Mahdi Shaghaghi
Abstract
Short abstract: In this study I have tried to contribute in some meta-ethical reflections on moral responsibility involving disinformation. Conceptual analysis and reflective equilibrium ...
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Short abstract: In this study I have tried to contribute in some meta-ethical reflections on moral responsibility involving disinformation. Conceptual analysis and reflective equilibrium were two methods that have been used for achieving the goals of this article. In first step, I used some citations from philosophers and some examples to show dilemmatic view of moral problems is logically fallacious. Findings of the second step showed that ideal morality fails to explain actions in pressure conditions and implications of care ethics and doing best practices are the defendable way of action in such conditions, provided that the provisions of “helping to eliminate poverty and address the gap between poor and wealthy” are satisfied. In final step, by reviewing arguments of some philosophers, I introduced will and wish as a building blocks of the akrasia and weakness of will phenomenon. Then, 8 rules were predicted for determining moral responsibility in akratic and weakness of will conditions.
Keywords: Disinformation, Moral Failure, Moral Responsibility, Akrasia, Moral Conflict.
Introduction: Disinformation is a purposeful misguiding of people (Fallis 2009, 2014) by representing false or even true predicates. Mediatic, diplomatic, and performatic governmental institutions continually disinform people by misleading news or reports. Factitious organizational reports are prevalent in the administrative and managerial level. Some of these institutions assert on dilemmatic nature of situations or pressure condition and security issues or weakness of will to justify disinformation. In this case, three distinct questions arise: 1) is the moral dilemma and disinformation we must assign moral responsibility in this context logically possible? 2) does the disinformation result from a pressure condition and we should assign moral responsibility in this context? 3) does the disinformation result from akrasia or weakness of will and we should assign moral responsibility by considering this context? several philosophers have considered the moral dilemmas from distinct points of view. As a Platonic issue (known as platonic conflict), we can see that a couple of other philosophers such as Sartre have studies moral dilemmas (Sartre dilemma). But recent scholars such as Donagan (1984), McConnell (1978, 2018), Bagnoli (2013), Bennett & Chamberlin (2013), Marcus (1980), and Vessel (2020) have studied moral dilemmas from the possibility, dichotomic distinctions, moral residue, deontic logic, and other points of view. In the domain of moral responsibility in pressure condition, we have several scholars such as Frye (1983), Rawls (1999), Mills (2004), Sen (2006), and Tessman (2015), who have studied this issue from the Pluralism of reasonable, Rectificatory justice, idealization, and best practices points of view. And several other scholars such as Fischer and Ravizza (1998), Arpaly and Schroeder (1999), Davidson (2001), Holton (2012) and others have considered Akrasia and weakness of will from the deep self, whole self, irresistible desire, reasons responsiveness, and a couple of other points of view. By critical analysis of these literature, I tried to consider moral responsibility in the context of each of them.
Methodology: In this article, I have used two related methods for text analysis and studying reasonability of arguments: conceptual analysis and reflective equilibrium. Using conceptual analysis, I have tried to find main themes of arguments to make comparisons with other reasonings. Standpoints of several important scholars and philosophers were considered to make comparisons and find new themes. And then, I tried to use reflective equilibrium by considering our moral intuitions as a reasonable and conventional human being. In this sense, intuitions were considered from the common sense point of view. I tried to use counterexamples and counter arguments to find a way for assigning moral responsibility.
Findings: Initially, I tried to show that dilemmatic view of moral problems is logically fallacious and we cannot reject moral responsibility by referring to dilemmatic nature of the situation. Findings of the second step showed that ideal morality fails to explain actions in pressure conditions and implications of care ethics and doing best practical practices is the defendable way of action in such conditions, if the provision of “helping to elimination of poverty or deliberative marginalization, and bridging the gap between poor and wealthy” were satisfied. Third, by reviewing arguments of some philosophers, I introduced will and wish as a building blocks of the akrasia and weakness of will phenomenon. Then, 8 categories were predicted for determining moral responsibility in akratic and weakness of will conditions: A) a person has moral will and this is inconsistent with her/his judge value. In this case there is not moral responsibility in the irresistible desire conditions but there is moral responsibility in external force conditions. B) a person has moral will this is consistent with her/his judge value. In this case, there is moral responsibility in any conditions. C) a person has immoral will and this is inconsistent with her/his judge value. In this case, there is moral responsibility if the desire is resistible. Also, there is moral responsibility in the condition of external force if this condition is a result of her retrospective negligence and this negligence is not a reasonable result of an oppressive situation. Furthermore, there is moral responsibility in the case of irresistible will, if the will is a result of her/his retrospective negligence and this negligence is not a reasonable result of an oppressive or external compulsion. D) a person has immoral will and this is consistent with her/his judge value. In this case there is moral responsibility in any conditions. E) a person has immoral judge value and this is consistent with her/his will. In this case, there is moral responsibility if the judge value is not a reasonable result of oppressive force or isolated in-group nurture. F) a person has immoral judge value and this is inconsistent with her/his will. In this case, there is moral responsibility in any time when the moral will goes to adhere immoral judge value that is not a reasonable result of oppressive force or isolated in-group nurture. G) a person has moral judge value and this is consistent with her/his will. In this case there is moral responsibility in any condition. H) a person has moral judge value and this is inconsistent with her/his will. In this case there is moral responsibility in resistible desire condition. Also, there is moral responsibility if the will shaped in the external force condition is not reasonable result of her/his retrospective negligence and the mentioned negligence is not a reasonable result of oppressive context.
Conclusions and discussions: As a concluding remark, it is worth to mention that disinformation is a deliberate misguide of others and is more consistent with rules that denotes immoral judge value (case of E and F). In these cases, disinforming consists of moral responsibility unless judge value of a person be a reasonable result of oppressive force or isolated in-group nurture. Also, for clarifying “irresistible will”, Fischer and Ravizza’s idea of “Moderate reasons responsiveness” is a reasonable conceptual measure.
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