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| == '''[[Moral responsibility]]''' ==
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| '''Moral responsibility''' is an assignment of a duty or obligation to behave in a 'good' manner and refrain from behaving in a 'bad' manner. From a philosophical standpoint, the rationale behind 'good' and 'bad' is a subject for [[ethics]]<ref name=Shoemaker>
| | ==Footnotes== |
| {{cite web |author=David Shoemaker |title=Personal Identity and Ethics |work=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014 Edition) |editor=Edward N. Zalta, ed |date=Feb 13, 2012 |url=http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/identity-ethics/ }}
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| </ref> and [[metaethics]].<ref name=SayreMcCord/> Stent provides four conditions for assigning moral responsibility, among them the "duties and obligations devolving from moral, legal, or ritual imperatives".<ref name=Stent/> In everyday life, obligation in this context is distinguished in part from milder demands for conformity like etiquette by the intense and insistent social pressure brought to bear upon those who deviate or threaten to deviate.<ref name=Hart0>
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| {{cite book |author=HLA Hart |title=The Concept of Law |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=53u8K7jNGioC&pg=PA86&lpg=PA86 |page=86 |isbn=0199644705 |year=2012 |publisher= Oxford University Press |edition=3rd }} Reprint of 1961 edition with introduction by Leslie Greene.
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| </ref> From an anthropological or sociological standpoint, the specifics of what is 'good' or 'bad', and the ways of enforcing acceptable behavior, vary considerably from one group to another.<ref name=Kleinman>
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| {{cite book |title=Normal and Abnormal Behavior in Chinese Culture |chapter=Moral rules |author=Richard W. Wilson |editor=A. Kleinman, T.Y. Lin, eds |pages=pp. 119-120 |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=JFnqr74bCxAC&pg=PA119 |isbn=9027711046 |year=1981 |publisher=Springer}}
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| The reference is to {{cite book |author=BF Skinner |title=Beyond Freedom and Dignity |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=CtF6FDfUcQoC&pg=PA128 |year=2002 |pages=p. 128 |isbn=1603844163 |publisher=Hackett Publishing |edition= Reprint of Knopf 1971 ed}}
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| </ref>
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| :"Social learning theorists...feel that the learning of moral rules is not culturally invariant, but is, rather, critically related to particular learning environments and to the distinctive normative code of the society in question. The major influences on moral development are what B.F. Skinner calls "contingencies of reinforcement"...culturally variable factors that explain why different peoples acquire different types of moral orientations."
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| 'Moral responsibility' is part of the interplay between the individual and their society, and study of this relationship is both a scientific and a philosophical investigation.<ref name=Kendler>
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| {{cite book |author=Howard H. Kendler |title=Amoral thoughts about morality |chapter=Nature's search for human values |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=b2XgltlsIAcC&pg=PA27 |pages=pp. 27 ''ff'' |isbn= 0398077924 |year=2008 |edition=2nd ed |publisher=Charles C Thomas}} | |
| </ref><ref name=Morgan>
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| {{cite book |title=Naturally Good: A Behavioral History of Moral Development from Charles Darwin to E.O. Wilson |author= John Henry Morgan |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=vTEH01s9BJIC&pg=PA1 |isbn=1929569130 |year=2005 |publisher=Cloverdale Press}} | |
| </ref>
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| :"The study of ethics is concerned not only with identification of societal values but with thinking logically about ethical challenges and developing practical approaches to moral problem solving. Other disciplines also are concerned with discovering society's moral precepts. For example, sociology and anthropology each study cultural norms."<ref name=Carper>
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| {{cite book |title=Understanding the law |chapter=The nature of ethical inquiry |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=fdgFAAAAQBAJ&pg=PA28 |pages=p. 28 |isbn=111179801X |publisher=Cengage Learning |year=2007 |edition=5th ed |author=Donald Carper, John McKinsey, Bill West}}
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| </ref> | |
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| A large part of the philosophical discussion of 'moral responsibility' is focused upon the logical implications (as distinct from the ascertainable facts, such as they may be) of whether or not humans actually are able to control their actions to some or another extent.<ref name=Vargas>
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| {{cite book |title=Building Better Beings: A Theory of Moral Responsibility |author=Manuel Vargas |quote=[There are] other legitimate worries one can have about responsibility. For example, one could be worried about the consequences of reductionism of the mental (including whether our minds do anything, or whether they are epiphenomenal byproducts of more basic causal processes). Alternately, one might be worried that specific results in some or another science (usually, neurology but sometimes psychology) show that we lack some crucial power necessary for moral responsibility....|isbn=0191655775 |year=2013 |publisher=Oxford University Press |url=http://books.google.com/books?id=S21oAgAAQBAJ&pg=PA10&lpg=PA10 |pages=p. 10}}
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| </ref><ref name=Cane0/> Resolution of that issue is the philosophical subject of [[free will]], a continuing debate that began millennia ago and seems destined to continue indefinitely. It is known that humans' control over their actions is limited in some circumstances, and there is debate over the role of moral responsibility where there is only curtailed agency.
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| ! style="text-align: center;" | [[Moral responsibility#References|notes]]
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The Mathare Valley slum near Nairobi, Kenya, in 2009.
Poverty is deprivation based on lack of material resources. The concept is value-based and political. Hence its definition, causes and remedies (and the possibility of remedies) are highly contentious.[1] The word poverty may also be used figuratively to indicate a lack, instead of material goods or money, of any kind of quality, as in a poverty of imagination.
Definitions
Primary and secondary poverty
The use of the terms primary and secondary poverty dates back to Seebohm Rowntree, who conducted the second British survey to calculate the extent of poverty. This was carried out in York and was published in 1899. He defined primary poverty as having insufficient income to “obtain the minimum necessaries for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency”. In secondary poverty, the income “would be sufficient for the maintenance of merely physical efficiency were it not that some portion of it is absorbed by some other expenditure.” Even with these rigorous criteria he found that 9.9% of the population was in primary poverty and a further 17.9% in secondary.[2]
Absolute and comparative poverty
More recent definitions tend to use the terms absolute and comparative poverty. Absolute is in line with Rowntree's primary poverty, but comparative poverty is usually expressed in terms of ability to play a part in the society in which a person lives. Comparative poverty will thus vary from one country to another.[3] The difficulty of definition is illustrated by the fact that a recession can actually reduce "poverty".
Causes of poverty
The causes of poverty most often considered are:
- Character defects
- An established “culture of poverty”, with low expectations handed down from one generation to another
- Unemployment
- Irregular employment, and/or low pay
- Position in the life cycle (see below) and household size
- Disability
- Structural inequality, both within countries and between countries. (R H Tawney: “What thoughtful rich people call the problem of poverty, thoughtful poor people call with equal justice a problem of riches”)[4]
As noted above, most of these, or the extent to which they can be, or should be changed, are matters of heated controversy.
- ↑ Alcock, P. Understanding poverty. Macmillan. 1997. ch 1.
- ↑ Harris, B. The origins of the British welfare state. Palgrave Macmillan. 2004. Also, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.
- ↑ Alcock, Pt II
- ↑ Alcock, Preface to 1st edition and pt III.
