Moral Personhood

Moral Personhood PDF Author: G. E. Scott
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791403211
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
This book presents a theory of personhood and moral personhood using results from recent work on intentionality in the philosophy of mind. An account of intentional kinds, causation, and explanation is provided to resolve some current issues in moral and legal theory, and to examine questions raised in law and medicine where it is necessary to deal with human individuals at the boundaries of their lives. Topics discussed include abortion, death, euthanasia, personal identity, rights -- including the right to privacy and the right to die -- servility, and suicide.

Moral Personhood

Moral Personhood PDF Author: G. E. Scott
Publisher: SUNY Press
ISBN: 9780791403211
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 232

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Book Description
This book presents a theory of personhood and moral personhood using results from recent work on intentionality in the philosophy of mind. An account of intentional kinds, causation, and explanation is provided to resolve some current issues in moral and legal theory, and to examine questions raised in law and medicine where it is necessary to deal with human individuals at the boundaries of their lives. Topics discussed include abortion, death, euthanasia, personal identity, rights -- including the right to privacy and the right to die -- servility, and suicide.

On Moral Personhood

On Moral Personhood PDF Author: Richard Eldridge
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226203164
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 236

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Book Description
In this remarkable blend of sophisticated philosophical analysis and close reading of literary texts, Richard Eldridge presents a convincing argument that literature is the most important and richest source of insights in favor of a historicized Kantian moral philosophy. He effectively demonstrates that only through the interpretation of narratives can we test our capacities as persons for acknowledging the moral laws as a formula of value and for acting according to it. Eldridge presents an extensive new interpretation of Kantian ethics that is deeply informed by Kant's aesthetics. He defends a revised version of Kantian universalism and a Kantian conception of the content of morality. Eldridge then turns to literature armed not with any a priori theory but with an interpretive stance inspired by Hegel's phenomenology of self-understanding, more or less naturalized, and by Wittgenstein's work on self-understanding as ongoing narrative-interpretive activity, a stance that yields Kantian results about the universal demands our nature places on itself. Eldridge goes on to present readings of novels by Conrad and Austen and poetry by Wordsworth and Coleridge. In each text protagonists are seen to be struggling with moral conflicts and for self-understanding as moral persons. The route toward partial resolution of their conflicts is seen to involve multiple and ongoing activities of reading and interpreting. The result of this kind of interpretation is that such literature—literature that portrays protagonists as themselves readers and interpreters of human capacities for morality—is a primary source for the development of morally significant self-understanding. We see in the careers of these protagonists that there can be genuine and fruitful moral deliberation and valuable action, while also seeing how situated and partial any understanding and achievement of value must remain. On Moral Personhood at once delineates the moral nature of persons; shows various conditions of the ongoing, contextualized, partial acknowledgment of that nature and of the exercise of the capacities that define it; and enacts an important way of reading literature in relation to moral problems. Eldridge's work will be important reading for moral philosophers (especially those concerned with Kant, Hegel, and issues dividing moral particularists from moral universalists), literary theorists (especially those concerned with the value of literature and its relation to philosophy and to moral problems), and readers and critics of Conrad, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Austen.

An African Philosophy of Personhood, Morality, and Politics

An African Philosophy of Personhood, Morality, and Politics PDF Author: Motsamai Molefe
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3030155617
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 179

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Book Description
This book explores the salient ethical idea of personhood in African philosophy. It is a philosophical exposition that pursues the ethical and political consequences of the normative idea of personhood as a robust or even foundational ethical category. Personhood refers to the moral achievements of the moral agent usually captured in terms of a virtuous character, which have consequences for both morality and politics. The aim is not to argue for the plausibility of the ethical and political consequences of the idea of personhood. Rather, the book showcases some of the moral-political content and consequences of the account it presents.

Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition

Personhood, Ethics, and Animal Cognition PDF Author: Gary E. Varner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199758786
Category : Nature
Languages : en
Pages : 334

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Book Description
The book also draws heavily on empirical research on consciousness and cognition in non-human animals as a way of approaching the question of which animals, if any, are "persons," or at least "near-persons".

African Personhood and Applied Ethics

African Personhood and Applied Ethics PDF Author: Molefe, Motsamai
Publisher: NISC (Pty) Ltd
ISBN: 1920033696
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 150

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Book Description
Recently, the salient idea of personhood in the tradition of African philosophy has been objected to on various grounds. Two such objections stand out – the book deals with a lot more. The first criticism is that the idea of personhood is patriarchal insofar as it elevates the status of men and marginalises women in society. The second criticism observes that the idea of personhood is characterised by speciesism. The essence of these concerns is that personhood fails to embody a robust moral-political view. African Personhood and Applied Ethics offers a philosophical explication of the ethics of personhood to give reasons why we should take it seriously as an African moral perspective that can contribute to global moral-political issues. The book points to the two facets that constitute the ethics of personhood – an account of (1) moral perfection and (2) dignity. It then draws on the under-explored view of dignity qua the capacity for sympathy inherent in the moral idea of personhood to offer a unified account of selected themes in applied ethics, specifically women, animal and development.

The Moral Status of Persons

The Moral Status of Persons PDF Author: Gerhold K. Becker
Publisher: Rodopi
ISBN: 9789042012011
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 270

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Book Description
The advances in molecular biology and genetics, medicine and neurosciences, in ethology and environmental studies have put the concept of the person firmly on the philosophical agenda. Whereas earlier times seemed to have a clear understanding about the moral implications of personhood and its boundaries, today there is little consensus on such matters. Whether a patient in the last stages of Alzheimer's disease is still a person, or whether a human embryo is already a person are highly contentious issues. This book tackles the issue of personhood and its moral implications head-on. The thirteen essays are representative of the major strands in the current bioethical debate and offer new insights into humanity's moral standing, its foundations, and its implications for social interaction. While most of the essays approach the issue by drawing on the rich intellectual tradition of the West, others offer a cross-cultural perspective and make available for ethical consideration the philosophical resources and the wisdom of the East. The contributors to this book are highly recognized philosophers, ethicists, theologians, and professionals in health care and medicine from East Asia (China, Japan), Europe, and North America. The first part of the book probes the foundations of personhood. Examining critically the main theories on personhood in contemporary philosophy, the authors offer alternatives that better respond to contemporary challenges and their implications for bioethics. The focus of the second part is firmly on the Confucian relational concept of the person and on the social constitution of personhood in traditional Japanese culture. While the essays challenge the individualistic features of personhood in the Western tradition, they lay the foundations for a richer concept that holds great promise for the resolution of moral dilemmas in modern medicine and health care. The third part of the book enters into a dialogue with the Christian tradition and draws on its spiritual heritage in the search for answers to the contemporary challenges to human dignity and value. Its focus is on the Catholic social thought and Lutheran theology. The fourth part addresses the moral status of persons in view of specific issues such as the effects of brain injury, gene therapy, and human cloning on personhood. It extends the scope of research beyond human beings and inquires also into the moral status of animals.

What Is a Person?

What Is a Person? PDF Author: Christian Smith
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226765946
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 529

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Book Description
The task of understanding human beings, what we ourselves are, our constitution and condition, is a perennial problem in philosophy and related disciplines. Smith argues here that our understanding of human persons is threatened by technological development and capricious academic theories alike, seeking to deny or relativize the personhood of humanity. Smith's book puts a stake in the ground, in defense of a view of the human that is genuinely humanistic in the traditional sense and capable of sustaining with intellectual coherence things like modern human rights and universal benevolence.

Arguments about Abortion

Arguments about Abortion PDF Author: Kate Greasley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198766785
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 289

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Book Description
Does the morality of abortion depend on the moral status of the human fetus? Must the law of abortion presume an answer to the question of when personhood begins? Can a law which permits late abortion but not infanticide be morally justified? These are just some of the questions this book sets out to address. With an extended analysis of the moral and legal status of abortion, Kate Greasley offers an alternative account to the reputable arguments of Ronald Dworkin and Judith Jarvis Thomson and instead brings the philosophical notion of 'personhood' to the foreground of this debate. Structured in three parts, the book will (I) consider the relevance of prenatal personhood for the moral and legal evaluation of abortion; (II) trace the key features of the conventional debate about when personhood begins and explore the most prominent issues in abortion ethics literature: the human equality problem and the difference between abortion and infanticide; and (III) examine abortion law and regulation as well as the differing attitudes to selective abortion. The book concludes with a snapshot into the current controversy surrounding the scope of the right to conscientiously object to participation in abortion provision.

Transformations in Personhood and Culture After Theory

Transformations in Personhood and Culture After Theory PDF Author: Christie McDonald
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 0271040203
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 209

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Book Description


Moral Status

Moral Status PDF Author: Mary Anne Warren
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191588156
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 278

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Book Description
Mary Anne Warren explores a theoretical question which lies at the heart of practical ethics: what are the criteria for having moral status? In other words, what are the criteria for being an entity towards which people have moral obligations? Some philosophers maintain that there is one intrinsic property—for instance, life, sentience, humanity, or moral agency. Others believe that relational properties, such as belonging to a human community, are more important. In Part I of the book, Warren argues that no single property can serve as the sole criterion for moral status; instead, life, sentience, moral agency, and social and biotic relationships are all relevant, each in a different way. She presents seven basic principles, each focusing on a property that can, in combination with others, legitimately affect an agent's moral obligations towards entities of a given type. In Part II, these principles are applied in an examination of three controversial ethical issues: voluntary euthanasia, abortion