In one of a series of articles on philosophical medical ethics, Gillon rebuts the argument that moral claims are essentially different from scientific claims because scientific claims are objective and confirmable or refutable, while moral claims are subjective, unconfirmable, irrefutable, and their differences incapable of resolution. He contends that there is widespread agreement about many ...

Nurses are increasingly confronted with situations of moral difficulty, such as not to feed terminally ill patients, whistle blowing, or participation in termination of pregnancy. Most of these moral dilemmas are often analyzed using the principle-based approach which applies the four moral principles of justice, autonomy, beneficence, and non-malificence. In some instances, consequentialism is...

For a moral consequentialist, the connection between business ethics and quality of life is very close and direct. In general, moral philosophers may be divided into two very broad groups: deontologists and consequentialists. Deontologists hold that some human actions are inherently morally good or evil—for example, murder is inherently bad, whereas telling the truth is inherently good. Consequ...

Dual-process theories of moral judgment suggest that responses to moral dilemmas are guided by two moral principles: the principle of deontology states that the morality of an action depends on the intrinsic nature of the action (e.g., harming others is wrong regardless of its consequences); the principle of utilitarianism implies that the morality of an action is determined by its consequences...

HE purpose of this paper is to examine some of the basic terms in the discussion of 1 the theme of this symposium on 'Ethics and the practice of medicine'. These terms can be grouped under the headings of moral law and human rights; for if these two terms are defined a great many of the principles, whose application to medical practice is in question, will have been examined. A general paper li...

My aim in this paper is to develop the concept of moral economy by exploring how moral principles intertwine and interact with forms of economic organisation. Through applying a holistic moral economy framework (Bolton and Laaser, 2013), informed by the writings of Polanyi (1944, 1957), Thompson (1993) and Sayer (2000, 2005, 2011), this paper explores institutional variations in the moral econo...

A plausible philosophical characterization of moral reasoning need not be an oracle for the resolution of difficult moral questions for it to be a significant influence in how a person deliberates about such questions. Reflection upon a particular account may, for instance, have consequences for a person’s standing judgments concerning the kinds of consideration that are relevant for thinking a...

According to modern psychology, morality is a matter not only of attitudes towards moral principles but also of people's competence to utilize those principles. In a series of longitudinal and cross-cultural studies, comprising several thousand subjects, both aspects have been assessed simultaneously by using the Moral Judgment Test, based on the methodology of Experimental Questionnaire (EQ). ...