bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Intuitionism in ethics
Authors: Frazier Robert L. 
Published: September 2018

To intuit something is to apprehend it directly, without recourse to reasoning processes such as deduction or induction. Intuitionism in ethics proposes that we have a capacity for intuition and that some of the facts or properties that we intuit are irreducibly ethical. Traditionally, intuitionism also advances the important thesis that beliefs arising from intuition have direct justification, and therefore do not need to be justified by appeal to other beliefs or facts. So, while intuitionism in ethics is about the apprehension of ethical facts or properties, traditional intuitionism is principally a view about how beliefs, including ethical beliefs are justified. Varieties of intuitionism differ over what is intuited (for example, rightness or goodness?); whether what is intuited is general and abstract or concrete and particular; the degree of justification offered by intuition; and the nature of the intuitive capacity. The rejection of intuitionism is usually a result of rejecting one of the views that lie behind it.
Note that ‘intuition’ can refer to the thing intuited as well as the process of intuiting. Also, somewhat confusingly, intuitionism is sometimes identified with pluralism, the view that there is a plurality of fundamental ethical properties or principles. This identification probably occurs because pluralists often accept the epistemological version of intuitionism.
Kantian ethics
Authors: O’Neill Onora 
Published: September 2018

Kantian ethics originates in the ethical writings of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), which remain the most influential attempt to vindicate universal ethical principles that respect the dignity and equality of human beings without presupposing theological claims or a metaphysical conception of the good. Kant’s systematic, critical philosophy centres on an account of reasoning about action, which he uses to justify principles of duty and virtue, a liberal and republican conception of justice with cosmopolitan scope, and an account of the relationship between morality and hope.
Numerous contemporary writers also advance views of ethics which they, and their critics, think of as Kantian. However, some contemporary work is remote from Kant’s philosophy on fundamental matters such as human freedom and reasoning about action. It converges with Kant’s ethics in claiming that we lack a substantive account of the good (so that teleological or consequentialist ethics are impossible), in taking a strong view of the equality of moral agents and the importance of universal principles of duty which spell out what it is to respect them, and in stressing an account of justice and rights with cosmopolitan scope.
Both Kant’s ethics and contemporary Kantian ethics have been widely criticized for preoccupation with rules and duties, and for lack of concern with virtues, happiness or personal relationships. However, these criticisms may apply more to recent Kantian ethics than to Kant’s own ethics.
Medical ethics
Authors: Wikler Daniel 
Published: September 2018

Medical ethics was once concerned with the professional obligations of physicians, spelled out in codes of conduct such as the ancient Hippocratic oath and elaborated by contemporary professional societies. Today this subject is a broad, loosely defined collection of issues of morality and justice in health, health care and related fields. The term ‘bioethics’ is often used interchangeably, though it is also used with its original broad meaning, which included issues in ecology.
The range of concerns grouped under ‘medical ethics’ begins with the relationship of doctor to patient, including such issues as consent to treatment, truth-telling, paternalism, confidentiality and the duty to treat. Particular moral uncertainty is engendered by contexts which demand divided allegiances of physicians, such as medical experimentation on human subjects, public health emergencies and for-profit medicine. Issues in medical ethics arise in every stage of life, from the fate of defective newborns to the withholding of life-sustaining therapies from the very old. Medical practices with patients who may not be competent to make their own medical decisions, including paediatrics and psychiatry, raise a distinctive set of ethical issues, as does medical genetics, which involves choices affecting family members, future individuals and offspring in utero. In recent years, medical ethics has broadened its focus beyond the individual physician or nurse to include the organization, operation and financing of the health care system as a whole, including difficult theoretical and practical uncertainties regarding the fair allocation of health care resources.
Medical ethics is at once a field of scholarship and a reform movement. The latter has campaigned in many countries on behalf of patients’ rights, better care of the dying and freedom for women in reproductive decisions. As a field of scholarship, medical ethics addresses these and many other issues, but is not defined by positions taken on any of them. Though ethicists often favour an emphasis on informed consent, oppose paternalism, urge permission to end life-sustaining therapy (or choose suicide) and seek protection of human subjects of experimentation, a diversity of viewpoints finds expression in the medical ethics literature.
Moral agents
Authors: Haksar Vinit 
Published: September 2018

Moral agents are those agents expected to meet the demands of morality. Not all agents are moral agents. Young children and animals, being capable of performing actions, may be agents in the way that stones, plants and cars are not. But though they are agents they are not automatically considered moral agents. For a moral agent must also be capable of conforming to at least some of the demands of morality.
This requirement can be interpreted in different ways. On the weakest interpretation it will suffice if the agent has the capacity to conform to some of the external requirements of morality. So if certain agents can obey moral laws such as ‘Murder is wrong’ or ‘Stealing is wrong’, then they are moral agents, even if they respond only to prudential reasons such as fear of punishment and even if they are incapable of acting for the sake of moral considerations. According to the strong version, the Kantian version, it is also essential that the agents should have the capacity to rise above their feelings and passions and act for the sake of the moral law. There is also a position in between which claims that it will suffice if the agent can perform the relevant act out of altruistic impulses. Other suggested conditions of moral agency are that agents should have: an enduring self with free will and an inner life; understanding of the relevant facts as well as moral understanding; and moral sentiments, such as capacity for remorse and concern for others.
Philosophers often disagree about which of these and other conditions are vital; the term moral agency is used with different degrees of stringency depending upon what one regards as its qualifying conditions. The Kantian sense is the most stringent. Since there are different senses of moral agency, answers to questions like ‘Are collectives moral agents?’ depend upon which sense is being used. From the Kantian standpoint, agents such as psychopaths, rational egoists, collectives and robots are at best only quasi-moral, for they do not fulfil some of the essential conditions of moral agency.
Moral realism
Authors: Dancy Jonathan 
Published: September 2018

Moral realism is the view that there are facts of the matter about which actions are right and which wrong, and about which things are good and which bad. But behind this bald statement lies a wealth of complexity. If one is a full-blown moral realist, one probably accepts the following three claims.
First, moral facts are somehow special and different from other sorts of fact. Realists differ, however, about whether the sort of specialness required is compatible with taking some natural facts to be moral facts. Take, for instance, the natural fact that if we do this action, we will have given someone the help they need. Could this be a moral fact – the same fact as the fact that we ought to do the action? Or must we think of such a natural fact as the natural ‘ground’ for the (quite different) moral fact that we should do it, that is, as the fact in the world that makes it true that we should act this way?
Second, realists hold that moral facts are independent of any beliefs or thoughts we might have about them. What is right is not determined by what I or anybody else thinks is right. It is not even determined by what we all think is right, even if we could be got to agree. We cannot make actions right by agreeing that they are, any more than we can make bombs safe by agreeing that they are.
Third, it is possible for us to make mistakes about what is right and what is wrong. No matter how carefully and honestly we think about what to do, there is still no guarantee that we will come up with the right answer. So what people conscientiously decide they should do may not be the same as what they should do.
Praise and blame
Authors: Klein Martha 
Published: September 2018

Praise and blame are philosophically interesting partly because, despite appearances, they are not simple opposites, but mainly because there are significant disagreements about whether, and when, they can be justified. The issue of justification connects praise and blame with some of philosophy’s most central concerns: justice, desert and free will.
Disagreements about the justification of praise and blame tend to take two forms. In one the disagreement is about whether praise and blame can be justified without being deserved. Utilitarians, who argue that the rightness of praise and blame does not depend on desert, but on their contributing to the level of happiness, are opposed by those who believe that justice is of overriding value.
In its second form, the disagreement is about the essential requirements for deserving praise and blame. Among the conditions which have been proposed as essential are voluntariness (outlined originally by Aristotle), acting from the motive of duty (for praiseworthiness), and (usually in connection with blameworthiness) being free in a sense which is incompatible with determinism (the thesis that every event has a necessitating cause). Kant, who argued for both of the last two requirements, is a key figure in this debate.
Rectification and remainders
Authors: Card Claudia Falconer 
Published: September 2018

Forgiveness, mercy and gratitude are rectifications, attempts to correct imbalances or set things right between us. Guilt is a moral remainder, a residue acknowledging an unexpiated wrong. Remainders offer us a limited redemption in revealing our appreciation that not everything has been made right.
Forgiveness manifests compassion for wrongdoers, who may or may not deserve it. Questions arise about when, what and whom we can forgive, what forgiving achieves, and when we ought or ought not to forgive. Forgiveness has special value in personal relationships, enabling their renewal. Connections among punishment, repentance, forgiveness and regret (another remainder) are complex, sometimes paradoxical.
Mercy often manifests forgiveness, as in pardons and amnesties. Yet we can also show mercy in administering rules where there has been no wrong. Is mercy unjust? Answers vary according to whether the case resembles a criminal offence or a civil suit. Grounded in others’ sufferings rather than their deeds, mercy has us see ourselves in them, but the value of doing so can be qualified by considerations of justice and of self-respect.
Mercy and forgiveness sometimes evoke gratitude, appreciative acknowledgement of another’s goodwill. Gratitude can be deserved or misplaced. Debts of gratitude are paradoxical, giving rise to ethical questions. When do we owe more than emotional response? What does reciprocity require between unequals? Some paradoxes may be solved by understanding obligations of gratitude as like those of a trustee rather than those of a debtor.
Guilt is emotional self-punishment (often relievable by forgiveness) which continues even after compensation, restitution or punishment by others. Questions arise about when it is rational and how it is related to shame, remorse, regret and repentance, which are also remainders.
Respect for persons
Authors: Hill Thomas E. 
Published: September 2018

The idea that one should treat persons with due respect is an important part of common sense morality, but opinions differ about when respect is called for, what it requires, and why. Respect for persons is also a central concept in many ethical theories. Some theories even hold respect for persons to be the foundation of all other moral duties and obligations.
Respect is distinguished commonly, on one side, from fear and submission, and on another, from admiration, liking and affection. Respect for all persons as such is distinguished normally from esteem or special regard for persons of unusual merit. Some philosophers identify respect with agapē, a special kind of love, but respect is perhaps most often regarded as a distinct attitude that should constrain and complement the promptings of love. Kant, for example, held that the requirements of respect and love are different, though compatible, and that both are dependent upon the more general and fundamental idea that humanity in every person is an end in itself.
Other key issues in discussions of respect for persons include: what moral requirement, if any, there is to respect all persons; what the grounds, scope, and theoretical status are of that requirement; whether one can forfeit all claim to respect as a person; what ‘respect for persons’ demands with regard to specific problems, such as conflicts rooted in race and gender differences; and whether there is the same ground and obligation to respect oneself as to respect others.
Right and good
Authors: Larmore Charles 
Published: September 2018

‘Right’ and ‘good’ are the two basic terms of moral evaluation. In general, something is ‘right’ if it is morally obligatory, whereas it is morally ‘good’ if it is worth having or doing and enhances the life of those who possess it.
Acts are often held to be morally right or wrong in respect of the action performed, but morally good or bad in virtue of their motive: it is right to help a person in distress, but good to do so from a sense of duty or sympathy, since no one can supposedly be obliged to do something (such as acting with a certain motive) which cannot be done at will.
Henry Sidgwick distinguished between two basic conceptions of morality. The ‘attractive’ conception, favoured by the ancient Greeks, views the good as fundamental, and grounds the claims of morality in the self-perfection to which we naturally aspire. The ‘imperative’ conception, preferred in the modern era, views the right as fundamental, and holds that we are subject to certain obligations whatever our wants or desires.
Shaftesbury, Third Earl of (Anthony Ashley Cooper) (1671–1713)
Authors: McNaughton David 
Published: September 2018

Shaftesbury, whose influence on eighteenth-century thought was enormous, was the last great representative of the Platonic tradition in England. He argued that by natural reason we can see that the world is an intelligible, harmonious system. In reflecting on our character traits we will inevitably approve of those which contribute to the good of humanity and of the whole system. These same personal qualities are also needed for a happy life, so virtue and happiness go hand in hand.
Shaftesbury is often seen as the founder of the moral sense or ‘sentimentalist’ school in ethics, whose members held that morality was based on human feeling rather than on reason. Although leading sentimentalists, such as Hutcheson and Hume, made use of many of his ideas, Shaftesbury himself has more in common with the rationalists, who held that there are eternal moral truths which we can know by the use of reason.
Utilitarianism
Authors: Chappell Tim 
Published: September 2018

Utilitarianism is a theory about rightness, according to which the only good thing is welfare (wellbeing or ‘utility’). Welfare should, in some way, be maximized, and agents are to be neutral between their own welfare, and that of other people and of other sentient beings.
The roots of utilitarianism lie in ancient thought. Traditionally, welfare has been seen as the greatest balance of pleasure over pain, a view discussed in Plato. The notion of impartiality also has its roots in Plato, as well as in Stoicism and Christianity. In the modern period, utilitarianism grew out of the Enlightenment, its two major proponents being Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.
Hedonists, believing that pleasure is the good, have long been criticized for sensualism, a charge Mill attempted to answer with a distinction between higher and lower pleasures. He contended that welfare consists in the experiencing of pleasurable mental states, suggesting, in contrast to Bentham, that the quality, not simply the amount, of a pleasure is what matters. Others have doubted this conception, and developed desire accounts, according to which welfare lies in the satisfaction of desire. Ideal theorists suggest that certain things are just good or bad for people, independently of pleasure and desire.
Utilitarianism has usually focused on actions. The most common form is act-utilitarianism, according to which what makes an action right is its maximizing total or average utility. Some, however, have argued that constantly attempting to put utilitarianism into practice could be self-defeating, in that utility would not be maximized by so doing. Many utilitarians have therefore advocated non-utilitarian decision procedures, often based on common sense morality. Some have felt the appeal of common sense moral principles in themselves, and sought to reconcile utilitarianism with them. According to rule-utilitarianism, the right action is that which is consistent with those rules which would maximize utility if all accepted them.
There have been many arguments for utilitarianism, the most common being an appeal to reflective belief or ‘intuition’. One of the most interesting is Henry Sidgwick’s argument, which is ultimately intuitionist, and results from sustained reflection on common sense morality. The most famous argument is Mill’s ‘proof’. In recent times, R.M. Hare has offered a logical argument for utilitarianism.
The main problems for utilitarianism emerge out of its conflict with common sense morality, in particular justice, and its impartial conception of practical reasoning.
Utilitarianism
Authors: Crisp Roger , Chappell Tim 
Published: September 2018

Utilitarianism is a theory about rightness, according to which the only good thing is welfare (well-being or ‘utility’). Welfare should, in some way, be maximized, and agents are to be neutral between their own welfare, and that of other people and of other sentient beings.
The roots of utilitarianism lie in ancient thought. Traditionally, welfare has been seen as the greatest balance of pleasure over pain, a view discussed in Plato. The notion of impartiality also has its roots in Plato, as well as in Stoicism and Christianity. In the modern period, utilitarianism grew out of the Enlightenment, its two major proponents being Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill.
Hedonists, believing that pleasure is the good, have long been criticized for sensualism, a charge Mill attempted to answer with a distinction between higher and lower pleasures. He contended that welfare consists in the experiencing of pleasurable mental states, suggesting, in contrast to Bentham, that the quality, not simply the amount, of a pleasure is what matters. Others have doubted this conception, and developed desire accounts, according to which welfare lies in the satisfaction of desire. Ideal theorists suggest that certain things are just good or bad for people, independently of pleasure and desire.
Utilitarianism has usually focused on actions. The most common form is act-utilitarianism, according to which what makes an action right is its maximizing total or average utility. Some, however, have argued that constantly attempting to put utilitarianism into practice could be self-defeating, in that utility would not be maximized by so doing. Many utilitarians have therefore advocated nonutilitarian decision procedures, often based on common-sense morality. Some have felt the appeal of common-sense moral principles in themselves, and sought to reconcile utilitarianism with them. In particular, the extreme demandingness of act-utilitarianism has been found objectionable, since it rules out the giving of any special weight by the agent to their own interests or the interests of those close to them. This is one of the reasons for the development of rule-utilitarianism, according to which the right action is that which is consistent with those rules which would maximize utility if all accepted them.
There have been many arguments for utilitarianism, the most common being an appeal to reflective belief or ‘intuition’. One of the most interesting is Henry Sidgwick’s argument, which is ultimately intuitionist, and results from sustained reflection on common-sense morality. The most famous argument is Mill’s ‘proof’. In recent times, R. M. Hare has offered a logical argument for utilitarianism.
The main problems for utilitarianism emerge out of its conflict with common-sense morality, in particular justice, and its impartial conception of practical reasoning.
Virtues and vices
Authors: Williams Bernard 
Published: September 2018

The concept of a virtue can make an important contribution to a philosophical account of ethics, but virtue theory should not be seen as parallel to other ‘ethical theories’ in trying to provide a guide to action.
Modern accounts of the virtues typically start from Aristotle, but they need to modify his view substantially, with respect to the grounding of the virtues in human nature; the question of what virtues there are; their unity; and their psychological identity as dispositions of the agent. In particular, one must acknowledge the historical variability of what have been counted as virtues.
Aristotle saw vices as failings, but modern opinion must recognize more radical forms of viciousness or evil. It may also need to accept that the good is more intimately connected with its enemies than traditional views have allowed. Virtue theory helps in the discussion of such questions by offering greater resources of psychological realism than other approaches.
Journalism, ethics of
Authors: Belsey Andrew 
Published: September 2018

It is sometimes suggested that ethical principles, even fundamental ones like nonmaleficence and beneficence, are totally out of place in journalism, and that it should be shaped solely by market forces. This suggestion should be resisted. One reason why journalism should be ethical is that in a democracy it is expected to serve the public interest, which means that it should accept the responsibility to circulate the information and opinion without which a democracy could not operate, and to enable it to do this the freedom of the press is acknowledged.
If journalism is to serve the public interest, then a commitment to truth-telling is fundamental. Journalists should also be fair and accurate in reporting news, should publish corrections, should offer a right of reply. They should avoid discrimination, deception, harassment, betraying confidences and invasions of privacy. But ethical journalism is more than lists of requirements and prohibitions. In investigative journalism, for example, some deception or intrusion into privacy could be justified in order to uncover corruption. Ethical journalism is therefore reflective understanding of the underlying principles of harm and benefit and the public interest, and an ability to apply them in particular cases.