Philosophical Basis for Moral Analysis
Howard Winet in Ethics for Bioengineering Scientists, 2021
A virtue ethicist tends to view authority differently. Here, the process of moral decision making is more “inside-out”. Moral behavior should be the result of, and flow from, a person’s character. This is not to say that moral behavior is only automatic or spontaneous. It can indeed involve difficult and perplexing thinking and deliberation. But, in virtue ethics, a person’s character (the kind of person they are) is integral to the way that person will perceive ethical situations and the way that person will think about ethical matters. Cultivation of an ethical person, then, is very largely a matter of developing the right character. Here, ethics is not just a matter of what people do, or even, to a large extent, of why people do what they do (i.e. what their motives are); it is, rather, a matter of what people are.
Public health and ethics
Sridhar Venkatapuram, Alex Broadbent in The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Public Health, 2023
The third type of normative ethics, called virtue ethics, focuses on personal moral character (Crisp and Slote 1997; Hursthouse and Pettigrove 2018). In contrast to focusing on consequences or the act itself, virtue ethics approaches locate the target of moral assessment inside the person taking action (although acts or consequences will feature in determining whether a person is virtuous or not). The focus on moral character shifts from external rules and principles, including the rights-claims that others may have on us, to our internal dispositions. Certain virtues are seen to be worthy of developing for the sake of the virtues themselves and not for other reasons, such as the valued consequences that may result, or for being the kind of character that follows rules. Moreover, virtues are not superficial traits or habits, but reflect a certain complex mindset. Many professional codes of conduct seek to elevate certain virtues, but usually often fall short in many ways because the code itself does not produce the underlying complex mindset in the target professionals. Things become even more confounding when such codes of conduct, while initially addressing moral dispositions, then also include decision-making principles that constrain the application of exactly the highlighted dispositions by drawing directly upon consequentialist or deontological considerations. Virtues that have often been considered exemplary include a sense of justice, wisdom, honesty, and beneficence, among others.
Practitioner research, practical wisdom and teaching
David Carr in Cultivating Moral Character and Virtue in Professional Practice, 2018
So two research projects will now be described that were supervised by the chair of teachers’ professional ethics. These projects may be classified under the rather different headings of ‘teaching morally’ and ‘teaching morality’. Teaching morally means that teachers teach ‘in a manner that accords with notions of what is good or right’ (Fenstermacher et al., 2009, p. 8). It includes all the subtle ways in which teachers bring moral considerations into the classroom, even when schools do not have a specific moral curriculum. However, teaching morally contrasts (despite any relations between these processes) with explicitly teaching morality to students, which is more a matter of ‘providing to another person the means for becoming a good or righteous person’ (Fenstermacher et al., 2009, p. 8). From the virtue ethical perspective adopted by the chair, teaching morally is understood as teaching virtuously, whereas teaching morality refers to attempts to cultivate students’ and pupils’ qualities of good character through role modelling and other methods. Still, in both research projects, teachers and teacher educators were concerned with how to integrate the cultivation of students’ and pupils’ virtues into their own lessons by following a research-based educational design (McKenney & Reeves, 2012).
Factors Influencing Moral Responsibility and Control in People Suffering from Alcohol Use Disorder - a Qualitative Study
Published in Alcoholism Treatment Quarterly, 2019
Regina Christiansen, Anne-Marie S. Christensen, Randi Bilberg, Jakob Emiliussen
According to some philosophical theorists, AUD influences the degree to which people may be held accountable for their actions. The theory of reason-responsiveness (TRR), proposed by Fischer and Ravizza (1998), is semicompatibilist regarding control and moral responsibility. Their theory holds that an individual might not have alternative possibilities for action yet could, nonetheless, be in control and have moral responsibility for personal behavior. The central argument of their theory is that moral responsibility and free will are not dependent on alternate factors such as the number of choices we have or the way the individual is influenced/limited by others/the situation. Moral behavior can be exhibited by the individual when she reacts or reflects upon the attitudes/inputs from others. This is the deployment of what are termed “reactive attitudes” in the TRR. This means that an individual might end up doing something that is morally irresponsible because she has no other choice. However, if she has reflected or engaged with the opinions of or feedback from others—and shown reactive attitudes, she exhibits moral responsibility. For a full presentation of TRR, see a companion publication to this article that provides a conceptual basis for this study (Christiansen, Bilberg, Christensen, & Emiliussen, 2018)
Coaches Who Care: Moral Exemplars in Collegiate Athletics
Published in Journal of Applied Sport Psychology, 2020
Maya G. B. Hamilton, Nicole M. LaVoi
The constructivist theoretical framework of moral development that informs this study is the structural developmental approach in the tradition of Lawrence Kohlberg (1984) and further advanced by James Rest and his colleagues, who believed that morality is a social process (Rest, 1986). They developed the four component model of psychological processes that bring about moral behavior, which are (a) moral sensitivity (interpreting a situation as having moral elements), (b) moral judgment (deciding which course of action is most morally justifiable), (c) moral motivation and commitment (prioritizing moral values over other values, such as family, career, pleasure, etc., and deciding whether to fulfill the ideal moral action), and (d) moral character and competence (following through on the moral action that was deemed ideal; Rest & Narváez, 1994). Each of these processes develop over the lifespan from a self-interest orientation to an other-oriented, social focus to one based on universal ethical principles.
Moral Status or Moral Value? The Former May Require Phenomenal Consciousness, But Does It Matter?
Published in AJOB Neuroscience, 2023
That said, given that there are things in the world that have moral status, there are lots of things that have moral value. Some are things that have moral status, in virtue of that status. But many are things that do not have phenomenal experience but have moral value because they have implications for the moral concerns of things that have moral status. They contribute or detract from the value of states of affairs that matter to entities that have moral status. For example, on the assumption that many animals have phenomenal consciousness, and that their lives go better in many ways if they live in a clean versus a polluted environment, maintaining a clean ecosystem has moral value. Nonetheless, on this view, assuming the ecosystem is not sentient, it has only derivative moral value, not intrinsic moral status.
Related Knowledge Centers
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