Reasoning with comparative moral judgements: an argument for Moral Bayesianism

The paper discusses the notion of reasoning with comparative moral judgements (i.e judgements of the form “act a is morally superior to act b”) from the point of view of several meta-ethical positions. Using a simple formal result, it is argued that only a version of moral cognitivism that is committed to the claim that moral beliefs come in degrees can give a normatively plausible account of such reasoning. Some implications of accepting such a version of moral cognitivism are discussed

Comparing Teacher Education and Finance Majors’ Agreement with Financial Morality Topics

The authors describe findings of a survey that contains items related to financial morality. They analyzed responses of 382 teacher education majors and finance majors at a Midwestern institution of higher learning. The study found highest agreement with items measuring business responsibilities, and lowest agreement with items related to wealth distribution. It notes significant differences and varying effect sizes among education and finance majors’ interpretation of items concerning business responsibility, wealth distribution, and business management. Analysis of items concerning consumer attitudes and consumer behaviors found significant differences and moderate effect sizes. The authors argue for additional research that explores the concepts related to financial morality and provide suggestions for related study.

Quantum Geometry and its Implications for Black Holes

General relativity successfully describes space-times at scales that we can observe and probe today, but it cannot be complete as a consequence of singularity theorems. For a long time there have been indications that quantum gravity will provide a more complete, non-singular extension which, however, was difficult to verify in the absence of a quantum theory of gravity. By now there are several candidates which show essential hints as to what a quantum theory of gravity may look like. In particular, loop quantum gravity is a non-perturbative formulation which is background independent, two properties which are essential close to a classical singularity with strong fields and a degenerate metric. In cosmological and black hole settings one can indeed see explicitly how classical singularities are removed by quantum geometry: there is a well-defined evolution all the way down to, and across, the smallest scales. As for black holes, their horizon dynamics can be studied showing characteristic modifications to the classical behavior. Conceptual and physical issues can also be addressed in this context, providing lessons for quantum gravity in general. Here, we conclude with some comments on the uniqueness issue often linked to quantum gravity in some form or another.Comment: 16 pages, Plenary talk at ``Einstein's Legacy in the New Millenium,'' Puri, India, December 200

What Normative Facts Should Political Theory Be About? Philosophy of Science meets Political Liberalism

Just as different sciences deal with different facts—say, physics versus biology—so we may ask a similar question about normative theories. Is normative political theory concerned with the same normative facts as moral theory or different ones? By developing an analogy with the sciences, we argue that the normative facts of political theory belong to a higher— more coarse-grained—level than those of moral theory. The latter are multiply realizable by the former: competing facts at the moral level can underpin the same facts at the political one. Consequently, some questions that moral theories answer are indeterminate at the political level. This proposal offers a novel interpretation of John Rawls’s idea that, in public reasoning, we should abstract away from comprehensive moral doctrines. We contrast our distinction between facts at different levels with the distinction between admissible and inadmissible evidence and discuss some implications for the practice of political theory

I knew I Shouldn’t Do It; But I Did It: Davidson on Causal Strength and Weakness of Will

Reasons for action is a widely employed methodology in practical philosophy, and especially in moral philosophy. Reasons are facts that explain and justify actions. But, conceptually, if reasons were causes, incontinent actions would be impossible. When an agent ranks an evaluation about what to do as his best judgement, it entails that he has a reason for acting as that judgement prescribes. But when an agent acts incontinently, he acts in accordance to an intention that is not aligned with his best evaluative judgement. Yet, if the agent’s best evaluative judgement provides him a reason for action, this reason should also be his strongest reason, and therefore, the strongest cause. How then can it be possible that an agent incontinently acts according to a reason of inferior causal strength? In this paper, I analyze how Davidson’s argument for the possibility of incontinent actions interacts with his causal theory of actions. I argue that Davidson’s proposal does not fully respect the two principles of intentional rationality, that he himself claims to be compelling. Lastly, I sketch some initial steps that might be helpful to drawing more precise conceptual distinctions in terms of the rationality of incontinent actions

Nursing and euthanasia : a narrative review of the nursing ethics literature

Background: Medical Assistance in Dying, also known as euthanasia or assisted suicide, is expanding internationally. Canada is the first country to permit Nurse Practitioners to provide euthanasia. These developments highlight the need for nurses to reflect upon the moral and ethical issues that euthanasia presents for nursing practice. Purpose: The purpose of this article is to provide a narrative review of the ethical arguments surrounding euthanasia in relationship to nursing practice. Methods: Systematic search and narrative review. Nine electronic databases were searched using vocabulary developed from a stage 1 search of Medline and CINAHL. Articles that analysed a focused ethical question related to euthanasia in the context of nursing practice were included. Articles were synthesized to provide an overview of the literature of nursing ethics and euthanasia. Ethical Considerations: This review was conducted as per established scientific guidelines. We have tried to be fair and respectful to the authors discussed. Findings: Forty-three articles were identified and arranged inductively into four themes: arguments from the nature of nursing; arguments from ethical principles, concepts and theories; arguments for moral consistency; and arguments from the nature of the social good. Key considerations included nursing's moral ontology, the nurse-patient relationship, potential impact on the profession, ethical principles and theories, moral culpability for acts versus omissions, the role of intention and the nature of the society in which euthanasia would be enacted. In many cases, the same assumptions, values, principles and theories were used to argue both for and against euthanasia. Discussion: The review identified a relative paucity of literature in light of the expansion of euthanasia internationally. However, the literature provided a fulsome range of positions for nurses to consider as they reflect on their own participation in euthanasia. Many of the arguments reviewed were not nursing-specific, but rather are relevant across healthcare disciplines. Arguments explicitly grounded within the nature of nursing and nurse-patient relationships warrant further exploration

Papers, Please and the systemic approach to engaging ethical expertise in videogames

Papers, Please, by Lucas Pope (2013), explores the story of a customs inspector in the fictional political regime of Arstotzka. In this paper we explore the stories, systems and moral themes of Papers, Please in order to illustrate the systemic approach to designing videogames for moral engagement. Next, drawing on the Four Component model of ethical expertise from moral psychology, we contrast this systemic approach with the more common scripted approach. We conclude by demonstrating the different strengths and weaknesses that these two approaches have when it comes to designing videogames that engage the different aspects of a player’s moral expertise