Download or read book Essays on Moral Realism written by Geoffrey Sayre-McCord and published by Cornell University Press. This book was released on 1988 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of influential essays illustrates the range, depth, and importance of moral realism, the fundamental issues it raises, and the problems it faces.

Download or read book Essays on Moral Realism written by Geoffrey Sayre-McCord and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of influential essays illustrates the range, depth, and importance of moral realism, the fundamental issues it raises, and the problems it faces.

Download or read book Essays on Moral Realism written by Geoffrey Sayre-McCord and published by . This book was released on 1991 with total page 317 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics written by David Owen Brink and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1989-02-24 with total page 394 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A systematic analysis considers the objectivity of ethics, the relationship between the moral point of view and a scientific or naturalist worldview and its role in a person's rational lifespan.

Download or read book Essays on Moral Realism written by Alexander B. Hyun and published by . This book was released on 2017 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This dissertation is a defense of moral realism. By moral realism, I mean the conjunction of three claims: (i) Descriptive cognitivism, according to which moral judgments are descriptive beliefs that aim to represent the world accurately; (ii) The success thesis, according to which some moral judgments are true; and (iii) The objectivity thesis, according to which the true moral judgments are objectively true, in the sense that their truth does not constitutively depend on the attitudes of some actual or idealized agent. The purpose of my dissertation is to argue in favor of the success and objectivity theses. In Chapter 1, I argue in favor of externalism about normative reasons, thereby defending both the success and objectivity theses from influential objections. Roughly, externalism about normative reasons states that there are some external reasons for action, i.e., reasons to do some act that do not depend on the desires of the agent whose reasons they are. I argue for externalism by appealing to epistemic normativity. While others have appealed to epistemic normativity to defend externalism, such appeals are normally aimed at undermining arguments against externalism. In contrast, I develop a more ambitious use of epistemic normativity that aims to provide a direct argument for the truth of externalism. Specifically, I argue that there exist practical epistemic facts - facts to the effect that we epistemically ought to perform certain actions - and that these facts entail the existence of external reasons for action. I also bolster this argument for externalism by seeking to refute the formidable challenges to externalism that have recently been offered by Kate Manne and Julia Markovits. In Chapter 2, I defend a version of the increasingly influential 'companions in guilt' argument for moral facts, thereby establishing the success thesis. My favored version of this argument goes as follows: (1) If there are no moral facts, then there are no practical epistemic facts; (2) there are practical epistemic facts; (3) so, there are moral facts. The second premise, which is known as the 'Ontological Premise,' is defended at length in Chapter 1. I offer a presumptive case for the first premise, which is known as the 'Parity Premise,' by arguing that the four most formidable arguments against moral facts suggest equally-plausible arguments against practical epistemic facts. I then argue that my argument's atypical appeal to practical epistemic facts allows it to address recent objections to the companions in guilt argument that have been offered by Christopher Heathwood and Stephen Ingram. In the third and final chapter of my dissertation, I respond to the 'puzzle of pure moral deference,' a challenge to the objectivity thesis that has been most forcefully pressed by Sarah McGrath. According to this challenge, moral anti-realism can explain why moral deference seems intuitively problematic to many of us, whereas moral realism cannot explain why this is so; and we therefore have reason to accept anti-realism instead of realism. I develop three independent rebuttals to this challenge. First, I object to the four main anti-realist accounts of our discomfort with moral deference, thereby undermining the claim that moral anti-realism provides an explanation of this discomfort. Second, I develop a dilemma for the proponent of the puzzle of pure moral deference, arguing that either the anti-realist cannot provide the needed explanation, or else the realist can do so. Finally, I offer a novel, realist-friendly account of our discomfort with moral deference that builds on extant realist accounts. In brief, I argue that a lot of people's discomfort can plausibly be explained by appealing to the fact that moral deference is both unfair and bad for society.

Download or read book Facts Values and Norms written by Peter Railton and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2003-03-17 with total page 412 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In our everyday lives we struggle with the notions of why we do what we do and the need to assign values to our actions. Somehow, it seems possible through experience and life to gain knowledge and understanding of such matters. Yet once we start delving deeper into the concepts that underwrite these domains of thought and actions, we face a philosophical disappointment. In contrast to the world of facts, values and morality seem insecure, uncomfortably situated, easily influenced by illusion or ideology. How can we apply this same objectivity and accuracy to the spheres of value and morality? In the essays included in this collection, Peter Railton shows how a fairly sober, naturalistically informed view of the world might nonetheless incorporate objective values and moral knowledge. This book will be of interest to professionals and students working in philosophy and ethics.

Download or read book Realism and Antirealism in Kant s Moral Philosophy written by Robinson dos Santos and published by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG. This book was released on 2017-12-18 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The debate between moral realism and antirealism plays an important role in contemporary metaethics as well as in the interpretation of Kant’s moral philosophy. This volume aims to clarify whether, and in what sense, Kant is a moral realist, an antirealist, or something in-between. Based on an explication of the key metaethical terms, internationally recognized Kant scholars discuss the question of how Kant’s moral philosophy should be understood in this regard. All camps in the metaethical field have their inhabitants: Some contributors read Kant’s philosophy in terms of a more or less robust moral realism, objectivism, or idealism, and some of them take it to be a version of constructivism, constitutionism, or brute antirealism. In any case, all authors introduce and defend their terminology in a clear manner and argue thoughtfully and refreshingly for their positions. With contributions of Stefano Bacin, Jochen Bojanowski, Christoph Horn, Patrick Kain, Lara Ostaric, Fred Rauscher, Oliver Sensen, Elke Schmidt, Dieter Schönecker, and Melissa Zinkin.

Download or read book Does Anything Really Matter written by Peter Singer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2017-01-12 with total page 344 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the first two volumes of On What Matters Derek Parfit argues that there are objective moral truths, and other normative truths about what we have reasons to believe, and to want, and to do. He thus challenges a view of the role of reason in action that can be traced back to David Hume, and is widely assumed to be correct, not only by philosophers but also by economists. In defending his view, Parfit argues that if there are no objective normative truths, nihilism follows, and nothing matters. He criticizes, often forcefully, many leading contemporary philosophers working on the nature of ethics, including Simon Blackburn, Stephen Darwall, Allen Gibbard, Frank Jackson, Peter Railton, Mark Schroeder, Michael Smith, and Sharon Street. Does Anything Really Matter? gives these philosophers an opportunity to respond to Parfit's criticisms, and includes essays on Parfit's views by Richard Chappell, Andrew Huddleston, Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer, Bruce Russell, and Larry Temkin. A third volume of On What Matters, in which Parfit engages with his critics and breaks new ground in finding significant agreement between his own views and theirs, is appearing as a separate companion volume.

Download or read book The Normative Web written by Terence Cuneo and published by Clarendon Press. This book was released on 2010-03-04 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Antirealist views about morality claim that moral facts or truths do not exist. Do these views imply that other types of normative facts, such as epistemic ones, do not exist? The Normative Web develops a positive answer to this question. Terence Cuneo argues that the similarities between moral and epistemic facts provide excellent reason to believe that, if moral facts do not exist, then epistemic facts do not exist. But epistemic facts, it is argued, do exist: to deny their existence would commit us to an extreme version of epistemological skepticism. Therefore, Cuneo concludes, moral facts exist. And if moral facts exist, then moral realism is true. In so arguing, Cuneo provides not simply a defense of moral realism, but a positive argument for it. Moreover, this argument engages with a wide range of antirealist positions in epistemology such as error theories, expressivist views, and reductionist views of epistemic reasons. If the central argument of The Normative Web is correct, antirealist positions of these varieties come at a very high cost. Given their cost, Cuneo contends, we should find realism about both epistemic and moral facts highly attractive.

Download or read book Morality and Moral Reasoning Routledge Revivals written by John Casey and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-09-13 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1971, the five essays in this book were written by young philosophers at Cambridge at that time. They focus on two major questions of ethical theory: ‘What is it to judge morally?’ and ‘What makes a reason a moral reason?’. The book explores the relation of moral judgements to attitudes, emotions and beliefs as well as the notions of expression, agency, and moral responsibility.

Download or read book Essays in Quasi Realism written by Simon Blackburn and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1993-06-17 with total page 271 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume collects some influential essays in which Simon Blackburn, one of our leading philosophers, explores one of the most profound and fertile of philosophical problems: the way in which our judgments relate to the world. This debate has centered on realism, or the view that what we say is validated by the way things stand in the world, and a variety of oppositions to it. Prominent among the latter are expressive and projective theories, but also a relaxed pluralism that discourages the view that there are substantial issues at stake. The figure of the "quasi-realist" dramatizes the difficulty of conducting these debates. Typically philosophers thinking of themselves as realists will believe that they alone can give a proper or literal account of some of our attachments--to truth, to facts, to the independent world, to knowledge and certainty. The quasi-realist challenge, developed by Blackburn in this volume, is that we can have those attachments without any metaphysic that deserves to be called realism, so that the metaphysical picture that goes with our practices is quite idle. The cases treated here include the theories of value and knowledge, modality, probability, causation, intentionality and rule-following, and explanation. A substantial new introduction has been added, drawing together some of the central themes. The essays articulate a fresh alternative to a primitive realist/anti-realist opposition, and their cumulative effect is to yield a new appreciation of the delicacy of the debate in these central areas.

Download or read book The Moral Landscape written by Sam Harris and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2011-09-13 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sam Harris dismantles the most common justification for religious faith--that a moral system cannot be based on science.

Download or read book Morality in a Natural World written by David Copp and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-07-16 with total page 325 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The central philosophical challenge of metaethics is to account for the normativity of moral judgment without abandoning or seriously compromising moral realism. In Morality in a Natural World, David Copp defends a version of naturalistic moral realism that can accommodate the normativity of morality. Moral naturalism is often thought to face special metaphysical, epistemological, and semantic problems as well as the difficulty in accounting for normativity. In the ten essays included in this volume, Copp defends solutions to these problems. Three of the essays are new, while seven have previously been published. All of them are concerned with the viability of naturalistic and realistic accounts of the nature of morality, or, more generally, with the viability of naturalistic accounts of reasons.

Download or read book Time and Ethics written by H. L. Dyke and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a pressing need for an investigation into how time and ethics impact on each other. This book leads the way in addressing that need. The essays in this collection raise and investigate some of the key issues that arise at the intersection between these two areas of philosophy. It is for undergraduates, postgraduates and professional philosophers.

Download or read book Realism Ethics and Secularism written by George Levine and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2008-10-09 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: George Levine is one of the world's leading scholars of Victorian literature and culture. This collection of his essays develops the key themes of his work: the intersection of nineteenth-century British literature, culture and science and the relation of knowledge and truth to ethics. The essays offer perspectives on George Eliot, Thackeray, the Positivists, and the Scientific Naturalists, and reassess the complex relationship between Ruskin and Darwin. In readings of Lawrence and Coetzee, Levine addresses Victorian and modern efforts to push beyond the limits of realist art by testing its aesthetic and epistemological limits in engagement with the self and the other. Some of Levine's most important contributions to the field are reprinted, in revised and updated form, alongside previously unpublished material. Together, these essays cohere into an exploration both of Victorian literature and culture and of ethical, epistemological, and aesthetic problems fundamental to our own times.

Download or read book Ethics and the A Priori written by Michael Smith and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-09-06 with total page 404 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Publisher Description

Download or read book Morality in a Realistic Spirit written by Andrew Gleeson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-09-18 with total page 419 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This unique collection of essays has two main purposes. The first is to honour the pioneering work of Cora Diamond, one of the most important living moral philosophers and certainly the most important working in the tradition inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein. The second is to develop and deepen a picture of moral philosophy by carrying out new work in what Diamond has called the realistic spirit. The contributors in this book advance a first-order moral attitude that pays close attention to actual moral life and experience. Their essays, inspired by Diamond’s work, take up pressing challenges in Anglo-American moral philosophy, including Diamond’s defence of the concept ‘human being’ in ethics, her defence of literature as a source of moral thought that does not require external sanction from philosophy, her challenge to the standard ‘fact/value’ dichotomy, and her exploration of non-argumentative forms of legitimate moral persuasion. There are also essays that apply this framework to new issues such as the nature of love, the connections of ethics to theology, and the implications of Wittgenstein’s thought for political philosophy. Finally, the book features a new paper by Diamond in which she contests deep-rooted philosophical assumptions about language that severely limit what philosophers see as the possibilities in ethics. Morality in a Realistic Spirit offers a tribute to a great moral philosopher in the best way possible—by taking up the living ideas in her work and taking them in original and interesting directions.