All posts tagged: Moral

Moral Realism and the Persistence of Ethical Myths

Moral Realism and the Persistence of Ethical Myths

Published by Jenni Sidey

Moral realism is the view that there are moral facts, that there are objective moral properties out there in the world. But there are not. Notions like ‘rights’, ‘wrongs’, and ‘duties’ are leftovers from a pre-scientific age in which dogma and myths ruled over evidence and reason. And much like unicorns, gods, and other fairy tales, they should be consigned to hell. Despite the pride we take from human scientific and technological advancements, our minds, our brains are as much obstacles to these achievements as they are its cause. Humans are largely irrational and addicted to their own intuitions, which we had to overcome in order to develop modern science. Of course, even when it comes to science, we have hardly overcome this psychology. The rise of anti-scientific sentiments is not a reflection of the realization of flaws of science, as some conspiracy theorists may proudly proclaim, but simply a reflection of our poorly designed primate brains (from the perspective of finding out truths about the world). But when it comes to morals, our thinking …

Coping with Moral Distress in Healthcare

Coping with Moral Distress in Healthcare

Published by Jenni Sidey

Allard, C. B. (2024). Transform your guilt and shame: Evidence-based strategies to heal from trauma and adversity. American Psychological Association D’Alessandro‑Lowe, A. M., et al. (2023). Coping, supports and moral injury: Spiritual well‑being and organizational support are associated with reduced moral injury in Canadian healthcare providers during the COVID‑19 pandemic. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 20(19), Article 6812. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph20196812 Griffin, B. J., Maguen, S., McCue, M. L., Pietrzak, R. H., McLean, C. P., Hamblen, J. L., Jendro, A. M., & Norman, S. B. (2025). Moral injury is independently associated with suicidal ideation and suicide attempt in high-stress, service-oriented occupations. Npj mental health research, 4(1), 32. https://doi.org/10.1038/s44184-025-00151-9 Litz, B. T., Stein, N., Delaney, E., Lebowitz, L., Nash, W. P., Silva, C., & Maguen, S. (2009). Moral injury and moral repair in war veterans: A preliminary model and intervention strategy. Clinical psychology review, 29(8), 695-706. Mewborn, E. K., Fingerhood, M. L., Johanson, L., & Hughes, V. (2023). Examining moral injury in clinical practice: A narrative literature review. Nursing ethics, 30(7-8), 960–974. https://doi.org/10.1177/09697330231164762 Norman, S., …

Moral Virtues in Context

Moral Virtues in Context

Published by Jenni Sidey

Paramedics face daily challenges in their profession. Shiftwork, physical workload, and dealing with life-and-death situations are often exceedingly stressful. Paramedics must cope with traumatic and morally challenging situations while making fast decisions that have significant outcomes for patients. The London Ambulance Service, for example, responds to thousands of calls for service each day. Many are routine and not life-threatening, but more serious situations occur regularly. Meaning and purpose are essential for nearly all occupations. This is perhaps especially true for paramedics. Responding to emergencies and saving lives is intrinsically rewarding. However, the daily grind of seeing others in dire need of help, combined with the organizational stress inherent in such occupations, may erode the idealistic core values that motivated joining the ambulance service in the first place. All too often, paramedics experience job burnout that may in turn lead to poor job performance, a cynical attitude, or leaving the ambulance service altogether. An Empirical Study of Moral Values Among Paramedics Understanding the role of meaning and purpose in such in extremis occupations may prove useful …

Colson Whitehead’s Moral Vision in the Harlem Trilogy

Colson Whitehead’s Moral Vision in the Harlem Trilogy

Published by Sam Flores

Sturdy, steady, and as reliable as a well-tooled construction, Ray Carney, the “cool machine” that powers the third volume of Colson Whitehead’s Harlem Trilogy, is a time-worn but still fully functional version of the man in the first two books. Carney, a furniture salesman who fenced stolen goods and navigated the consequences in Harlem Shuffle and Crook Manifesto, faces a few last scores in the new novel, Cool Machine. Although Whitehead is good at literalizing metaphors (as he did in The Underground Railroad, which won the first of his two Pulitzer Prizes), Carney is, of course, a machine only in the figurative sense. In reality, or in the fictive realm that Cool Machine occupies with palpably true-to-life resonance, he is a crook in his fragile, aging bones. “It was in the man’s blood” to be a cool machine—“ruthless and cunning,” thinks Uncle Rich, a totemic elder of the Black underworld who lords with quasi-godly authority over the seriocomic goings-on of the second and third books. Uncle Rich maps out the setups and oversees the jobs—in …

Colin Farrell Says ‘Sugar’ Was a Moral Palate Cleanser After ‘Penguin’

Colin Farrell Says ‘Sugar’ Was a Moral Palate Cleanser After ‘Penguin’

Published by Daniella Wilson

In 2020, Colin Farrell began a six-year back-and-forth between two polar opposite characters, Oz “The Penguin” Cobb and John Sugar. That’s not to say that there aren’t some similarities between the Gotham City gangster in The Penguin and Los Angeles private investigator of Sugar. They’re both cinephiles. They both have a knack for anticipating human behavior in order to garner their preferred outcome, and they each have talent for wriggling (or waddling) their way out of jams.  However, their core selves are night-and-day different in that Oz will hurt anyone and everyone to get what he wants, even his own flesh and blood. Conversely, Oz is as altruistic as one can be, and he’ll often endure great pain if it means defending the defenseless. Oh, and he happens to be an alien. For Farrell, Sugar and his two seasons’ worth of time as the compassionate PI has served as an antidote and “sanity check” to the toxic, unrecognizable Penguin character he’s transformed into via three-hour makeup processes on Matt Reeves’ The Batman and Lauren LeFranc’s …

When Is It Moral To Have Sex?

When Is It Moral To Have Sex?

Published by Jenni Sidey

In 1755, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) became a Privatdozent, or non-stipendiary lecturer, making a living by charging students for his lectures and giving private tuition. His students joked that he could cover for the entire philosophy faculty—which at the time included everything except the three “higher” faculties of theology, law, and medicine. He became a star lecturer, reputed for his wit, dry humour, and poker face. When he lectured, Kant was, according to a contemporary account, “all things to all men.” He stood at a diminutive five foot two (1.57m), with blond hair, blue eyes, and rosy cheeks. Despite his slender build, flat and narrow chest, and “slight corkscrew twist,” he was described as attractive. According to his own account, his flat and narrow chest left “little room for the movement of the heart and lungs”, contributing to his delicate constitution, predisposition to hypochondria, and sedentary, regimented lifestyle. Kant compensated for his physical frailties by being a sharp dresser. He took inspiration from nature for matching colours. Thus, in middle age, he often wore a yellow …

Oscar-winning filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar says directors have a ‘moral duty’ to be political

Oscar-winning filmmaker Pedro Almodóvar says directors have a ‘moral duty’ to be political

Published by Daniella Wilson

Pedro Almodóvar, the acclaimed Spanish director, has said that filmmakers have a “moral duty” to speak up about politics. The two-time Oscar winner spoke out in criticism of US president Donald Trump during an appearance at the 2026 Cannes Film Festival, where he was promoting his new film Bitter Christmas. “I don’t want to judge anyone, but I think artists have to speak out about the situation in which they live in contemporary society,” he said. “It’s a moral duty.” Pedro Almodóvar in Cannes (Reuters) The 76-year-old also criticised Trump’s attacks on free speech, stating that European countries needed to avoid allowing similar forces into power. “Europe must never be subjected to Trump,” he said. Almodóvar, who won an Oscar for Best Foreign Language Film (for 1999’s All About My Mother) and another for Best Original Screenplay (for 2002’s Talk to Her), is often regarded as Spain’s most prominent filmmaker on the international stage. “Silence and fear is a symptom that things are going badly, it’s a serious sign democracy is crumbling,” he continued. “In …

Does Evolution Undercut Moral Knowledge?

Does Evolution Undercut Moral Knowledge?

Published by Sam Flores

Everything you believe about what’s right and what’s wrong may have nothing to do with moral truth and everything to do with what helped your ancestors survive. The evolutionary debunking argument against moral realism–the view that there are objective moral truths independent of what anyone thinks, believes or desires–claims that even if objective moral truths exist, we have no good reason to think our evolved moral faculties are reliably connected to them. And if that is right, we face a choice about what to do with our moral beliefs from there. This puzzle was the topic of my dissertation (‘Some Epistemological and Practical Challenges to Moral Realism: Evolutionary Debunking, Overgeneralization, and Afterward’). The dissertation itself examines what is best understood as a conditional argument: If robust moral realism is true, and if familiar facts about human psychology and evolution are taken seriously, then what, if anything, happens to our moral knowledge? And what do we do about our moral beliefs from there? This question unifies all four chapters of the dissertation. The target throughout is robust …

Moral Education of AI: The Tangled Web We Weave

Moral Education of AI: The Tangled Web We Weave

Published by Jenni Sidey

Every summer, parents watch a child drive off to college and whisper some version of the same prayer. Please make wise choices. Please stay safe. Please be good. We hope our children will choose well, and we know, though we rarely say it out loud, that wise choices require more than a rulebook. They require a mind that can confront difficulty without running from it, consciously take on other perspectives, feel the weight of a deeply held value, and then act on that value. Morality is not a set of instructions you hand over at the end of the driveway. It is something that grows. A few years ago, in The New Atlantis, I argued that the same is true in psychotherapy and other forms of behavior change. Merely telling people hard truths — “what you did was wrong” — does not reliably make them better. Ask any parent. What works, over and over in the data, is to model, to instigate, and to support people being more open to their own experience (including a …

The Refusal of Moral Resignation

The Refusal of Moral Resignation

Published by Sam Flores

Human dignity is inherent—but indignity is the condition of being treated as if it were not. Modern life increasingly normalizes this contradiction. We affirm intrinsic worth while organizing society around metrics, incentives, and systems that treat human beings as disposable inputs. We speak the language of dignity even as daily life is structured to deny its expression. Freedom is proclaimed while agency is eroded. The problem is not merely political or economic.It is moral—and personal. Dignity does not disappear when it is violated. But it is denied in practice when people are treated, or come to treat themselves, as means rather than ends. To live as an input is to live as if one’s worth were contingent—valuable only insofar as it serves a function to a system. That condition, whether imposed externally or accepted internally, is indignity. Indignity is not born of oppression—it is the product of slowly accepting that oppression is deserved. Agency does not disappear under pressure; it is merely tested. Stoic humanism begins here. It is a secular humanist ethic concerned not …