In this paper I put forth three criticisms against McDowell account of the idea that moral requirements are categorical imperatives. I argue that McDowell’s account fails as a defense of Kant’s doctrine for at least three reasons. First, McDowell claims that agents can appeal to experience in order to formulate and recognize categorical imperatives. However, Kant strongly disagrees with this claim, explicitly claiming that moral requirements cannot be derived from experience. Second, McDowell argues that the virtuous agent will not experience inner conflict when motivating herself to act virtuously, but inner conflict plays a central role in Kant’s picture of moral motivation and virtue. Third, McDowell does not account for how the moral law serves as a necessary incentive to moral action through the a priori feeling of respect. Finally, I suggest that my criticisms cast doubt on the validity of McDowell’s account, and provide insights into some criteria that an account must meet if it is to be a proper defense of Kant’s doctrine of moral requirements as categorical imperatives.

In my dissertation I argue that prominent descriptivist metaethical views face a serious semantic problem. According to standard descriptivism, moral thought and discourse purports to describe some ontology of moral properties and/or relations: e.g., the term `good' purports to refer to some property or cluster of properties. Central to any such theory, then, is the recognition of certain items of ontology which, should they actually exist, would count as the referents of moral terms and concepts. And since one commonly accepted feature of moral thought and discourse is a supervenience constraint, descriptivists hold that any ontology suitable for morality would have to supervene upon non-moral ontology. But this lands descriptivists with the task of providing a semantic account capable of relating this ontology to moral terms and concepts. That is, they must explain why it is that certain items of ontology and not others would count as the referents of moral terms and concepts, in a way that is consistent with the supervenience constraint. I argue that this important explanatory task cannot be carried out. And because the problem generalizes from metaethics to all normativity, we are left with good reason to pursue alternatives to descriptivist accounts of normative semantics.

Esta tese possui dois objetivos fundamentais, quais sejam, 1) a apresentação de um aspecto da obra de Durkheim que consiste em enunciados sobre o dever ser moral 2) a discussão em torno da fundamentação possível de sua defesa de um ideal moral específico, o individualismo, e de sua proposta de institucionalização de uma moral laica. A tese central é a de tudo aquilo que ele afirma como dever ser corresponde a um ideal criado coletivamente, portanto, sua fundamentação é a própria coletividade. A defesa desse ideal em detrimento de outro qualquer se dá pela avaliação, por parte de sua ciência, de que ele corresponde à lógica imanente de sua sociedade sendo, portanto, normal, desejável e necessário. / I have to main purposes in this thesis, which are 1) to present an aspect of Durkheims work that is basically about what morals should be and 2) look for a plausible grounding of this very specific moral ideal sustained by him, which himself refers as individualism, and of his proposals regarding the institutionalization of a secular moral education. The main thesis to be sustained affirms that all his arguments regarding what moral should or ought to be corresponds to an ideal collectively created, therefore, its ground is collectivity itself. Defending this particular ideal instead of any other possible one depends upon the evaluation made possible by his science that it corresponds to the intrinsic rationale of his own society, therefore, is both normal and desirable.

Nathan Phillip Stout

In this paper, I analyze the concept of a besire. I argue that distinguishing between different types and interpretations of besires is a critical tool for adequately assessing besire theories of moral judgment. I argue for this by applying the results of this conceptual analysis of a besire to David Brink’s version of the moral problem and to objections against besire theories made by Michael Smith, Simon Blackburn, and Nick Zangwill.

Thesis (M.E.)--International Baptist College Graduate School, 2000. / Abstract and vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [113-114]).

Recent work in empirical moral psychology has led to at least one point of consensus: intuitive, psychologically-spontaneous cognitive processes play a central and inescapable role in moral evaluation. However, among those who accept that intuitive processes play a central role there remains much debate concerning the underlying character of these intuitive processes, as well as their developmental and evolutionary origins. The two dominant approaches are represented by psychological sentimentalists, who hold that these underlying processes are essentially emotion-driven, and moral nativists, who hold that these processes are subserved by innate, tacitly-held moral principles. In the course of this dissertation I critically examine each of these prominent psychological accounts, and work to outline a novel alternative. Questions concerning the psychological processes involved in moral judgment are interesting in their own right, as well as for their potential relevance to debates in ethical theory. The observed role of intuitive processing in moral judgment challenges those traditions in psychology and philosophy according to which deliberate rational processes do or should dominate. Indeed, it is widely thought that the centrality of these intuitive processes serves to undermine the status of morality and the epistemic standing of moral beliefs. Both the sentimentalist and the nativist analyses of intuitive moral judgment have been used to ground challenges to the status of morality and moral belief. I build on my critiques of the empirical adequacy of the psychological and evolutionary claims grounding these challenges to develop ways to defeat them. When properly understood, neither of these accounts of intuitive moral psychology supports a global challenge to the epistemic standing of moral belief.

The moral distress experiences of Registered Nurses who work in non-acute, continuing care settings were examined using qualitative methods. Previous research suggests that in general, nurses experience moral distress when they are not able to pursue actions in accordance with their moral conscience. Moral distress in nurses is expressed negatively in both the nurses’ professional and personal lives. However, most research on moral distress among nurses has focused on acute care settings. Registered Nurse participants were recruited from non-acute continuing care settings and described their experiences of moral conflict and distress. Particular attention was placed on the nurses’ experiences and reactions to their experience. The findings from this study indicated that as in other settings, moral distress is present in Registered Nurses practicing in non-acute continuing care. The nurses’ practicing in non-acute continuing care settings experienced moral distress after facing a barrier to their moral conscience involving organizational functioning, end of life decisions, patient advocacy, and resource utilization. Nurses experienced feelings including powerlessness, concern, regret, disappointment, suspicion of others, and feeling devalued. Future studies may focus further on the subspecialties in the non-acute continuing care sector. Research on strategies to resolve moral distress and research on the effectiveness of current interventions to combat moral distress among Registered Nurses in this setting should be pursued. / Thesis (Master, Nursing) -- Queen's University, 2009-09-01 10:02:08.043

The present study is designed to outline the approaches towards moral development and moral education over the past four decades, and to show how the findings of second-generation cognitive science compel a re-thinking of the role of narrative and narrative thinking in moral education. Examined also, are the psychological and philosophical assumptions that underpin and lend substantiation to these findings. Narrative, as an essential instrument for moral education, is now on the way to being rehabilitated, by virtue of the emerging trend to apply the narrative method of autobiographical mythology, or personal narrative to moral education. Through the increased implementation of this process, it is envisioned that the cognitive-developmental, rationalistic view of moral education will be supplanted by other cognitive models, with their implications for moral development and moral education, of a nature closer to the way human beings make meaning of experience.

There is recent interest in a narrative approach to values education. Perhaps with the intention of responding to needs of the pluralistic, multicultural society emerging at the end of the 1990s, values educators are turning their attention to the role of story telling and narrative in our moral development. This is an important contribution to values education because narrative approaches allow bridges to be built between different individuals and cultures and for a profound understanding of others to become possible. Many of the narrative approaches rest on a fuzzy or narrow definition of moral imagination. My thesis tries to clarify imaginations' abilities and gifts. I have reflected on the writings of Kieran Egan to establish what imagination brings to education and also the relationship between narrative and imagination. The final piece of my thesis sketches an outline of a moral imagination in consultation with two authors: Daniel Maguire and Mark Johnson. Through very different approaches, they both arrive at the idea that it is imagination which in fact underpins moral understanding. Kieran Egan opens the door to the idea of imagination and Daniel Maguire and Mark Johnson complete the picture by pointing out that imagination is our capacity to create moral understanding.