bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Love
Authors: Nussbaum Martha C. 
Published: September 2018

Love is usually understood to be a powerful emotion involving an intense attachment to an object and a high evaluation of it. On some understandings, however, love does not involve emotion at all, but only an active interest in the wellbeing of the object. On other accounts, love is essentially a relationship involving mutuality and reciprocity, rather than an emotion. Moreover, there are many varieties of love, including erotic/romantic love, friendly love, and love of humanity. Different cultures also recognize different types of love. Love has, as well, a complicated archaeology: because it has strong links with early experiences of attachment, it can exist in the personality at different levels of depth and articulateness, posing special problems for self-knowledge. It is mistake to try to give too unified an account of such a complex set of phenomena.
Love has been understood by many philosophers to be a source of great richness and energy in human life. But even those who praise its contribution have seen it as a potential threat to virtuous living. Philosophers in the Western tradition have therefore been preoccupied with proposing accounts of the reform or ‘ascent’ of love, in order to demonstrate that there are ways of retaining the energy and beauty of this passion while removing its bad consequences.
Moral education
Authors: White John 
Published: September 2018

This entry looks at three contemporary approaches to moral learning and education, all of which have roots in the history of philosophy. The first holds that just as children grow, or develop, in a physical sense, so they also develop in their moral dispositions or judgments. A central issue here is whether the concept of development is applicable outside its biological home.
The second sees moral learning not as a natural process, but as a deliberate induction into socially approved norms or values. On one version of this view, it is not enough to bring children to follow the rules enshrined in conventional moral codes as they need to learn to sift these in the light of higher-order rational principles. Problems arise here both about moral motivation and about whether morality is wholly to do with rules and principles. For other theorists moral education is more a matter of shaping children’s nature-given desires and emotions into settled dispositions or virtues on Aristotelian lines. While the ‘rational principle’ view focuses on the morally autonomous individual, this view has its roots in communal moral traditions.
Despite Plato’s belief that only knowledge is teachable, and therefore that it is doubtful whether moral goodness can be taught at all, the third view of moral learning maintains that it must include the acquisition of relevant knowledge and understanding, and cover the formation of dispositions. All this bears on how moral education should feature in schools – on the role of school ethos, learning by example, and the contribution of the whole curriculum.
Moral expertise
Authors: Hooker Brad 
Published: September 2018

Moral experts are best defined as those who have studied moral questions carefully, know the main theories developed in response to such questions, and (where possible) know and are able to offer arguments that would convince reasonable people.
In scientific and technical areas, one important feature of a successful answer is that it works, in the sense that it makes accurate predictions. We can say that successful answers to moral questions take the form of arguments which, if examined carefully, would persuade reasonable people and lead to convergence in their moral views.
The moral responsibility of individuals for themselves does not preclude the role of moral advisor. Many self-pronounced moral experts might be interfering, condescending and hypocritical, but such characteristics need not accompany moral expertise. Probably no one could claim a high degree of expertise in all areas of ethics.
Moral motivation
Authors: Wallace R. Jay 
Published: September 2018

Questions about the possibility and nature of moral motivation occupy a central place in the history of ethics. Philosophers disagree, however, about the role that motivational investigations should play within the larger subject of ethical theory. These disagreements surface in the dispute about whether moral thought is necessarily motivating – ‘internalists’ affirming that it is,‘externalists’ denying this.
The disagreement between externalists and internalists reflects a basic difference in how the subject matter of ethics is conceived: externalism goes with the view that ethics is primarily about the truth of theories, construed as sets of propositions, while internalists see morality as a set of principles meant to guide the practical deliberations of individual agents. Internalists interpret questions of objectivity in ethics as questions of practical reason, about the authority of moral principles to regulate our activities. Here controversy has centred on whether the authority of practical principles for a given agent must be grounded in that agent’s antecedent desires, or whether, instead, practical reason can give rise to new motivations.
There are also important questions about the content of moral motivations. A moral theory should help us to make sense of the fact that people are often moved to do the right thing, by identifying a basic motive to moral behaviour that is both widespread and intelligible, as a serious source of reasons. Philosophers have accounted for moral motivation in terms of self-interest, sympathy, and a higher-order concern to act in accordance with moral principles. But each of these approaches faces difficult challenges. Can egoistic accounts capture the distinctive character of moral motivation? Can impartial sympathy be integrated within a realistic system of human ends? Can we make sense of responsiveness to moral principle, as a natural human incentive?
Naturalism in ethics
Authors: Sturgeon Nicholas L. 
Published: September 2018

Ethical naturalism is the project of fitting an account of ethics into a naturalistic worldview. It includes nihilistic theories, which see no place for real values and no successful role for ethical thought in a purely natural world. The term ‘naturalism’ is often used more narrowly, however, to refer to cognitivist naturalism, which holds that ethical facts are simply natural facts and that ethical thought succeeds in discovering them.
G.E. Moore (1903), attacked cognitivist naturalism as mistaken in principle, for committing what he called the ‘naturalistic fallacy’. He thought a simple test showed that ethical facts could not be natural facts (the ‘fallacy’ lay in believing they could be), and he took it to follow that ethical knowledge would have to rest on nonsensory intuition. Later writers have added other arguments for the same conclusions. Moore himself was in no sense a naturalist, since he thought that ethics could be given a ‘non-natural’ basis. Many who elaborated his criticisms of cognitivist naturalism, however, have done so on behalf of generic ethical naturalism, and so have defended either ethical nihilism or else some more modest constructive position, usually a version of noncognitivism. Noncognitivists concede to nihilists that nature contains no real values, but deny that it was ever the function of ethical thought to discover such things. They thus leave ethical thought room for success at some other task, such as providing the agent with direction for action.
Defenders of cognitivist naturalism deny that there is a ‘naturalistic fallacy’ or that ethical knowledge need rest on intuition; and they have accused Moore and his successors of relying on dubious assumptions in metaphysics, epistemology, the philosophy of language and the philosophy of mind. Thus many difficult philosophical issues have been implicated in the debate.
Prescriptivism
Authors: Hare R.M. 
Published: September 2018

Prescriptivism is a theory about moral statements. It claims that such statements contain an element of meaning which serves to prescribe or direct actions. The history of prescriptivism includes Socrates, Aristotle, Hume, Kant and Mill, and it has been influential also in recent times.
Moral statements also contain a factual or descriptive element. The descriptive element of morality differs between persons and cultures, but the prescriptive element remains constant.
Prescriptivism can allow for moral disagreement, and explain moral weakness. It can also explain better than other theories the rationality and objectivity of moral thinking.
Responsibility
Authors: Duff R.A. 
Published: September 2018

To be responsible for something is to be answerable for it. We have prospective responsibilities, things it is up to us to attend to: these may attach to particular roles (the responsibilities of, for instance, parents or doctors), or be responsibilities we have as moral agents, or as human beings. We have retrospective responsibilities, for what we have done or failed to do, for the effects of our actions or omissions. Such responsibilities are often (but not always) moral or legal responsibilities.
The scope of our retrospective moral responsibilities is controversial. We are responsible for the intended results of our actions, but how far we are responsible for their foreseen effects, or for harms that we do not prevent when we could, depends on how we should define our prospective responsibilities, that is, on how far we should regard such foreseen effects, or such preventable harms, as our business. To say that I am responsible for some foreseen effect, or for a harm which I did not prevent, is to say that I should have attended to that effect or to that harm in deciding how to act; our retrospective responsibilities are partly determined by our prospective responsibilities.
I am responsible for something only if it is within my control. It is sometimes argued that I am therefore not responsible for that whose occurrence is a matter of luck; but it is not clear that we can or should try to make responsibility wholly independent of matters of luck.
We have responsibilities not merely as individuals, but also as members of organizations (organizations themselves have responsibilities in so far as they can be seen as agents). This raises the question of how far we are responsible for the actions of groups or organizations to which we belong.
Self-realization
Authors: Evans Mark 
Published: September 2018

‘Self-realization’ is the development and expression of characteristic attributes and potentials in a fashion which comprehensively discloses their subject’s real nature. Usually, the ‘self’ in question is the individual person, but the concept has also been applied to corporate bodies held to possess a unitary identity.
What constitutes the self’s ‘real nature’ is the key variable generating the many conceptions of self-realization. These can be grouped broadly into two types: (1) the ‘collectivist’, in which the self-realizing lifestyle, being either the same for all or specific to a person or subgroup of people, is ultimately definable only in the context, and perhaps with reference to the common purposes, of a collective social body; (2) the ‘individualist’, in which a person’s self-realization has no necessary connection with the ends of a particular community.
As an ethic, self-realization can be proposed as the means to achieve a life identified as good by some criterion independent of the self-realizing process, or held to be that which actually defines the good. Its critics typically argue that human nature is such that any equation of ‘self-realization’ and ‘goodness’ is implausible or undesirable.
Moral relativism
Authors: Kölbel Max 
Published: September 2018

In philosophical discussions, the term 'moral relativism' is primarily used to denote the metaethical thesis that the correctness of moral judgments is relative to some interesting factor, for example, relative to an individual’s or group’s moral norms.
Outside philosophy, for example in anthropology, sociology or ethnology, 'moral relativism' can also denote the thesis that there is significant cross-cultural or inter-personal diversity as to the moral values that are accepted or adhered to – following Brandt (1967), this is often called 'descriptive moral relativism'. Also following Brandt, a further sense of 'moral relativism' is often distinguished and labelled 'normative moral relativism'. Unlike metaethical moral relativism, normative moral relativism is supposed to involve ethical and not just metaethical claims, such as, for example, that what an individual (or a group) considers morally right or wrong to do, is in fact right or wrong for them to do. Given the general implausibility of such claims, this sense of the term seems to be linked to the frequent polemical or derogatory use of the term, in which it is taken for granted that moral relativism is a position that ought to be avoided.
Serious philosophical discussion of moral relativism has no need for the derogatory notion, and it is only indirectly concerned with empirical descriptive theses of cross-cultural or interpersonal divergence of moral views, namely in so far as they are sometimes adduced as evidence for metaethical moral relativism. Hence this article focuses on the metaethical thesis that the correctness of moral judgments is relative to, for example, individuals or groups, or their systems of value.
Truthfulness
Authors: Bok Sissela 
Published: September 2018

Humans are the only species capable of speech and thus of lies. Choices regarding truthfulness and deceit are woven into all that they say and do. From childhood on, everyone knows the experience of being deceived and of deceiving others, of doubting someone’s word and of being thought a liar. Throughout life, no moral choice is more common than that of whether to speak truthfully, equivocate, or lie – whether to flatter, get out of trouble, retaliate, or gain some advantage.
All societies, as well as all major moral, religious and legal traditions have condemned forms of deceit such as bearing false witness; but many have also held that deceit can be excusable or even mandated under certain circumstances, as, for instance, to deflect enemies in war or criminals bent on doing violence to innocent victims. Opinions diverge about such cases, however, as well as about many common choices about truthfulness and deceit. How open should spouses be to one another about adultery, for example, or physicians to dying patients? These are quandaries familiar since antiquity. Others, such as those involving the backdating of computerized documents, false claims on résumés in applying for work, or misrepresenting one’s HIV-positive status to sexual partners, present themselves in new garb.
Hard choices involving truthfulness and lying inevitably raise certain underlying questions. How should truthfulness be defined? Is lying ever morally justified, and if so under what conditions? How should one deal with borderline cases between truthfulness and clear-cut falsehood, and between more and less egregious forms of deceit? And how do attitudes towards truthfulness relate to personal integrity and character? The rich philosophical debate of these issues has focused on issues of definition, justification, and line-drawing, and on their relevance to practical moral choice.
Virtue ethics
Authors: Crisp Roger 
Published: September 2018

Virtue ethics has its origin in the ancient world, particularly in the writings of Plato and Aristotle. It has been revived following an article by G.E.M. Anscombe critical of modern ethics and advocating a return to the virtues.
Some have argued that virtue ethics constitutes a third option in moral theory additional to utilitarianism and Kantianism. Utilitarians and Kantians have responded vigorously, plausibly claiming that their views already incorporate many of the theses allegedly peculiar to virtue ethics.
Virtue theory, the study of notions, such as character, related to the virtues, has led to the recultivation of barren areas. These include: What is the good life, and what part does virtue play in it? How stringent are the demands of morality? Are moral reasons independent of agents’ particular concerns? Is moral rationality universal? Is morality to be captured in a set of rules, or is the sensitivity of a virtuous person central in ethics?
From virtue ethics, and the virtue theory of which it is a part, have emerged answers to these questions at once rooted in ancient views and yet distinctively modern.
Ethics and psychology
Authors: Doris John M. , Stich Stephen P. 
Published: September 2018

Psychological research promises substantive contributions to philosophical ethics. Arguments purporting to show that empirical considerations are of sharply limited relevance to ethical reflection, such as those commonly associated with Hume and Moore (although in the former case strangely, since this can hardly be thought to have been Hume’s view), have proved indecisive. Arguments in philosophical ethics very often presuppose empirical claims that are appropriately evaluated by reference to the behavioural and social sciences. Four points of contact between philosophical and psychological research substantiate this contention and suggest a general methodological standard: philosophical ethics can, and indeed must, interface with the human sciences.
Contemporary virtue ethics typically understands character traits as involving reliable tendencies to trait-appropriate behaviour. However, much research in psychology indicates that this conception of character traits is inadequate; behaviour varies enormously with the situation, and people very often do not consistently behave in ways that accord with a given trait. To address this difficulty, virtue ethics must either be recast in a way that does not involve commitments in empirical psychology, or take better account of the empirical evidence than existing articulations of the position have done.
In philosophical ethics, motivational internalism is the view that a rational agent will be reliably moved to act in ways that comport with their moral judgments. Recent clinical studies of psychopaths, individuals who suffer no generalized cognitive deficiencies but seem to be quite unmoved by their moral judgments, appear to undermine internalism. To address this argument, the motivational internalist must engage with the clinical literature
It is often argued that the existence of widespread and persistent moral disagreement makes claims for the ‘objectivity of morality’ problematic: If there were really a ‘fact of the matter’ for moral issues, we would expect more convergence on answers in moral debate than we in fact observe. In response, those defending the objectivity of morality argue that convergence can be expected to obtain only in ideal circumstances, when participants in moral discussion are impartial, rational, aware of the non-moral facts, and so on. A preliminary assessment of the record in anthropology and cultural psychology does not justify confidence in this conjecture. If such confidence is to be vindicated, it must be based on a serious investigation of the empirical literature.
A standard method in philosophical writing is to present readers with a hypothetical example designed to tap some intuition. The resulting intuitions are often treated as ‘data’ for ethical theory; competing theories, it is widely believed, must account for people’s responses to cases. For this method to be credible, what people’s responses actually are, and what factors influence these responses, must be subject to systematic empirical investigation.
Metaethics
Authors: Finlay Stephen 
Published: September 2018

A tripartite distinction is often drawn in moral philosophy between (i) applied ethics, (ii) normative ethical theory, and (iii) metaethics. Applied ethics seeks answers to moral questions about specific practices like abortion, euthanasia and business, while normative ethics seeks abstract moral principles that apply generally. We can loosely define metaethics as seeking answers to questions about normative ethics. It does not, at least directly, seek answers to moral or normative questions about (e.g.) which acts are right, what things are good, or how we ought to live our lives; instead it asks a variety of nonmoral questions about morality. While it is sometimes claimed that metaethics is morally neutral in the sense that it leaves normative questions open, metaethical theories can have normative implications, and it is sometimes argued that they all do.
Since there is in principle no limit to the kinds of nonmoral questions one might ask about morality, there is no limit to the possible kinds of metaethical questions other than their relation to the subject of morality. One central kind of question is semantic, concerning the meaning of moral language. For example, what do we mean by saying that something is ‘right’ or ‘good’? Another central kind of question is metaphysical. For example, what kind of property is moral goodness, and does such a thing exist? A third central kind of question is epistemological, concerning how we might come to know moral truths. Some of the many other kinds of metaethical questions are psychological (concerned with the mental attitudes we call ‘moral judgments’ and how they motivate us to action), logical (concerning the inferences we can legitimately draw between different moral claims), sociobiological (concerning how humans may have evolved as beings with a moral sense), and – although it may blur the distinction between metaethics and normative ethics – normative (concerning the rational justification for acting morally). The boundaries of metaethics are vague. For example, just as normative ethics on a broader conception concerns itself not merely with morality narrowly construed but with all practical or normative questions about how to act, choose and live, so too metaethics on a broader conception asks nonnormative questions about normativity more generally.