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Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons’ work implies four criteria thatmoralphenomenology must be capable of meeting if it is to be a viable field of study that can make a worthwhile contribution tomoral philosophy. It must be (a) about a unifed subject matter as well as being, (b) wide, (c) independent, and (d) robust. Contrary to some scepticism about the possibility or usefulness of this field, I suggest that these criteria can be met by elucidating (...) the very foundations ofmoral experience or what I call amoral ontology of the human person. I attempt to partially outline such an ontology by engaging with Robert Sokolowski'sphenomenology of the human person from amoral perspective. My analysis of Sokolowski's thought leads me to five core ideas of amoral ontology of the human person: well-being, virtue, freedom, responsibility, and phronesis. Though I do not by any means boast a completemoral ontology of the human person, I go on to demonstrate how the account I have presented, or something like it, can go a long way to helpingmoralphenomenology meet the criteria it requires to be a viable and worthwhile pursuit. (shrink)

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In this paper, I address the what, the how, and the why ofmoralphenomenology. I consider first the question What ismoralphenomenology?, secondly the question How to pursuemoralphenomenology?, and thirdly the question Why pursuemoralphenomenology? My treatment of these questions is preliminary and tentative, and is meant not so much to settle them as to point in their answers’ direction.

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Moralphenomenology is the dedicated study of the experiential dimension of ourmoral inner life – of the phenomenal character ofmoral mental states. Many different questions arise withinmoralphenomenology, but three stand out. The first concerns the scope ofmoral experience: How much of ourmoral mental life is experienced by us? The second concerns the nature ofmoral experience: What is it like to undergo the various kinds of (...)moral experience we have? The third concerns the theoretical ​significance ofmoral experience: How might our understanding ofmoral experience impact central debates inmoral philosophy? This entry considers each of these in turn. (shrink)

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In this short paper, I argue that thephenomenology ofmoral judgment is not unified across different areas of morality (involving harm, hierarchy, reciprocity, and impurity) or even across different relations to harm. Common responses, such as thatmoral obligations are experienced as felt demands based on a sense of what is fitting, are either too narrow to cover allmoral obligations or too broad to capture anything important and peculiar to morality. The disunity of (...) class='Hi'>moralphenomenology is, nonetheless, compatible with some uses ofmoralphenomenology formoral epistemology and with the objectivity and justifiability of parts of morality. (shrink)

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Do the introspectively ascertainable aspects of ourmoral experiences carry ontological objective purport—portraying reality as containing worldlymoral properties and facts, thus supportingmoral realism? Horgan and Timmons answer this question in the negative, arguing that their non-realist view, cognitivist expressivism, can accommodate the introspectively ascertainablemoralphenomenology just as well as realism can—where accommodating thephenomenology means accounting for it without construing it as misleading or erroneous. If sound, this constitutes an important defense (...) of cognitivist expressivism, undermining a central attraction of realism. They thus pose a challenge to realists to identify any aspects ofmoralphenomenology that cannot be accommodated by expressivism and instead favor realism. I here take up that challenge, in two stages. First, I argue that cognitivist expressivism does not after all capture certain important aspects of thephenomenology of the sort ofmoral experience on which they focus, while realism does. This argument does not depend on claiming that thephenomenology has ontological objective purport. The claim so far is just that there is more to categorical authoritativeness than the expressivist account captures, though this leaves the door open to Kantian rationalism as well as realism. Second, I will go on to argue that although some aspects ofmoralphenomenology may only point to this broader range of views, others do specifically carry ontological objective purport and thus directly support realism insofar as we take thephenomenology seriously. (shrink)

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This paper distinguishes between two senses of the term “phenomenology ”: a narrow sense and a broader sense. It claims, with particular reference to themoral sphere, that the narrow meaning ofmoralphenomenology cannot stand alone, that is, thatmoralphenomenology in the narrow sense entailsmoral intentionality. The paper proceeds by examining different examples of the axiological and volitional experiences of both virtuous and dutiful agents, and it notes the correlation (...) between the phenomenal and intentional differences belonging to these experiences. The paper concludes with some reflections on how the focus on the broader sense of “phenomenology ” serves to provide a more precise sense of what we might mean by “moralphenomenology.”. (shrink)

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Moralphenomenology, as i will use the term in this paper, is the study of our experience of morality. It is the study of morality “as experienced from the first-person point of view,” 1 the study of the “what-it-is-like features of concretemoral experiences,” 2 the study of introspectively accessible features that can be discerned by “a direct examination of the data of men’smoral consciousness.” 3A crucial part ofmoralphenomenology is the study (...) of what it is like to make amoral judgment. This part ofmoralphenomenology seeks to delineate the introspectively accessible mental features that are essentially involved in judging that an act ought or ought not to be performed, and in judging that a person is virtuous or vicious.An adequatemoral theory must account for the phenomenological facts. It must accommodate or explain in some way the introspectively accessible mental features essentially involved in ourmoral experience. An adequatemoral theory must cohere with what it is like to makemoral judgments.It has been common for philosophers to claim that theirmoral theories are superior to others because theirmoral theories better account for our experience ofmoral judgment. In sections 2 and 3 of this paper, I will show how Francis Hutcheson and David Hume used phenomenological claims of this sort to argue that their sentimentalistmoral theories were superior to rationalist and egoist rivals.But Hutcheson’s and Hume’s phenomenological arguments do not succeed, or so I will argue in section 4. They fail to show that thephenomenology ofmoral judgment constitutes a strong reason for us to accept sentimentalism and reject rationalism and egoism. I think, moreover, that this failure is the typical fate ofmoral phenomenological arguments in general. This is because I think the introspectively. (shrink)

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In the philosophy of mind, the study of mental life has tended to focus on three central aspects of mental states: their representational content, their functional role, and their phenomenal character. The representational content of a mental state is what the state represents, what it is about; its functional role is the role it plays within the functional organization of the subject’s overall psychology; its phenomenal character is the experiential or subjective quality that goes with what it is like, from (...) the inside, to be in it. The study of this third aspect of mental life is known asphenomenology. Thus,moralphenomenology is the study of the experiential dimension of ourmoral inner life – of the phenomenal character ofmoral mental states. (shrink)

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This dissertation offers aphenomenology of that mode of self-interpretation in which it becomes possible for an interpreter to intentionally participate in the production ofmoral norms to which the interpreter himself or herself feels bound. Part One draws on Richard Rorty's notion of the "ironist" in order to thematize the phenomenon I call "moral friction"; a condition in which an interpreter becomes explicitly aware of the historical and cultural contingencies of their ownmoral vocabularies, practices, (...) and concerns and as a result find themselves incapable of feeling the normative weight implicit in these. Part Two draws on Heidegger's existential analytic of human being, Gadamer's development of HermeneuticPhenomenology, and Hegel's notion of "sublation" in order to map how novel interpretations can irreversibly displace the coherence of older interpretations. I call this form of interpretation "moralphenomenology." Finally, in Part Three, I utilize a selectivephenomenology of musical improvisation to plot the unique temporal orientation of self-interpretation that results from intentionally deploying this irreversible displacement of older interpretations that involve normativemoral implications. I call the form of life that is marked by this hermeneutic mode the "improviser." The result is a description of a form of life in which it becomes possible to explicitly participate in the production ofmoral norms within a historical and culturally contingent context that nevertheless preserves standards of rational justification for normativemoral judgment without the need for atemporal first principles. The availability of this mode of self-interpretation displaces the sharp distinction between non-normative descriptivephenomenology and normativemoral reasoning by placing the latter within a non-teleological historical practice that engages in the production of interpretations which irreversibly displace older interpretations--a practice that is governed by the critical cultivation of contingentmoral norms within the open investigation into the good life for human being. (shrink)

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Manymoral philosophers in the Western tradition have used phenomenological claims as starting points for philosophical inquiry; aspects ofmoralphenomenology have often been taken to be anchors to which any adequate account of morality must remain attached. This paper raises doubts about whethermoral phenomena are universal and robust enough to serve the purposes to whichmoral philosophers have traditionally tried to put them. Persons’ experiences of morality may vary in a way that greatly (...) limits the extent to whichmoralphenomenology can constitute a reason to favor onemoral theory over another.Phenomenology may not be able to serve as a pre-theoretic starting point or anchor in the consideration of rivalmoral theories becausemoralphenomenology may itself be theory-laden. These doubts are illustrated through an examination of howmoralphenomenology is used in the thought of Ralph Cudworth, Samuel Clarke, Joseph Butler, Francis Hutcheson, and Søren Kierkegaard. (shrink)

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Moralphenomenology is concerned with the elements of one'smoral experiences that are generally available to introspection. Some philosophers argue that one'smoral experiences, such as experiencing oneself as being morally obligated to perform some action on some occasion, contain elements that (1) are available to introspection and (2) carry ontological objectivist purportargument from phenomenological introspection.neutrality thesisthe phenomenological data regarding one'smoral experiences that is available to introspection is neutral with respect to the issue of (...) whether such experiences carry ontological objectivist purport. (shrink)

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ABSTRACTThis article analyzes themoral-psychological stakes of Jay Garfield's reading of Buddhist ethics asmoralphenomenology and applies that thesis to the pedagogical mechanisms of the Tibetan Buddhist lojong tradition. I argue thatmoralphenomenology requires that the practitioner work on a part of her subjectivity not ordinarily accessible to agential action: the phenomenological structures that condition experience. This makesmoralphenomenology a highly ambitious ethical project. I turn to lojong as an example (...) of a Buddhist practice that claims to accomplish this ambitious task. As a training toward the ethical ideal of bodhicitta, lojong utilizes practices of meditation and contemplation to disrupt the habitual, affective responses that arise from the conventional phenomenological orientation to the world, replacing them with imagined responses of radically compassionate altruism. This ultimately inculcates a transformation of the phenomenological structures that underlie both ethical action and conscious experience, fulfilling the aim ofmoralphenomenology. (shrink)

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In a series of publications, Tamar Gendler has argued for a distinction between belief and what she calls ?alief?. Gendler's argument for the distinction is a serviceability argument: the distinction is indispensable for explaining a whole slew of phenomena, typically involving ?belief-behaviour mismatch?. After embedding Gendler's distinction in a dual-process model ofmoral cognition, I argue here that the distinction also suggests a possible (dis)solution of what is perhaps the organizing problem of contemporarymoral psychology: the apparent tension (...) between the inherently motivational role ofmoral judgments and their manifestly objectivisticphenomenology. I argue thatmoral judgments come in two varieties,moral aliefs andmoral beliefs, and it is only the former that are inherently motivating and only the latter that have an objectivisticphenomenology. This serves to both bolster the case for the alief/belief distinction and shed new light on otherwise well-trodden territory in metaethics. I start with an exposition of themoral-psychological problem (?1) and a discussion of Gendler's alief/belief distinction (?2). I then apply the latter tomoral judgments in an attempt to dissolve the former (?3). I close with discussion of the upshot for our understanding ofmoral thought,moral motivation, andmoralphenomenology (?4). (shrink)

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This article puts Buddhistmoralphenomenology in dialogue with ethical veganism to propose a new way of thinking about animal ethics. It first defines ethical veganism and outlines Buddhistmoralphenomenology before articulating what amoral phenomenological approach to ethical veganism looks like. It then provides some examples of this approach to ethical veganism in both Tibetan and Western settings to demonstrate its viability. It concludes by thinking through some of the implications of a (...) class='Hi'>moral phenomenological approach to ethical veganism and argues thatmoralphenomenology is an exemplary mode of understanding and establishing ethical veganism. (shrink)

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Many researchers inmoral psychology approach the topic ofmoral judgment in terms of value—assessing outcomes of behaviors as either harmful or helpful which makes the behaviors wrong or right, respectively. However, recent advances in motivation science suggest that other motives may be at work as well—namely truth (wanting to establish what is real) and control (wanting to manage what happens). In this review, we argue that the epistemic experiences of observers of (im)moral behaviors, and the perceived (...) epistemic experiences of those observed, serve as a groundwork for understanding how truth and control motives are implicated in themoral judgment process. We also discuss relations between this framework and recent work from across the field ofmoral psychology, as well as implications for future research. (shrink)

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To explain evaluation we need to take into account the perspective of an evaluator, we need to turn to phenomenological approach inmoral theory. This is the approach proposed by John McDowell. According to him, we need to approach to the question ‘How to live right?’ via the concept of a virtuous person. To lendsupport to his views McDowell employs Wittgensteinean philosophy that could be a good basis for establishingmoralphenomenology as a metaethical approach to (...) class='Hi'>moral phenomena. First of all, introducing the notion of language-game we can provide a metaethical explanation ofmoral terms referring to roles they play in certain language-games. From this point of view there is no difference betweenmoral terms and other terms. But understanding a language-game not just as a model of a certain kind of behavior formed by external observer, but as a form of life we can capturemoral phenomena form within. The language-game considered as the form of life allows us to discern certain phenomena asmoral ones. That is why trying to answer the question about right livingfrom the virtuous person perspective we should be involved in a language game that carvesmoral phenomena from the brute stuff of the world and forms a certain kind of sensitivity in us to these properties. Wittgensteinean philosophy also allows us to answer the question: how can mere knowledge of situation make us behave? Following Wittgensteinean ideas, we can presentmoral knowledge as something uncodifiable, which is exhibited in our everyday life, in our way of living and ‘going on doing the same thing’. It is impossible to understand this knowledge from the external point of view. To see how this knowledge can motivate someone, we need to capture the way the person appreciates a particular situation. (shrink)

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In the eyes of many “classical” phenomenologists, Kantianism has seemed to invite individuals to leave the rich, complexly motivated environment of lived experience in favor of a shadowy, formal kingdom of abstract duties and rights. Yet there have been notable attempts within the phenomenological tradition to articulate a richer vision of Kantianmoral consciousness and to exhibit, from a first-person perspective, the shape of mental life and the standing dispositions that befit membership in a Kantian kingdom of ends. Here (...) I offer two such competing paradigms of Kantianmoral consciousness: on the one hand, the responsive, situational Kantianmoral consciousness that recent commentators have reconstructed from Martin Heidegger’s work, and on the other hand, the very different, explicitly cosmopolitan Kantianmoral consciousness traced in Hannah Arendt’s conception of an “enlarged mentality.” While each is arguably a legitimately Kantian view, these alternative models ofmoral consciousness offer considerably different spirits of Kantianism with different benefits and detriments, and each places very different cognitive andmoral burdens on agents. (shrink)

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El presente artículo tiene como objetivo señalar el procedimiento, que Jean Paul Sartre lleva a cabo en su primera obra filosófica, La trascendencia del ego. A nuestro juicio, esta obra al igual que El ser y la nada tiene como fundamento metodológico la llamada “ontología fenomenológica”. Con el fin de fundamentar esta tesis señalamos que el ego trascendente y el cogito tienen el mismo sentido ontológico que el ser-en-sí y ser-para-sí.

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When we talk about natural beauty perhaps we think of the products or forces that we commonly associate with nature: rivers, birds, trees, the sky, the moon, the sun, and so on. That is, objects that, we assume, have not been generated by human technique such as chairs, computer tables or works of art. However, this presentation will approach a non-objectifying perspective of nature. Trying to return to Kant’s and Schiller’s interpretation of beauty, that of both art and nature, I (...) intend to take a step back and remain in the consideration of the judgment of taste itself, parenthesizing to which object it refers. From the perspectives of the Husserlian concept of modification of neutrality and the Kantian notion of disinterestedness, we will consider that the concept of nature in Kant’s and Schiller’s aesthetics does not refer to the empirical objects that we commonly associate with nature but to a specific mode of appearing exclusive to the aesthetic dimension and different from that developed from the empirical sciences. Finally, we will see how these considerations can be transferred to other phenomenologies of art such as Dufrenne’s. (shrink)

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This work proposes that pain meets the requirements of being characterized as a secondary quality, as it covers, like a color, a determined extension. The argument seeks to establish a literal pain-color analogy through an inquiry into the intensity and location of the pain. From the classic intensity/location relationship reported by patients with acute appendicitis, three degrees of pain are distinguished: mild, moderate, and severe. The objective is only achieved by examining the Body’s extensional determinations (primary quality) insofar as each (...) of these degrees of pain covers three particular measures. Once these three measures have been explored according to the perforation process (tissue damage), the work ends by identifying pain as a transcendent moment. (shrink)

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This paper discusses the issue of Germanmoral responsibility for the Holocaust in the light of the thesis of Daniel Goldhagen and others that inherited negative stereotypes of Jews and Jewishness were prime causal factors contributing to the genocide. It is argued that in so far as the Germans of the Third Reich were dupes of an ''hallucinatory ideology,'' they strikingly exemplify the ''paradox ofmoral luck'' outlined by Thomas Nagel, that people are not morally responsible for what (...) they are and are not responsible for. The implications of this paradox for the appraisal of German guilt are explored in relation to the views of a number of recent writers on the Holocaust. (shrink)

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Our pains can be more or less intense, our mental imagery can be more or less vivid, our perceptual experiences can be more or less striking. These degrees of intensity of conscious experiences are all manifestations of a phenomenal property I call mental strength. In this article, I argue that mental strength is a domain-general phenomenal magnitude; in other words, it is a phenomenal quantity shared by all conscious experiences that explains their degree of felt intensity. Mental strength has been (...) largely overlooked in favor of mental states’ type, representational contents, domain-specificphenomenology, or processes such as attention. Considering mental strength in our reflections about the mind illuminates debates about the relation of representational contents and phenomenal character, and it also helps address questions about the structure and functions of consciousness. Mental strength provides a unifying construct to model what is shared in thephenomenology of different types of conscious experiences. (shrink)

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Some thoughts on ourmoral experience andmoralphenomenology, asking whether it can be justified or whether it is misleading.

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Many philosophers hold thatmoral agency is defined by an agent’s capacity for rational reflection and self-governance. It is only through the exercise of such capacities, these philosophers contend, that one’s actions can be judged to be of distinctivelymoral value. Themoralphenomenology of the Danish philosopher and theologian K. E. Løgstrup, currently enjoying a revival of interest amongst Anglo-Americanmoral philosophers, is an exception to this view. Under the auspices of his signature theory (...) of the ‘sovereign expressions of life,’ Løgstrup provides a richmoralphenomenology aimed at establishing the ethical value of ‘spontaneous,’ non-deliberative actions, such as those exemplified in the showing of trust and acts of mercy. In this thesis, my aim is to investigate what mode ofmoral agency, if any, is compatible with Løgstrup’sphenomenology of the sovereign expressions of life. I argue that Løgstrup’smoralphenomenology is compatible with a distinctive medio-passive mode of agency. According to this conception ofmoral agency, the subject’s agency is constituted not through her capacity to stand back and make a judgment on how to act, but rather in the way the subject comports herself in relation to situations and encounters that are experienced first-personally as overwhelming and encompassing. I will proceed by providing detailed analyses of the core aspects of Løgstrup’smoralphenomenology and his theory of the sovereign expressions of life. In the process, I will elucidate the decisive influence that thinkers such as Martin Heidegger, Martin Luther and Søren Kierkegaard had on Løgstrup’s way of thinking about ethics. Thus, in this thesis my aim is to contribute both to Løgstrup scholarship and to central on-going debates inmoral philosophy and the philosophy of action. (shrink)

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Recently, a number of phenomenological approaches to experiential justification emerged according to which an experience's justificatory force is grounded in the experience’s distinctivephenomenology. The basic idea is that certain experiences exhibit a presentivephenomenology and that they are a source of immediate justification precisely by virtue of their presentivephenomenology. Such phenomenological approaches usually focus on perceptual experiences and mathematical intuitions. In this paper, I aim at a phenomenological approach to ethical experiences. I shall show that (...) we need to make a distinction between evaluative experiences directed at concrete cases and ethical intuitions directed at general principles. The focus will be on evaluative experiences. I argue that evaluative experiences constitute a sui generis type of experience that gain their justificatory force by virtue of their presentive evaluativephenomenology. In Sect. 1, I introduce and motivate the phenomenological idea that certain experiences exhibit a justification-conferringphenomenology. In Sect. 4, I apply this idea to morally evaluative experiences. In Sect. 5, I suggest that certain epistemic intuitions should be considered epistemically evaluative experiences and I outline a strong parallelism between ethics and epistemology. (shrink)

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Background: In Hospital Emergency Department and Emergency Medical Services professionals experience situations in which they face difficulties or barriers to know patient’s advance directives and implement them. Objectives: To analyse the barriers, facilitators, and ethical conflicts perceived by health professionals derived from the management of advance directives in emergency services. Research design, participants, and context: This is a qualitative phenomenological study conducted with purposive sampling including a population of nursing and medical professionals linked to Hospital Emergency Department and Emergency Medical (...) Services. Three focus groups were formed, totalling 24 participants. We performed an inductive-type thematic discourse analysis. Ethical considerations: This study was approved by ethical committees of Ethical Commitee of Clínic Hospital (Barcelona) and Comittee of Emergency Medical Services (Barcelona). The participants received information about the purpose of the study. Patients’ anonymity and willingness to participate in the study were guaranteed. Findings: There were four types of barriers that hindered the proper management of patients’ advance directives in Hospital Emergency Department and Emergency Medical Services: personal and professional, family members, organisational and structural, and those derived from the health system. These barriers caused ethical conflicts and hindered professionals’ decision-making. Discussion: These results are in line with those of previous studies and indicate that factors such as gender, professional category, and years of experience, in addition to professionals’ beliefs and the opinions of colleagues and family members, can also influence the professionals’ final decisions. Conclusion: The different strategies described in this study can contribute to the development of health policies and action protocols to help reduce both the barriers that hinder the correct management and implementation of advance directives and the ethical conflicts generated. (shrink)

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In this study, I examine the significance of the trace and its legibility in the phenomenologies of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, showing that this trope plays a more significant role in Merleau-Ponty's thinking than has been recognized heretofore and that it constitutes a crucial point of contact between Merleau-Ponty and Levinas. But this point of contact is also, in both their philosophies, a site where their thinking is compelled to confront its limits and the enigmas involved in the description of the (...) topography of a hermeneutical flesh. It is argued that the significance of the trace consists in its alterity, its registering and inscribing in the very matter of the flesh an imperative spiritual assignment: the morally binding hold of the other person on my capacity to be responsive to the other's needs and bear responsibility for the other's welfare. The retrieval or recuperation of the trace, which, I argue, is inscribed as a certain predisposition in what, borrowing from Merleau-Ponty, we might call the prepersonal topology of the flesh, would thus constitute a task of the utmost importance for the formation of themoral self. However, given the paradoxical temporality of the trace and the hermeneutical nature of its legibility, the retrieval of the trace is not actually possible. Nevertheless, the attempt to retrieve it - one's commitment to retrieving it - is an absolutely imperative existential task, determining the character of themoral self. In both Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, however, the problematic nature of this recuperative project is manifested in the ambiguous, equivocal modality of their rhetoric, supposedly engaged in the phenomenological description of the primordial 'inscription', but oscillating, in fact, undecidably between descriptive and prescriptive, constative and performative, literal and metaphorical modes of discourse. It is argued that this, far from being a fault, is necessitated by the hermeneutic nature of the trace, which requires that the description be invocative and evocative, provoking a deep transformation in experience that would make the description true. It accordingly becomes clear that and why themoral phenomenologies of Merleau-Ponty and Levinas, depending as they must on a metaphorical interaction between language and experience, cannot function within the framework of the traditional correspondence theory of truth. (shrink)

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Through the concept of enjoyment in Levinas, this paper examines the phenomenological and ontological dimension of everyday aesthetics. Enjoyment, in Levinas, forms an essential element in the constitution of the subjectivity of the human being and is no longer to be seen as a moment of ‘inauthenticity’ or ‘alienation’. The experience of the objects of everyday experience is not related to that of objects of representation or of tools, but rather to that of a system of nourishment into which the (...) subject is integrated, as in an ‘element’ or ‘atmosphere’. This constitutive closeness of enjoyment indicates the fundamental difference between what we understand as everyday aesthetics and other aesthetics characterised by contemplation or disinterest. (shrink)

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The nurse'smoral competences in the management of situations which present ethical implications are less investigated in literature than other ethical problems related to clinical nursing.Phenomenology affirms that emotional warmth is the first fundamental attitude as well as the premise of any ethical reasoning. Nevertheless, it is not clear how and when this could be confirmed in situations where the effect of emotions on the nurse's decisional process is undiscovered. To explore the processes through which situations of (...)moral distress are determined for the nurses involved in nursing situations, a phenomenological–hermeneutic analysis of a nurse's report of an experience lived by her as amoral distress situation has been conducted. Nursing emerges as a relational doctrine that requires the nurse to have different degrees of personal involvement, the integration between logical–formal thinking and narrative thinking, the perception of the salience of the given situation also through the interpretation and management of one's own emotions, and the capacity to undergo a process of co‐construction of shared meanings that the others might consider adequate for the resolution of her problem.Moral action requires the nurse to think constantly about the important things that are happening in a nursing situation. Commitment towards practical situations is directed to training in order to promote the nurse's reflective ability towards finding salience in nursing situations, but it is also directed to the management of nursing assistance and human resources for the initial impact that this reflexive ability has on patients' and their families' lives and on their need to be heard and assisted. The only case analysed does not allow generalizations. Further research is needed to investigate how feelings generated by emotional acceptance influence ethical decision making andmoral distress in nursing situations. (shrink)

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This book elaborates amoral realism of phenomenological inspiration by introducing the idea thatmoral experience, primordially, constitutes a perceptual grasp of actions and of their solid traces in the world. The main thesis is that, before any reference to values or to criteria about good and evil—that is, before any reference to specific ethical outlooks—one should explain the very materiality of what necessarily constitutes the ‘moral world’. These claims are substantiated by means of a text- centered (...) interpretation of Aristotle’s _Nicomachean Ethics_ in dialogue with contemporarymoral realism. The book concludes with a critique of Heidegger’s, Gadamer’s and Arendt’s approaches to Aristotle’s ethics. (shrink)

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Moralphenomenology is (roughly) the study of those features of occurrent mental states withmoral significance which are accessible through direct introspection, whether or not such states possess phenomenal character – a what-it-is-likeness. In this paper, as the title indicates, we introduce and make prefatory remarks aboutmoralphenomenology and its significance for ethics. After providing a brief taxonomy of types ofmoral experience, we proceed to consider questions about the commonality within and distinctiveness (...) of such experiences, with an eye on some of the main philosophical issues in ethics and howmoralphenomenology might be brought to bear on them. In discussing such matters, we consider some of the doubts aboutmoralphenomenology and its value to ethics that are brought up by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Michael Gill in their contributions to this issue. (shrink)

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Our pains can be more or less intense, our mental imagery can be more or less vivid, our perceptual experiences can be more or less striking. These degrees of intensity of conscious experiences are all manifestations of a phenomenal property I call mental strength. In this article, I argue that mental strength is a domain-general phenomenal magnitude; in other words, it is a phenomenal quantity shared by all conscious experiences that explains their degree of felt intensity. Mental strength has been (...) largely overlooked in favor of mental states’ type, representational contents, domain-specificphenomenology, or processes such as attention. Considering mental strength in our reflections about the mind illuminates debates about the relation of representational contents and phenomenal character, and it also helps address questions about the structure and functions of consciousness. Mental strength provides a unifying construct to model what is shared in thephenomenology of different types of conscious experiences. (shrink)

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Themoral presentation: an essay on Merleau-Ponty's notion of time in thePhenomenology of Perception: The purpose of this essay is to investigate the notion of memory in Merleau-Ponty, suggesting a possible interpretation of the time and memory within Merleau-Ponty’s genetic phenomenological analysis. Ultimately, our hypothesis is that Merleau-Ponty’s understanding of the problem of representation and perception - particularly the problem of retention - places an ethical ground in perception. We will suggest that the phenomenological approach to memory (...) might pave a different undertaking of morals as constructed in the living-present. Our objective is then to point amoral dimension to the process of presentation-representation that happens in consciousness, and establish that our way into the comprehension of values has both a passive and active dimension that is often underdeveloped in studies of how we establishmoral and political convictions. Keywords: Time, Memory, Representation, Perception, Ethics A presentaçãomoral: um ensaio sobre a noção de tempo de Merleau-Ponty na Fenomenologia da Percepção Resumo: O propósito desse ensaio é instigar a ideia de memória em Merleau-Ponty, sugerindo uma possível interpretação de tempo e memória dentro da análise genética-fenomenológica de Merleau-Ponty. Em última medida, nossa hipótese é que o entendimento de Merleau-Ponty sobre o problema da representação e da percepção - particularmente o problema da retenção - coloca um fundamento ético para a percepção. Nós iremos sugerir que a abordagem fenomenológica para a memória pode nos dar um diferente modo de análise damoral enquanto construída no presente-vivido. Nosso objetivo é então apontar para uma dimensãomoral para o processo de apresentação-representação que acontece na consciência e estabelecê-lo como um caminho para nossa representação consciente, entendendo que nosso modo de compreensão tem tanto uma dimensão intencionalmente ativa quanto passiva que é frequentemente pouco desenvolvida em estudos sobre nossos estabelecimento de convicções morais e políticas. Palavras chaves: Tempo, Memória, Representação, Percepção, Ética La presentaciónmoral: un ensayo sobre la noción de tiempo de Merleau-Ponty en la Fenomenología de la Percepción Resumen: El propósito de este ensayo es instigar la idea de memoria en Merleau-Ponty, sugiriendo una posible interpretación del tiempo y la memoria dentro del análisis genético-fenomenológico de Merleau-Ponty. En última instancia, nuestra hipótesis es que la comprensión de Merleau-Ponty del problema de la representación y la percepción, particularmente el problema de la retención, sienta una base ética para la percepción. Sugeriremos que el enfoque fenomenológico de la memoria puede darnos un modo diferente de análisismoral a medida que se integra en el presente. Nuestro objetivo es, entonces, señalar una dimensiónmoral al proceso de presentación-representación que tiene lugar en la conciencia y establecerlo como un camino hacia nuestra representación consciente, entendiendo que nuestro modo de comprensión tiene una dimensión intencionalmente activa y pasiva que a menudo se entiende mal. desarrollado en estudios de nuestro establecimiento de creencias morales y políticas. Palavras clave: Tiempo, Memoria, Representación, Percepción, Ética Data de registro: 03/09/2019 Data de aceite: 22/07/2020. (shrink)

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Bodhicaryåvatåra was composed by the Buddhist monk scholar Íåntideva at Nalandå University in India sometime during the 8th Century CE. It stands as one the great classics of world philosophy and of Buddhist literature, and is enormously influential in Tibet, where it is regarded as the principal source for the ethical thought of Mahåyåna Buddhism. The title is variously translated, most often as A Guide to the Bodhisattva’s Way of Life or Engaging in the Bodhisattva Deeds, translations that follow the (...) canonical Tibetan translation of the title of the book (Byang chub sems pa’i spyod pa la ‘jug pa) and the commentarial tradition of Tibet. But that translation itself is a bit of a gloss on the original Sanskrit, and I think that a more natural English rendering of the Sanskrit title is simply How to Lead an Awakened Life, and that indeed describes the content of the text admirably. Taking this as the title of the text might also issue in a kind of gestalt shift in our view of the text, allowing us to see it not so much as a characterization of the extraordinarymoral life of a saint, but as a guide tomoral development open to any of us. So, let’s take that as the English title for now. (shrink)

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In this paper I argue that a phenomenological account ofmoral sense-bestowal can provide valuable insight into the possibility ofmoral dilemmas. I propose an account ofmoral sense-bestowal that is grounded in thephenomenology of expression that Maurice Merleau-Ponty developed throughout the course of his philosophical work, and most explicitly in the period immediately following the publication ofPhenomenology of Perception. Based on this Merleau-Pontian account ofmoral sense-bestowal, I defend the view that (...) there are genuinemoral dilemmas, i.e., that we can be faced with situations of conflicting oughts that we cannot resolve withoutmoral remainder. (shrink)

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Moral judgment commonly depends on intuition. It is also true, though less widely agreed, that ethical theory depends on it. The nature and epistemic status of intuition have long been concerns of philosophy, and, with the increasing importance of ethical intuitionism as a major position in ethics, they are receiving much philosophical attention. There is growing agreement that intuition conceived as a kind of seeming is essential for both the justification ofmoral judgment and the confirmation of ethical (...) theories. This paper describes several importantly different kinds of intuition, particularly the episodic kinds often called seemings. This is done partly by sketching numerous examples of intuition. Intuitive seemings andmoral judgments based on them differ in content, basis, epistemic authority, andphenomenology. The paper explores these four dimensions of intuition and, in doing so, comparesmoral intuition withmoral perception. The overall aim is to clarifymoralphenomenology both descriptively and epistemologically and to support the view that intuitions are often discriminative responses to experience and have justificatory power analogous to the power of sense-perceptions. (shrink)

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The aim of this study is to explore the relationship between affectivity andmoral experience from a phenomenological perspective. I will start by showing how in a phenomenologically oriented account emotions can be conceived as intentional evaluative feelings which play a role in bothmoral epistemology and the motivation ofmoral behaviour. I will then move to discuss a particular kind of affect, "existential feelings" (Ratcliffe in Journal of Consciousness Studies 12(8–10), 43–60, 2005, 2008), which has not (...) been considered so far in the discourse onmoral and affective experience. Relying on the notion of pre-intentionality through which Ratcliffe characterizes existential feelings (Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 53(6), 602–626, 2010) and on some insights into the relationship between affectivity and ethics developed by De Monticelli (2003, 2006), I suggest that key to the role played by existential feelings inmoral experience is that they determine the kinds of evaluations that it is possible for us to make and the range of our possibilities of action. I then illustrate and further develop this idea through a phenomenological analysis of some forms of psychopathological experience. More specifically, by considering some experiential features of depression and borderline personality disorder, I claim that, by acquiring an existential character, emotions such as guilt, feelings of isolation, anger and shame can radically alter the structure of the individual evaluative perspective, having a deep impact on bothmoral judgements and behaviours. (shrink)

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Do the various ascriptions of “violence,” e.g., to rape, logical reasoning, racist legislation, unqualified statements, institutions of class and/or gender inequity, etc., mean something identically the same, something analogous, or equivocal and context-bound? This paper argues for both an analogous sense as well as an exemplary essence and finds support in Aristotle’s theory of anger as, as Sokolowski has put it, a form ofmoral annihilation, culminating in a level of rage that crosses a threshold. Here we adopt Sartre’s (...) analysis of the “threshold of violence” as indicating a basic “existential” possibility wherein persons may and do adopt a posture of anti-god. This has considerable symmetry with the mythic and theological figure in the Abrahamic religions who is called “Lucifer.” This personage, at a unique timeless moment, found himself empowered to assume the right to exercise an infinite will-act which tolerated no superior normative perspective. I argue that this mythic stance is a live option for persons. Further, modern day nation-state military preparedness, where nuclear weaponry is a major tool of foreign policy, is a way of putting on ice and holding in reserve, but button ready, the onto-logical madness of the Luciferian moment. (shrink)

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