Morality and Socially Constructed Norms

Morality and Socially Constructed Norms
Title Morality and Socially Constructed Norms PDF eBook
Author Laura Valentini
Publisher Oxford University Press
Pages 247
Release 2023-10-26
Genre Philosophy
ISBN 019266073X

Download Morality and Socially Constructed Norms Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Observe social distancing. Tip your waiter. Give priority to the elderly. Stop at the red light. Pay your taxes. Do not chew with your mouth open. These are imperatives we face every day, imposed upon us by norms that happen to be generally accepted in our environment. Call these 'socially constructed norms'. A constant presence in our lives, these norms elicit mixed feelings. On the one hand, we treat them as valid standards of behaviour and respond to their violation with emotions such disapproval, resentment, and guilt. On the other hand, we look at them with suspicion: after all, they are arbitrary human constructs that may contribute to oppression and injustice. In light of this ambivalence, it is important to have a criterion telling us when, if ever, we are morally bound by socially constructed norms and when we should instead disregard them. Morality and Socially Constructed Norms systematically develops such a criterion. It traces the moral significance of those norms to the agential commitments that underpin them, and explains why those commitments ought to be respected, provided the content of the corresponding norms is consistent with independent moral constraints. The book then explores the implications of this view for three core questions in moral, legal, and political philosophy: the grounding of moral rights, the obligation to obey the law, and the wrong of sovereignty violations. Morality and Socially Constructed Norms shows how much progress can be made in normative theorizing when we give socially constructed norms their (moral) due.

Morality and Socially Constructed Norms

Morality and Socially Constructed Norms
Title Morality and Socially Constructed Norms PDF eBook
Author Laura Valentini
Publisher Oxford University Press
Pages 247
Release 2023-10-26
Genre Philosophy
ISBN 0192660721

Download Morality and Socially Constructed Norms Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Observe social distancing. Tip your waiter. Give priority to the elderly. Stop at the red light. Pay your taxes. Do not chew with your mouth open. These are imperatives we face every day, imposed upon us by norms that happen to be generally accepted in our environment. Call these 'socially constructed norms'. A constant presence in our lives, these norms elicit mixed feelings. On the one hand, we treat them as valid standards of behaviour and respond to their violation with emotions such disapproval, resentment, and guilt. On the other hand, we look at them with suspicion: after all, they are arbitrary human constructs that may contribute to oppression and injustice. In light of this ambivalence, it is important to have a criterion telling us when, if ever, we are morally bound by socially constructed norms and when we should instead disregard them. Morality and Socially Constructed Norms systematically develops such a criterion. It traces the moral significance of those norms to the agential commitments that underpin them, and explains why those commitments ought to be respected, provided the content of the corresponding norms is consistent with independent moral constraints. The book then explores the implications of this view for three core questions in moral, legal, and political philosophy: the grounding of moral rights, the obligation to obey the law, and the wrong of sovereignty violations. Morality and Socially Constructed Norms shows how much progress can be made in normative theorizing when we give socially constructed norms their (moral) due.

The Oxford Handbook of the Human Essence

The Oxford Handbook of the Human Essence
Title The Oxford Handbook of the Human Essence PDF eBook
Author Martijn van Zomeren
Publisher Oxford University Press
Pages 321
Release 2018
Genre Medical
ISBN 0190247576

Download The Oxford Handbook of the Human Essence Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Oxford Handbooks offer authoritative and up-to-date reviews of original research in a particular subject area. Specially commissioned chapters from leading figures in the discipline give critical examinations of the progress and direction of debates, as well as a foundation for future research. Oxford Handbooks provide scholars and graduate students with compelling new perspective upon a wide range of subjects in the humanities, social sciences, and sciences. Book jacket.

The Moral Background

The Moral Background
Title The Moral Background PDF eBook
Author Gabriel Abend
Publisher Princeton University Press
Pages 413
Release 2016-05-31
Genre Business & Economics
ISBN 0691171122

Download The Moral Background Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

In recent years, many disciplines have become interested in the scientific study of morality. However, a conceptual framework for this work is still lacking. In The Moral Background, Gabriel Abend develops just such a framework and uses it to investigate the history of business ethics in the United States from the 1850s to the 1930s. According to Abend, morality consists of three levels: moral and immoral behavior, or the behavioral level; moral understandings and norms, or the normative level; and the moral background, which includes what moral concepts exist in a society, what moral methods can be used, what reasons can be given, and what objects can be morally evaluated at all. This background underlies the behavioral and normative levels; it supports, facilitates, and enables them. Through this perspective, Abend historically examines the work of numerous business ethicists and organizations—such as Protestant ministers, business associations, and business schools—and identifies two types of moral background. "Standards of Practice" is characterized by its scientific worldview, moral relativism, and emphasis on individuals' actions and decisions. The "Christian Merchant" type is characterized by its Christian worldview, moral objectivism, and conception of a person's life as a unity. The Moral Background offers both an original account of the history of business ethics and a novel framework for understanding and investigating morality in general.

Unbecoming Subjects

Unbecoming Subjects
Title Unbecoming Subjects PDF eBook
Author Annika Thiem
Publisher
Pages 152
Release 2006
Genre Crimes against humanity
ISBN 9780823248582

Download Unbecoming Subjects Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Using the horrors of the war in Bosnia to develop meaningfully adequate accounts of evil within the context of war crimes and crimes against humanity, this book states that since the foundations of the social are found in human action, evil's assault on these foundations results in the demise of the social.

Normative Subjects

Normative Subjects
Title Normative Subjects PDF eBook
Author Meir Dan-Cohen
Publisher Oxford University Press
Pages 273
Release 2016
Genre Law
ISBN 0199985200

Download Normative Subjects Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Combining constructivist and hermeneutical themes, this book explores normative aspects of human self creation seen as a matter of fixing and elaborating the values and norms that shape human identity, individually and collectively. The book focuses especially on a conception of dignity as the value that accrues to us qua authors of the meanings constitutive of human life.

What's Wrong with Morality?

What's Wrong with Morality?
Title What's Wrong with Morality? PDF eBook
Author Charles Daniel Batson
Publisher Oxford University Press
Pages 273
Release 2016
Genre Business & Economics
ISBN 0199355576

Download What's Wrong with Morality? Book in PDF, Epub and Kindle

Most works on moral psychology consider morality an unalloyed good. Drawing primarily on social-psychological theory and research, this book looks at morality as a problem. The problem is that we often fail live up to our own moral standards. Why?