-causal libertarian accounts as well. [source]

Rethinking civic education in the age of biotechnology

EDUCATIONAL THEORY, Issue 1 2005
Huey-li Li
In this paper, I first examine the three justifications most often provided for differentiating, discounting, or even disclaiming the present generation's moral responsibility to future generations. I then discuss ideological critiques of, and educational solutions to, the complicity of formal educational institutions in propagating these justifications. Finally, I inquire into the ethical postulates by which prefigurative democratic civic and citizenship education could facilitate civic engagement in deliberating about intergenerational relations. I argue that, by challenging such hegemonic cultural values as atomistic individualism, contractual social relations, the pursuit of progress, and the sharp division between ethics and epistemology, prefigurative civic education serves as the first step toward egalitarian intergenerational relations. [source]

Enduring Freedom: Globalizing Children's Rights

HYPATIA, Issue 1 2003
CONSTANCE L. MUI
Events surrounding the September 11 terrorist attacks on the United States raise compelling moral questions about the effects of war and globalization on children in many parts of the world. This paper adopts Sartre's notion of freedom, particularly its connection with materiality and intersubjectivity, to assess the moral responsibility that we have as a global community toward our most vulnerable members. We conclude by examining important first steps that should be taken to address the plight of children. [source]

What's wrong with business ethics

INTERNATIONAL SOCIAL SCIENCE JOURNAL, Issue 185 2005
David Rodin
The field of business ethics is trapped between two competing and flawed conceptions of corporate responsibility. On the one hand is the shareholder value model, championed by Nobel Prize winning economist Milton Friedman, which claims that corporations owe positive moral obligations only to their shareholders. On the other hand is the normative stakeholder theory, which claims that corporations are morally obliged to secure the interests of a broad range of groups, of which shareholders are only one. In this paper I will argue that if it is to generate a viable account of corporate moral responsibility, business ethics will need to abandon both canonical approaches and adopt a new approach based on a more concrete conception of the business corporation. At the end of the paper I sketch what such a theoretical approach would look like. The argument is not only relevant to business ethics; it also has important consequences for Michael Porter's influential approach to competitive strategy. [source]

Contrasting Role Morality and Professional Morality: Implications for Practice

JOURNAL OF APPLIED PHILOSOPHY, Issue 1 2003
Kevin Gibson
Investigating role morality is important, since the mentality of role morality may allow agents to believe they can abdicate moral responsibility when acting in a role. This is particularly significant in the literature dealing with professional morality where professionals, because of their special status, may find themselves at odds with their best moral judgments. Here I tell four stories and draw out some distinctions. I conclude that role morality is a genuine and useful distinction. However, I suggest that the purported distinction between role morality and professional morality is over-determined. Therefore, alleged conflicts between the demands of role and profession (such as the different pressures on Pinto designers as employees and as engineers) are not conflicts between different kinds of demands, but rather conflicts arising from divergent roles that most workers will encounter regularly. Another analytical perspective is to look at moral choices at work in terms of power and the ability to bring about change. Finally, I draw the implication that we should stress moral awareness at a fairly abstract level for all employees and reinforce the moral primacy of individual choice. [source]

Moral emotions and bullying: A cross-national comparison of differences between bullies, victims and outsiders

AGGRESSIVE BEHAVIOR, Issue 6 2003
Ersilia Menesini
Abstract This study aims to analyse the role of moral emotions and reasoning in relation to children's behaviour in a bullying situation. On the basis of a peer nomination questionnaire [Salmivalli et al., 1996; Sutton and Smith, 1999], children from three different cities (Seville, Florence, and Cosenza) were assigned to one of three different status groups: bullies, victims, or outsiders. Subsequently they were interviewed about their feelings in relation to the task of putting themselves in the role of the bully in a bullying scenario. Specifically, emotions such as guilt and shame, expressed in a sense of moral responsibility, and indifference and pride, expressed in an attitude of moral disengagement, were investigated. Results showed significant differences between bullies, victims, and outsiders, with regard to moral disengagement, at both the affective and cognitive levels. Across the three cities, bullies, as compared to victims and outsiders, showed a higher level of disengagement emotions and motives when they were asked to put themselves in the role of bully. At a more detailed level, analyses of specific mechanisms of moral disengagement revealed that bullies possessed a main profile of egocentric reasoning. Besides the differences between bullies and victims, cross-cultural differences were also present. Compared to children from Seville, children from the south of Italy (Cosenza) attributed higher disengagement to the bullies. Findings are discussed in relation to specific cultural characteristics of this area. Aggr. Behav. 29:515,530, 2003. © 2003 Wiley-Liss, Inc. [source]

The Ethics of Integrity: Educational Values Beyond Postmodern Ethics

JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION, Issue 1 2001
Mark Mason
I address the problems of diminished moral responsibility and of moral relativism, typically associated with education in late modern society, by developing, beyond the problematic contemporary formulations of postmodern ethics, an ethics of integrity as a moral resource for education. This ethics is constituted by the principles of respect for the dignity of persons, and the acceptance of responsibility for the consequences of our moral choices. I show how it offers more than the scant resources of postmodern ethics to educators who seek to enable their students to develop a deeply-founded sense of moral comportment and an authentic identity in the face of the moral complexity of late modernity's globalised and plural society. [source]

GENOCIDE AND THE MORAL AGENCY OF ETHNIC GROUPS

METAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 3-4 2006
KAREN KOVACH
Abstract: Genocide is the deliberate destruction, in whole or in part, of a people. Typically, it is a crime that is committed by a people. In this essay, I propose an analysis of the concept of an ethnic identity group, which is, I argue, the concept of ethnicity at issue in many important discussions of group rights, group acts, and the moral responsibility of group members for the acts of the groups to which they belong. I develop the account of collective agency presupposed by this analysis and explore its implications for assessments of individual moral responsibility for genocide. I argue, further, that among other advantages over culturalist approaches to questions about group rights, the approach that follows from the concept of an ethnic identity group sheds light on the specific moral wrong of genocide. I reply to individualist objections to the idea that ethnic group membership may be morally significant and argue that morally adequate responses to genocide presuppose acknowledgment of the fact that groups act and are acted upon in morally significant ways. [source]

PASTORAL COUNSEL FOR THE ANXIOUS NATURALIST: DANIEL DENNETT'S FREEDOM EVOLVES

METAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 4 2005
Timothy O'Connor
Abstract: Daniel Dennett's Freedom Evolves is a rhetorically powerful but philosophically unconvincing attempt to show that a deterministic and ontologically reductionist, but epistemologically pluralist, outlook may peacefully coexist with a robust acceptance of human freedom and moral responsibility. The key to understanding the harmony rests in recognizing that freedom is not a metaphysical or physical condition but is instead a product of deeply embedded social practices. I argue that Dennett's project rests on an unargued and implausible deflationary stance toward basic metaphysics. [source]

Evolution and Free Will: A Defense of Darwinian Non,naturalism

METAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 4 2002
John Lemos
In his recent book The Natural Selection of Autonomy, Bruce Waller defends a view that he calls "natural autonomy." This view holds that human beings possess a kind of autonomy that we share with nonhuman animals, a capacity to explore alternative courses of action, but an autonomy that cannot support moral responsibility. He also argues that this natural autonomy can provide support for the ethical principle of noninterference. I argue that to support the ethical principle of noninterference Waller needs either a libertarian or a compatibilist theory of autonomy. I then go on to argue that, contra Waller, the libertarian view is both compatible with Darwinism and able to make sense of how autonomous acts belong to the agents who perform them. Thus, I conclude that the libertarian position is a live option for Darwinians. If however, naturalism is taken to include a deterministic view of the universe (at least at the nonquantum level), as is often the case, then my article takes some strides in defending "Darwinian non,naturalism." [source]

Swedish mental health nurses' responsibility in supervised community care of persons with long-term mental illness

NURSING & HEALTH SCIENCES, Issue 1 2004
Annabella Magnusson rpn
Abstract The aim of the present study was to describe psychiatric nurses' experience of how the changing focus of mental health care in Sweden, from in-patient treatment to community-based care, has influenced their professional autonomy. Eleven psychiatric nurses were interviewed and a qualitative content analysis was used to identify major themes in the data. Three main themes were found: pattern of responsibility, pattern of clinical judgement, and pattern of control through support and supervision. All themes were related to the nurse's identity, moral responsibility and the feelings of loneliness and independence in his/her daily work. Together, the three themes were found to constitute a process. This study shows the complexity involved in nursing care provided in the patient's home. Achieving control over the patient's everyday life through support and supervision does not imply taking over the patient's autonomy, but rather reducing the stigma attached to mental illness and facilitating the process of rehabilitation. [source]

Human nature: a foundation for palliative care

NURSING PHILOSOPHY, Issue 2 2008
Beverly J. B. Whelton PhD MSN RN
Abstract, The Aristotelian-Thomist philosopher holds that human intellectual knowledge is possible because of the order in the world and natural human capacities. It is the position of this paper that there is a shared human form or nature that unites all humanity as members of the same kind. Moral treatment is due to every human being because they are human, and is not based upon expression of abilities. Humans have substantial dynamic existence in the world, an existence which overflows in expressive relationships. As both patient and health professional are human, human nature forms the natural foundation of health care. This paper looks towards human nature for moral guidance. The therapeutic relationship is seen as a part of the interpersonal moral space formed by human relationality, which tends towards community , in this case, the healthcare system. The therapeutic relationship is also a source of moral responsibility, as illness makes the patient vulnerable, while knowledge and nursing capacities generate in the nurse a duty to care. Nursing theory serves to connect philosophical reflection and nursing practice. Imogene King's conceptual system and theory of Goal Attainment is the theory that follows from the perspective of human person being presented. This synthesis of philosophy and theory is developed with the goal of shedding light on healthcare decisions in palliative care. The article concludes with the acknowledgement that the complexity of contextualized individual decisions requires the insight and discipline of the moral practitioner, and provides some thoughts on how education, development, and refinement transform an individual into a nurse. [source]

Elsewhere and Otherwise: Lévinasian Eros and Ethics in Le Clézio's La quarantaine

ORBIS LITERARUM, Issue 4 2001
Karen D. Levy
Beginning in the 1930s, Emmanuel Lévinas called into question the totalizing priorities of the Western metaphysical tradition and developed a dramatically original description of how subjectivity is constructed in the context of what he terms a face to face encounter with an absolute Other. This destabilizing experience is presented in terms of a summons that demands an ethical response in the form of unqualified moral responsibility for the well being of the Other, without any expectation of reciprocity. In a series of profoundly challenging works, Lévinas analyzes the different stages in the development of this relationship, expressed in masculine oriented terms, and he contrasts the nobility and generosity of ethics with the intimacy of eros and the welcome of the feminine in a protected domestic site. Lévinas insists on the impossibility of fusion and possession in both the ethical and the erotic relationships and seeks to disengage his discourse from essentialist, gender based interpretations. Nevertheless, he privileges terms associated with masculine subjects and likewise seems to endorse stereotypical interpretations of the feminine as fragile and frail, inviting either pity or tenderness. The fact that eros is based on an equivocation between need and the desire for something absolutely Other, which does not depend on any lack, prevents it from attaining the same stature as ethics. And by leaving the feminine out of his discussion of ethics, Lévinas at least downplays the possibility for feminine subjects to respond to the summons of the face to face encounter and accept the risk of living other than in the metaphysical dwelling of Being. The questions raised in Lévinas' works concerning eros, ethics, and the feminine assume different configurations and lead elsewhere when explored in proximity to J.M.G. Le Clézio's emblematic saga La quarantaine. Similar in many ways to Lévinas' philosophical trajectory, Le Clézio's literary undertaking details the disjointed stages of a journey from the self-contained solitude of Being to an exposed elsewhere in what Lévinas calls the "au-delà de l'être." The multi-layered text of La quarantaine fictionalizes the crisis that caused Le Clézio's great-uncle to be erased from family history and depicts the transgenerational effects of that disappearance. The originality of Le Clézio's work stems from the double inscription of the alterity of both eros and ethics in an Other who is gendered female. His text explores the process of rupture and exposure that Lévinas valorizes, but it does so in a way that reveals how a female subject, who both welcomes discreetly and imposes herself indiscreetly, challenges what Lévinas calls the "égoïté tragique" of the other protagonists. Le Clézio's arrestingly beautiful prose serves as a kind of textual face that expresses concretely the complexity of Lévinas' preoccupations and summons us as readers to exceed our capacities and live otherwise. [source]

DISPOSITIONAL COMPATIBILISM AND FRANKFURT-TYPE EXAMPLES

PACIFIC PHILOSOPHICAL QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2008
ISHTIYAQUE HAJI
It is argued that partisans of Frankfurt examples can still make a powerful case for the view that being able to do otherwise, even on Vihvelin's compatibilist explication of ,could have done otherwise,' is not required for moral responsibility. [source]

Moral responsibility to attain thorough pediatric drug labeling

Rational Ignorance and Political Morality,

PHILOSOPHY AND PHENOMENOLOGICAL RESEARCH, Issue 1 2006
Guido Pincione
People frequently advance political proposals in the name of a goal while remaining apparently indifferent to the fact that those proposals, if implemented, would frustrate that goal. Theorists of "deliberative democracy" purport to avoid this difficulty by arguing that deliberation is primarily about moral not empirical issues. We reject this view (the moral turn) and propose a method (The Display Test) to check whether a political utterance is best explained by the rational ignorance hypothesis or by the moral turn: the speaker must be prepared to openly acknowledge the bad consequences of his political position. If he is, the position is genuinely moral; if he is not, the position evinces either rational ignorance or posturing. We introduce deontological notions to explain when the moral turn works and when it does not. We discuss and reject possible replies, in particular the view that a moral-political stance insensitive to consequences relies on a distribution of moral responsibility in evildoing. Finally, we show that even the most plausible candidates for the category of purely moral political proposals are best explained by the rational ignorance/posturing hypothesis, if only because enforcing morality gives rise to complex causal issues. [source]

Legal and Moral Responsibility

Three-Dimensional Power: A Discussion of Steven Lukes' Power: A Radical View

POLITICAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 2 2006
Keith Dowding
Lukes' third dimension of power exists where people are subject to domination and acquiesce in that domination. The intentional stance allows us to predict and explain others' behaviour in ways that those agents may not recognise. It denies agents' privileged access to their own reasons for actions. Using the intentional stance we can understand how agents may acquiesce in their own domination. We can also make distinctions between those who dominate knowingly and those who dominate without realising they do so. It allows us to distinguish morally such cases and to understand the power structure without falling into the Foucaultian trap of seeing all social relationships in the same relativistic light and where all , dominant and dominated alike , are subject to the same power relations and moral responsibility. [source]