Umami ethics: is kindness an acquired taste?

Fitzpatrick, Christopher (2022) Umami ethics: is kindness an acquired taste? Masters thesis, Memorial University of Newfoundland.

[English] PDF - Accepted Version Available under License - The author retains copyright ownership and moral rights in this thesis. Neither the thesis nor substantial extracts from it may be printed or otherwise reproduced without the author's permission. Download (675kB)

Abstract

Is it possible to persuade everyday people to become more generous, courteous and considerate? I believe the answer is yes, and the emotivist framework provides a guide as to how that might be possible. Rather than assume moral values are shared, we are better served by seeking evidence that this is the case. This requires learning how beliefs inform attitudes, which we can do by actively engaging with the experiences of many kinds of people, including those who are very unlike ourselves. When we do this, we can see that values are determined by many things including personal experiences, culture, even simple preference. From here, persuading people to become more kind depends on identifying connections between the values of any one person, and the goals of the society in which they live; being good does not require abstaining from our desires, it means pursuing them with consideration for others.

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