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Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare... Jan 2024There are many authors who consider the so-called "moral nose" a valid epistemological tool in the field of morality. The expression was used by George Orwell, following...
There are many authors who consider the so-called "moral nose" a valid epistemological tool in the field of morality. The expression was used by George Orwell, following in Friedrich Nietzsche's footsteps and was very clearly described by Leo Tolstoy. It has also been employed by authors such as Elisabeth Anscombe, Bernard Williams, Noam Chomsky, Stuart Hampshire, Mary Warnock, and Leon Kass. This article examines John Harris' detailed criticism of what he ironically calls the "olfactory school of moral philosophy." Harris' criticism is contrasted with Jonathan Glover's defense of the moral nose. Glover draws some useful distinctions between the various meanings that the notion of moral nose can assume. Finally, the notion of moral nose is compared with classic notions such as Aristotelian phronesis, Heideggerian aletheia, and the concept of "sentiment" proposed by the philosopher Thomas Reid. The conclusion reached is that morality cannot be based only on reason, or-as David Hume would have it-only on feelings.
Topics: Male; Humans; Morals; Philosophy; Emotions
PubMed: 36524377
DOI: 10.1017/S0963180122000184 -
The Journal of Medicine and Philosophy May 2023The frequency of death from miscarriage is very high, greater than the number of deaths from induced abortion or major diseases. Berg (2017 , Philosophical Studies...
The frequency of death from miscarriage is very high, greater than the number of deaths from induced abortion or major diseases. Berg (2017 , Philosophical Studies 174:1217-26) argues that, given this, those who contend that personhood begins at conception (PAC) are obliged to reorient their resources accordingly-towards stopping miscarriage, in preference to stopping abortion or diseases. This argument depends on there being a basic moral similarity between these deaths. I argue that, for those that hold to PAC, there are good reasons to think that there is no such similarity. There is a morally relevant difference between preventing killing and letting die, giving PAC supporters reasons to prioritize reducing abortion over reducing miscarriage. And the time-relative interest account provides a morally relevant difference in the badness of death of miscarriages and deaths of born adults, justifying attempts to combat major diseases over attempts to combat miscarriage. I consider recent developments in the literature and contend that these new arguments are unsuccessful in establishing moral similarities between deaths from miscarriage and abortion, and deaths from miscarriage and disease.
Topics: Pregnancy; Adult; Female; Humans; Abortion, Spontaneous; Abortion, Induced; Personhood; Morals; Dissent and Disputes; Value of Life; Moral Obligations; Beginning of Human Life
PubMed: 37078977
DOI: 10.1093/jmp/jhad012 -
Critical Care Nursing Clinics of North... Sep 2020Ethically challenging situations are an increasing phenomenon in the nurse's environment, and literature on the subject is growing. Morally challenging experiences... (Review)
Review
Ethically challenging situations are an increasing phenomenon in the nurse's environment, and literature on the subject is growing. Morally challenging experiences common in the critical care environment include end-of-life situations, barriers to providing the best care possible, and lack of organizational resources. These experiences can lead to moral distress and subsequent negative impacts on the clinician. Emerging in the literature are strategies to address the impact of moral distress through the development of moral resilience. Moral resilience is gained through personal commitment and organizational support.
Topics: Critical Care; Critical Care Nursing; Humans; Morals; Organizational Case Studies; Resilience, Psychological; Workplace
PubMed: 32773180
DOI: 10.1016/j.cnc.2020.05.002 -
Annual Review of Psychology Jan 2024Moral psychology was shaped around three categories of agents and patients: humans, other animals, and supernatural beings. Rapid progress in artificial intelligence has... (Review)
Review
Moral psychology was shaped around three categories of agents and patients: humans, other animals, and supernatural beings. Rapid progress in artificial intelligence has introduced a fourth category for our moral psychology to deal with: intelligent machines. Machines can perform as moral agents, making decisions that affect the outcomes of human patients or solving moral dilemmas without human supervision. Machines can be perceived as moral patients, whose outcomes can be affected by human decisions, with important consequences for human-machine cooperation. Machines can be moral proxies that human agents and patients send as their delegates to moral interactions or use as a disguise in these interactions. Here we review the experimental literature on machines as moral agents, moral patients, and moral proxies, with a focus on recent findings and the open questions that they suggest.
Topics: Animals; Humans; Artificial Intelligence; Morals; Intelligence
PubMed: 37722750
DOI: 10.1146/annurev-psych-030123-113559 -
Psychodynamic Psychiatry Mar 2023The understanding of concepts like moral distress and countertransference in mental health settings has advanced over time. While organizational constraints and the...
The understanding of concepts like moral distress and countertransference in mental health settings has advanced over time. While organizational constraints and the clinician's moral values are conventionally thought to play a part in evoking such responses, certain behavioral transgressions might be universally deemed as morally unacceptable. The authors present case scenarios that took place during forensic assessments and routine clinical care. Clinical interactions evoked a diverse range of negative emotional reactions, including anger, disgust, and frustration. The clinicians struggled with moral distress and negative countertransference, which resulted in difficulty mobilizing empathy. Such responses could affect a clinician's ability to best work with the individual and could even affect the clinician's well-being adversely. The authors put forth several suggestions on how to manage one's own negative emotional reactions in similar settings.
Topics: Humans; Countertransference; Empathy; Mental Health; Morals; Psychiatry
PubMed: 36867186
DOI: 10.1521/pdps.2023.51.1.15 -
Perspectives in Biology and Medicine 2022Phase 1 drug trials-first-in-human tests of new pharmaceuticals- are necessary for FDA approval, and healthy volunteers are necessary to conduct those trials....
Phase 1 drug trials-first-in-human tests of new pharmaceuticals- are necessary for FDA approval, and healthy volunteers are necessary to conduct those trials. Bioethicists are rightly concerned with the morally problematic aspects of these trials: Are risks and benefits balanced? Are would-be volunteers sufficiently informed, and have they given proper consent? But these are not the only, or even the most worrisome, ethical problems with Phase 1 research. In Adverse Events (2020), Jill Fisher looks beyond these ordinary bioethical concerns to the moral complications associated with the motivations of healthy volunteers and the demands of the everyday work of running those trials. Her work is the latest example of a much needed "second bioethics." Unlike the "first bioethics," this approach views health-care institutions from the outside, examining the structural and organizational sources that generate the ethical quandaries bioethicists are called upon to mediate and the ethical problems they often fail to see. Adverse Events makes clear that the moral problems of medicine can only be addressed by supporting bioethics of both types-the first and the second.
Topics: Bioethics; Ethicists; Female; Humans; Morals; Motivation
PubMed: 35307706
DOI: 10.1353/pbm.2022.0008 -
Current Opinion in Psychology Jun 2024Successful leaders often use humor to motivate, inspire, and lead. Yet, recent research suggests that the use of humor is risky for leaders. Our review suggests that... (Review)
Review
Successful leaders often use humor to motivate, inspire, and lead. Yet, recent research suggests that the use of humor is risky for leaders. Our review suggests that humor must be morally offensive to some people for it to be perceived as funny. This inherent tension between humor and morality implies that the use of humor can sometimes act as a signal of acceptable moral standards in organizations, where a leader's use of humor carries significant risks because of the norm-violating message it sends to subordinates, or it can even be dangerous in extreme cases. We conclude the paper by offering future research directions on the study of workplace humor.
Topics: Humans; Morals; Wit and Humor as Topic; Leadership; Organizations
PubMed: 38330867
DOI: 10.1016/j.copsyc.2024.101799 -
Nature Human Behaviour Jan 2023According to evolutionary theories, markets may foster an internalized and universalist prosociality because it supports market-based cooperation. This paper uses the...
According to evolutionary theories, markets may foster an internalized and universalist prosociality because it supports market-based cooperation. This paper uses the cultural folklore of 943 pre-industrial ethnolinguistic groups to show that a society's degree of market interactions, proxied by the presence of intercommunity trade and money, is associated with the cultural salience of (1) prosocial behaviour, (2) interpersonal trust, (3) universalist moral values and (4) moral emotions of guilt, shame and anger. To provide tentative evidence that a part of this correlation reflects a causal effect of market interactions, the analysis leverages both fine-grained geographic variation across neighbouring historical societies and plausibly exogenous variation in the presence of markets that arises through proximity to historical trade routes or the local degree of ecological diversity. The results suggest that the coevolutionary process involving markets and morality partly consists of economic markets shaping a moral system of a universalist and internalized prosociality.
Topics: Humans; Interpersonal Relations; Emotions; Guilt; Morals; Shame
PubMed: 36411345
DOI: 10.1038/s41562-022-01480-x -
Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare... Jan 2020In a recent paper in Nature1 entitled The Moral Machine Experiment, Edmond Awad, et al. make a number of breathtakingly reckless assumptions, both about the...
In a recent paper in Nature1 entitled The Moral Machine Experiment, Edmond Awad, et al. make a number of breathtakingly reckless assumptions, both about the decisionmaking capacities of current so-called "autonomous vehicles" and about the nature of morality and the law. Accepting their bizarre premise that the holy grail is to find out how to obtain cognizance of public morality and then program driverless vehicles accordingly, the following are the four steps to the Moral Machinists argument:1)Find out what "public morality" will prefer to see happen.2)On the basis of this discovery, claim both popular acceptance of the preferences and persuade would-be owners and manufacturers that the vehicles are programmed with the best solutions to any survival dilemmas they might face.3)Citizen agreement thus characterized is then presumed to deliver moral license for the chosen preferences.4)This yields "permission" to program vehicles to spare or condemn those outside the vehicles when their deaths will preserve vehicle and occupants.This paper argues that the Moral Machine Experiment fails dramatically on all four counts.
Topics: Morals
PubMed: 31581972
DOI: 10.1017/S096318011900080X -
Social Science & Medicine (1982) Sep 2019Weight stigma is prevalent in Western society and has numerous negative effects on people with obesity. There remains a strong and currently unmet need to understand why...
RATIONALE
Weight stigma is prevalent in Western society and has numerous negative effects on people with obesity. There remains a strong and currently unmet need to understand why anti-fat attitudes are tenacious and what intervention strategies might best produce lasting attitude change.
OBJECTIVE
Many negative effects of weight stigma can be integrated by noting that people differ in the extent to which they see obesity as a moral failing. Drawing from moral psychology and weight stigma literature, we hypothesized that greater moral disapproval of obesity would be linked to greater control attributions and disgust towards obese people, stronger endorsement of discrimination, perception of greater health risks associated with obesity, resistance to attitude change, and negative perceptions of people who have bariatric surgery.
METHOD
Three studies were conducted with U.S.-based online samples in 2017-2018, and were analyzed with correlational, analysis of variance, and linear regression models.
RESULTS
In Study 1, greater moralization of obesity predicted stronger belief in the controllability of obesity, greater disgust towards obese people, stronger endorsement of discrimination against obese individuals, and the perception of greater health risks associated with obesity. In Study 2, people with stronger moralized obesity attitudes rated arguments for classifying obesity as a disease as less convincing, demonstrating that moralized obesity attitudes are more resistant to persuasion than nonmoral attitudes. In Study 3, greater moralization predicted more negative responses to an individual who had bariatric surgery, even when the individual exerted strong diet and exercise-related effort to make the surgery successful.
CONCLUSION
A moral view of obesity explains why control attributions and disgust are essential components of weight stigma, and why antifat attitudes are resistant to change. We conclude with suggestions for future research and consideration of the implications of obesity moralization for other chronic health conditions.
Topics: Adult; Attitude to Health; Bariatric Surgery; Female; Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; Humans; Male; Morals; Obesity; Social Stigma
PubMed: 31377501
DOI: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112399