Sedat Yazici

Recent advances in neuroethical and moral psychological research have largely focused on the cognitive and emotional bases of moral judgments through the use of extreme and artificial moral dilemmas. These studies suffer from three key limitations: (1) overreliance on unrealistic, sacrificial dilemmas; (2) the complete omission of virtue ethics as a distinct moral framework; and (3) a lack of validated instruments that reflect the complexity of moral reasoning in everyday contexts. To address this issue, we developed and tested a 22-moral dilemma set that incorporates moral reasoning in three ethical traditions. Explanatory factor analysis with 349 participants aged 18–65 showed a strong context-dependency. Confirmatory factor analysis including 443 participants for 19 dilemmas with 38 corresponding binary items provided good model fit with RMSEA = 0.062, CFI = 0.987, and SRMR = 0.048. The findings of the present study suggest that efforts to measure moral reasoning through ethical dilemmas must move beyond rigid theoretical opposition and embrace more ecologically valid, context-sensitive conceptual models.

This paper critically examines the central tenet of constructive empiricism, namely that the epistemological significance between observable and unobservabie entities plays a putative role for our attitudes toward scientific theories. More specifically, I shall try to show whether the distinction Van Fraassen draws between observable and unobservable entities is epistemicaliy significant or an arbitrary criterion. I suggest that even if observation in the sense of perception were theory-neutral that does not make any difference in testing scientific theories, because the kind of testability that scientific theories must pass is based upon not personal or subjective beliefs but intersubjectively shared ones.

Kant’s general taxonomy of duties includes substantial claims that normatively and theoretically differentiates it from other moral theories. Basing his moral theory on a conception of Right, he also made a general classification of several duties with their corresponding moral worth. The general aim of this study is to identify the basic principles and criteria that determine Kant’s classification of duties. Another aim is to trace some implications and effects of Kant’s conception of duties in the contemporary discussion of social and economic rights. We argue that the normative basis of the argument against social and economic rights is very similar to that of the principles Kant uses in his classification of duties. However, from the responsibility of the state, Kant imposes legitimate obligations over individuals, albeit indirectly