Associate Professor Ryo Chonabayashi of the Faculty of Letters at Soka University published his paper “A Localist Turn for Defending Moral Explanations” in the academic journal "Asian Journal of Philosophy".

The paper discusses moral explanations that appeal to moral-based values such as “injustice” or “mercy”, with statements like, “Social instability is caused by injustice in that society,” and, “the reason a person is able to notice the suffering of others and act to assist them is that that person possesses the virtue of compassion.” The paper argues that these kinds of moral explanations have different characteristics, for example, the former statement being from the perspective of comparative politics and the latter from the perspective of sociology and that as such should be evaluated and investigated separately. Additionally. this investigation will gradually reveal which values actually exist and which do not.

Associate Professor Chonabayashi said, “I am delighted that I was able to compile a topic I have been working on since my doctoral program. I believe there is still much potential for interesting research on moral explanations. I hope to continue doing research on this topic in the future.”

Faculty Profile:
Specialized Field
Philosophy and ethics

Research Topics
(1) Meta-ethics and meta-normativity (naturalistic moral realism, relationships between practical normativity and epistemic normativity, moral particularism versus moral generalism, etc.)
(2) Applied ethics (medical ethics (informed consent), ethics in urban environments, ethics of welfare, suicide, etc.)
(3) Other (ethics of belief, the nature of faith, social influence of the humanities, the modern development of Buddhism, etc.)