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

Graduate Recital: Sharon Slote, Trumpet

Kemp Recital Hall Saturday Afternoon April 20, 1996 1:30p.m

Decision Theory

A book chapter (about 4,000 words, plus references) on decision theory in moral philosophy, with particular attention to uses of decision theory in specifying the contents of moral principles (e.g., expected-value forms of act and rule utilitarianism), uses of decision theory in arguing in support of moral principles (e.g., the hypothetical-choice arguments of Harsanyi and Rawls), and attempts to derive morality from rationality (e.g., the views of Gauthier and McClennen)

A dimension-free Remez-type inequality on the polytorus

Consider $f:\Omega^n_K\to\mathbf{C}$ a function from the $n$-fold product of multiplicative cyclic groups of order $K$. Any such $f$ may be extended via its Fourier expansion to an analytic polynomial on the polytorus $\mathbf{T}^n$, and the set of such polynomials coincides with the set of all analytic polynomials on $\mathbf{T}^n$ of individual degree at most $K-1$. In this setting it is natural to ask how the supremum norms of $f$ over $\mathbf{T}^n$ and over $\Omega_K^n$ compare. We prove the following Remez-type inequality: if $f$ has degree at most $d$ as an analytic polynomial, then $\|f\|_{\mathbf{T}^n}\leq C(d,K)\|f\|_{\Omega_K^n}$ with $C(d,K)$ independent of dimension $n$. As a consequence we also obtain a new proof of the Bohnenblust--Hille inequality for functions on products of cyclic groups. Key to our argument is a special class of Fourier multipliers on $\Omega_K^n$ which are $L^\infty\to L^\infty$ bounded independent of dimension when restricted to low-degree polynomials. This class includes projections onto the $k$-homogeneous parts of low-degree polynomials as well as projections of much finer granularity.Comment: 21 pages. Largely revise

Other‐Sacrificing Options

I argue that you can be permitted to discount the interests of your adversaries even though doing so would be impartially suboptimal. This means that, in addition to the kinds of moral options that the literature traditionally recognises, there exist what I call other-sacrificing options. I explore the idea that you cannot discount the interests of your adversaries as much as you can favour the interests of your intimates; if this is correct, then there is an asymmetry between negative partiality toward your adversaries and positive partiality toward your intimates

HARMLESS DISCRIMINATION

ABSTRACTIn Born Free and Equal: A Philosophical Inquiry into the Nature of Discrimination, Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen defends the harm-based account of the wrongness of discrimination, which explains the wrongness of discrimination with reference to the harmfulness of discriminatory acts. Against this view, we offer two objections. The conditions objection states that the harm-based account implausibly fails to recognize that harmless discrimination can be wrong. The explanation objection states that the harm-based account fails adequately to identify all of the wrong-making properties of discriminatory acts. We argue that the structure of a satisfactory view cannot be outcome-focused. A more promising family of views focuses on the deliberation of the discriminator and in particular on the reasons that motivate or fail to motivate her action.</jats:p

Graduate Recital:Sharon A. Slote, Trumpet Gloria Cardoni, Harpsichord and Piano

Kemp Recital Hall Saturday Evening April 19, 1997 5:30p.m