Motivation and the Virtue of Honesty: Some Conceptual Requirements and Empirical Results
The virtue of honesty has been stunningly neglected in contemporary philosophy, with only two papers appearing in the last 40 years. The first half of this paper is a conceptual exploration of one aspect of the virtue, namely the honest person’s motivational profile. I argue that egoistic motives fo...
| Pubblicato in: | Ethical theory and moral practice |
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| Autore principale: | |
| Tipo di documento: | Elettronico Articolo |
| Lingua: | Inglese |
| Verificare la disponibilità: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Caricamento...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Pubblicazione: |
Springer Science + Business Media B. V
[2020]
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| In: |
Ethical theory and moral practice
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| Altre parole chiave: | B
Cheating
B Honesty B Lying B Motivazione B Virtue B Altruism B Egoism |
| Accesso online: |
Volltext (Resolving-System) |
| Riepilogo: | The virtue of honesty has been stunningly neglected in contemporary philosophy, with only two papers appearing in the last 40 years. The first half of this paper is a conceptual exploration of one aspect of the virtue, namely the honest person’s motivational profile. I argue that egoistic motives for telling the truth or not cheating are incompatible with honest motivation. At the same time, there is no one specific motive that is required for a person to be motivated in a virtuously honest way. Instead I advance a pluralistic theory of honest motivation, which allows for motives of caring, fairness, and virtue, among others. The second half of the paper then turns briefly to the empirical literature in psychology and behavioral economics on cheating, to see to what extent honest motives appear to be operative. The upshot is that we have good preliminary evidence for the claim that most people are not virtuously honest. |
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| ISSN: | 1572-8447 |
| Comprende: | Enthalten in: Ethical theory and moral practice
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1007/s10677-019-10055-1 |