No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
The essays that compose our January 1992 value inquiry are all concemed with some aspect of the theme, Insensitivity, Egoism, and the Ethical Community. Among the thought-provoking questions that this issue suggests are: What is the relationship between sensitivity and a person's selection of one or more possible virtues? Is sensitivity to the needs and feelings of others, for instance, required for such a choice? Is it, moreover, sufficient for it? If so, how much sensitivity and toward whom? Toward one's friends only? Toward members of some organizations and certain countries, or toward all human beings? Would an awareness of and empathy with the needs of some non-human sentient species also be required for a selection of moral values? And what about perception of the earth's environment, including the space around it? Should' sensitivity toward non-sentient entities be present as well in the moral choice? Yet, when we expand our sensitive awareness to include the existence of both human and non-human objects, sensitivity alone seems not tO suffice for our selection among possible virtues.
In his essay, "Insensitivity and moral responsibility," Larry May examines "insensitivity" and "sensitivity," terms he believes are as yet unexplored in philosophical writings. May's analysis confines itself to the uses of these terms as they occur in ordinary language and in their morally significant senses. For him, sensitivity involves an awareness of the needs or feelings of others, along with a caring about the consequences of behavior. Its value, moreover, lies in providing critical perceptiveness in moral judgment. Indeed, sensitivity amounts to a meta-virtue inasmuch as it provides the ground or necessary condition for the proper exercising of at least some of the other virtues, and thus may act as a corrective for them. If sensitivity is required for good moral behavior, what then of insensitivity and culpable ignorance? May illustrates "easier" and "hard" cases of moral responsibility for insensitivity. These cases range from physiological disabilities to the influence of stereotypes. Habits may serve to reinforce stereotypic thinking. Nevertheless, "a person may keep open the possibility for change" and thus remain responsible for those acts that result from not so doing.
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
## Definitions Ethical egoism has been variously defined as the view that "each and every man ought to look out for himself alone, ''1 "everyone ought to concern himself with his own welfare alone, ''2 "my sole duty is to promote my own interests exclusively, ''3 and "everyone ought exclusively to
The July 1992 issue of The Journal of Value Inquiry investigates the ground and nature of moral good and evil. During the course of its inquiries, a wide selection of views that have been held in the history of philosophy are considered. Whether this be so because the past lives eternally in the pre
## Abstract The authors present the case not only for studying the history of community psychology but also of adopting a pluralistic approach to historical inquiry, using multiple methods and access to resources from other disciplines (e.g., historians of science and social historians). Examples o