Download or read book The Scope of Morality written by Peter A. French and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 1979 with total page 238 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Morals and Consent written by Malcolm Murray and published by McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP. This book was released on 2017-09-27 with total page 411 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How are we meant to behave? And how are we to defend whatever answer we give? Morals and Consent grounds our notion of morality in natural evolution, and from that basis, Malcolm Murray shows why contractarianism is a far more viable moral theory than is widely believed. The scope of Morals and Consent has two main parts: theory and application. In his discussion of theory, Murray defends contractarianism by appealing to evolutionary game theory and metaethical analyses. His main argument is that we are not going to find morality as an objective fact in the world, and that instead, we can understand morality as a reciprocal cooperative trait. From this minimal moral architecture, Murray derives his innovative consent principle. The application of the theory, detailing what contractarians can – or ought to – say about moral matters, takes up the greater portion of the work. Murray offers a trenchant examination of what moral constraints we can claim concerning death (abortion, euthanasia, and capital punishment), sex (pornography, prostitution, and sexual assault), beneficence (toward present and future people, animals, and the environment), and liberty (genetic enhancement, organ sales, and torture). By focusing on evolutionary contractarianism and the epistemic justification of our moral claims – or lack thereof – Malcolm Murray’s Morals and Consent is a serious advance in the field of applied ethics and fills an important void.
Download or read book The Scope of Autonomy written by Katerina Deligiorgi and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-05-31 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Katerina Deligiorgi offers a contemporary defence of autonomy that is Kantian in orientation but which engages closely with recent arguments about agency, morality, and practical reasoning. Autonomy is a key concept in contemporary moral philosophy with deep roots in the history of the subject. However, there is still no agreed view about the correct way to formulate an account of autonomy that adequately captures both our capacity for self-determination and our responsiveness to reasons. The theory defended in The Scope of Autonomy is distinctive in two respects. First, whereas autonomy has primarily been understood in terms of our relation to ourselves, Deligiorgi shows that it also centrally involves our relation to others. Identifying the intersubjective dimension of autonomy is crucial for the defence of autonomy as a morality of freedom. Second, autonomy must be treated as a composite concept and hence not capturable in simple definitions such as acting on one's higher order desires or on principles one endorses. One of the virtues of the composite picture is that it shows autonomy lying at the intersection of concerns with morality, practical rationality, and freedom. Autonomy pertains to all these areas, though it does not exactly coincide with any of them. Proving this, and so tracing the scope of autonomy, is therefore essential: Deligiorgi shows that autonomy is theoretically plausible, psychologically realistic, and morally attractive.
Download or read book Honor in Political and Moral Philosophy written by Peter Olsthoorn and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2014-12-03 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this history of the development of ideas of honor in Western philosophy, Peter Olsthoorn examines what honor is, how its meaning has changed, and whether it can still be of use. Political and moral philosophers from Cicero to John Stuart Mill thought that a sense of honor and concern for our reputation could help us to determine the proper thing to do, and just as important, provide us with the much-needed motive to do it. Today, outside of the military and some other pockets of resistance, the notion of honor has become seriously out of date, while the term itself has almost disappeared from our moral language. Most of us think that people ought to do what is right based on a love for jus-tice rather than from a concern with how we are perceived by others. Wide-ranging and accessible, the book explores the role of honor in not only philosophy but also literature and war to make the case that honor can still play an important role in contemporary life.
Download or read book The Moral Nexus written by R. Jay Wallace and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2019 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new way of understanding the essence of moral obligation The Moral Nexus develops and defends a new interpretation of morality—namely, as a set of requirements that connect agents normatively to other persons in a nexus of moral relations. According to this relational interpretation, moral demands are directed to other individuals, who have claims that the agent comply with these demands. Interpersonal morality, so conceived, is the domain of what we owe to each other, insofar as we are each persons with equal moral standing. The book offers an interpretative argument for the relational approach. Specifically, it highlights neglected advantages of this way of understanding the moral domain; explores important theoretical and practical presuppositions of relational moral duties; and considers the normative implications of understanding morality in relational terms. The book features a novel defense of the relational approach to morality, which emphasizes the special significance that moral requirements have, both for agents who are deliberating about what to do and for those who stand to be affected by their actions. The book argues that relational moral requirements can be understood to link us to all individuals whose interests render them vulnerable to our agency, regardless of whether they stand in any prior relationship to us. It also offers fresh accounts of some of the moral phenomena that have seemed to resist treatment in relational terms, showing that the relational interpretation is a viable framework for understanding our specific moral obligations to other people.
Download or read book A Decent Life written by Todd May and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2019-03-22 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: You’re probably never going to be a saint. Even so, let’s face it: you could be a better person. We all could. But what does that mean for you? In a world full of suffering and deprivation, it’s easy to despair—and it’s also easy to judge ourselves for not doing more. Even if we gave away everything we own and devoted ourselves to good works, it wouldn’t solve all the world’s problems. It would make them better, though. So is that what we have to do? Is anything less a moral failure? Can we lead a fundamentally decent life without taking such drastic steps? Todd May has answers. He’s not the sort of philosopher who tells us we have to be model citizens who display perfect ethics in every decision we make. He’s realistic: he understands that living up to ideals is a constant struggle. In A Decent Life, May leads readers through the traditional philosophical bases of a number of arguments about what ethics asks of us, then he develops a more reasonable and achievable way of thinking about them, one that shows us how we can use philosophical insights to participate in the complicated world around us. He explores how we should approach the many relationships in our lives—with friends, family, animals, people in need—through the use of a more forgiving, if no less fundamentally serious, moral compass. With humor, insight, and a lively and accessible style, May opens a discussion about how we can, realistically, lead the good life that we aspire to. A philosophy of goodness that leaves it all but unattainable is ultimately self-defeating. Instead, Todd May stands at the forefront of a new wave of philosophy that sensibly reframes our morals and redefines what it means to live a decent life.
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 Becoming Human written by Jana Rošker and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2020-01-20 with total page 346 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The book Becoming Human: Li Zehou’s Ethics offers a critical introduction and in-depth analysis of Li Zehou’s moral philosophy and ethics. Li Zehou, who is one of the most influential contemporary Chinese philosophers, believes that ethics is the most important philosophical discipline. He aims to revive, modernize, develop, and complement Chinese traditional ethics through what he calls “transformative creation” (轉化性的創造). He takes Chinese ethics, which represents the main pillar of Chinese philosophy, as a vital basis for his elaborations on certain aspects of Kant’s, Marx’s and other Western theoreticians’ thoughts on ethics, and hopes to contribute in this way to the development of a new global ethics for all of humankind.
Download or read book Human Morality written by Samuel Scheffler and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1992 with total page 161 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 'An immensely rich book.... The book is extremely careful, resourceful, and reasonable. It is essential reading for everyone interested in ethics.' -Mind
Download or read book Ethics and the History of Indian Philosophy written by Shyam Ranganathan and published by Motilal Banarsidass Publishe. This book was released on 2007 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ethics and the History of Indian Philosophy, by Shyam Ranganathan, presents a compelling, systematic explication of the moral philosophical content of history of Indian philosophy in contrast to the received wisdom in Indology and comparative philosophy that Indian philosophers were scarcely interested in ethics. Unlike most works on the topic, this book makes a case for the positive place of ethics in the history of Indian philosophy by drawing upon recent work in metaethics and metamorality, and by providing a through analysis of the meaning of moral concepts and PHILOSOPHY itself- in addition to explicating the texts of Indian authors. In Ranganathan`s account, Indian philosophy shines with distinct options in ethics that find their likeness in the writings of the Ancient in the West, such as Plato and the Neo-Platonists, and not in the anthropocentric or positivistic options that have dominated the recent Western tradition.
Download or read book The Second Person Standpoint written by Stephen Darwall and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-09-30 with total page 363 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why should we avoid doing moral wrong? The inability of philosophy to answer this question in a compelling manner—along with the moral skepticism and ethical confusion that ensue—result, Stephen Darwall argues, from our failure to appreciate the essentially interpersonal character of moral obligation. After showing how attempts to vindicate morality have tended to change the subject—falling back on non-moral values or practical, first-person considerations—Darwall elaborates the interpersonal nature of moral obligations: their inherent link to our responsibilities to one another as members of the moral community. As Darwall defines it, the concept of moral obligation has an irreducibly second-person aspect; it presupposes our authority to make claims and demands on one another. And so too do many other central notions, including those of rights, the dignity of and respect for persons, and the very concept of person itself. The result is nothing less than a fundamental reorientation of moral theory that enables it at last to account for morality’s supreme authority—an account that Darwall carries from the realm of theory to the practical world of second-person attitudes, emotions, and actions.
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 No Morality No Self written by James Doyle and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Elizabeth Anscombe’s “Modern Moral Philosophy” and “The First Person” have become touchstones of analytic philosophy but their significance remains controversial or misunderstood. James Doyle offers a fresh interpretation of Anscombe’s theses about ethical reasoning and individual identity that reconciles seemingly incompatible points of view.
Download or read book Satisfaction of Interest and the Concept of Morality written by Steve Smith and published by Bucknell University Press. This book was released on 1974 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This work addresses itself to the question: How is morality to be properly defined? Also explored are the distinguishing characteristics of a moral code. The conclusion to which this analysis leads is that moralities do not necessarily concern themselves with satisfaction of human interests and with conflict resolution.
Download or read book Why Have Children written by Christine Overall and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2012-02-03 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging exploration of whether or not choosing to procreate can be morally justified—and if so, how. In contemporary Western society, people are more often called upon to justify the choice not to have children than they are to supply reasons for having them. In this book, Christine Overall maintains that the burden of proof should be reversed: that the choice to have children calls for more careful justification and reasoning than the choice not to. Arguing that the choice to have children is not just a prudential or pragmatic decision but one with ethical repercussions, Overall offers a wide-ranging exploration of how we might think systematically and deeply about this fundamental aspect of human life. Writing from a feminist perspective, she also acknowledges the inevitably gendered nature of the decision; the choice has different meanings, implications, and risks for women than it has for men. After considering a series of ethical approaches to procreation, and finding them inadequate or incomplete, Overall offers instead a novel argument. Exploring the nature of the biological parent-child relationship—which is not only genetic but also psychological, physical, intellectual, and moral—she argues that the formation of that relationship is the best possible reason for choosing to have a child.
Download or read book Theory Vs Anti theory in Ethics written by N. Fotion and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 343 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book presents a broad and new theory of theory formation in ethics. There are many existing theories, and more could be generated, but most thinkers of theory formation have a narrow view of what a theory of ethics should be like. They favor certain kinds of grand theories that generate various ethical rules and principles. In fact these grand theories allegedly do so much work that they give the appearance of being super-theories (or strong theories). Many theory creators think that it is possible to create strong theories, and that they themselves have created such a theory. Anti-theorists scoff at these claims. In effect, then, the argument between the two sides is not one of theory versus anti-theory but of grand or strong theory versus anti-grand or strong theory. Nick Fotion argues that once a broader view of theory is accepted, it is easier to see that there really is no serious conflict between theorists and anti-theorists. In principle, both sides, if they overcome their addiction to thinking in terms of grand, strong theory formation, can accept a role for theories in ethics. Theories in ethics can be either grand or local in nature. Provided theory creators and users don't expect theories to performs all kinds of impossible tasks (e.g., to deal with all of our ethical problems and be so fully justified that only one theory can be accepted as being correct) it is easier to accept them. It is also easier to accept the idea that a theorist might very well appeal to more than one theory to help him or her deal with whatever ethical issues bother.
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.
