Download or read book Merit Meaning and Human Bondage written by Nomy Arpaly and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2009-08-15 with total page 158 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps everything we think, feel, and do is determined, and humans--like stones or clouds--are slaves to the laws of nature. Would that be a terrible state? Philosophers who take the incompatibilist position think so, arguing that a deterministic world would be one without moral responsibility and perhaps without true love, meaningful art, and real rationality. But compatibilists and semicompatibilists argue that determinism need not worry us. As long as our actions stem, in an appropriate way, from us, or respond in some way to reasons, our actions are meaningful and can be judged on their moral (or other) merit. In this highly original work, Nomy Arpaly argues that a deterministic world does not preclude moral responsibility, rationality, and love--in short, meaningful lives--but that there would still be something lamentable about a deterministic world. A person may respond well to reasons, and her actions may faithfully reflect her true self or values, but she may still feel that she is not free. Arpaly argues that compatibilists and semicompatibilists are wrong to dismiss this feeling--for which there are no philosophical consolations--as philosophically irrelevant. On the way to this bittersweet conclusion, Arpaly sets forth surprising theories about acting for reasons, the widely accepted idea that "ought implies can," moral blame, and more.

Download or read book Moral Responsibility and Desert of Praise and Blame written by Audrey L. Anton and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-12-24 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book challenges a basic assumption held by many responsibility theorists: that agents must be morally responsible in the retrospective sense for anything in virtue of which they deserve praise or blame (the primacy assumption). Anton sets out to defeat this assumption by showing that accepting it as well as the much more intuitive causality assumption renders us incapable of making sense of cases whereby agents seem to deserve praise and blame. She argues that retrospective moral responsibility is a species of causal responsibility (the causality assumption). Then, she illustrates several examples in which agents are not causally responsible for any morally relevant consequences, but they seem to be deserving of praise or blame nonetheless. Anton concludes that such cases are counterexamples to the primacy assumption, and turns her attention towards discerning what grounds desert of praise and blame if not retrospective moral responsibility. Anton advances the moral attitude account, whereby agents deserve praise and blame in virtue of moral attitudes they have in response to moral reasons. These moral attitudes must be sufficiently sincere, which means they reach a threshold that distinguishes such attitudes as eligible for praise and blame. Anton adds that whether one deserves praise or blame and to what degree is sensitive to the agent’s personal moral progress as well as the status quo of her society. This addition brings with it the welcome consequence that morality may be objective, but we are still justified in judging one another charitably based on personal and societal limitations.

Download or read book The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers written by Stephen Leach and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-05-11 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Meaning of Life and the Great Philosophers reveals how great philosophers of the past sought to answer the question of the meaning of life. This edited collection includes thirty-five chapters which each focus on a major philosophical figure, from Confucius to Rorty, and that imaginatively engage with the topic from their perspective. This volume also contains a Postscript on the historical origins and original significance of the phrase ‘the meaning of life’. Written by leading experts in the field, such as A.C. Grayling, Thaddeus Metz and John Cottingham, this unique and engaging book explores the relevance of the history of philosophy to contemporary debates. It will prove essential reading for students and scholars studying the history of philosophy, philosophy of religion, ethics, metaphysics or comparative philosophy.

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Moral Responsibility written by Dana Kay Nelkin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 783 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Moral Responsibility is a collection of 33 articles by leading international scholars on the topic of moral responsibility and its main forms, praiseworthiness and blameworthiness. The articles in the volume provide a comprehensive survey on scholarship on this topic since 1960, with a focus on the past three decades. Articles address the nature of moral responsibility - whether it is fundamentally a matter of deserved blame and praise, or whether it is grounded anticipated good consequences, such as moral education and formation, or whether there are different kinds of moral responsibility. They examine responsibility for both actions and omissions, whether responsibility comes in degrees, and whether groups such as corporations can be responsible. The traditional debates about moral responsibility focus on the threats posed from causal determinism, and from the absence of the ability to do otherwise that may result. The articles in this volume build on these arguments and appraise the most recent developments in these debates. Philosophical reflection on the personal relationships and moral responsibility has been especially intense over the past two decades, and several articles reflect this development. Other chapters take up the link between blameworthiness and attitudes such as moral resentment and indignation, while others explore the role that forgiveness and reconciliation play in personal relationships and responsibility. The range of articles in this volume look at moral responsibility from a range of perspectives and disciplines, explaining how physics, neuroscience, and psychological research on topics such as addiction and implicit bias illuminate the ways and degrees to which we might be responsible.

Download or read book Agency Negligence and Responsibility written by Veronica Rodriguez-Blanco and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-11-04 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection of essays represents a ground-breaking collaboration between moral philosophers, action theorists, lawyers and legal theorists to set a fresh research agenda on agency and responsibility in negligence. The complex phenomenon of responsibility in negligence is analysed from multi- and interdisciplinary perspectives, shedding light on key ethical and legal issues related to agency and negligence to impact substantive law and policy-making in different jurisdictions. The volume introduces new debates and questions old assumptions, inviting the reader to rethink substantive law and practical ethical reflection.

Download or read book Moral Dimensions written by T. M. Scanlon and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2010-09-30 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a clear and elegant style, T. M. Scanlon reframes current philosophical debates as he explores the moral permissibility of an action. Permissibility may seem to depend on the agent’s reasons for performing an action. For example, there seems to be an important moral difference between tactical bombing and a campaign by terrorists—even if the same number of non-combatants are killed—and this difference may seem to lie in the agents’ respective aims. However, Scanlon argues that the apparent dependence of permissibility on the agent’s reasons in such cases is merely a failure to distinguish between two kinds of moral assessment: assessment of the permissibility of an action and assessment of the way an agent decided what to do. Distinguishing between these two forms of assessment leads Scanlon to an important distinction between the permissibility of an action and its meaning: the significance for others of the agent’s willingness to act in this way. An action’s meaning depends on the agent’s reasons for performing it in a way that its permissibility does not. Blame, he argues, is a response to the meaning of an action rather than its permissibility. This analysis leads to a novel account of the conditions of moral responsibility and to important conclusions about the ethics of blame.

Download or read book Addiction and Self Control written by Neil Levy and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-12 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book brings cutting edge neuroscience and psychology into dialogue with philosophical reflection to illuminate the loss of control experienced by addicts, and thereby cast light on ordinary agency and the way in which it sometimes goes wrong.

Download or read book Philosophy and Psychiatry written by Daniel D. Moseley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-09-16 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This groundbreaking volume of original essays presents fresh avenues of inquiry at the intersection of philosophy and psychiatry. Contributors draw from a variety of fields, including evolutionary psychiatry, phenomenology, biopsychosocial models, psychoanalysis, neuroscience, neuroethics, behavioral economics, and virtue theory. Philosophy and Psychiatry’s unique structure consists of two parts: in the first, philosophers write five lead essays with replies from psychiatrists. In the second part, this arrangement is reversed. The result is an interdisciplinary exchange that allows for direct discourse, and a volume at the forefront of defining an emerging discipline. Philosophy and Psychiatry will be of interest to professionals in philosophy and psychiatry, as well as mental health researchers and clinicians.

Download or read book Ethics and Form in Fantasy Literature written by Lykke Guanio-Uluru and published by Springer. This book was released on 2015-08-10 with total page 261 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethics and Form in Fantasy Literature: Tolkien, Rowling and Meyer by Lykke Guanio-Uluru examines formal and ethical aspects of The Lord of the Rings , Harry Potter and the Twilight series in order to discover what best-selling fantasy texts can tell us about the values of contemporary Western culture.

Download or read book Moral Psychology Volume 4 written by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2014-02-21 with total page 493 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leading philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists address issues of moral responsibility and free will, drawing on new findings from empirical science. Traditional philosophers approached the issues of free will and moral responsibility through conceptual analysis that seldom incorporated findings from empirical science. In recent decades, however, striking developments in psychology and neuroscience have captured the attention of many moral philosophers. This volume of Moral Psychology offers essays, commentaries, and replies by leading philosophers and scientists who explain and use empirical findings from psychology and neuroscience to illuminate old and new problems regarding free will and moral responsibility. The contributors—who include such prominent scholars as Patricia Churchland, Daniel Dennett, and Michael Gazzaniga—consider issues raised by determinism, compatibilism, and libertarianism; epiphenomenalism, bypassing, and naturalism; naturalism; and rationality and situationism. These writings show that although science does not settle the issues of free will and moral responsibility, it has enlivened the field by asking novel, profound, and important questions. Contributors Roy F. Baumeister, Tim Bayne, Gunnar Björnsson, C. Daryl Cameron, Hanah A. Chapman, William A. Cunningham, Patricia S. Churchland, Christopher G. Coutlee, Daniel C. Dennett, Ellen E. Furlong, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Patrick Haggard, Brian Hare, Lasana T. Harris, John-Dylan Haynes, Richard Holton, Scott A. Huettel, Robert Kane, Victoria K. Lee, Neil Levy, Alfred R. Mele, Christian Miller, Erman Misirlisoy, P. Read Montague, Thomas Nadelhoffer, Eddy Nahmias, William T. Newsome, B. Keith Payne, Derk Pereboom, Adina L. Roskies, Laurie R. Santos, Timothy Schroeder, Michael N. Shadlen, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Chandra Sripada, Christopher L. Suhler, Manuel Vargas, Gideon Yaffe

Download or read book Free Will and Action Explanation written by Scott Sehon and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-04-29 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do we have free will and moral responsibility? Is free will compatible with determinism? Scott Sehon argues that we can make progress on these questions by focusing on an underlying issue: the nature of action explanation. When a person acts, or does something on purpose, we explain the behavior by citing the agent's reasons. The dominant view in philosophy of mind has been to construe such explanations as a species of causal explanation. Part I of the book proposes and defends a non-causal account of action and agency, according to which reason explanation of human behavior is irreducibly teleological rather than causal. Part II applies the teleological account of action to free will and responsibility, arguing that the free actions—the ones for which we are directly responsible—are the goal-directed actions, the actions that are teleologically explicable in terms of our reasons. It is then argued that this non-causal account of action undermines the appeal of incompatibilist arguments, arguments attempting to show that free will is not compatible with determinism. Beyond this, Sehon argues that the non-causal compatibilist account works well in practice: it is in accord with our clear intuitions about cases, and it both explains and provides guidance in the cases where our intuitions are murkier.

Download or read book Responsibility and Psychopathy written by Luca Malatesti and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-08-19 with total page 341 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The discussion of whether psychopaths are morally responsible for their behaviour has long taken place in philosophy. In recent years this has moved into scientific and psychiatric investigation. Responsibility and Psychopathy discusses this subject from both the philosophical and scientific disciplines, as well as a legal perspective.

Download or read book Parental Responsibility in the Context of Neuroscience and Genetics written by Kristien Hens and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-01-09 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Should parents aim to make their children as normal as possible to increase their chances to “fit in”? Are neurological and mental health conditions a part of children’s identity and if so, should parents aim to remove or treat these? Should they aim to instill self-control in their children? Should prospective parents take steps to insure that, of all the children they could have, they choose the ones with the best likely start in life? This volume explores all of these questions and more. Against the background of recent findings and expected advances in neuroscience and genetics, the extent and limits of parental responsibility are increasingly unclear. Awareness of the effects of parental choices on children’s wellbeing, as well as evolving norms about the moral status of children, have further increased expectations from (prospective) parents to take up and act on their changing responsibilities. The contributors discuss conceptual issues such as the meaning and sources of moral responsibility, normality, treatment, and identity. They also explore more practical issues such as how responsibility for children is practiced in Yoruba culture in Nigeria or how parents and health professionals in Belgium perceive the dilemmas generated by prenatal diagnosis.

Download or read book The Significance of Aspect Perception written by Avner Baz and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-06-24 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this volume, Baz offers a wide-ranging discussion of Wittgenstein’s remarks on aspect-perception, with special focus on Wittgenstein’s method. Baz starts out with an interpretation of Wittgenstein’s remarks on aspects and continues with attempts to characterize and defend Wittgenstein’s approach to the understanding and dissolution of philosophical difficulties. Baz ends with attempts to articulate—under the inspiration of Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology—certain dissatisfactions, both with Wittgenstein’s remarks on aspect perception, and with his philosophical approach more generally. On the way, Baz explores connections between Wittgenstein’s remarks on aspects and Kant’s aesthetics. He examines ways in which the remarks on aspects may be brought to bear on contemporary philosophical work on perception. He discusses some of the implications of Wittgenstein’s work on aspect perception for issues in moral philosophy and the philosophy of action.

Download or read book Canceling Lawyers written by W. Bradley Wendel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2024 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Lawyers take pride in a professional tradition of representing unpopular clients, understanding it as a contribution to the rule of law and the practice of toleration in a polarized society. This does not mean that lawyers are fully insulated from criticism for the clients they represent. The seemingly intractable debate over accountability for representing nasty clients is in part the result of a deep, structural tension between the institutions and procedures of the legal system, and the underlying issues and controversies about which people disagree. We also care about the attitudes and motives of lawyers, which play an important role in evaluating the actions of others. Much of the frustration experienced by lawyers who are criticized for representing unpopular clients arises from what lawyers see as the public's inability to understand the rule of law and the function of the legal system in resolving conflicts over rights and justice. Using a series of case studies, this book explores the possibility that both lawyers and their critics are right. There is genuine value in a system of formal law that aims at settling social disagreement, but that is not the whole story. Public criticism of lawyers may reflect the sense that the legal system has fallen short of ideals of fairness and inclusiveness. Many of the lawyer shaming or "canceling" episodes discussed in this book arise out of the representation of clients in matters involving issues where it appears that the official process of establishing and interpreting formal law has been captured by powerful interests. Accepting a certain amount of public criticism is necessary to avoid a dangerous isolation of the legal profession from accountability to the broader political community, or from the humanity of lawyers being submerged by their professional role"--

Download or read book The Self Beyond Itself written by Heidi M. Ravven and published by New Press, The. This book was released on 2014-09-16 with total page 437 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “Intertwines history, philosophy, and science . . . A powerful challenge to conventional notions of individual responsibility” (Publishers Weekly). Few concepts are more unshakable in our culture than free will, the idea that individuals are fundamentally in control of the decisions they make, good or bad. And yet the latest research about how the brain functions seems to point in the opposite direction . . . In a work of breathtaking intellectual sweep and erudition, Heidi M. Ravven offers a riveting and accessible review of cutting-edge neuroscientific research into the brain’s capacity for decision-making—from “mirror” neurons and “self-mapping” to surprising new understandings of group psychology. The Self Beyond Itself also introduces readers to a rich, alternative philosophical tradition of ethics, rooted in the writing of Baruch Spinoza, that finds uncanny confirmation in modern science. Illustrating the results of today’s research with real-life examples, taking readers from elementary school classrooms to Nazi concentration camps, Ravven demonstrates that it is possible to build a theory of ethics that doesn’t rely on free will yet still holds both individuals and groups responsible for the decisions that help create a good society. The Self Beyond Itself is that rare book that injects new ideas into an old debate—and “an important contribution to the development of our thinking about morality” (Washington Independent Review of Books). “An intellectual hand-grenade . . . A magisterial survey of how contemporary neuroscience supports a vision of human morality which puts it squarely on the same plane as other natural phenomena.” —William D. Casebeer, author of Natural Ethical Facts

Download or read book Reasons Why written by Bradford Skow and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016-08-18 with total page 224 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reasons Why first argues that what philosophers are really after, or at least should be after, when they seek a theory of explanation, is a theory of answers to why-questions. It then advances a thesis about what form a theory of answers to why-questions should take: a theory of answers to why-questions should say what it takes for one fact to be a reason why another fact obtains. The book's main thesis, then, is a theory of reasons why. Every reason why some event happened is either a cause, or a ground, of that event. Challenging this thesis are many examples philosophers have thought they have found of "non-causal explanations." Reasons Why uses two ideas to show that these examples are not counterexamples to the theory it defends. First is the idea that not every part of a good response to a why-question is part of an answer to that why-question. Second is the idea that not every reason why something is a reason why an event happened is itself a reason why that event happened. In the book's final chapter its theory of reasons why is extended to cover teleological answers to why-questions, and answers to why-questions that give an agent's reason for acting.