Why should I be moral? My thesis is dedicated to exploring how David Hume’s moral theory may answer this question. According to Hume’s psychology of action, only passions, desires and dispositions have motivational force, but reason alone has not. As Hume believes that morality is action-guided, he bases his moral theory on sentiments. The advantage of a sentiment-based theory is that it easily explains why we follow morality: as we have moral sentiments, we already have a motive to follow morality. However, it seems that a moral theory based on sentiments hardly explains why we follow impartial judgments, for original sentiments arising from sympathy are always partial. proposes a general point of view to correct unregulated sympathy. Adopting a general point of view, we leave aside personal interest and view a person through the eyes of those who are in his narrow circle according to the effects his character tends to cause. However, there seems be tension between sentimentalism and Hume’s general point of view. It is doubtful whether the judgments made from a general point of view are still sentiment-based and how we are moved to leave our personal standpoint to take up a general point of view when we are naturally more concerned with our own self-interest. Hence, the main difficulty for Hume’s moral theory is to explain what causes us to adopt a general point of view and act morally in a sentimentalist framework. I suggest that to get rid of the contradiction in the soul caused by our sympathy with others’ sentiments is the primary motive for us to adopt a general point of view. Moreover, understanding the limitations of human nature, we do not have overly high expectation of people; hence, we are satisfied with a person if he benefits his narrow circle and therefore limit ourselves to a general point view. / published_or_final_version / Philosophy / Master / Master of Philosophy

Psychopaths pose a challenge to those who make claims about the strength of moral assessments. These individuals are entirely unmoved by the moral rules that they articulate and purportedly espouse. Psychopaths appear rationally intact but are emotionally broken. In some cases, they commit horrendous crimes yet show no guilt, no remorse. Sentimentalists claim that the empirical evidence about psychopaths’ affective deficits supports that moral judgment is rooted in emotion and that psychopaths do not make genuine moral judgments—they can’t. Here, I challenge an explanation of psychopathy that indicts psychopaths’ emotional impairments alone. I conclude that there are rational requirements for moral motivation and that psychological and neuroscientific research support that psychopaths do not make the grade.

Aristotelian eudaimonism – as Daniel Russell puts it – is understood as two things at once: it is the final end for practical reasoning, and it is a good human life for the one living it. This understanding of Aristotelian eudaimonism, on which one’s ultimate reason for doing all that one does is one’s own eudaimonia, has given rise to what I call the “self-absorption objection.” Roughly, proponents of this objection state that the main problem with neo-Aristotelian accounts of moral motivation is that they prescribe that our ultimate reason for acting virtuously is the fact that doing so is good for us. In an attempt to adequately address this objection, I break with those contemporary neo-Aristotelian accounts of moral motivation that insist that the virtuous agent ought to be understood as performing virtuous actions ultimately for the sake of her own eudaimonia (enlarged, no doubt, to include the eudaimonia of others). On the alternative neo-Aristotelian account of moral motivation I go on to defend – what I call the altruistic account of motivation – the virtuous agent’s ultimate reason for acting virtuously is based on a desire to act in accordance with her particular conception of the good life, where what makes such a conception good is not that it is good for her, but rather good, qua human goodness. More specifically, on the altruistic account of motivation I advance, the virtuous agent may be understood as being motivated by human goodness, valuing objects and persons only insofar as they participate in human goodness, and where all of the virtuous agent’s reasons, values, motivations, and justifications are cashed out in terms of human goodness – as they say – “all the way down.” / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / In this dissertation, I advance a neo-Aristotelian account of moral motivation that is immune from what I call the “self-absorption objection.” Roughly, proponents of this objection state that the main problem with neo-Aristotelian accounts of moral motivation is that they wrongly prescribe that our ultimate reason for acting virtuously is the fact that doing so is good for us. In an attempt to sidestep this objection, I offer what I call the altruistic account of motivation. On this account, the virtuous agent’s main reason for acting virtuously is based on her desire to act in accordance with a particular conception of the good life, where what makes such a conception good is not that it is good for her, but rather good, qua human goodness.

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 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 (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2007. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references (p. 29-37, 104-113).

The purpose of this dissertation is to make sense of two sets of reactions. On the one hand, Americans can barely lift a finger to help threatened and endangered species while on the other, they routinely come to the aid of human victims of disaster. I argue that in contrast to cases of human tragedy, for the biodiversity crisis conservationists are faced not only with the familiar yet arduous task of motivating the American public to care for living other-than-humans, but they are also saddled with having to overcome the motivation problem of future ethics. The motivation problem consists in eliminating or bridging a motivational gap that lies between knowledge of the effects of our actions on future generations and action taken based upon such knowledge. The gap exists because motives that typically move people to action are either ineffective or unavailable. What is more, the gap influences not only our ability to care for future humans, but it affects our ability to care for future other-than-humans as well. Biodiversity loss is in fact a subset of the problem of future generations, an identification hitherto little appreciated. I argue that conservationists can overcome the motivational gap not by appealing directly to the value of species or biodiversity, both of which are temporally distant, abstract and general moral patients, but indirectly, by focusing on the concrete and particular lives of extant and near future moral patients. By applying techniques that have been developed to overcome the motivation problem as it pertains to distant future human generations, conservationists have additional resources to draw upon in their efforts to motivate American citizens to preserve biodiversity. This dissertation’s contribution to the fields of environmental philosophy and conservation biology is both theoretical and practical. It is theoretically significant to elucidate the nature of moral failure for biodiversity conservation. In terms of broader impacts, identifying the basis of moral failure for biodiversity conservation allows me to assess educational campaigns and environmental policy, and to suggest solutions for bridging the motivational gap.

In this paper, I call into question the thesis known as judgment internalism about moral motivation. Broadly construed, this thesis holds that there is a non-contingent relation between moral judgment and moral motivation. The difficulty for judgment internalism arises because of amoral agents: when an agent both knows the right and yet fails to be motivated to act on this knowledge. Specifically, I cite John Milton's Satan from Paradise Lost. This is a problem because it calls into question the non-contingent relation between moral judgment and moral motivation. I argue that in order for judgment internalism to be viable in reconciling judgment internalism and amoralism, it must provide plausible accounts of both (a) the relationship between judging and motivation, and (b) the conditions for defeasibility. While crude versions of the thesis fail to do this, I provide a revised thesis which I call Narrative Internalism, which assumes a narrative theory of the self. This thesis has the dual strength that it can account for both why one would typically be motivated to Φ upon judging that it is right to Φ and also the conditions that might obtain such that one would fail to be motivated. This account of moral psychology explains both (a) the relationship between judging and motivation, and (b) the conditions for defeasibility by giving an account of plausible defeasibility conditions. I conclude that unless there are more plausible accounts of judgment internalism in the offing, which doesn't seem apparent to me, we should adopt Narrative Internalism. / Master of Arts

Thesis advisor: Jeffrey Bloechl / The idea of moral action seems to contain a paradox. On the one hand, it seems that in performing such an act one is obligated, bound to the act by something external. On the other hand, it seems that such an act must be freely chosen in the sense that the act must be done for its own sake. The source of the moral act therefore seems to be located both within and without the self. I refer to this as the problem of moral motivation. This dissertation proposes to clarify the nature of moral motivation in the context of a phenomenological investigation of the feeling of guilt, one informed by various thinkers, but particularly by the work of Paul Ricoeur. The rationale behind this proposal can be grasped by observing the confrontation between Immanuel Kant and Friedrich Nietzsche. Kant’s moral philosophy answers the problem of moral motivation by identifying freedom with the determination of the will by the moral law. A crucial aspect of his argument for this identification is his appeal to the experience of respect for the moral law. This feeling, which Kant describes as the incentive of morality, is a feeling of humiliation before reason, but is at the same time the ennobling sense of one’s autonomy. Nietzsche places this liaison between morality and freedom under stern scrutiny, arguing that the two notions are antithetical to one another. In effect, Nietzsche’s attack implies that moral motivation is a chimera. Guilt does not signify the power of the good to motivate one to do right for its own sake. Moral action is better interpreted as the exertion of power: justice is the advantage of the stronger. Provoked by this confrontation, the dissertation argues that the phenomenology of guilt does not permit us to reduce it entirely to internalized aggression and self-deception. Rather, the self-deceptive and manipulative emotional phenomenon that Nietzsche calls bad conscience can be distinguished from guilt per se. The central task of the work is to explicate the distinctive structure of the latter for the sake of two purposes: 1) by distinguishing guilt from bad conscience, to defend the possibility of moral motivation, and 2) to clarify that possibility in terms of its apparently paradoxical relation to the structure of the self. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2016. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Philosophy.

The idea that there are universal human rights that can, and should, be enforced has been an increasingly wide-spread and popular belief, as well as a controversial one. Concerns of cultural relativism contrasted with stances of universalism spark an impassioned debate that permeates the dialogue of human rights today in all spheres: social, academic, and even those professional spheres that are tasked with creating and enforcing the laws regarding these issues. What does psychology have to say about this? After all, if it is a universal phenomenon, it must span across time, culture, and difference, and there must be trends in our human nature or similarities in our psychology that allow us to claim universality. One psychological theory, the Moral Foundations Theory (MFT) can help shed light on this issue. MFT holds that universally, as human beings, we share five grounds of moral foundations on which we make our judgments and take action: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Authority/Submissiveness, Sanctity/Degradation, and Loyalty/Betrayal. While we are all born with the capability to act and reason on these, our cultures shape us to emphasize different foundations and it is in that shift that conflict arises. What one group sees as right, and based in moral justification, another sees as wrong and as a violation of human rights. This paper attempts to use MFT to understand the moral foundations underlying three case studies of practices internationally seen as human rights abuses, female genital modification, child marriage, and male guardianship in Saudi Arabia, and provides suggestions for methods of effective intervention based in MFT.