the foundation of most intellectual discourse is western-centric to the exclusion of other views. this includes ideal patterns of social interaction, preference for aesthetic, accepted norms and values, and the concepts of dignity, respectability, morality and ethics. such a position is culturally myopic. western cultural influence colors all of them including moral precepts. the assumption is ...

This report documents the programme of, and outcomes from, the Dagstuhl Seminar 16222 on “Engineering Moral Agents – from Human Morality to Artificial Morality”. Artificial morality is an emerging area of research within artificial intelligence (AI), concerned with the problem of designing artificial agents that behave as moral agents, i.e., adhere to moral, legal, and social norms. Context-awa...

An ethics of permission can be helpful in framing a response to the ethical differences surrounding the California End of Life Option Act. Law does not define morality, and reaching a moral understanding demands thorough reflection. An ethics of permission examines the ethical demands of a permissive law for both clinician and patient. Serving the good of the patient, respecting professional co...

The current state of global poverty presents citizens in the Global North with a moral crisis: Do we care? In this essay, I examine two competing moral accounts of why those in the North should or should not give care (in the form of charity) to impoverished peoples in the Global South. Nineteen years ago feminist philosopher Nel Noddings wrote in Caring that “we are not obliged to care for sta...

The implications of sleep for morality are only starting to be explored. Extending the ethics literature, we contend that because bringing morality to conscious attention requires effort, a lack of sleep leads to low moral awareness. We test this prediction with three studies. A laboratory study with a manipulation of sleep across 90 participants judging a scenario for moral content indicates t...

What place is there for virtue theory in theological ethics? Many question the normative significance of virtue theory in theological ethics today, leaving it to rule-based ethics to provide action-guidance. There are three key objections to the normativity of virtue theory: that virtue theory is about agents rather than actions, that virtue theory has nothing to say directly about the morality...