Cultural Context and Moral Responsibility

Ethics

Volumn 107, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 670-684

  Isaacs, Tracy ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0009072631     PISSN: 00141704     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/233765     Document Type: Article

References (29)

1. Cheshire Calhoun, "Responsibility and Reproach," Ethics 99 (1989): 389-406, p. 389.
2. Michele Moody-Adams, "Culture, Responsibility, and Affected Ignorance," Ethics 104 (1994): 291-309.
3. Ibid.; Calhoun.
4. Susan Wolf, "Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility," in Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions: New Essays in Moral Psychology, ed. Ferdinand Schoeman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 46-61, and Freedom within Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
5. Susan Wolf, "Sanity and the Metaphysics of Responsibility," in Responsibility, Character, and the Emotions: New Essays in Moral Psychology, ed. Ferdinand Schoeman (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 46-61, and Freedom within Reason (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).
6. Moody-Adams, p. 294.
7. Ibid., p. 296.
8. Ibid.
9. Ibid., p. 303.
10. Ibid.
11. Ibid., p. 306.
12. Owen Flanagan, Varieties of Moral Personality: Ethics and Psychological Realism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), pp. 300-301.
13. I owe this point to Michael Milde.
14. Calhoun, p. 394.
15. Ibid., p. 396.
16. Carol Gilligan, In a Different Voice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982).
17. Calhoun, p. 398.
18. Here it will be necessary to examine empirically the potential for individuals to acquire new perspectives, and the psychological limits facing them. Evidence from our ordinary experience suggests that shifts in perspective are possible. Ultimately, empirical evidence documenting the potential for and limits of this kind of perceptual shift ought to be consulted. But realism and optimism both suggest that human agents have a great deal of potential in this area, though it is obviously not easy for us to make these changes.
19. Calhoun, p. 402.
20. Ibid., p. 405.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid., p. 390.
23. Vicki Igneski first brought this concern to my attention.
24. This difficulty was raised in a very helpful way by Eric Lewis in the discussion period following my presentation of this work at McGill University.
25. Calhoun, p. 406.
26. Compare Thomas Nagel's discussion of "luck in circumstances" in "Moral Luck," in his Mortal Questions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979).
27. Discussions of this distinction occur, not exclusively, in Peter Railton, "Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality," Philosophy and Public Affairs 13 (1984): 134-71; W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930); Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (1907; reprint, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), pp. 207-10.
28. Discussions of this distinction occur, not exclusively, in Peter Railton, "Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality," Philosophy and Public Affairs 13 (1984): 134-71; W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930); Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (1907; reprint, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), pp. 207-10.
29. Discussions of this distinction occur, not exclusively, in Peter Railton, "Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demands of Morality," Philosophy and Public Affairs 13 (1984): 134-71; W. D. Ross, The Right and the Good (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1930); Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics, 7th ed. (1907; reprint, Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), pp. 207-10.