Download or read book Moral Beliefs and Moral Theory written by M.G. Forrester and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2013-03-09 with total page 453 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Some time ago I wrote a book (Moral Language, 1982) in which I argued that moral judgments are capable of being true ('truth-apt,' to use a current phrase, or descriptive and having truth-value, to use a more traditional term), that the methods of discovering moral facts are fundamentally similar to those of discovering non-moral facts, and that moral judgments may be true. What I did not do at that time was to develop a moral theory which would demonstrate how the method of discovering moral truths would work and what the criteria of truth actually are. In a later work (Persons, Animals, and Fetuses, 1996) I did propose a moral theory as to what the criteria for moral truth are; however, I presented it primarily as an introduction to the discussion of several practical ethical issues and did not argue fully for that theory. It is high time that I did so, because without showing that such a theory can be developed my defense of moral realism is incomplete. It is all very well to say that we can discover what moral beliefs are true, but unless we can demonstrate just which beliefs are true, the thesis that we can discover this truth cannot be fully defended. For this reason the biggest (although not the only) challenge to showing that ethical objectivity is possible is the presence of moral disagreement - and the contention of many that such disagreement cannot be definitively resolved.
Download or read book The Righteous Mind written by Jonathan Haidt and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-02-12 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The acclaimed social psychologist challenges conventional thinking about morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to conservatives and liberals alike—a “landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself” (The New York Times Book Review). Drawing on his twenty-five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, Jonathan Haidt shows how moral judgments arise not from reason but from gut feelings. He shows why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have such different intuitions about right and wrong, and he shows why each side is actually right about many of its central concerns. In this subtle yet accessible book, Haidt gives you the key to understanding the miracle of human cooperation, as well as the curse of our eternal divisions and conflicts. If you’re ready to trade in anger for understanding, read The Righteous Mind.
Download or read book Ethics and Experience written by Tim Chappell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-12-05 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Ethics and Experience" presents a wide-ranging and thought-provoking introduction to the question famously posed by Socrates: How is life to be lived? 'An excellent primer for any student taking a course on moral philosophy, the book introduces ethics as a single and broadly unified field of inquiry in which we apply reason to try and solve Socrates' question. "Ethics and Experience "examines the major forms of ethical subjectivism and objectivism - including expressivism, error theory', naturalism, and intuitionism. The book lays out the detail of the most significant contemporary moral theories - including utilitarianism, virtue ethics, Kantianism, and contractarianism - and reconsiders these theories in the light of two questions that should perhaps be asked more often: Is moral theory, with its tendency to regiment ethical thought and experience, really the best way for us to apply reason to deciding how to live? And, might it not be more truly reasonable to look for less system and more insight?
Download or read book Moral Theory written by Mark Timmons and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2013 with total page 381 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Overview: What makes an action right or wrong? Why is something good or bad? How does one make moral decision about what is right and good? These are among the main questions in ethics that are the subject of moral theory. This book explores some of the most historically important and currently debated moral theories about the nature of the right and good. After introducing students in the first chapter to some of the main aims and methods of evaluating a moral theory, the remaining chapters in this book are devoted to an examination of various moral theories including the divine command theory, moral relativism, natural law theory, Kant's moral theory, moral pluralism, virtue ethics and moral particularism. Providing an introduction to moral theory that explains and critically examines the theories of such classical moral philosophers as Aristotle, Aquinas, Kant, Bentham, Mill and Ross, this book acquaints students with the work of contemporary moral philosophers.
Download or read book Conduct and Character written by Mark Timmons and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This anthology of 29 readings on philosophical theories of morality is organized according to type of moral theory (utilitarianism, egoism, virtue ethics, the ethics of care, etc.), with a separate chapter devoted to each type. Reading selections in the chapters provide a balance of both classical and contemporary philosophical writings, representing a spectrum of viewpoints on each theory. In addition, the collection contains an introductory essay on moral theory by the editor.
Download or read book The Philosophical and Theological Foundations of Ethics written by Peter Byrne and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-07-27 with total page 210 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study is an introduction to the problems of moral philosophy designed particularly for students of theology and religious studies. It offers an account of the nature and subject matter of moral reasoning and of the major types of moral theory current in contemporary moral philosophy. The account aims to bring out the major issues in moral theory, to present a clear, non-technical articulation of the structure of moral knowledge and to explore the relation between religious belief and morality.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory written by Professor of Philosophy David Copp and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2006-01-26 with total page 680 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Handbook is a comprehensive reference work in ethical theory consisting of commissioned articles by leading scholars. The first part treats meta-ethics and the second part normative ethical theory. As with all the Oxford Handbooks, the collection is designed to achieve three goals: exposition of central ideas, criticism of other approaches, and defenses of distinct points of view.
Download or read book Moral Imagination written by Mark Johnson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-12-10 with total page 302 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using path-breaking discoveries of cognitive science, Mark Johnson argues that humans are fundamentally imaginative moral animals, challenging the view that morality is simply a system of universal laws dictated by reason. According to the Western moral tradition, we make ethical decisions by applying universal laws to concrete situations. But Johnson shows how research in cognitive science undermines this view and reveals that imagination has an essential role in ethical deliberation. Expanding his innovative studies of human reason in Metaphors We Live By and The Body in the Mind, Johnson provides the tools for more practical, realistic, and constructive moral reflection.
Download or read book Ethics written by Lawrence M. Hinman and published by Wadsworth Publishing Company. This book was released on 1998 with total page 476 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book not only provides an introduction to the main traditions in ethical thought (Aristotle and virtue ethics, Mill and utilitarianism, and Kant and deontology), but also offers a conceptual framework (ethical pluralism) for understanding the relationship among these various theories.
Download or read book Christian Theism and Moral Philosophy written by Michael D. Beaty and published by Mercer University Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: These seminal essays will be of interest to scholars and students of religious ethics, but also of interest to those of "mainstream" moral philosophy who work from a Christian worldview as well as to non-Christians with an interest in the relation between Christian theism and moral philosophy.
Download or read book Methodology and Moral Philosophy written by Jussi Suikkanen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-10-31 with total page 242 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many ethicists either accept the reflective equilibrium method or think that anything goes in ethical theorizing as long as the results are plausible. The aim of this book is to advance methodological thinking in ethics beyond these common attitudes and to raise new methodological questions about how moral philosophy should be done. What are we entitled to assume as the starting-point of our ethical inquiry? What is the role of empirical sciences in ethics? Is there just one general method for doing moral philosophy or should different questions in moral philosophy be answered in different ways? Are there argumentative structures and strategies that we should be encouraged to use or typical argumentative patterns that we should avoid? This volume brings together leading moral philosophers to consider these questions. The chapters investigate the prospects of empirical ethics, outline new methods of ethics, evaluate recent methodological advances, and explore whether different areas of moral philosophy are methodologically continuous or independent of one another. The aim of Methodology and Moral Philosophy is to make moral philosophers more self-aware and reflective of the way in which they do moral philosophy and also to encourage them to take part in methodological debates.
Download or read book Moral Philosophy A Contemporary Introduction written by Daniel R. DeNicola and published by Broadview Press. This book was released on 2018-11-30 with total page 330 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moral Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction is a compact yet comprehensive book offering an explication and critique of the major theories that have shaped philosophical ethics. Engaging with both historical and contemporary figures, this book explores the scope, limits, and requirements of morality. DeNicola traces our various attempts to ground morality: in nature, in religion, in culture, in social contracts, and in aspects of the human person such as reason, emotions, caring, and intuition.
Download or read book Moral Psychology written by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2008 with total page 607 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since the 1990s, many philosophers have drawn on recent advances in cognitive psychology, brain science and evolutionary psychology to inform their work. These three volumes bring together some of the most innovative work by both philosophers and psychologists in this emerging, collaboratory field.
Download or read book The Nature of Moral Thinking written by Francis Snare and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-09-11 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Nature of Moral Thinking is an introductory text to the questions of ethics, offering a solid philosophical and historical basis for understanding the central issues. Francis Snare discusses in detail the classical philosophical arguments of Plato and Butler in relation to relativism and subjectivism and treats Marx and Nietzsche in regard to the origins and explanation of morality.
Download or read book Moral Values written by Nicolai Hartmann and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-29 with total page 444 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Nicolai Hartmann (1882-1950), along with Henri Bergson and Martin Heidegger, was instrumental in restoring metaphysics to the study of philosophy. Unlike his contemporaries, however, Hartmann was clearly influenced by Plato. His tour-de-force, Ethik, published in English in 1932 as Ethics, may be the most outstanding work on moral philosophy produced in the twentieth century.In the first part of Ethics (Moral Phenomena), Hartmann was concerned with the structure of ethical phenomena, and criticized utilitarianism, Kantianism, and relativism as misleading approaches. In the second part, Moral Values, the author describes all values as forming a complex and as yet imperfectly known system. The actualization of the non-moral and elementary moral values is a necessary condition for the actualization of the higher values. It is on this account that rudimentary values have a prior claim.Hartmann outlines the main features of the chief virtues, and shows that the moral disposition required in any exigency is always a specific synthesis of various and often conflicting values. Specifically describing fundamental moral values-such as goodness, nobility, and vitality-and special moral values-such as justice, wisdom, courage, self-control, trustworthiness, and modesty-Hartmann takes theoretical philosophy and brings it very much into the realm of the practical.A compelling and insightful volume, Moral Values remains an essential contribution to the moral and ethical literature of the twentieth century. Hartmann offers a self-contained system of ethics that yet offers a conservative outlook on social life.
Download or read book An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals written by David Hume and published by . This book was released on 1907 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Morality and Moral Theory written by Robert B. Louden and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1992-05-28 with total page 245 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contemporary philosophers have grown increasingly skeptical toward both morality and moral theory. Some argue that moral theory is a radically misguided enterprise that does not illuminate moral practice, while others simply deny the value of morality in human life. In this important new book, Louden responds to the arguments of both "anti-morality" and "anti-theory" skeptics. In Part One, he develops and defends an alternative conception of morality, which, he argues, captures more of the central features of both Aristotelian and Kantian ethics than do other contemporary models, and enables the central importance of morality to be convincingly reaffirmed. In Louden's model, morality is primarily a matter of what one does to oneself, rather than what one does or does not do to others. This model eliminates the gulf that many anti-morality critics say exists between morality's demands and the personal point of view. Louden further argues that morality's primary focus should be on agents and their lives, rather than on right actions, and that it is always better to be morally better--i.e. it is impossible to be "too moral." Part Two presents Louden's alternative conception of moral theory. Here again he draws on the work of Aristotle and Kant, showing that their moral theories have far more in common than is usually thought, and that those features that they share can be the basis for a viable moral theory that is immune to the standard anti-theory objections. Louden reaffirms the necessity and importance of moral theory in human life, and shows that moral theories fulfill a variety of genuine and indispensable human needs.
