acase@tulane.edu / This dissertation analyzes the difficult moral decisions encountered predominantly in medical contexts. In particular, the notion of moral distress among nurses and physicians has received a great deal of attention in recent literature, and understandably so. Moral distress has been identified as a leading cause of practitioner burnout and staffing shortages, which, in turn, negatively impact patients. Yet, the precise nature and the potentially positive value of moral distress remain relatively unexplored. By incorporating contemporary research on the moral emotions and their significance for moral responsibility, the following work provides a robust account of moral distress, one that challenges the common assessments of its problematic nature. The project begins by making clear exactly what an account of moral distress should be able to explain and how the most widely cited notions in the existing literature leave significant explanatory gaps. I then propose a comprehensive, analytically robust account that is equipped to explain a wide range of plausible cases. On the view I develop, moral distress is best understood as a tension between agents’ negative emotions and their judgments that they are either not morally responsible for any potential wrongdoing or cannot do anything to improve the circumstances. With this account in mind, I argue for the positive value of moral distress. Although the phenomenon may be associated with undesirable effects, the experience itself appears to be partly constitutive of an honorable character and can reveal and affirm some of our most important concerns as moral agents. Additionally, moral distress bears potentially positive value for others. It provides an appropriate response by which practitioners can take the blame for medical error and thereby help patients and families to move forward. Finally, I examine moral distress and its relationship to compassion fatigue, a commonly associated yet importantly distinct phenomenon. I show that while morally distressed agents are often excused from responsibility, compassion fatigue constitutes a sort of marginal agency. Accordingly, compassion fatigue should be far more alarming and demands policies addressing the condition itself, while the problem of moral distress lies primarily in the circumstances and need not be alleviated directly. / 1 / Daniel Tigard

Emerging work in moral psychology challenges our confidence in our moral judgment. Our moral intuitions have been attributed to automatic, emotionally laden processes and are alleged to be accordingly deficient. Intuitive moral judgments apparently neglect some of the most basic concerns of moral decision-making; for example, they purportedly disregard relevant information, fail to balance competing considerations, and ignore social costs and benefits. Some moral psychologists propose an evolutionary explanation, suggesting that our moral sensibilities track matters of adaptive, rather than moral, significance.These findings are disconcerting and might naturally be taken to unsettle our philosophical practice. An empirically-informed moral psychology seems to discredit moral common sense as well as prevailing accounts of method and justification in moral and political philosophy. In turn, it threatens to undermine substantive conceptions of matters such as virtue, rights, and distributive justice.I argue that contemporary moral psychology does not, as is often supposed, necessitate radical revisions to our conception of morality. Recent research does oblige us to reevaluate many of our views in moral and political philosophy; however, I argue that it also gives us the opportunity to supply these views with new and stronger support.

This research introduces an attempt to regard morality from a motivational perspective by conceptualizing the moral realm in terms of approach-avoidance motivation. The study used a situational priming measure and dispositional measures to investigate the impact of approach-avoidance motivation on moral judgments. A secondary objective was to explore the relationship between conceptions of morality and perceived personal preference. Despite the failure of the priming measure, dispositional activation predicted moral judgments of approach-oriented behaviors, which were, overall, viewed as more a matter of personal preference. Dispositonal inhibition predicted moral judgments of avoidance-oriented behaviors, which were, overall, judged more harshly and were associated with perceptions of personal preference. The findings concerning the differences between approach and avoidance moral motivations provide support for the role of self-regulation in an individual’s moral system.

<p>The purpose of this dissertation is to rebut some skeptical arguments in moral epistemology by appealing to philosophical resources from the history of European philosophy. The skeptical arguments I will be countering are grounded in the perspective of contemporary biology. Put quickly, our evolutionary history is said to undermine our claims to moral knowledge because the process by which our capacity for such knowledge developed was determined by adaptive and reproductive fitness. The determinations of fitness, it is said, cannot be expected to align with standards of objective moral value. In the first chapter, I spell out the importance of evaluative perception. The need for a capacity to perceive value raises the concern that moral psychology is something mysterious. In the second chapter, I consider some skeptical arguments in moral epistemology that conclude we have no good reason to believe we are wired to be receptive to objective moral truth. While some of these arguments purport to undermine our access toobjective moral truths, I conclude that they do not. The remainder of the dissertation considers the work of Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel in light of the concerns raised in part one. Despite initial appearances, these authors understand the relation of conscience and human nature in a way that points toward a defensible view, even in light of the challenges raised by contemporary biology. The resulting view is an account of the moral conscience that emphasizes autonomy and rational agency and recognizes their value in virtue of their concrete expression in a social context.<br></p>

<p>This dissertation identifies 5 mayor demands regarding the role of the emotions in Aristotelian virtue theories and examines how well some contemporary psychological views of the emotions deal with these issues. The discussion of the role of emotion in Aristotelian virtue theory draws on Aristotle's texts and the works of Terence Irwin, Nancy Sherman, Martha Nussbaum, John Cooper, Rosalind Hursthouse and Arash Abizadeh. The discussion of the contemporary psychological views of the emotions is based on the work of Paul Griffiths in What Emotions Really Are, and focuses on his division of the study of emotion into affect programs and higher cognitive emotions. </p><p>The dissertation is divided in three chapters. The first chapter discusses Aristotelian definitions of emotion and outlines the following demands that psychological theories of emotion should be able to explain: (1) plausibility, (2) psychological harmony, (3) motivational support, (4) perception of moral salience and (5) training. The second chapter explains the psychological views that Griffiths focuses on, the affect program theory and the higher cognitive view, and highlights the areas relevant to the Aristotelian demands. The third chapter compares the contemporary theories of emotion discussed with Aristotelian views of emotion by taking the Aristotelian demands outlined in the first chapter and examining how the contemporary theories handle these issues. I conclude that the contemporary views do not adequately meet the Aristotelian demands and need to pay more attention to the Aristotelian view of emotion to achieve a more complete view. I argue that how a theory distinguishes between basic and higher cognitive emotions impacts the compatibility with Aristotelian notions of emotion and how it can meet its demands.</p> / Dissertation

This thesis offers an analysis of the vice tradition of the fourth-century monk Evagrius Ponticus. While Evagrius, like others before him, understands that virtue and vice have an affective component, and that these affections are reactions to mental images, for Evagrius these images are veridically thinner than what we find in earlier discussions of passion in ancient philosophy. As a result, vice is less a matter of false reasoning and false perception than it is a matter of the excessive dwelling on representations connected with events of one’s personal history, to the point that the passions aroused at the time of those events become globalized dispositions. Evagrius’s concern with how memories lead us to dwell on these “bad thoughts” proves to be point of contact with psychoanaly which many modern authors, including Michel Foucault, have detected; yet a close analysis of what Evagrius takes to be involved in self-examination reveals that Foucault’s account of the “technologies of the self” fails to take into account Evagrius’s interest in the distinction between the endowed self, that self which is examined, and the ideal self, the goal of the ascetic activity.

This thesis offers an analysis of the vice tradition of the fourth-century monk Evagrius Ponticus. While Evagrius, like others before him, understands that virtue and vice have an affective component, and that these affections are reactions to mental images, for Evagrius these images are veridically thinner than what we find in earlier discussions of passion in ancient philosophy. As a result, vice is less a matter of false reasoning and false perception than it is a matter of the excessive dwelling on representations connected with events of one’s personal history, to the point that the passions aroused at the time of those events become globalized dispositions. Evagrius’s concern with how memories lead us to dwell on these “bad thoughts” proves to be point of contact with psychoanaly which many modern authors, including Michel Foucault, have detected; yet a close analysis of what Evagrius takes to be involved in self-examination reveals that Foucault’s account of the “technologies of the self” fails to take into account Evagrius’s interest in the distinction between the endowed self, that self which is examined, and the ideal self, the goal of the ascetic activity.

Moral philosophers like Martha Nussbaum, Philippa Foot, and Michael Weber argue for what I call the “Neo-Stoic Reading” of Nietzsche, which includes two claims: first, Nietzsche allegedly recommends the relentless pursuit of self-interest at the expense of other persons; second, he denies empathy any major role in the ethical life. I will argue that the Neo-Stoic view misses an important unifying theme in Nietzsche’s ethics and his criticism of morality—his investment in the value of honor—and that Nietzsche’s ethical recommendations involving empathy and even altruism can be better understood by situating them within an historical tradition of honor-based ethics.

Nathan Phillip Stout

<p>The Explanation Hypothesis is a psychological hypothesis about how people attribute moral responsibility. The hypothesis makes general claims about everyday thinking of moral responsibility and is also said to have important consequences for related philosophical issues. Since arguments in favor of the hypothesis are largely based on a number of intuitive cases, there is need to investigate whether it is supported by empirical evidence. In this study, the hypothesis was tested by means of quantitative experimental methods. The data were collected by conducting online surveys in which participants were introduced to a number of different scenarios. For each scenario, questions about moral responsibility were asked. Results provide general support for the Explanation Hypothesis and there are therefore more reasons to take its proposed consequences seriously.</p>