Download or read book The Stubborn System of Moral Responsibility written by Bruce N. Waller and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2015 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book the author examines the stubborn philosophical belief in moral responsibility, surveying the philosophical arguments for it, but focusing on the system that supports these arguments: powerful social and psychological factors that hold the belief in moral responsibility firmly in place.--Publisher's description.

Download or read book The Moral Responsibility Delusion written by Bruce N. Waller and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2022-10-28 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Belief in moral responsibility enjoys widespread support, both among philosophers and in popular culture. Moral responsibility for our characters and our acts is often regarded as beyond doubt or question, and, although the belief seems to be a cultural universal, it is particularly powerful in the USA and the UK. This book explores the deep psychological factors at the source of the profound commitment to belief in moral responsibility. Philosophers have developed legions of arguments in support of moral responsibility, but even philosophical champions of those arguments acknowledge that they are not conclusive and certainly not strong enough to account for the powerful belief in moral responsibility; and because those philosophical arguments are not widely known, they cannot be the source of the popular belief in moral responsibility. Belief in moral responsibility is rooted in forces that run much deeper than justifications favored by both philosophers and the layperson. This book is a quest to uncover those deeper sources, showing that the roots of the common belief in moral responsibility run deep, and they include powerful factors that rarely rise to consciousness.

Download or read book Against Moral Responsibility written by Bruce N. Waller and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2011-10-14 with total page 365 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A vigorous attack on moral responsibility in all its forms argues that the abolition of moral responsibility will be liberating and beneficial. In Against Moral Responsibility, Bruce Waller launches a spirited attack on a system that is profoundly entrenched in our society and its institutions, deeply rooted in our emotions, and vigorously defended by philosophers from ancient times to the present. Waller argues that, despite the creative defenses of it by contemporary thinkers, moral responsibility cannot survive in our naturalistic-scientific system. The scientific understanding of human behavior and the causes that shape human character, he contends, leaves no room for moral responsibility. Waller argues that moral responsibility in all its forms—including criminal justice, distributive justice, and all claims of just deserts—is fundamentally unfair and harmful and that its abolition will be liberating and beneficial. What we really want—natural human free will, moral judgments, meaningful human relationships, creative abilities—would survive and flourish without moral responsibility. In the course of his argument, Waller examines the origins of the basic belief in moral responsibility, proposes a naturalistic understanding of free will, offers a detailed argument against moral responsibility and critiques arguments in favor of it, gives a general account of what a world without moral responsibility would look like, and examines the social and psychological aspects of abolishing moral responsibility. Waller not only mounts a vigorous, and philosophically rigorous, attack on the moral responsibility system, but also celebrates the benefits that would result from its total abolition.

Download or read book Free Will Moral Responsibility and the Desire to Be a God written by Bruce N. Waller and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2020-09-04 with total page 188 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Free Will, Moral Responsibility, and the Desire to be a God explores the hidden corridors of the moral responsibility system to discover why that system is so widely accepted and passionately defended. The moral responsibility system has obvious charms: it provides justification for our powerful strike-back motives, transforms selfishness into the virtuous defense of our justly deserved special benefits, draws a radical distinction between humans and the other species we exploit, and protects our nonconscious belief in a just world. Those charms notwithstanding, the resilience and endurance of the moral responsibility system indicates a hidden force that not only binds together the pieces of the system but also motivates our stubborn devotion to that system. That hidden force is a nonconscious desire to be a god: a desire that afflicts both believers and atheists, and that is almost universally denied (Nietzsche being a special exception). That desire can be found throughout the history of philosophy, from Aristotle to the present. It is also manifested in myths and a variety of religious practices and teachings. The breadth, power and harm of nonconscious “apotheosis aspiration” is the focus of this study.

Download or read book An Intersectional Feminist Theory of Moral Responsibility written by Michelle Ciurria and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-06 with total page 362 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book develops an intersectional feminist approach to moral responsibility. It accomplisheses four main goals. First, it outlines a concise list of the main principles of intersectional feminism. Second, it uses these principles to critique prevailing philosophical theories of moral responsibility. Third, it offers an account of moral responsibility that is compatible with the ethos of intersectional feminism. And fourth, it uses intersectional feminist principles to critique culturally normative responsibility practices. This is the first book to provide an explicitly intersectional feminist approach to moral responsibility. After identifying the five principles central to intersectional feminism, the author demonstrates how influential theories of responsibility are incompatible with these principles. She argues that a normatively adequate theory of blame should not be preoccupied with the agency or traits of wrongdoers; it should instead underscore, and seek to ameliorate, oppression and adversity as experienced by the marginalized. Apt blame and praise, according to her intersectional feminist account, is both communicative and functionalist. The book concludes with an extensive discussion of culturally embedded responsibility practices, including asymmetrically structured conversations and gender- and racially biased social spaces. An Intersectional Feminist Approach to Moral Responsibility presents a sophisticated and original philosophical account of moral responsibility. It will be of interest to philosophers working at the crossroads of moral responsibility, feminist philosophy, critical race theory, queer theory, critical disability studies, and intersectionality theory.

Download or read book The Injustice of Punishment written by Bruce N. Waller and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-10-19 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Injustice of Punishment emphasizes that we can never make sense of moral responsibility while also acknowledging that punishment is sometimes unavoidable. Recognizing both the injustice and the necessity of punishment is painful but also beneficial. It motivates us to find effective means of minimizing both the use and severity of punishment, and encourages deeper inquiry into the causes of destructive behavior and how to change those causes in order to reduce the need for punishment. There is an emerging alternative to the comfortable but destructive system of moral responsibility and just deserts. That alternative is not the creation of philosophers but of sociologists, criminologists, psychologists, and workplace engineers; it was developed, tested, and employed in factories, prisons, hospitals, and other settings; and it is writ large in the practices of cultures that minimize belief in individual moral responsibility. The alternative marks a promising path to less punishment, less coercive control, deeper common commitment, and more genuine freedom.

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 Moral Responsibility written by Christopher Cowley and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-10-20 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How and to what degree are we responsible for our characters, our lives, our misfortunes, our relationships and our children? This question is at the heart of "Moral Responsibility". The book explores accusations and denials of moral responsibility for particular acts, responsibility for character, and the role of luck and fate in ethics. Moral responsibility as the grounds for a retributivist theory of punishment is examined, alongside discussions of forgiveness, parental responsibility, and responsibility before God. The book also discusses collective responsibility, bringing in notions of complicity and membership, and drawing on the seminal contemporary discussion of collective agency and responsibility: the Nuremberg trials.

Download or read book Trialectic written by Peter A. Alces and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2023-08-15 with total page 311 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A thought-provoking examination of how insights from neuroscience challenge deeply held assumptions about morality and law. As emerging neuroscientific insights change our understanding of what it means to be human, the law must grapple with monumental questions, both metaphysical and practical. Recent advances pose significant philosophical challenges: how do neuroscientific revelations redefine our conception of morality, and how should the law adjust accordingly? Trialectic takes account of those advances, arguing that they will challenge normative theory most profoundly. If all sentient beings are the coincidence of mechanical forces, as science suggests, then it follows that the time has come to reevaluate laws grounded in theories dependent on the immaterial that distinguish the mental and emotional from the physical. Legal expert Peter A. Alces contends that such theories are misguided—so misguided that they undermine law and, ultimately, human thriving. Building on the foundation outlined in his previous work, The Moral Conflict of Law and Neuroscience, Alces further investigates the implications for legal doctrine and practice.

Download or read book Moral Responsibility Reconsidered written by Gregg D. Caruso and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-12-01 with total page 150 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Element examines the concept of moral responsibility as it is used in contemporary philosophical debates and explores the justifiability of the moral practices associated with it, including moral praise/blame, retributive punishment, and the reactive attitudes of resentment and indignation. After identifying and discussing several different varieties of responsibility-including causal responsibility, take-charge responsibility, role responsibility, liability responsibility, and the kinds of responsibility associated with attributability, answerability, and accountability-it distinguishes between basic and non-basic desert conceptions of moral responsibility and considers a number of skeptical arguments against each. It then outlines an alternative forward-looking account of moral responsibility grounded in non-desert-invoking desiderata such as protection, reconciliation, and moral formation. It concludes by addressing concerns about the practical implications of skepticism about desert-based moral responsibility and explains how optimistic skeptics can preserve most of what we care about when it comes to our interpersonal relationships, morality, and meaning in life.

Download or read book Total Collapse The Case Against Responsibility and Morality written by Stephen Kershnar and published by Springer. This book was released on 2018-03-29 with total page 193 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book argues that there is no morality and that people are not morally responsible for what they do. In particular, it argues that what people do is neither right nor wrong and that they are neither praiseworthy nor blameworthy for doing it. Morality and moral responsibility lie at the heart of how we view the world. In our daily life, we feel that people act rightly or wrongly, make the world better or worse, and are virtuous or vicious. These policies are central to our justifying how we see the world and treat others. In this book, the author argues that our views on these matters are false. He presents a series of arguments that threaten to undermine our theoretical and practical worldviews. The philosophical costs of denying moral responsibility and morality are enormous. It does violence to philosophical positions that many people took a lifetime to develop. Worse, it does violence to our everyday view of people. A host of concepts that we rely on daily (praiseworthy, blameworthy, desert, virtue, right, wrong, good, bad, etc.) fail to refer to any property in the world and are thus deeply mistaken. This book is of interest to philosophers, lawyers, and humanities professors as well as people interested in morality, law, religion, and public policy.

Download or read book Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility written by Gregg D. Caruso and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2013-07-05 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Exploring the Illusion of Free Will and Moral Responsibility investigates the philosophical and scientific arguments for free will skepticism and their implications. Skepticism about free will and moral responsibility has been on the rise in recent years. In fact, a significant number of philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists now either doubt or outright deny the existence of free will and/or moral responsibility—and the list of prominent skeptics appears to grow by the day. Given the profound importance that the concepts of free will and moral responsibility hold in our lives—in understanding ourselves, society, and the law—it is important that we explore what is behind this new wave of skepticism. It is also important that we explore the potential consequences of skepticism for ourselves and society. Edited by Gregg D. Caruso, this collection of new essays brings together an internationally recognized line-up of contributors, most of whom hold skeptical positions of some sort, to display and explore the leading arguments for free will skepticism and to debate their implications.

Download or read book Reflections on Ethics and Responsibility written by Zachary J. Goldberg and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-02-06 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The original essays in this book address the influential writings of Peter A. French on the nature of responsibility, ethics, and moral practices. French’s contributions to a wide spectrum of philosophical discussions have made him a dominant figure in the fields of normative ethics, meta-ethics, applied ethics, as well as legal and political philosophy. Many of French’s deepest insights come from identifying and exploring the scope and nature of moral responsibility and human agency as they appear in actual events, real social and cultural practices, as well as in literature and film. This immediacy renders French’s scholarship vital and accessible to a wide variety of audiences. The authors, recognized for their own contributions to the understanding of the nature of morality and moral practices offer new and unique positions while exploring, expanding and responding to those of French. The final chapter is written by French, in which he provides both new philosophical insight as well as some reflection on his own work and its influence. This book will appeal to philosophers, as well as advanced students and researchers in the humanities, social sciences, law, and political science.

Download or read book A Companion to Free Will written by Joseph Keim Campbell and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2023-06-13 with total page 533 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Provides a comprehensive, cutting-edge, and accessible accompaniment to various narratives about free will A Companion to Free Will is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the philosophy of free will, offering an authoritative survey of perennial issues and contemporary debates within the field. Bringing together the work of a diverse team of established and younger scholars, this well-balanced volume offers innovative perspectives and fresh approaches to the classical compatibility problem, moral and legal responsibility, consciousness in free action, action theory, determinism, logical fatalism, impossibilism, and much more. The Companion’s 30 chapters provide general coverage of the discipline as well as an in-depth exploration of both CAP (Classical Analytic Paradigm) and non-CAP perspectives on the problem of free will and the problem of determinism—raising new questions about what the free will debate is, or should be, about. Throughout the book, coverage of modern exchanges between the world’s leading philosophers is complemented by incisive commentary, novel insights, and selections that examine compatibilist, libertarian, and denialist viewpoints. Offers a balanced presentation of conflicting theories and ongoing debates about the nature, existence, and implications of free will Explores the role of scientific advances and empirical methods in contributing to discourses on free will and action theory Reviews new developments in longstanding arguments between compatibilist and incompatibilist approaches to free will including those that question this way of framing the debate and critique the standard terminology Discusses descriptive, revisionary, and pragmatic approaches for defining key concepts and addressing compatibility problems surrounding free will Considers various issues of moral responsibility and philosophical approaches to the problem of free will in new ways Part of the acclaimed Blackwell Companions to Philosophy series, A Companion to Free Will is essential reading for undergraduate and graduate students of philosophy, professional philosophers and theorists, and interested novices alike.

Download or read book Moral Responsibility and the Boundaries of Community written by Marion Smiley and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2009-09-15 with total page 297 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The question of responsibility plays a critical role not only in our attempts to resolve social and political problems, but in our very conceptions of what those problems are. Who, for example, is to blame for apartheid in South Africa? Is the South African government responsible? What about multinational corporations that do business there? Will uncovering the "true facts of the matter" lead us to the right answer? In an argument both compelling and provocative, Marion Smiley demonstrates how attributions of blame—far from being based on an objective process of factual discovery—are instead judgments that we ourselves make on the basis of our own political and social points of view. She argues that our conception of responsibility is a singularly modern one that locates the source of blameworthiness in an individual's free will. After exploring the flaws inherent in this conception, she shows how our judgments of blame evolve out of our configuration of social roles, our conception of communal boundaries, and the distribution of power upon which both are based. The great strength of Smiley's study lies in the way in which it brings together both rigorous philosophical analysis and an appreciation of the dynamics of social and political practice. By developing a pragmatic conception of moral responsibility, this work illustrates both how moral philosophy can enhance our understanding of social and political practices and why reflection on these practices is necessary to the reconstruction of our moral concepts.

Download or read book Freedom Without Responsibility written by Bruce N. Waller and published by . This book was released on 1990 with total page 236 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this book, Bruce Waller attacks two prevalent philosophical beliefs. First, he argues that moral responsibility must be rejected; there is no room for such a notion within our naturalist framework. Second, he denies the common assumption that moral responsibility is inseparably linked with individual freedom. Rejection of moral responsibility does not entail the demise of individual freedom; instead, individual freedom is enhanced by the rejection of moral responsibility. According to this theory of "no-fault naturalism," no one deserves either blame or reward.In the course of arguing against moral responsibility, Waller critiques major compatibilist arguments-by Dennett, Frankfurt, Strawson, Bennett, Wolf, Hampshire, Glover, Rachels, Sher, and others. In addition, the implications of denying moral responsibility-for individual freedom, for moral judgments and moral behavior, and for social justice-are examined; the supposed dire consequences of the denial of moral responsibility are challenged; and the benefits of denying moral responsibility are described. Author note: Bruce N. Waller, Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Youngstown State University, Youngstown, Ohio, is the author of Critical Thinking: Consider the Verdict.

Download or read book The Problem of Blame written by Kelly McCormick and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2022-05-05 with total page 237 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book makes a case for the permissibility of reactive blame – the angry, harmful variety. Blame is a thorny philosophical problem, as it is notoriously difficult to specify the conditions under which an agent is deserving of blame, is deserving of blame in the basic sense, and furthermore why this is so. Kelly McCormick argues that sharpening the focus to reactive, angry blame can both show us how best to characterize the problem itself, and suggest a possible solution to it, because even reactive blame is both valuable and deserved in the basic sense. Finally, McCormick shows how, despite the many facets of the dark side of blame, adopting an explicitly victim-centered approach highlights a powerful argument from empathy for retaining reactive blame and its attendant attitudes and practices.