Real (and) Imaginal Relationships with the Dead

Norlock, Kathryn J.

doi:10.1007/s10790-016-9573-6

Cited by 18 publications

(14 citation statements)

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“…30 Relational obligations are most easily captured between cotemporal persons, but not all of our morally significant relations are to currently existing persons. We can stand in a relation to persons who are deceased (Norlock 2017). We may also stand in a That aborting a planned fetus might require some justification won't come as a surprise to procreators who have found themselves in the position where they have to consider ending a planned pregnancy.…”

Section: Relational Obligations To Early Fetusesmentioning

confidence: 99%

It’s Complicated: What Our Attitudes toward Pregnancy, Abortion, and Miscarriage Tell Us about the Moral Status of Early Fetuses

Chambers

2020

Can. J. of Philosophy

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Many accounts of the morality of abortion assume that early fetuses must all have or lack moral status in virtue of developmental features that they share. Our actual attitudes toward early fetuses don’t reflect this all-or-nothing assumption. If we start with the assumption that our attitudes toward fetuses are accurately tracking their value, then we need an account of fetal moral status that can explain why it is appropriate to love some fetuses but not others. I argue that a fetus can come to have moral claims on persons who have taken up the activity of person-creation.

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Section: Relational Obligations To Early Fetusesmentioning

confidence: 99%

It’s Complicated: What Our Attitudes toward Pregnancy, Abortion, and Miscarriage Tell Us about the Moral Status of Early Fetuses

Chambers

2020

Can. J. of Philosophy

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“…Norlock begins with an interesting claim: a fundamental element of the relations “between living entities include imaginal content that endows our relationships with moral import and meaningfulness,” and that this imaginal content can continue “even after one of the relata has died” (Norlock , 343). The concept imaginal is of central importance here.…”

Section: Blueprints For a Future Care Ethicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…That is, in developing self‐awareness of our place in the world, we develop internal dialogues that help us interpret how we perceive and interact with others. This process is not antithetical to reason, but in service to it—“not imaginary, but developed imaginally on the basis of known actualities” (Norlock , 346).…”

Section: Blueprints For a Future Care Ethicmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Instead, I argue that a middle route can be taken—that although relations between present and future generations will not be metaphysically real, they could still be real enough for them to count as normatively relevant within the care ethical framework. Kathryn Norlock has pursued such a route with regard to the present generation's relations to the dead (Norlock ). Examining Norlock's argument first will offer some tools to begin establishing normatively relevant relations between present and future generations.…”

Section: Blueprints For a Future Care Ethicmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Care Ethics and Obligations to Future Generations

Randall¹

2019

Hypatia

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A dominant area of inquiry within intergenerational ethics concerns how goods (and bads) ought to be justly distributed between noncontemporaries. Contractualist theories of justice that have broached these discussions have often centered on the concepts of mutual advantage and (indirect) reciprocal cooperation between rational, self‐interested beings. However, another prominent reason that many in the present feel that they have obligations toward future generations is not due to self‐interested reciprocity, but simply because they care about what happens to them. Care ethics promises to be conceptually well‐suited for articulating this latter reason: given that future generations are in a perpetual condition of dependency on present‐day people's actions, this is precisely the kind of relational structure that care theorists should be interested in morally evaluating. Unfortunately, the care literature has been largely silent on intergenerational ethics. This article aims to advance this literature, offering the blueprints of what a care ethic concerning future generations—a “future care ethic”—should look like. The resultant ethic defends a sufficientarian theory of obligation: people in the present ought to ensure the conditions needed to encourage and sustain a world that enables good caring relations to flourish.

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“…7 In addition, empirically-informed recent work in ethics suggests that there is value to be found in maintaining what Norlock calls 'imaginal relationships' with the dead. 8 This line of argument draws on contemporary work in clinical psychology, which suggests that grieving often involves thinking of oneself as sustaining a relationship with the deceased, by continued engagement with an internal representation of the loved one. This phenomenon can be quite long-lived.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Conversation from Beyond the Grave? A Neo‐Confucian Ethics of Chatbots of the Dead

Elder

2019

J Applied Philosophy

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Digital records, from chat transcripts to social media posts, are being used to create chatbots that recreate the conversational style of deceased individuals. Some maintain that this is merely a new form of digital memorial, while others argue that they pose a variety of moral hazards. To resolve this, I turn to classical Chinese philosophy to make use of a debate over the ethics of funerals and mourning. This ancient argument includes much of interest for the contemporary issue at hand, including the use of impersonators of the dead to help the bereaved to deal well with their grief. I connect this historical discussion with a modern trend in clinical psychology that reframes therapeutic interventions with bereaved individuals. The trend directs practitioners away from facilitating detachment and toward affirming continuing bonds. I conclude that these chatbots can offer an important source of support to mourners, but also discuss parameters and features of social context that will be important to avoid the moral hazards identified by sceptics.

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Real (and) Imaginal Relationships with the Dead

Cited by 18 publications

References 1 publication

It’s Complicated: What Our Attitudes toward Pregnancy, Abortion, and Miscarriage Tell Us about the Moral Status of Early Fetuses

It’s Complicated: What Our Attitudes toward Pregnancy, Abortion, and Miscarriage Tell Us about the Moral Status of Early Fetuses

Care Ethics and Obligations to Future Generations

Conversation from Beyond the Grave? A Neo‐Confucian Ethics of Chatbots of the Dead

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