Download or read book Moral Desert written by Howard Simmons and published by University Press of America. This book was released on 2010-02-23 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Moral Desert, Howard Simmons notes that the idea that we deserve to be praised or rewarded for good behavior and blamed or punished when we act badly seems central to everyone's moral deliberation and practices. Simmons subjects this assumption to critical scrutiny. He argues that in a wide range of cases it is almost impossible to know the extent of people's moral responsibility, and indeed that it may be a complete delusion. He attacks the still-popular theory of retributive punishment, with special reference to the views of Peter French and J. Angelo Corlett. Simmons does not conclude that punishment is always unjustified, but insists that any justification should relate to its real world consequences. State punishment should be inflicted according to strict consequentialist precepts, and the author provides systematic principles for determining an appropriate sentence and for deciding when offenders should be excused. He also considers the implications of his views for distributive justice and personal morality.

Download or read book The Geometry of Desert written by Shelly Kagan and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2014-12-04 with total page 675 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Geometry of Desert explores the hidden complexity of moral desert. Using graphs to illustrate and contrast alternative views, it carefully investigates the various ways in which the value of an outcome varies when people get (or fail to get) what they deserve.

Download or read book Moral Agents and Their Deserts written by Sophia Vasalou and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-07-26 with total page 268 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Must good deeds be rewarded and wrongdoers punished? Would God be unjust if He failed to punish and reward? And what is it about good or evil actions and moral identity that might generate such necessities? These were some of the vital religious and philosophical questions that eighth- and ninth-century Mu'tazilite theologians and their sophisticated successors attempted to answer, giving rise to a distinctive ethical position and one of the most prominent and controversial intellectual trends in medieval Islam. The Mu'tazilites developed a view of ethics whose distinguishing features were its austere moral objectivism and the crucial role it assigned to reason in the knowledge of moral truths. Central to this ethical vision was the notion of moral desert, and of the good and evil consequences--reward or punishment--deserved through a person's acts. Moral Agents and Their Deserts is the first book-length study of this central theme in Mu'tazilite ethics, and an attempt to grapple with the philosophical questions it raises. At the same time, it is a bid to question the ways in which modern readers, coming to medieval Islamic thought with a philosophical interest, seek to read and converse with Mu'tazilite theology. Moral Agents and Their Deserts tracks the challenges and rewards involved in the pursuit of the right conversation at the seams between modern and medieval concerns.

Download or read book Utilitarianism Hedonism and Desert written by Fred Feldman and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1997-08-13 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Fred Feldman is an important philosopher, who has made a substantial contribution to utilitarian moral philosophy. This collection of ten previously published essays plus a new introductory essay reveal the striking originality and unity of his views. Feldman's version of utilitarianism differs from traditional forms in that it evaluates behaviour by appeal to the values of accessible worlds. These worlds are in turn evaluated in terms of the amounts of pleasure they contain, but the conception of pleasure involved is a novel one and the formulation of hedonism improved. In Feldman's view pleasure is not a feeling but a propositional attitude. He also deals with problems of justice that affect standard forms of utilitarianism. The collection is ideally suited for courses on contemporary utilitarian theory.

Download or read book Dessert Person written by Claire Saffitz and published by Clarkson Potter. This book was released on 2020-10-20 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • In her first cookbook, Bon Appétit and YouTube star of the show Gourmet Makes offers wisdom, problem-solving strategies, and more than 100 meticulously tested, creative, and inspiring recipes. IACP AWARD WINNER • NAMED ONE OF THE BEST COOKBOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The New York Times Book Review • Bon Appétit • NPR • The Atlanta Journal-Constitution • Salon • Epicurious “There are no ‘just cooks’ out there, only bakers who haven't yet been converted. I am a dessert person, and we are all dessert people.”—Claire Saffitz Claire Saffitz is a baking hero for a new generation. In Dessert Person, fans will find Claire’s signature spin on sweet and savory recipes like Babkallah (a babka-Challah mashup), Apple and Concord Grape Crumble Pie, Strawberry-Cornmeal Layer Cake, Crispy Mushroom Galette, and Malted Forever Brownies. She outlines the problems and solutions for each recipe—like what to do if your pie dough for Sour Cherry Pie cracks (patch it with dough or a quiche flour paste!)—as well as practical do’s and don’ts, skill level, prep and bake time, step-by-step photography, and foundational know-how. With her trademark warmth and superpower ability to explain anything baking related, Claire is ready to make everyone a dessert person.

Download or read book Desert written by George Sher and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 1987 with total page 246 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Studies the range of acts and traits for which persons are said to deserve things. These include acting wrongly, being victimized by others' wrongdoing, extending sustained effort, working productively, performing well in competition, being best qualified for positions, and possessing or exhibiting moral virtue.

Download or read book A Theory of Justice written by John RAWLS and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 624 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Though the revised edition of A Theory of Justice, published in 1999, is the definitive statement of Rawls's view, so much of the extensive literature on Rawls's theory refers to the first edition. This reissue makes the first edition once again available for scholars and serious students of Rawls's work.

Download or read book Drawing Morals written by Thomas Hurka and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-07-18 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume contains selected essays in moral and political philosophy by Thomas Hurka. The essays address a wide variety of topics, from the well-rounded life and the value of playing games to proportionality in war and the ethics of nationalism. They also share a common aim: to illuminate the surprising richness and subtlety of our everyday moral thought by revealing its underlying structure, which they often do by representing that structure on graphs. More specifically, the essays all give what the first in the volume calls "structural" as against "foundational" analyses of moral views. Eschewing the grander ambition of grounding our ideas about, say, virtue or desert in claims that use different concepts and concern some other, allegedly more fundamental topic, they examine these ideas in their own right and with close attention to their details. As well as illuminating their individual topics, the essays illustrate the insights this structural method can yield.

Download or read book Desert in Modern Literature and Philosophy written by Aidan Tynan and published by Edinburgh University Press. This book was released on 2020-06-18 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Aidan explores the ways in which Nietzsche's warning that 'the desert grows' has been taken up by Heidegger, Derrida and Deleuze in their critiques of modernity, and the desert in literature ranging from T.S Eliot to Don DeLillo; from imperial travel writing to postmodernism; and from the Old Testament to salvagepunk.

Download or read book Desert Collapses written by Stephen Kershnar and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2021-08-18 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: People consider desert part of our moral world. It structures how we think about important areas such as love, punishment, and work. This book argues that no one deserves anything. If this is correct, then claims that people deserve general and specific things are false. At the heart of desert is the notion of moral credit or discredit. People deserve good things (credit) when they are good people or do desirable things. These desirable things might be right, good, or virtuous acts. People deserve bad things (discredit) when they are bad people or do undesirable things. On some theories, people deserve credit in general terms. For instance, they deserve a good life. On other theories, people deserve credit in specific terms. For instance, they deserve specific incomes, jobs, punishments, relationships, or reputations. The author’s argument against desert rests on three claims: There is no adequate theory of what desert is. Even if there were an adequate theory of what desert is, nothing grounds (justifies) desert. Even if there were an adequate theory of what desert is and something were to ground it, there is no plausible account of what people deserve. Desert Collapses will be of interest to researchers and advanced students working in ethics and political philosophy.

Download or read book Rethinking Responsibility written by K. E. Boxer and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2013-02-07 with total page 191 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores moral responsibility, and whether it is compatible with causal determinism. Its author, K. E. Boxer, started out with deeply incompatibilist intuitions but became dissatisfied with the arguments that she and other contemporary incompatibilists marshalled in support of this view. Rethinking Responsibility has evolved out of her search for a more adequate argument. Boxer suggests that if incompatibilists are to be in a position to provide such an argument, they must shift their attention away from metaphysics and back to what H. L. A. Hart deemed the primary sense of the concept of moral responsibility, viz., the sense of liability. To say that an agent is morally responsible for an action in this sense is to say that she satisfies the necessary causal and capacity conditions for desert of certain forms of response. If incompatibilists are to show that among those conditions is a requirement for some form of ultimate responsibility incompatible with determinism, they must first clarify their understanding of moral desert and the moral responses associated with attributions of responsibility. The book examines different possible understandings of moral liability-responsibility based on different possible accounts of the nature of moral blame, the moral desert of punishment, and the relation between desert of moral blame and desert of punishment. A focal point throughout the discussion is whether, on any of the possible understandings, moral responsibility would require agents to be ultimately responsible for their actions in a way incompatible with causal determinism. Other issues discussed include what renders a defect a moral defect or a particular criticism a moral criticism, whether moral obligations are act-governing or will-governing, the connection between the moral reactive attitudes and the retributive sentiments, the relevance of the capacity to participate in ordinary interpersonal relationships, and whether it is possible to understand the moral desert of punishment in communicative terms. Boxer concludes that incompatibilists face an unenviable choice: either they must adopt an understanding of the moral desert of punishment that many find morally problematic, or they must abandon incompatibilism.

Download or read book An Eye for an Eye written by Stephen Nathanson and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2001 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The death penalty issue has become the epitome of the unresolvable issue, the question which people answer on the basis of gut reactions rather than logical arguments. In the second edition of An Eye for an Eye? Stephen Nathanson evaluates arguments for and against the death penalty, and ultimately defends an abolitionist position to the controversial practice, including arguments that show how and why the dealth penalty is inconsistent with respect for life and a commitment to justice. A timely new postscript and an updated bibliography accompany the volume.

Download or read book Liberalism and the Limits of Justice written by Michael J. Sandel and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1998-03-28 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Previous edition published in 1982.

Download or read book Justice as Fairness written by John Rawls and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2001-05-16 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book originated as lectures for a course on political philosophy that Rawls taught regularly at Harvard in the 1980s. In time the lectures became a restatement of his theory of justice as fairness, revised in light of his more recent papers and his treatise Political Liberalism (1993). As Rawls writes in the preface, the restatement presents "in one place an account of justice as fairness as I now see it, drawing on all [my previous] works." He offers a broad overview of his main lines of thought and also explores specific issues never before addressed in any of his writings. Rawls is well aware that since the publication of A Theory of Justice in 1971, American society has moved farther away from the idea of justice as fairness. Yet his ideas retain their power and relevance to debates in a pluralistic society about the meaning and theoretical viability of liberalism. This book demonstrates that moral clarity can be achieved even when a collective commitment to justice is uncertain.

Download or read book Just Deserts written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2021-01-14 with total page 145 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The concept of free will is profoundly important to our self-understanding, our interpersonal relationships, and our moral and legal practices. If it turns out that no one is ever free and morally responsible, what would that mean for society, morality, meaning, and the law? Just Deserts brings together two philosophers – Daniel C. Dennett and Gregg D. Caruso – to debate their respective views on free will, moral responsibility, and legal punishment. In three extended conversations, Dennett and Caruso present their arguments for and against the existence of free will and debate their implications. Dennett argues that the kind of free will required for moral responsibility is compatible with determinism – for him, self-control is key; we are not responsible for becoming responsible, but are responsible for staying responsible, for keeping would-be puppeteers at bay. Caruso takes the opposite view, arguing that who we are and what we do is ultimately the result of factors beyond our control, and because of this we are never morally responsible for our actions in the sense that would make us truly deserving of blame and praise, punishment and reward. Just Deserts introduces the concepts central to the debate about free will and moral responsibility by way of an entertaining, rigorous, and sometimes heated philosophical dialogue between two leading thinkers.

Download or read book Equality and Responsibility written by Christopher Lake and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2001-11-08 with total page 183 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Arguments about distributive justice often take place around two ideas. One is that good should be distributed equally. The other is that how people fare in life should depend on what they are responsible for. The author asks what draws us to these two ideas and examines recent attempts by egalitarian thinkers to bring them together in a single distributive ideal. Underlying this ideal is the egalitarian intuition - the intuition that it is objectionable for some to be worse off than others through no fault of their own. in a wide-ranging discussion, Lake tests that intuition from a variety of perspectives and points to the gaps in our current thinking about quality and individual responsibility.

Download or read book Theories of Justice written by Alejandra Mancilla and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-05-15 with total page 1144 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Forty years ago, in his landmark work A Theory of Justice, the American philosopher John Rawls depicted a just society as a fair system of cooperation between citizens, regarded as free and equal persons. Justice, Rawls famously claimed, is 'the first virtue of social institutions'. Ever since then, moral and political philosophers have expanded, expounded and criticized Rawls's main tenets, from perspectives as diverse as egalitarianism, left and right libertarianism and the ethics of care. This volume of essays provides a general overview of the main strands in contemporary justice theorising and features the most important and influential theories of justice from the 'post Rawlsian' era. These theories range from how to build a theory of justice and how to delineate its proper scope to the relationship between justice and equality, justice and liberty, and justice and desert. Also included is the critique of the Rawlsian paradigm, especially from feminist perspectives and from the growing strand of 'non-ideal' theory, as well as consideration of more recent developments and methodological issues.