Justifying Moral Standing by Biosemiotic Particularism

Moral Particularism and Transduction

Caring and Full Moral Standing*

A being has moral standing if it or its interests matter intrinsically, to at least some degree, in the moral assessment of actions and events. For instance, animals can be said to have moral standing if, other things being equal, it is morally bad to intentionally cause their suffering. This essay focuses on a special kind of moral standing, what I will call “full moral standing” (FMS), associ...

The Two Sources of Moral Standing

There are two primary traditions in philosophical theorizing about moral standing—one emphasizing Experience (the capacity to feel pain and pleasure) and one emphasizing Agency (complexity of cognition and lifestyle). In this article we offer an explanation for this divide: Lay judgments about moral standing depend importantly on two independent cues (Experience and Agency), and the two philoso...

Some Problems with Particularism

This article suggests that due to a restricted understanding of the nature and scope of ethical theory, particularism discounts prematurely the possibility of a metatheory of Buddhist ethics. The textual evidence presented in support of particularism is reconsidered and shown to be consistent with a metatheoretical reading. It is argued that writers who have adopted a particularist approach bas...

Particularism and Generalism: How AI can Help us to Better Understand Moral Cognition

Particularism and Generalism refer to families of attitudes towards moral principles. This paper explores the suggestion that neural network models of cognition may aid in vindicating particularist views of moral reasoning. Neural network models of moral case classification are presented, and the contrast case method for testing and revising case classifications is considered. It is concluded t...