Are Women Morally Different from Men?

In recent years there has been a surge of interest in the differences between men and women. Some recent work appears to show that men and women differ in the ways in which they approach moral issues. This paper considers the implications of this research for moral philosophy. It is argued that this research does not undermine the idea of a single morality that applies equally to both men and women

Saucers of Mud: Why Sympathy and Altruism Require Empathy

Empathy and helping motives are more closely connected than philosophers and psychologists have realized. Empathy doesn’t just cause sympathetic concern for others, but is conceptually tied to it. When we empathize with someone’s distress at their pain, we ourselves are distressed by that pain and that in itself necessarily constitutes a motive to rid them of that pain. But helping motives like compassion or concern for others can be shown to be conceptually impossible in the absence of empathy. Compassion as a feeling and compassion as a motive are thus inseparable from one another, and this then lets the Chinese complementarity of yin and yang enter the picture. Yin can be viewed as a kind of receptivity, and compassion as a feeling instantiates such receptivity; but compassion as a motive instantiates yang conceived along somewhat traditional lines as a form of strong purposiveness. If moral sentimentalism is on the right track, then the motives and feelings it views as foundational to normative morality turn out to instantiate yin and yang conceived in traditional terms as an indissoluble complementarity. Moral sentimentalism properly pursued allows East to meet West in the field of ethics and possibly in other areas of philosophy as well

Between Psychology and Philosophy

This open access book discusses a variety of important but unprecedented ways in which psychology can be useful to philosophy. The early chapters illustrate this theme via comparisons between Chinese and Western philosophy. It is argued that the Chinese notion of a heart-mind is superior to the Western concept of mind, but then, more even-handedly, the relative strengths and weaknesses of Chinese and Western thought overall are critically examined. In later chapters, the philosophical uses of psychology are treated more specifically in relation to major issues in Western philosophy. Michael Slote shows that empathy and emotion play a role in speech acts (like assertion and thanking) that speech act theory has totally ignored. Similarly, he treats the age-old question of whether justice pays using psychological material that has not previously been recognized. Finally, the implications of psychological egoism are discussed in terms of some new psychological and, indeed, human distinctions. Human life is pervaded by instincts and aspirations that are neither egoistic nor altruistic, and recognizing that fact can help put egoism in its place. It is less of a challenge to morality than we have realized

Against and for Ethical Naturalism Or: How Not To "Naturalize" Ethics

Moral realism and ethical naturalism are both highly attractive ethical positions but historically they have often been thought to be irreconcilable. Since the late 1980s defenders of Cornell Realism have argued that the two positions can consistently be combined. They make three constitutive claims: (i) Moral properties are natural kind properties that (ii) are identical to (or supervene) on descriptive functional properties, which (iii) causally regulate our use of moral terms. We offer new arguments against the feasibility of Cornell realism and then show that there is a way to be a naturalistic realist that avoids internal inconsistency and uniquely provides for moral normativity

Do Patients Want to Die at Home? A Systematic Review of the UK Literature, Focused on Missing Preferences for Place of Death.

BACKGROUND: End-of-life care policy has a focus on enabling patients to die in their preferred place; this is believed for most to be home. This review assesses patient preferences for place of death examining: the extent of unreported preferences, the importance of patient factors (place of care and health diagnosis) and who reports preferences. METHODS AND FINDINGS: Systematic literature review of 7 electronic databases, grey literature, backwards citations from included studies and Palliative Medicine hand search. Included studies published between 2000-2015, reporting original, quantifiable results of adult UK preferences for place of death. Of 10826 articles reviewed, 61 met the inclusion criteria. Summary charts present preferences for place of death by health diagnosis, where patients were asked and who reported the preference. These charts are recalculated to include 'missing data,' the views of those whose preferences were not asked, expressed or reported or absent in studies. Missing data were common. Across all health conditions when missing data were excluded the majority preference was for home: when missing data were included, it was not known what proportion of patients with cancer, non-cancer or multiple conditions preferred home. Patients, family proxies and public all expressed a majority preference for home when missing data were excluded: when included, it was not known what proportion of patients or family proxies preferred home. Where patients wished to die was related to where they were asked their preference. Missing data calculations are limited to 'reported' data. CONCLUSIONS: It is unknown what proportion of patients prefers to die at home or elsewhere. Reported preferences for place of death often exclude the views of those with no preference or not asked: when 'missing data' are included, they supress the proportion of preferences for all locations. Caution should be exercised if asserting that most patients prefer to die at home.This is the final version of the article. It was first available from PLOS via http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.014272

Silver Ion Biocide Delivery System for Water Disinfection

U.S. space exploration missions have long considered returning to the Moon and exploration of Mars that challenge life support systems. For these long duration missions, there is interest in replacing the iodine water treatment system with ionic silver, a proven biocide. For long duration exploration missions, it is imperative that an effective biocide be used that prevents microbial growth, biofilm formation, and microbially induced corrosion in the water storage and distribution systems while minimizing logistical supply requirements associated with the biocide delivery system. Two biocide delivery systems have been developed that electrochemically produce silver ions for disinfecting water throughout the water storage and distribution system. One system uses a newly developed hybrid micro-filtration and ion-exchange membrane to produce an abundance of silver ions at the 1000 ppb level upstream in the water distribution system to prevent biofilm growth. This is followed by a downstream collection module that electrochemically removes these silver ions before the water is discharged. Another approach uses a membraneless reactor to produce a 1000 ppb silver ion concentration level that also has a mechanically driven electrode cleaning mechanism that removes oxide films ensuring long life operation. By maintaining a sufficiently high level of silver ions throughout the water storage and distribution system, biofilm formation is suppressed. This approach overcomes present concerns where spurious silver deposition occurs on the container and flow line surfaces thus lowering the silver ion concentration to unsatisfactory disinfection levels

Group Virtues: No Great Leap Forward with Collectivism

A body of work in ethics and epistemology has advanced a collectivist view of virtues. Collectivism holds that some social groups can be subjects in themselves which can possess attributes such as agency or responsibility. Collectivism about virtues holds that virtues (and vices) are among those attributes. By focusing on two different accounts, I argue that the collectivist virtue project has limited prospects. On one such interpretation of institutional virtues, virtue-like features of the social collective are explained by particular group-oriented features of individual role-bearers that are elicited by institutional structures or goals. On another account of groups as moral agents unbound by formal institutional constraints, to the extent that group characteristics meet the collectivist requirement, they fail to stand up as virtues in the substantive sense of a character trait. These two positions’ respective drawbacks and insights support a non-collectivist conclusion: Where there is a substantive virtue of some social group, it consists only in certain group-specific attitudes and motives of individuals qua members of that group. I end by outlining some risks in adopting collectivism about virtues as an explanatory or normative doctrine, and suggesting that we can abandon it without embracing an equally undesirable individualism in virtue theory

John Rawls between two enlightenments

John Rawls shares the Enlightenment's commitment to finding moral and political principles which can be reflectively endorsed by all individuals autonomously. He usually presents reflective autonomy in Kantian, rationalist terms: autonomy is identified with the exercise of reason, and principles of justice must be constructed which are acceptable to all on the basis of reason alone. Yet David Hume, Adam Smith and many other Enlightenment thinkers rejected such rationalism, searching instead for principles which can be endorsed by all on the basis of all the faculties of the human psyche, emotion and imagination included. The influence of these sentimentalists on Rawls is clearest in his descriptive moral psychology, but I argue that it is also present in Rawls's understanding of the sources of normativity. Although this debt is obscured by Rawls's explicit "Kantianism," his theory would be strengthened by a greater understanding of its debts to the sentimentalist Enlightenment

Misinformation as Immigration Control

It is wrong to force refugees to return to the countries they fled from. It is similarly wrong, many argue, to force migrants back to countries with life-threatening conditions. I argue that it is additionally wrong to help such refugees and migrants voluntarily return whilst failing to inform them of the risks. Drawing on existing data, and original data from East Africa, I describe distinct types of cases where such a wrong arises. In ‘Misinformation Cases’ officials tell refugees that it is safe to return, when it is not, and refugees return who would have otherwise stayed. In ‘Omission Cases’ officials do not provide any information on countries of origin, and this omission causes refugees to repatriate. In ‘Relevancy Cases’ refugees are misinformed or uninformed, but would have returned even if better informed. In all of these cases, at least some state officials are blameworthy for their failure to inform refugees, and are engaging in a form of wrongful immigration control

Willpower Satisficing

Satisficing Consequentialism is often rejected as hopeless. Perhaps its greatest problem is that it risks condoning the gratuitous prevention of goodness above the baseline of what qualifies as “good enough”. I propose a radical new willpower-based version of the view that avoids this problem, and that better fits with the motivation of avoiding an excessively demanding conception of morality. I further demonstrate how, by drawing on the resources of an independent theory of blameworthiness, we may obtain a principled specification of what counts as “good enough”