{"quotes":[{"text":"Humans are unique in having the astonishing capacity to extend our sympathies far beyond the here and now. Through time and space, to anywhere and anything we choose. It is our culture that decides how large and inclusive our moral circle is, but it is each of us who makes up our culture. (p.250).","author":"Andrew Westoll","tags":["animal-rights","apes","caring","empathy","moral-responsibility"],"id":282,"author_id":"Andrew+Westoll"},{"text":"We can't have moral obligations to every single person in this world. We have moral obligations to those who we come up against, who enter into our moral space, so to speak. That means neighbors, people we deal with, and so on.","author":"Alexander McCall Smith","tags":["moral-responsibility","morality","neighbors"],"id":114547,"author_id":"Alexander+McCall+Smith"},{"text":"The problem with ID, of course, is that it leaves open the possibility that the intelligence behind nature may have a moral interest in us, having communicated already with humanity in the past, and might try to boss you around in your private af.","author":"David Klinghoffer","tags":["accountability","aliens","dawkins","extraterrestrials","id","intelligent-design","judgement","moral-responsibility","multiple-universe","multiple-universes","multiverse","new-scientist","responsibility","richard-dawkins","science","theism"],"id":127322,"author_id":"David+Klinghoffer"},{"text":"Especially when it comes to animals used for food, humanity’s reasoning power and concern about fairness plummets.","author":"Karen Davis","tags":["animal-rights","animals","ethics","fairness","moral-responsibility","morality","vegan","veganism"],"id":171858,"author_id":"Karen+Davis"},{"text":"A system of justice does not need to pursue retribution. If the purpose of drug sentencing is to prevent harm, all we need to do is decide what to do with people who pose a genuine risk to society or cause tangible harm. There are perfectly rational ways of doing this; in fact, most societies already pursue such policies with respect to alcohol: we leave people free to drink and get inebriated, but set limits on where and when. In general, we prosecute drunk drivers, not inebriated pedestrians.In this sense, the justice system is in many respects a battleground between moral ideas and evidence concerning how to most effectively promote both individual and societal interests, liberty, health, happiness and wellbeing. Severely compromising this system, insofar as it serves to further these ideals, is our vacillation or obsession with moral responsibility, which is, in the broadest sense, an attempt to isolate the subjective element of human choice, an exercise that all too readily deteriorates into blaming and scapegoating without providing effective solutions to the actual problem. The problem with the question of moral responsibility is that it is inherently subjective and involves conjecture about an individuals’ state of mind, awareness and ability to act that can rarely if ever be proved. Thus it involves precisely the same type of conjecture that characterizes superstitious notions of possession and the influence of the devil and provides no effective means of managing conduct: the individual convicted for an offence or crime considered morally wrong is convicted based on a series of hypotheses and probabilities and not necessarily because he or she is actually morally wrong. The fairness and effectiveness of a system of justice based on such hypotheses is highly questionable particularly as a basis for preventing or reducing drug use related harm. For example, with respect to drugs, the system quite obviously fails as a deterrent and the system is not organised to ‘reform’ the offender much less to ensure that he or she has ‘learned a lesson’; moreover, the offender does not get an opportunity to make amends or even have a conversation with the alleged victim. In the case of retributive justice, the justice system is effectively mopping up after the fact. In other words, as far as deterrence is concerned, the entire exercise of justice becomes an exercise based on faith, rather than one based on evidence.","author":"Daniel Waterman","tags":["choice","deterrent","drug-sentencing","drugs","drunk-driving","evidence","fairness","harm","justice","moral-responsibility","morality","possession","retribution","risk","scapegoating","sentencing","society","subjectivity","superstition"],"id":211470,"author_id":"Daniel+Waterman"},{"text":"The victims of PTSD often feel morally tainted by their experiences, unable to recover confidence in their own goodness, trapped in a sort of spiritual solitary confinement, looking back at the rest of the world from beyond the barrier of what happened. They find themselves unable to communicate their condition to those who remained at home, resenting civilians for their blind innocence.The Moral Injury, New York Times. Feb 17, 2015.","author":"David Brooks","tags":["alienated","alienation","combat-ptsd","guilt","military","moral-responsibility","morality","morals","outsider","post-traumatic-stress-disorder","ptsd","shame","soldiers","tainted","trauma","traumatic-experiences","traumatized","veterans","veterans-survivor-guilt","war"],"id":245788,"author_id":"David+Brooks"},{"text":"When injustice becomes law, resistance becomes duty.","author":"Thomas Jefferson","tags":["injustice","moral-responsibility"],"id":246774,"author_id":"Thomas+Jefferson"},{"text":"[T]hose who willed the means and wished the ends are not absolved from guilt by the refusal of reality to match their schemes.","author":"Christopher Hitchens","tags":["cyprus","cyprus-dispute","greece","guilt","henry-kissinger","makarios-iii","moral-responsibility"],"id":259348,"author_id":"Christopher+Hitchens"},{"text":"Who is a Jew? A person whose integrity decays when unmoved by the knowledge of wrong done to other people.","author":"Abraham Joshua Heschel","tags":["altruism","communitarianism","conscience","integrity","jew","judaism","moral-responsibility"],"id":268235,"author_id":"Abraham+Joshua+Heschel"},{"text":"Bonhoeffer examined and dismissed a number of approaches to dealing with evil. 'Reasonable people,' he said, think that 'with a little reason, they can pull back together a structure that has come apart at the joints.' Then there are the ethical 'fanatics' who 'believe that they can face the power of evil with the purity of their will and their principles.' Men of'conscience' become overwhelmed because the 'countless respectable and seductive disguises and masks in which evil approaches them make their conscience anxious and unsure until they finally content themselves with an assuaged conscience instead of a good conscience.' They must 'deceive their own conscience in order not to despair.' Finally there are some who retreat to a 'private virtuousness. Such people neither steal, nor murder,nor commit adultery, but do good according to their abilities. But... They must close their eyes and ears to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self-deception can they keep their private blamelessness clean from the stains of responsible action in the world. In all that they do, what they fail to do will not let them rest.","author":"Eric Metaxas","tags":["conscience","dealing-with-evil","ethics","injustice","moral-responsibility","self-justification"],"id":288701,"author_id":"Eric+Metaxas"}],"pagination":{"page":1,"page_size":10,"total":17,"pages":2,"next":"?page=2\u0026page_size=10"}}