Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason

Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason PDF Author: Ruth Chang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
Can quite different values be rationally weighed against one another? Can the value of one thing always be ranked as greater than, equal to, or less than the value of something else? If the answer to these questions is no, then in what areas do we find commensurability and comparability unavailable? And what are the implications for moral and legal decision making? This book struggles with these questions, and arrives at distinctly different answers."

Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason

Incommensurability, Incomparability, and Practical Reason PDF Author: Ruth Chang
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 328

Get Book Here

Book Description
Can quite different values be rationally weighed against one another? Can the value of one thing always be ranked as greater than, equal to, or less than the value of something else? If the answer to these questions is no, then in what areas do we find commensurability and comparability unavailable? And what are the implications for moral and legal decision making? This book struggles with these questions, and arrives at distinctly different answers."

Making Comparisons Count

Making Comparisons Count PDF Author: Ruth Chang
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135714770
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 218

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book attempts to answer two questions: Are alternatives for choice ever incomparable? and In what ways can items be compared? The arguments offered suggest that alternatives for choice no matter how different are never incomparable, and that the ways in which items can be compared are richer and more varied than commonly supposed.

Moral Conflicts of Organ Retrieval

Moral Conflicts of Organ Retrieval PDF Author: Charles C. Hinkley II
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9401201781
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 246

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book addresses ethical conflicts arising from saving the lives of patients who need a transplant while treating living and dead donors, organ sellers, animals, and embryos with proper moral regard. Our challenge is to develop a better world in the light of debatable values and uncertain consequences.

The Oxford Handbook of Value Theory

The Oxford Handbook of Value Theory PDF Author: Iwao Hirose
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190273356
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 457

Get Book Here

Book Description
Value theory, or axiology, looks at what things are good or bad, how good or bad they are, and, most fundamentally, what it is for a thing to be good or bad. Questions about value and about what is valuable are important to moral philosophers, since most moral theories hold that we ought to promote the good (even if this is not the only thing we ought to do). This Handbook focuses on value theory as it pertains to ethics, broadly construed, and provides a comprehensive overview of contemporary debates pertaining not only to philosophy but also to other disciplines-most notably, political theory and economics. The Handbook's twenty-two newly commissioned chapters are divided into three parts. Part I: Foundations concerns fundamental and interrelated issues about the nature of value and distinctions between kinds of value. Part II: Structure concerns formal properties of value that bear on the possibilities of measuring and comparing value. Part III: Extensions, finally, considers specific topics, ranging from health to freedom, where questions of value figure prominently.

Varieties of Practical Reasoning

Varieties of Practical Reasoning PDF Author: Elijah Millgram
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780262133883
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 510

Get Book Here

Book Description
An overview of the philosophical subfield of practical reasoning.

Animals and Their Moral Standing

Animals and Their Moral Standing PDF Author: Stephen R L Clark
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134779275
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 214

Get Book Here

Book Description
Twenty years ago, people thought only cranks or sentimentalists could be seriously concerned about the treatment of non-human animals. However, since then philosophers, scientists and welfarists have raised public awareness of the issue; and they have begun to lay the foundations for an enormous change in human practice. This book is a record of the development of 'animal rights' through the eyes of one highly-respected and well-known thinker. This book brings together for the first time Stephen R.L. Clark's major essays in one volume. Written with characteristic clarity and persuasion, Animals and Their Moral Standing will be essential reading for both philosophers and scientists, as well as the general reader concerned by the debates over animal rights and treatment.

The Constitution of Agency

The Constitution of Agency PDF Author: Christine Marion Korsgaard
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0191564591
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 357

Get Book Here

Book Description
Christine M. Korsgaard is one of today's leading moral philosophers: this volume collects ten influential papers by her on practical reason and moral psychology. Korsgaard draws on the work of important figures in the history of philosophy such as Plato, Aristotle, Kant, and Hume, showing how their ideas can inform the solution of contemporary and traditional philosophical problems, such as the foundations of morality and practical reason, the nature of agency, and the role of the emotions in action. In Part 1, The Principles of Practical Reason, Korsgaard defends the view that the principles of practical reason are constitutive principles of action. By governing our actions in accordance with Kant's categorical imperative and the principle of instrumental reason, she argues, we take control of our own movements and so render ourselves active, self-determining beings. She criticizes rival attempts to give a normative foundation to the principles of practical reason, challenges the claims of the principle of maximizing one's own interests to be a rational principle, and argues for some deep continuities between Plato's account of the connection between justice and agency and Kant's account of the connection between autonomy and agency. In Part II, Moral Virtue and Moral Psychology, Korsgaard takes up the question of the role of our more passive or receptive faculties--our emotions and responses --in constituting our agency. She sketches a reading of the Nicomachean Ethics, based on the idea that our emotions can serve as perceptions of good and evil, and argues that this view of the emotions is at the root of the apparent differences between Aristotle and Kant's accounts of morality. She argues that in fact, Aristotle and Kant share a distinctive view about the locus of moral value and the nature of human choice that, among other things, gives them account of what it means to act rationally that is superior to other accounts. In Part III, Other Reflections, Korsgaard takes up question how we come to view one another as moral agents in Hume's philosophy. She examines the possible clash between the agency of the state and that of the individual that led to Kant's paradoxical views about revolution. And finally, she discusses her methodology in an account of what it means to be a constructivist moral philosopher. The essays are united by an introduction in which Korsgaard explains their connections to each other and to her current work.

Moral Reason

Moral Reason PDF Author: Julia Markovits
Publisher:
ISBN: 0199567174
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 225

Get Book Here

Book Description
Develops and defends a version of a desire-based, internalist account of what normative reasons are, and counters it with an internalist defense of universal moral reason built on Kant's formula of humanity.

Practical Shape

Practical Shape PDF Author: Jonathan Dancy
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192528025
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 217

Get Book Here

Book Description
Everyone allows that we can reason to a new belief from beliefs that we already have. Aristotle thought that we could also reason from beliefs to action. Practical Shape: A Theory of Practical Reasoning establishes this possibility of reasoning to action, in a way that allows also for reasoning to intention, hope, fear, and doubt. While many philosophers have found little sense in Aristotle's claim, Dancy offers a general theory of reasoning that is sensitive to current debates but still Aristotelian in spirit. The text clearly sets out the similarities between reasoning to action and reasoning to belief, which are far more striking than any dissimilarities. Its detailed account of practical reasoning, a topic inadequately covered in current literature, is presented in such a way as to be intelligible to a variety of readers, making it an ideal resource for students of philosophy but also of interest to academics in related disciplines.

Appearances of the Good

Appearances of the Good PDF Author: Sergio Tenenbaum
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139461753
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 11

Get Book Here

Book Description
'We desire all and only those things we conceive to be good; we avoid what we conceive to be bad.' This slogan was once the standard view of the relationship between desire or motivation and rational evaluation. Many critics have rejected this scholastic formula as either trivial or wrong. It appears to be trivial if we just define the good as 'what we want', and wrong if we consider apparent conflicts between what we seem to want and what we seem to think is good. In Appearances of the Good, Sergio Tenenbaum argues that the old slogan is both significant and right, even in cases of apparent conflict between our desires and our evaluative judgements. Maintaining that the good is the formal end of practical inquiry in much the same way as truth is the formal end of theoretical inquiry, he provides a fully unified account of motivation and evaluation.