Download or read book Noncognitivism in Ethics written by Mark Schroeder and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-04-05 with total page 273 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to noncognitivists, when we say that stealing is wrong, what we are doing is more like venting our feelings about stealing or encouraging one another not to steal, than like stating facts about morality. These ideas challenge the core not only of much thinking about morality and metaethics, but also of much philosophical thought about language and meaning. Noncognitivism in Ethics is an outstanding introduction to these theories, ranging from their early history through the latest contemporary developments. Beginning with a general introduction to metaethics, Mark Schroeder introduces and assesses three principal kinds of noncognitivist theory: the speech-act theories of Ayer, Stevenson, and Hare, the expressivist theories of Blackburn and Gibbard, and hybrid theories. He pays particular attention both to the philosophical problems about what moral facts could be about or how they could matter which noncognitivism seeks to solve, and to the deep problems that it faces, including the task of explaining both the nature of moral thought and the complexity of moral attitudes, and the ‘Frege-Geach’ problem. Schroeder makes even the most difficult material accessible by offering crucial background along the way. Also included are exercises at the end of each chapter, chapter summaries, and a glossary of technical terms - making Noncognitivism in Ethics essential reading for all students of ethics and metaethics.
Download or read book Noncognitivism in Ethics written by Mark Schroeder and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-04-05 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: According to noncognitivists, when we say that stealing is wrong, what we are doing is more like venting our feelings about stealing or encouraging one another not to steal, than like stating facts about morality. These ideas challenge the core not only of much thinking about morality and metaethics, but also of much philosophical thought about language and meaning. Noncognitivism in Ethics is an outstanding introduction to these theories, ranging from their early history through the latest contemporary developments. Beginning with a general introduction to metaethics, Mark Schroeder introduces and assesses three principal kinds of noncognitivist theory: the speech-act theories of Ayer, Stevenson, and Hare, the expressivist theories of Blackburn and Gibbard, and hybrid theories. He pays particular attention both to the philosophical problems about what moral facts could be about or how they could matter which noncognitivism seeks to solve, and to the deep problems that it faces, including the task of explaining both the nature of moral thought and the complexity of moral attitudes, and the ‘Frege-Geach’ problem. Schroeder makes even the most difficult material accessible by offering crucial background along the way. Also included are exercises at the end of each chapter, chapter summaries, and a glossary of technical terms - making Noncognitivism in Ethics essential reading for all students of ethics and metaethics.
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics written by Tristram McPherson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-08-24 with total page 1025 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Handbook surveys the contemporary state of the burgeoning field of metaethics. Forty-four chapters, all written exclusively for this volume, provide expert introductions to: the central research programs that frame metaethical discussions the central explanatory challenges, resources, and strategies that inform contemporary work in those research programs debates over the status of metaethics, and the appropriate methods to use in metaethical inquiry This is essential reading for anyone with a serious interest in metaethics, from those coming to it for the first time to those actively pursuing research in the field.
Download or read book The Language of Morals written by R. M. Hare and published by Oxford Paperbacks. This book was released on 1964 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Hare has written a clear, brief, and readable introduction to ethics which looks at all the fundamental problems of the subject.
Download or read book This Is Ethical Theory written by Jan Narveson and published by Open Court. This book was released on 2015-11-05 with total page 295 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethical questions lie at the very heart of all philosophy, and no one is better equipped to untangle the many facets of ethical theory than respected thinker and professor Jan Narveson. Drawing from theoretical notions as well as everyday applications, Narveson simplifies these nuanced ideas for any beginning ethicist. Discussing theoretical elements ranging from intuitionism to naturalism, emotivism to metaethics, Narveson’s approach to this complex topic is one that any reader will find accessible.
Download or read book Ethical Intuitionism written by M. Huemer and published by Springer. This book was released on 2007-12-14 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A defence of ethical intuitionism where (i) there are objective moral truths; (ii) we know these through an immediate, intellectual awareness, or 'intuition'; and (iii) knowing them gives us reasons to act independent of our desires. The author rebuts the major objections to this theory and shows the difficulties in alternative theories of ethics.
Download or read book Toward a Pragmatist Metaethics written by Diana Heney and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-05-20 with total page 180 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In our current social landscape, moral questions—about economic disparity, disadvantaging biases, and scarcity—are rightly receiving attention with a sense of urgency. This book argues that classical pragmatism offers a compelling and useful account of our engagement with moral life. The key arguments are first, that a broader reading of the pragmatist tradition than is usually attempted within the context of ethical theory is necessary; and second, that this broad reading offers resources that enable us to move forward in contemporary debates about truth and principles in moral life. The first argument is made by demonstrating that there is an arc of theoretical unity that stretches from two key founders of pragmatism—Charles Sanders Peirce and William James—through the work of John Dewey and Clarence Irving Lewis. The second argument is made by engaging with contemporary debates concerning the truth-status of the judgments and assertions made in ordinary moral discourse, as well as the role and nature of moral principles. Toward a Pragmatist Metaethics will be of interest to scholars of American philosophy, American intellectual history, and moral and political theorists, as well as anyone interested in the contours and demands of shared moral discourse.
Download or read book Moral Uncertainty written by William MacAskill and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2020 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: About the bookToby Ord try to fill this gap. They argue that there are distinctive norms that govern how one ought to make decisions and defend an information-sensitive account of how to make such decisions. They do so by developing an analogy between moral uncertainty and social choice, noting that different moral views provide different amounts of information regarding our reasons for action, and arguing that the correct account of decision-making under moral uncertainty must be sensitive to that. Moral Uncertainty also tackles the problem of how to make intertheoretic comparisons, and addresses the implications of their view for metaethics and practical ethics. Very often we are uncertain about what we ought, morally, to do. We do not know how to weigh the interests of animals against humans, how strong our duties are to improve the lives of distant strangers, or how to think about the ethics of bringing new people into existence. But we still need to act. So how should we make decisions in the face of such uncertainty? Though economists and philosophers have extensively studied the issue of decision-making in the face of uncertainty about matters of fact, the question of decision-making given fundamental moral uncertainty has been neglected. In Moral Uncertainty, philosophers William MacAskill, Krister Bykvist, and Toby Ord try to fill this gap. They argue that there are distinctive norms that govern how one ought to make decisions and defend an information-sensitive account of how to make such decisions. They do so by developing an analogy between moral uncertainty and social choice, noting that different moral views provide different amounts of information regarding our reasons for action, and arguing that the correct account of decision-making under moral uncertainty must be sensitive to that. Moral Uncertainty also tackles the problem of how to make intertheoretic comparisons, and addresses the implications of their view for metaethics and practical ethics.
Download or read book Hume on Motivation and Virtue written by Charles Pigden and published by Palgrave MacMillan. This book was released on 2009-11-27 with total page 332 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Contemporary ethical thought owes a great deal to David Hume whose work has inspired non-cognitivists, naturalists and error-theorists and stimulated the rival theories of Kant and contemporary Kantians. This timely volume assembles an distinguished cast of international scholars to discuss three themes from Hume. First, Hume's infamous claim that 'Reason is, and ought only to be, the slave of the passions', which seems to suggest that reason can choose between means but not ends; second, the Motivation Argument which purports to prove that 'the rules of morality . . . are not conclusions of our reason'; and third, Hume's treatment of the virtues, which is now the focus of renewed philosophical interest. The contributors discuss these issues and other matters arising from the Humean agenda"--OCLC
Download or read book Nietzsche on Ethics and Politics written by Maudemarie Clark and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2015-03-20 with total page 328 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume brings together fourteen mostly previously published articles by the prominent Nietzsche scholar Maudemarie Clark. Clark's previous two books on Nietzsche focused on his views on truth, metaphysics, and knowledge, but she has published a great deal on Nietzsche's views on ethics and politics in article form. Putting those articles -- many of which appeared in obscure venues -- together in book form will allow readers to see more easily how her views fit together as a whole, exhibit important developments of her ideas, and highlight Clark's distinctive voice in Nietzsche studies. Clark provides an introduction tying her themes together and placing them in their broader context.
Download or read book The Problem of the Interpretation of Noncognitivism in Ethics written by Fred Robert Berger and published by . This book was released on 1962 with total page 254 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Moral Fictionalism written by Mark Eli Kalderon and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2005-04-14 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Moral realists maintain that morality has a distinctive subject matter. Specifically, realists maintain that moral discourse is representational, that moral sentences express moral propositions - propositions that attribute moral properties to things. Noncognitivists, in contrast, maintain that the realist imagery associated with morality is a fiction, a reification of our noncognitive attitudes. The thought that there is a distinctively moral subject matter is regarded as somethingto be debunked by philosophical reflection on the way moral discourse mediates and makes public our noncognitive attitudes. The realist fiction might be understood as a philosophical misconception of a discourse that is not fundamentally representational but whose intent is rather practical.There is, however, another way to understand the realist fiction. Perhaps the subject matter of morality is a fiction that stands in no need of debunking, but is rather the means by which our attitudes are conveyed. Perhaps moral sentences express moral propositions, just as the realist maintains, but in accepting a moral sentence competent speakers do not believe the moral proposition expressed but rather adopt the relevant non-cognitive attitudes. Noncognitivism, in its primary sense, is aclaim about moral acceptance: the acceptance of a moral sentence is not moral belief but is some other attitude. Standardly, non-cognitivism has been linked to non-factualism - the claim that the content of a moral sentence does not consist in its expressing a moral proposition. Indeed, the terms'noncognitivism' and 'nonfactualism' have been used interchangeably. But this misses an important possibility, since moral content may be representational but the acceptance of moral sentences might not be belief in the moral proposition expressed. This possibility constitutes a novel form of noncognitivism, moral fictionalism. Whereas nonfactualists seek to debunk the realist fiction of a moral subject matter, the moral fictionalist claims that that fiction stands in no need of debunking butis the means by which the noncognitive attitudes involved in moral acceptance are conveyed by moral utterance. Moral fictionalism is noncognitivism without a non-representational semantics.
Download or read book Ethics for A Level written by Mark Dimmock and published by Saint Philip Street Press. This book was released on 2020-10-09 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "What does pleasure have to do with morality? What role, if any, should intuition have in the formation of moral theory? If something is â simulatedâ, can it be immoral? This accessible and wide-ranging textbook explores these questions and many more. Key ideas in the fields of normative ethics, metaethics and applied ethics are explained rigorously and systematically, with a vivid writing style that enlivens the topics with energy and wit. Individual theories are discussed in detail in the first part of the book, before these positions are applied to a wide range of contemporary situations including business ethics, sexual ethics, and the acceptability of eating animals. A wealth of real-life examples, set out with depth and care, illuminate the complexities of different ethical approaches while conveying their modern-day relevance. This concise and highly engaging resource is tailored to the Ethics components of AQA Philosophy and OCR Religious Studies, with a clear and practical layout that includes end-of-chapter summaries, key terms, and common mistakes to avoid. It should also be of practical use for those teaching Philosophy as part of the International Baccalaureate. Ethics for A-Level is of particular value to students and teachers, but Fisher and Dimmockâ s precise and scholarly approach will appeal to anyone seeking a rigorous and lively introduction to the challenging subject of ethics." This work was published by Saint Philip Street Press pursuant to a Creative Commons license permitting commercial use. All rights not granted by the work's license are retained by the author or authors.
Download or read book Facts and Values written by Giancarlo Marchetti and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-11-03 with total page 440 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection offers a synoptic view of current philosophical debates concerning the relationship between facts and values, bringing together a wide spectrum of contributors committed to testing the validity of this dichotomy, exploring alternatives, and assessing their implications. The assumption that facts and values inhabit distinct, unbridgeable conceptual and experiential domains has long dominated scientific and philosophical discourse, but this separation has been seriously called into question from a number of corners. The original essays here collected offer a diversity of responses to fact-value dichotomy, including contributions from Hilary Putnam and Ruth Anna Putnam who are rightly credited with revitalizing philosophical interest in this alleged opposition. Both they, and many of our contributors, are in agreement that the relationship between epistemic developments and evaluative attitudes cannot be framed as a conflict between descriptive and normative understanding. Each chapter demonstrates how and why contrapositions between science and ethics, between facts and values, and between objective and subjective are false dichotomies. Values cannot simply be separated from reason. Facts and Values will therefore prove essential reading for analytic and continental philosophers alike, for theorists of ethics and meta-ethics, and for philosophers of economics and law.
Download or read book Quine on Ethics written by Necip Fikri Alican and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2021-04-07 with total page 137 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is the first comprehensive treatment of Quine’s brief yet memorable foray into ethics. It defends Quine against his most formidable critics, corrects misconceptions in the reception of his outlook on ethics as a philosophical enterprise and morality as a social institution, and restores emphasis on observationality as the impetus behind his momentous intervention in metaethics. The central focus is on Quine’s infamous challenge to ethical theory: his thesis of the methodological infirmity of ethics as compared with science. The book ultimately demonstrates that the challenge is not only valid but also valuable in its identification of opportunities for reformation in ethical reasoning and moral justification.
Download or read book The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge written by Dallas Willard and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-06-12 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Based on an unfinished manuscript by the late philosopher Dallas Willard, this book makes the case that the 20th century saw a massive shift in Western beliefs and attitudes concerning the possibility of moral knowledge, such that knowledge of the moral life and of its conduct is no longer routinely available from the social institutions long thought to be responsible for it. In this sense, moral knowledge—as a publicly available resource for living—has disappeared. Via a detailed survey of main developments in ethical theory from the late 19th through the late 20th centuries, Willard explains philosophy’s role in this shift. In pointing out the shortcomings of these developments, he shows that the shift was not the result of rational argument or discovery, but largely of arational social forces—in other words, there was no good reason for moral knowledge to have disappeared. The Disappearance of Moral Knowledge is a unique contribution to the literature on the history of ethics and social morality. Its review of historical work on moral knowledge covers a wide range of thinkers including T.H Green, G.E Moore, Charles L. Stevenson, John Rawls, and Alasdair MacIntyre. But, most importantly, it concludes with a novel proposal for how we might reclaim moral knowledge that is inspired by the phenomenological approach of Knud Logstrup and Emmanuel Levinas. Edited and eventually completed by three of Willard’s former graduate students, this book marks the culmination of Willard’s project to find a secure basis in knowledge for the moral life.
Download or read book Purpose in the Universe written by Tim Mulgan and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2015-10-22 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Two familiar worldviews dominate Western philosophy: materialist atheism and the benevolent God of the Abrahamic faiths. Tim Mulgan explores a third way. Ananthropocentric Purposivism claims that there is a cosmic purpose, but human beings are irrelevant to it. Purpose in the Universe develops a philosophical case for Ananthropocentric Purposivism that it is at least as strong as the case for either theism or atheism. The book borrows traditional theist arguments to defend a cosmic purpose. These include cosmological, teleological, ontological, meta-ethical, and mystical arguments. It then borrows traditional atheist arguments to reject a human-centred purpose. These include arguments based on evil, diversity, and the scale of the universe. Mulgan also highlights connections between morality and metaphysics, arguing that evaluative premises play a crucial and underappreciated role in metaphysical debates about the existence of God, and Ananthropocentric Purposivism mutually supports an austere consequentialist morality based on objective values. He concludes that, by drawing on a range of secular and religious ethical traditions, a non-human-centred cosmic purpose can ground a distinctive human morality. Our moral practices, our view of the moral universe, and our moral theory are all transformed if we shift from the familiar choice between a universe without meaning and a universe where humans matter to the less self-aggrandising thought that, while it is about something, the universe is not about us.
