After briefly sketching common-morality principlism, as presented in Principles of Biomedical Ethics, this paper responds to two recent sets of challenges to this framework. The first challenge claims that medical ethics is autonomous and unique and thus not a form of, or justified or guided by, a common morality or by any external morality or moral theory. The second challenge denies that there is a common morality and insists that futile efforts to develop (...) common-morality approaches to bioethics limit diversity and prevent needed moral change. This paper argues that these two critiques fundamentally fail because they significantly misunderstand their target and because their proposed alternatives have major deficiencies and encounter insurmountable problems. (shrink)

The notion of common morality plays a prominent role in some of the most influential theories of biomedical ethics. Here, I focus on Beauchamp and Childress’s models in the fourth and fifth edition of Principles of Biomedical Ethics as well as on a revision that Beauchamp proposed in a recent article. Although there are significant differences in these works that require separate analysis, all include a role for common morality as starting point and normative framework for (...) theory construction in combination with a coherence theory of moral justification. I defend to some extent the existence and empirical significance of common morality, as delineated by Beauchamp and Childress in different versions, but criticize its normative role. It is neither convincing as a moral foundation nor well compatible with a standard coherentist justification. I suggest that the authors should give up the foundational account for a more modest account of common morality as resource of well-established moral insights and experiences, which have proved generally valid but neither sufficient nor infallible. Beauchamp’s latest proposal appears as a step in this direction; indeed, it may be the beginning of the end of his common-morality theory. (shrink)

I explore the possible meanings that the notion of the common morality can have in a contemporary communitarian approach to ethics and public policy. The common morality can be defined as the conditions for shared pursuit of the good or as the values, deliberations, traditions, and common construction of the narrative of a people. The former sense sees the common morality as the universal and invariant structures of morality while the second sense (...) is much more contingent in nature. Nevertheless, the communitarian sees both aspects as integral in devising solutions to public policy problems. I outline how both meanings follow from communitarian philosophical anthropology and illustrate how they work together when addressing a question such as that of providing universal health insurance in the United States. The common morality forms the basis of building an implicit consensus that is available to and reaffirmed by the shared reflections of the citizenry. (shrink)

Moral problems do not always come in the form of great social controversies. More often, the moral decisions we make are made quietly, constantly, and within the context of everyday activities and quotidian dilemmas. Indeed, these smaller decisions are based on a moral foundation that few of us ever stop to think about but which guides our every action. Here distinguished philosopher Bernard Gert presents a clear and concise introduction to what he calls "common morality" -- the moral (...) system that most thoughtful people implicitly use when making everyday, common sense moral decisions and judgments. Common Morality is useful in that -- while not resolving every disagreement on controversial issues -- it is able to distinguish between acceptable and unacceptable answers to moral problems. In the first part of the book Gert lays out the fundamental features of common morality: moral rules, moral ideals, and a two-step procedure for determining when a violation of a moral rule is justified. Written in a non-technical style, the ten general moral rules include rules on which everyone can agree, such as "do not kill," "do not deceive," and "keep your promises." The moral ideals include similarly uncontroversial precepts such as "Relieve pain" and "Aid the needy." In the second part of the book Gert examines the underlying concepts that justify common morality, such as the notions of rationality and impartiality. The distillation of over 40 years of scholarship, this book is the most accessible version of Gert's influential theory of morality as well as an eye-opening look at the moral foundations of our everyday actions. Throughout the discussion is clear enough for a reader with little or no philosophy background. (shrink)

The idea of moral reform requires that morality be more than a description of what people do value, for there has to be some measure against which to assess progress. Otherwise, any change is not reform, but simply difference. Therefore, I discuss moral reform in relation to two prescriptive approaches to common morality, which I distinguish as the foundational and the pragmatic. A foundational approach to common morality (e.g., Bernard Gert’s) suggests that there is no (...) reform of morality , but of beliefs, values, customs, and practices so as to conform with an unchanging, foundational morality. If, however, there were revision in its foundation (e.g., in rationality), then reform in morality itself would be possible. On a pragmatic view, on the other hand, common morality is relative to human flourishing, and its justification consists in its effectiveness in promoting flourishing. Morality is dependent on what in fact does promote human flourishing and therefore, could be reformed. However, a pragmatic approach, which appears more open to the possibility of moral reform, would need a more robust account of norms by which reform is measured. (shrink)

This chapter is an exposition and assessment of Bernard Gert’s arguments for a conception of common morality as the keystone of ethics. It begins by outlining the moral rules, ideals, and decision procedures that Gert defines as constitutive of the content of common morality. It explains how Gert’s appeal to common morality differs from the role that it plays in the work of Beauchamp and Childress. The chapter then canvasses two objections to Gert’s position. (...) The first raises doubts about whether his description of the content of common morality is accurate, particularly given that it is _not_ supported by any rigorous empirical evidence, and the second challenges his claim that common morality does not change over time. (shrink)

: The fifth edition of Beauchamp and Childress's Principles of Biomedical Ethics is distinguished by its emphatic embrace of common morality as the ultimate source of moral norms. This essay critically evaluates the fifth edition's discussion of common morality and, to a lesser extent, its treatment of coherence (both the model of ethical justification and the associated concept). It is argued that the book is overly accommodating of existing moral beliefs. The paper concludes with three suggestions (...) for improving this leading text. (shrink)

In his article 'Specifying, balancing and interpreting bioethical principles' (Richardson, 2000), Henry Richardson claims that the two dominant theories in bioethics - principlism, put forward by Beauchamp and Childress in Principles of Bioethics , and common morality, put forward by Gert, Culver and Clouser in Bioethics: A Return to Fundamentals - are deficient because they employ balancing rather than specification to resolve disputes between principles or rules. We show that, contrary to Richardson's claim, the major problem with principlism, (...) either the original version, or the specified principlism of Richardson, is that it conceives of morality as being composed of free-standing principles, rather than as common morality conceives it, as being a complete public system, composed of rules, ideals, morally relevant features, and a procedure for determining when a rule can be justifiably violated. (shrink)

This article shows how common morality can be helpful in clarifying the discussion of ethical issues that arise in computing. Since common morality does not always provide unique answers to moral questions, not all such issues can be resolved, however common morality does provide a clear answer to the question whether one can illegally copy software for a friend.

Rhodes seeks to defend her ‘conclusion that everyday ethics and medical ethics [are] incompatible’.1 She challenges ‘views that medical ethics is nothing more than common morality applied to clinical matters’ (Rhodes, p2).1 Beauchamp and Childress explicate the term ‘common morality’ at length.2 Nowhere do they claim that medical ethics is ‘nothing more than common morality applied to clinical matters’. Here is what they do say: “The origin of the norms of the common (...) class='Hi'>morality is no different in principle from the origin of the norms of a particular morality for a medical or other profession … The primary difference is that the common morality has authority in all communities, whereas particular moralities are authoritative only for specific groups” (Beauchamp and Childress, p8).2 This critique discusses the seven examples Rhodes uses to illustrate her main point: that common morality and medical ethics are radically different. I contend that common morality accounts for the purported differences she cites. In ordinary life, people can simply mind their own business, whereas physicians have a duty to act in their professional setting. On this view, common morality cannot explain the moral obligation people have to prevent easily avoidable harm to others. A bystander …. (shrink)

Unlike the principles of Kant, Mill, and Rawls, those of principlism are not action guides that stem from an underlying, integrated moral theory. Hence problems arise in reconciling the principles with each other and, indeed, in interpreting them as action guides at all, since they have no content in and of themselves. Another approach to "theory and method in bioethics" is presented as an alternative to principlism, though actually the "alternative" predates principlism by about 10 years. The alternative's account of (...) morality stays close to ordinary, common morality with its rules and ideals, which in turn are grounded in aspects of human nature. As such, morality must be understood to be a rational, impartial, and public system that is incumbent on everyone. Morality is a unified and integrated system. The moral rules and ideals are also "culture-" and "profession-sensitive" in that they are interpreted more specifically within these various contexts. (shrink)

: Biomedical ethicists often assume that common morality constitutes a largely consistent normative system. This premise is not taken for granted in general normative ethics. This paper entertains the possibility of inconsistency within common morality and explores methodological implications. Assuming common morality to be inconsistent casts new light on the debate between principlists and descriptivists. One can view the two approaches as complementary attempts to evade or transcend that inconsistency. If common morality (...) proves to be inconsistent, then principlists might have reason to prefer a less pluralistic theory, thereby moving closer to descriptivism. Descriptivists, by contrast, might want to qualify their claim to accommodate all of people's basic moral convictions. Finally, both camps might wish to adopt a more revisionist posture, accepting that an adequate ethical theory occasionally will contradict some of people's deepest moral convictions. Proper application of the method of reflective equilibrium, to which both descriptivists and principlists claim allegiance, may entail greater openness to revisionism than either camp admits. (shrink)

To address some questions in global biomedical ethics, three problems about cultural moral differences and alleged differences in Eastern and Western cultures are addressed: The first is whether the East has fundamentally different moral traditions from those in the West. Concentrating on Japan and the United States, it is argued that theses of profound and fundamental East-West differences are dubious because of many forms of shared morality. The second is whether human rights theory is a Western invention with no (...) firm traditions in Eastern moral traditions. It is argued that this thesis is unsupported both historically and in contemporary bioethics. The third problem is whether multiculturalist theory casts doubt on claims of universal principles and rights. It is argued that the reverse is true: multiculturalism is a universalistic theory. The argument throughout supports common morality theory. (shrink)

In this chapter, we discuss a selection of current views of the neural correlates of consciousness (NCC). We focus on the different predictions they make, in particular with respect to the role of prefrontal cortex (PFC) during visual experiences, which is an area of critical interest and some source of contention. Our discussion of these views focuses on the level of functional anatomy, rather than at the neuronal circuitry level. We take this approach because we currently understand more about experimental (...) evidence at this coarse level and because these results are appropriate for arbitrating between current theoretical frameworks. We discuss the Two-Visual-Systems Hypothesis (Milner & Goodale 1995; 2006), Local Recurrency (Lamme 2010; Lamme 2006), Higher Order (Lau 2008; Lau & Rosenthal 2011) and Global Workspace theories (Baars 1997; Baars 2005; Dehaene & Naccache 2001; Dehaene 2014). Despite the apparent stark differences between conscious and unconscious perceptual processing, available evidence suggests that their neural substrates must be largely shared. This indicates that the difference in neural activity between conscious and unconscious perceptual processing is likely to be subtle and highly specialized. We argue that current experimental evidence about the involvement of specific activity in prefrontal cortex supports the higher order neural theory of consciousness. In consequence, imaging techniques that focus only on marked differences between conscious and unconscious level of activity are likely to be insensitive to the relevant neural activity patterns that underlie conscious experiences. Finally, it follows from the evidence we discuss that the functional advantages of conscious over unconscious perceptual processing may be more limited than commonly thought. (shrink)

This chapter argues that Ubuntu as a philosophy and an ethic and a Bantu language expression of African Communitarianism, necessarily bears the traits of conversational thinking and that these traits are made manifest through the idea of the Common Moral Position (CMP), an Ubuntu moral imperative, which holds that the end result of any moral process is reaching a common moral position. This chapter argues that if conversational philosophy is a philosophy that necessarily pits two critical protagonists against (...) each other, namely the nwa-nju (inquirers) and the nwa-sa (respondents), with a view to understand phenomena, then Ubuntu is foundational to this process given that the CMP is packaged in folklore, proverbs and rites of passage, and conversational thinking seeks to, among other things, unpack these folklores, proverbs and rites of passage in pursuit of the truth. The chapter notes that during these conversations, some elders ask critical questions directed to the spirit world, while the spirit world responds to these questions, and as this happens, the elders discover the moral truths that should guide human behaviour and because they maybe disagreements at the discovery level on what should constitute the moral truths, elders then engage in a thought process that leads to a compromise position known as the CMP. The point is that the CMP is foundational to any genuine or authentic conversational project and subsequently any genuine or authentic intercultural dialogue/philosophy. (shrink)

This short book divides equally into two parts. In the first half, Gert describes what he calls "common morality"-"the moral system that thoughtful people use, usually implicitly, when they make moral decisions and judgments" ; and in the second part, he justifies it. As set out in the first half of the book, common morality comprises moral ideals, moral rules, and a two-step procedure to decide whether one of the rules can be justifiably violated. The idea (...) behind this test is, roughly, that if one is not sure whether some rule can be broken, one describes the morally relevant features of the proposed act before considering the consequences of all other persons knowing that the violating act is allowed and the consequences of them knowing the act is prohibited. If the former consequences are sufficiently acceptable in comparison to the latter, then violating the rule is justified. In Gert's words: "morality requires that a person never violates a moral rule unless she would be willing for everyone to know that they are allowed to violate the rule in the same circumstances". For me, the strength of Gert's description rests on his-in my mind, correct- assertion that there is not a single correct answer to every moral question. There is agreement on many ethical matters but where there is not, this need not reflect poorly on a theory of morality-there may be more than one correct answer to a moral question. Equally rational people will disagree about the outcome of this second step; some will believe a rule can be violated, others not. This difference explains why morality does not provide uniquely correct answers to every moral question. (shrink)

The paper anticipates increasing unethicalness of business in a hyper-competitive climate. An attempt is made to rediscover a core set of values and virtues reflective of traditional ethics to combat the crisis of business morality. The proposal for the 'common morals' view of ethics steers clear of the theoretical opposites of Kantian and Utilitarian ethics which seem to have little practical bearing on actual decision-making. The author quotes the findings of a research study in which 86 per cent (...) of the corporate executives were found to use traditional methods like prayer, meditation and scripture reading to enhance their moral imagination, to sharpen their judgment and to strengthen their sense of duty. Further, he advocates a culture of reward and punishment which reinforces moral excellence. According to him, 'leading by example' is the most important requisite for ethicality in organizations. (shrink)

This essay is a brief attempt to summarize and evaluate the contributions that "Democracy and Tradition" makes to the field of comparative ethics. It is argued that the potential impact of these contributions would be strengthened by engagement with the common morality already imbedded in international human rights norms.

Some defenders of the view that there is a common morality have conceived such morality as being universal, in the sense of extending across all cultures and times. Those who deny the existence of such a common morality often argue that the universality claim is implausible. Defense of common morality must take account of the distinction between descriptive and normative claims that there is a common morality. This essay considers these claims (...) separately and identifies the nature of the arguments for each claim. It argues that the claim that there is a universal common morality in the descriptive sense has not been successfully defended to date. It maintains that the claim that there is a common morality in the normative sense need not be understood as universalist. This paper advocates the concept of group specific common morality, including country-specific versions. It suggests that both the descriptive and the normative claims that there are country-specific common moralities are plausible, and that a country-specific normative common morality could provide the basis for a country's bioethics. (shrink)

Medical ethics has historically been grounded in principles and values that can be logically deduced from the broader moral principles of ordinary life or common morality. This approach has recently been challenged by philosopher Rosamond Rhodes, who argues the opposite: namely, that medical ethics embodies a system of beliefs that cannot be logically deduced from the moral principles of daily living. She offers seven “counterexamples” that seek to show that common morality is not the universal source (...) for medical ethics. This paper examines each of these counterexamples closely, explaining how they are flawed, in that they adopt oversimplified descriptions of common morality, inaccurate descriptions of optimal practice, or both, ultimately leading Rose to debunk straw scenarios. This paper then argues that the distinction between medical ethics based upon common morality and medical ethics based upon a specialized form of medical morality is not merely academic, but highly deleterious in clinical practice, as the latter approach shifts power from patients to philosophers. (shrink)

We have two aims in this paper. The first is negative: to demonstrate the problems in Bernard Gert’s account of common morality, in particular as it applies to professional morality. The second is positive: to suggest a more satisfactory explanation of the moral basis of professional role morality, albeit one that is broadly consistent with Gert’s notion of common morality, but corrects and supplements Gert’s theory. The paper is in three sections. In the first, (...) we sketch the main features of Gert’s account of common morality in general. In the second, we outline Gert’s explanation of the source of professional moral rules and demonstrate its inadequacy. In the third section, we provide an account of our own collectivist needs-based view of the source of the role-moral obligations of many professional roles, including those of health care professionals. (shrink)

Robert Baker and Rosamond Rhodes each argue against the universality “common morality,” the approach to ethics that comprises four fundamental principles and their application in various settings. Baker contends that common morality cannot account for cultural diversity in the world and claims that a human rights approach is superior in the context of global health. Rhodes maintains that bioethics is not reducible to common morality because medical professionals have special privileges and responsibilities that people (...) lack in everyday life. Baker fails to demonstrate how the human rights approach to global ethics is more sensitive to culture than the use of bioethics principles that comprise common morality. Rhodes has a narrow interpretation of “common morality,” which when understood more broadly, accounts for the special privileges and obligation of medical professionals. (shrink)

The unfinished nature of Beauchamp and Childress’s account of the common morality after 34 years and seven editions raises questions about what is lacking, specifically in the way they carry out their project, more generally in the presuppositions of the classical liberal tradition on which they rely. Their wide-ranging review of ethical theories has not provided a method by which to move beyond a hypothetical approach to justification or, on a practical level regarding values conflict, beyond a questionable (...) appeal to consensus. My major purpose in this paper is to introduce the thought of Bernard Lonergan as offering a way toward such a methodological breakthrough. In the first section, I consider Beauchamp and Childress’s defense of their theory of the common morality. In the second, I relate a persisting vacillation in their argument regarding the relative importance of reason and experience to a similar tension in classical liberal theory. In the third, I consider aspects of Lonergan’s generalized empirical method as a way to address problems that surface in the first two sections of the paper: (1) the structural relation of reason and experience in human action; and (2) the importance of theory for practice in terms of what Lonergan calls “common sense” and “general bias.”. (shrink)

This paper challenges the leading common morality accounts of medical ethics which hold that medical ethics is nothing but the ethics of everyday life applied to today’s high-tech medicine. Using illustrative examples, the paper shows that neither the Beauchamp and Childress four-principle account of medical ethics nor the Gert et al 10-rule version is an adequate and appropriate guide for physicians’ actions. By demonstrating that medical ethics is distinctly different from the ethics of everyday life and cannot be (...) derived from it, the paper argues that medical professionals need a touchstone other than common morality for guiding their professional decisions. That conclusion implies that a new theory of medical ethics is needed to replace common morality as the standard for understanding how medical professionals should behave and what medical professionalism entails. En route to making this argument, the paper addresses fundamental issues that require clarification: what is a profession? how is a profession different from a role? how is medical ethics related to medical professionalism? The paper concludes with a preliminary sketch for a theory of medical ethics. (shrink)

: Phenomena of moral conflict and disagreement have led writers in ethics to two antithetical conclusions: Either valid moral distinctions hold universally or they hold relative to a particular and contingent moral framework, and so cannot be applied with universal validly. Responding to three articles in this issue of the Journal that criticize his previously published views on the common morality, the author maintains that one can consistently deny universality to some justified moral norms and claim universality for (...) others. Universality is located in the common morality and nonuniversality in other parts of the moral life, called "particular moralities." The existence of universal moral standards is defended in terms of: (1) a theory of the objectives of morality, (2) an account of the norms that achieve those objectives, and (3) an account of normative justification (both pragmatic and coherentist). (shrink)

In the third and subsequent editions of Principles of Biomedical Ethics, Tom Beauchamp and James Childress articulate a series of ethical norms that they regard as “derived” from, and hence carrying, the “authority” of the common morality. Although Beauchamp and Childress do not claim that biomedical norms they derive from the common morality automatically become constituents of the common morality, or that every detail of their account carries the authority of the common (...) class='Hi'>morality, they regard these derived norms as provisionally binding in a way that does not apply to the norms of mere “particular” moralities. Whereas particular moralities “do not bind other persons or communities,” Beauchamp and Childress have designed the norms of Principles of Biomedical Ethics to be “extensions” of the common morality that universally binds other persons and communities. Beauchamp and Childress seem to hold that (1) the norms they articulate in Principles of Biomedical Ethics are derived in an objective way from the common morality, and also that by virtue of being so derived (2) they carry a moral authority that objectively exceeds the authority of norms constituting particular moralities. My thesis in this essay is that both of these claims are false. (shrink)

‘Why Not Common Morality?’ revisits an important and enduring question: is medical ethics distinct from ‘everyday’ ethics? In her paper, Rosamond Rhodes undertakes the ambitious project of answering this question, in addition to clarifying what constitutes a profession, how professions differ from ‘roles’ and how medical ethics relates to medical professionalism. Rhodes aims to challenge the status quo within medical ethics by departing from the views of certain giants within the field. The paper’s central contention is that the (...) ethics of everyday life and medical ethics are indeed distinct—the latter cannot be derived from the former and we consequently need a new theory of medical ethics. While I am sympathetic to the aims of the project and took no small delight in Rhodes’s gumption, the paper suffers from a number of issues. Putting aside the issue of whether Rhodes accurately represents the theories she critiques—and that is no small thing to set aside—first, many scholars have interrogated in great depth, and from many angles, the relationship between common morality and medical ethics.1–4 Scholarship from the philosophy of medicine, virtue ethics, role-differentiated ethics, narrative and care ethics has made a significant contribution to the projects of clarifying what is distinct about medical professionalism and understanding how we might subsequently treat ethical issues that arise in healthcare with due sensitivity to these myriad differences.5–10 Yet, Rhodes largely ignores this literature …. (shrink)

In this book, Jeanine Grenberg argues that everything important about Kant's moral philosophy emerges from careful reflection upon the common human moral experience of the conflict between happiness and morality. Through careful readings of both the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason, Grenberg shows that Kant, typically thought to be an overly technical moral philosopher, in fact is a vigorous defender of the common person's first-personal encounter with moral demands. Grenberg uncovers a notion of phenomenological experience (...) in Kant's account of the Fact of Reason, develops a new a reading of the Fact, and grants a moral epistemic role for feeling in grounding Kant's a priori morality. The book thus challenges readings which attribute only a motivational role to feeling; and Fichtean readings which violate Kant's commitments to the limits of reason. This study will be valuable to students and scholars engaged in Kant studies. (shrink)

El libro de Inmanuel Kant titulado “Fundamentación de la metafísica de las costumbres”, publicado en el año de 1785, es un trabajo sobre la filosofía de la moral; consta de un prefacio y tres capítulos. Cada capítulo nos lleva por un camino de ascenso: se trata, como dice el mismo autor, de un tránsito. Comienza analizando las convicciones éticas más comunes, para hablarnos luego de un ascenso que consiste en ir del plano común al filosófico, y de éste al metafísico, (...) lugar donde se asienta la moral. Después de determinar el lugar donde se fundamenta la moral, nos dice Kant, se ha de descender nuevamente al plano común, es decir, que se ha de señalar cómo la razón pura puede hacerse práctica, ya que conviene fundamentar primero la moral en la razón pura, y luego sí, a partir de su fundamentación, enjuiciar las acciones morales. En este artículo reflexionaremos sobre el capítulo primero que trata del tránsito del conocimiento moral común de la razón al conocimiento filosófico. (shrink)

Bernard Gert’s account of morality is straightforward, clear and, in its essentials, easily grasped. As such, it offers rich pedagogical resources for teaching morality, not just in undergraduate courses but also in pre-college philosophy classes or workshops, including those offered during the elementary school years. Gert’s account, properly calibrated to the age group in question, can provide a unified framework for students to think about morality, clarify their understanding of it, and engage in discussions with each other (...) about it. After summarizing Gert’s account, I illustrate several ways in which it can be applied in the classroom, beginning with applications at the elementary school level and working up to pedagogy appropriate to high school and college. I conclude by considering and responding to some possible objections to this approach. (shrink)

Bernard Gert’s account of morality is straightforward, clear and, in its essentials, easily grasped. As such, it offers rich pedagogical resources for teaching morality, not just in undergraduate courses but also in pre-college philosophy classes or workshops, including those offered during the elementary school years. Gert’s account, properly calibrated to the age group in question, can provide a unified framework for students to think about morality, clarify their understanding of it, and engage in discussions with each other (...) about it. After summarizing Gert’s account, I illustrate several ways in which it can be applied in the classroom, beginning with applications at the elementary school level and working up to pedagogy appropriate to high school and college. I conclude by considering and responding to some possible objections to this approach. (shrink)

This volume centers on debates about how far moral judgments bind across traditions and epochs. Nowadays such debates appear especially volatile, both in popular culture and intellectual discourse: although there is increasing agreement that the moral and political criteria invoked in human rights documents possess cross-cultural force, many modern and postmodern developments erode confidence in moral appeals that go beyond a local consensus or apply outside a particular community. Often the point of departure for discussion is the Enlightenment paradigm of (...) a common morality, in which it is assumed that certain unchanging beliefs inhere in the structure of human reason. Whereas some thinkers continue to defend this paradigm, others modify it in diverse ways without abandoning entirely the attempt to address a universal audience, and still others jettison virtually all of its distinguishing features. Exhibiting a range of positions Western participants take in these debates, this volume seeks to advance the substance of the debates themselves without prejudging the outcome. Rival assessments of the Enlightenment paradigm are offered from various philosophical and theological points of view. In addition to the editors, the contributors include Robert Merrihew Adams, Annette C. Baier, Alan Donagan, Margaret A. Farley, Alan Gewirth, David Little, Richard Rorty, Jeffrey Stout, and Lee H. Yearley. (shrink)

When visual attention is directed away from a stimulus, neural processing is weak and strength and precision of sensory data decreases. From a computational perspective, in such situations observers should give more weight to prior expectations in order to behave optimally during a discrimination task. Here we test a signal detection theoretic model that counter-intuitively predicts subjects will do just the opposite in a discrimination task with two stimuli, one attended and one unattended: when subjects are probed to discriminate the (...) unattended stimulus, they rely less on prior information about the probed stimulus’ identity. The model is in part inspired by recent findings that attention reduces trial-by-trial variability of the neuronal population response and that they use a common criterion for attended and unattended trials. In five different visual discrimination experiments, when attention was directed away from the target stimulus, subjects did not adjust their response bias in reaction to a change in stimulus presentation frequency despite being fully informed and despite the presence of performance feedback and monetary and social incentives. This indicates that subjects did not rely more on the priors under conditions of inattention as would be predicted by a Bayes-optimal observer model. These results inform and constrain future models of Bayesian inference in the human brain. (shrink)

Tom Beauchamp and James Childress have always maintained that their four principles approach (otherwise known as principlism) is a globally applicable framework for biomedical ethics. This claim is grounded in their belief that the principles of respect for autonomy, non-maleficence, beneficence and justice form part of a 'common morality', or collection of very general norms to which everyone who is committed to morality subscribes. The difficulty, however, has always been how to demonstrate, at least in the absence (...) of a full-blooded analysis of the concept of morality, whether the four principles are foundational, and so globally applicable, in this way. In the recently published sixth edition of Principles of Biomedical Ethics, an imaginative and non-question-begging empirical method of determining the common morality's norms is suggested. In this paper, I outline this method, before arguing that it is difficult to see how it might be thought to achieve its purpose. (shrink)

One of the fundamental challenges in any field of practical ethics is to articulate a framework for deliberation and decision making that is capable of providing warranted guidance about contentious ethical questions.1 Such a framework has to function effectively in the face of empirical uncertainty and what Rawls refers to as the fact of reasonable pluralism—the fact that individuals often differ in their ideals, ambitions, preferences and conceptions of the good life. One of the perennial questions in normative and metaethics (...) concerns the source of the warrant for such judgments, and a major preoccupation of practical ethics has been to find a way to generate such warrant without having to first settle all contentious philosophical questions about the nature and source of normativity. To the extent that scholars use the term ‘common morality’ to refer to a set of moral norms or concerns that are sufficiently common and widespread that they can be used as starting points for moral deliberation and inquiry, I am sympathetic to the term.2 To the extent that appeals to common morality are supposed to do more significant epistemic or justificatory work, they have always struck me as dangerously ad hoc and insufficiently responsive to the legitimate need to explain the ground for common normative claims. Although I am relatively sceptical of appeals to common morality, I am concerned that the version of this view that is critiqued in ‘Why not common morality’ is simply a straw person. Throughout the paper, Rhodes treats common morality as synonymous with everyday ethics and the ethics of everyday life. She says, ‘If common morality and medical ethics were the same, then the ethically justified behaviour for medical professionals and everyone else would be the same’ (Rhodes, p7).3 In effect, the view that Rhodes attacks is …. (shrink)

In the Republic, Socrates undertakes to defend justice as being in itself a benefit to its possessor. Does he do this, or does he change the subject? In a well-known article, David Sachs pointed out that there seems to be a shift in what Plato is defending. The challenge to Socrates is put by Thrasymachus, who admires the successful unjust man, and by Glaucon and Adeimantus, who do not, but are worried that justice has no adequate defence against Thrasymachus. In (...) all these passages justice is discussed in terms of the non-performance of actions which are regarded as unjust according to common morality; Sachs calls this common concept of ordinary justice ‘vulgar justice’. (shrink)

In this commentary, I critically discuss the respective views of Gert and Beauchamp–Childress on the nature of so-called common morality and its promise for enriching ethical reflection within the field of bioethics. Although I endorse Beauchamp and Childress’ shift from an emphasis on ethical theory as the source of moral norms to an emphasis on common morality, I question whether rouging up common morality to make it look like some sort of ultimate and universal (...) foundation for morality, untouched by the dialectics of time and reflective equilibrium, was an equally good move. As for Gert’s magisterial conception of common morality, I conclude that certain elements of his system are controversial at best and woefully inadequate at worst. He has a tendency to find in common morality what he himself put there, and his highly restricted conception of duties of assistance strikes this reader as ad hoc, inadequately defended, and unworthy of a project whose goal is to lessen the amount of misery in the world. (shrink)

Positive Psychology has turned its attention to the study of emotions in a scientific and rigorous way. Particularly, to how emotions influence people’s health, performance, or their overall life satisfaction. Within this trend, Flow theory has established a theoretical framework that helps to promote the Flow experience. Flow state, or optimal experience, is a mental state of high concentration and enjoyment that, due to its characteristics, has been considered desirable for the development of the performing activity of performing musicians. Musicians (...) are a population prone to health problems, both psychological and physical, owing to different stressors of their training and professional activity. One of the most common problems is Musical Performance Anxiety. In this investigation, an electronic intervention program was carried out for the development of psychological self-regulation skills whose main objective was to trigger the Flow response in performing musicians and the coping mechanism for Musical Performance Anxiety. A quasi-experimental design was used with a control group in which pre- and post-measures of Flow State, Musical Performance Anxiety and, also, Social Skills were taken. Sixty-two performing musicians from different music colleges in Spain participated in the program. Results indicated that the intervention significantly improved Flow State, and Sense of Control, and decreased Music Performance Anxiety, and self-consciousness of the participants in the EG but not CG. The changes in the EG after the program showed the inverse relationship between Flow and Anxiety. Two important theoretical factors of both variables, such as worry and the feeling of lack of control, could be involved. The results are under discussion and future lines of research are proposed. (shrink)

Collaborative economy emerged as a response to the need of people to exchange, produce and share in a more humane and cooperative manner. However, the growth of collaborative economy organizations and the terminological confusion have led to debates about their possible effects, both positive and negative. In this study, we have created a guideline that can be used to evaluate the contribution of organizations considered within collaborative economy to common good. We used the conceptualization of common good, which, (...) from its Aristotelian-Thomist philosophy, was developed by the personalist-humanist perspective of management. Our analysis leads us to conclude that the evaluation of the contribution of any organization to the common good must take into account how the participants develop their virtues, the creation of the community and its impact on the common good of society. At the end of the article, we present the aspects that society must take into account regarding collaborative economy. Firstly, society, in general, must approach collaborative economy as a tool that must complement others in the search for solutions to economic and social problems and, secondly, the governance of the platform-network is essential to foster organizational models that favour the common good. (shrink)

This article examines the configuration of political community in the thought of Thomas Hobbes and Baruch Spinoza from a perspective grounded in affect theory. In Hobbes, political order arises from the transfer of natural right to a sovereign, articulating an affective rationality based on fear and the pursuit of security. This transfer constitutes a strategy of conservation that subordinates individual will to a transcendent figure. In contrast, Spinoza develops an immanent conception of political community, in which the conatus—the striving to (...) persevere in one’s being—emerges as an affirmative force and the foundation of collective resistance. From this perspective, politics is not based on the negation of fear, but on the production of joyful passions that strengthen common action. Through a comparative analysis, the article argues that in both Hobbes and Spinoza, political community is inseparable from the management of affects, although oriented toward radically different ends: conservation and obedience in the former, resistance and affirmation in the latter. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Kennedy Institute of Ethics Journal 13.3 (2003) 189-192 [Access article in PDF] Is There a Common Morality? Robert M. VeatchSenior EditorOne of the most exciting and important developments in recent ethical theory—especially bioethical theory—is the emergence of the concept of "common morality." Some of the most influential theories in bioethics have endorsed the notion using it as the starting point of their systems. This issue (...) of the Journal is devoted to these developments.The core idea of a common morality is that all humans—at least all morally serious humans—have a pretheoretical awareness of certain moral norms. The claim is that normal humans intuit or in some other way know that there is something wrong with things like lying or breaking promises or killing people. These purportedly universally shared insights can provide the raw data from which ethical theories are constructed. As such, they are perhaps analogous to the raw sense data that are relied on in the natural sciences to launch the construction of scientific theories and accounts of the nature of reality. Some common morality theorists suggest an analogy between the natural and the moral sciences.In the natural sciences there is a widely shared belief that some raw sensory data are perceived by all normal humans and provide the basis for the construction of various scientific theories. For example, it is widely believed that all normal humans looking at the top light on a traffic signal perceive something that in English is called "red." Of course, different cultures will use different language to describe this experience. They may parse the boundaries differently (varying on the exact borderline between red and orange), provide widely differing accounts of why the experience of "red" occurs, and eventually generate significantly different theoretical formulations to explain the experience of redness. Moreover, some individuals may look at that top light of the traffic signal and not see color at all. One generally, however, does not account for this by denying there is any objective, generally shared basis for the experience that produces a sensation of redness in normal people. One simply explains the experience of the one who fails to see color by positing a defect in perception, called "color-blindness."Some moral theorists suggest that something analogous happens when humans look at the moral scene. The claim is that all normal humans in all places and cultures "see" certain moral requiredness. They see that some behaviors are, in some sense, generally wrong; that other behaviors are generally right; that [End Page 189] some character traits are generally praiseworthy, others blameworthy. No sophisticated common morality theorist denies that, as with color-blindness, there may be occasional outliers who for one reason or another fail to intuit or perceive these simple, abstract moral norms. Certainly, people in different cultures will define the terms differently, will recognize different limits on the norms, and will construct different theories to account for their experience. The primitive idea that there is something generally wrong with killing other humans will be articulated very differently in different cultures—some referring to the "sacredness of life;" others to a duty not to kill, a right to life, or a prohibition on killing the innocent. Some may extend the insight to a duty to prolong living, others limit it merely to a prohibition of direct, active killing. Some may endorse more exceptions—for killing of unjust aggressors, for killing in just war, for killing in self-defense; others, such as pacifists, will be much more stingy in doling out exceptions. Certainly, people at different times and places will articulate the norms in different language and embed them in different theories. The basic claim of common morality theorists, however, is that there is some primitive, pretheoretical insight that is shared by all normal, morally serious persons.Recently, the notion of a common morality has served as a starting point for bioethical theories as diverse as Bernard Gert, Charles Culver, and Danner Clouser's Bioethics: A Return to Fundamentals (1997) and the latest edition of Tom Beauchamp and James Childress's Principles of Biomedical Ethics... (shrink)