Suchergebnisse

Abstract:A good deal of contemporary moral nonconsequentialism assumes that agents have perfect knowledge about the various features and consequences of their options. This assumption is unrealistic. More often than not, moral agents can only assess with a certain degree of probability the factual circumstances that are morally relevant for their decision making. My aim in this essay is to discuss the problem of moral decisions under risk from the point of view of nonconsequentialism. Basically, I analyze how objective moral principles can be transformed into subjective, decisional prescriptions, and argue that the standard nonconsequentialist approach to moral decision making, which focuses on probability thresholds, is wrong. In accordance with the fundamental postulates of nonconsequentialism, I seek to solve the problem of risk in moral choice by proposing a theory about the marginal moral value of various options. Actions can vary along various dimensions, and each of these dimensions can offer a different moral value function. Nonconsequentialist marginalism can level the playing field with consequentialism. Whereas consequentialism can simply borrow the notion of expected utility from economics, nonconsequentialism must introduce the notion of expectational obligation to formulate a general principle of moral choice under risk. I finally suggest that further empirical work is needed to delineate the shape of various moral value functions that are critical for applying the general principle of moral decision making under risk to well-known cases.

La teoría discursiva de Habermas basada en el consenso de los participantes, siendo este consenso el fundamento de la corrección ética, ha sido objeto de crítica por sus limitaciones tanto en el terreno de la práctica como la teoría. El artículo pretende comentar y superar esas limitaciones. Es una tarea que deben realizar los partidarios de la democracia deliberativa, pues siempre la democracia deliberativa, en la que se concreta el discurso habermasiano, es más legítima que la democracia liberal. Las limitaciones aludidas en este artículo -la inconmensurabilidad discursiva, el dilema discursivo y la falla discursiva- podrían ser superadas y, aún si estos problemas no fueran totalmente superables, la democracia deliberativa es el mejor sistema político disponible. ; Habermas' discourse theory is ethically premised on thenotion of consensus. This work aims at overcoming the practical and theoretical limitations for which it has been criticized. Because deliberative democracy, on which the Habermasian discourse is concretized, is more legitimate than liberal democracy, its supportersmust engage in this task. I argue that the limitations of Habermas' discourse theory -the discursive incommensurability, the discursive dilemma and the discursive flaw- could be overcome. Yet, even if these limitations could not be completely corrected, deliberative democracy remains the best available political model. ; Universidad Pablo de Olavide

Contemporary political philosophers discuss the idea of freedom in terms of two distinctions: Berlin's famous distinction between negative and positive liberty, and Skinner and Pettit's divide between liberal and republican liberty. In this essay I proceed to recast the debate by showing that there are two strands in liberalism, Hobbesian and Lockean, and that the latter inherited its conception of civil liberty from republican thought. I also argue that the contemporary debate on freedom lacks a perspicuous account of the various conceptions of freedom, mainly because it leaves aside the classic contrast between natural liberty and civil liberty. Once we consider both the negative/positive distinction and the natural/civil one, we can classify all conceptions of freedom within four basic irreducible categories. In light of the resulting framework I show that there are two distinct conceptions of republican liberty, natural and civil, and that the former is coupled with an ideal of individual self-control.