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Author: Stephen R. Brown
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441146474
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 161
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Book Description
What make someone a good human being? Is there an objective answer to this question, an answer that can be given in naturalistic terms? For ages philosophers have attempted to develop some sort of naturalistic ethics. Against ethical naturalism, however, notable philosophers have contended that such projects are impossible, due to the existence of some sort of 'gap' between facts and values. Others have suggested that teleology, upon which many forms of ethical naturalism depend, is an outdated metaphysical concept. This book argues that a good human being is one who has those traits the possession of which enables someone to achieve those ends natural to beings like us. Thus, the answer to the question of what makes a good human being is given in terms both objective and naturalistic. The author shows that neither 'is-ought' gaps, nor objections concerning teleology pose insurmountable problems for naturalistic virtue ethics. This work is a much needed contribution to the ongoing debate about ethical theory and ethical virtue.
Author: Stephen R. Brown
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1441146474
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 161
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Book Description
What make someone a good human being? Is there an objective answer to this question, an answer that can be given in naturalistic terms? For ages philosophers have attempted to develop some sort of naturalistic ethics. Against ethical naturalism, however, notable philosophers have contended that such projects are impossible, due to the existence of some sort of 'gap' between facts and values. Others have suggested that teleology, upon which many forms of ethical naturalism depend, is an outdated metaphysical concept. This book argues that a good human being is one who has those traits the possession of which enables someone to achieve those ends natural to beings like us. Thus, the answer to the question of what makes a good human being is given in terms both objective and naturalistic. The author shows that neither 'is-ought' gaps, nor objections concerning teleology pose insurmountable problems for naturalistic virtue ethics. This work is a much needed contribution to the ongoing debate about ethical theory and ethical virtue.
Author: John Deigh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190878614
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 411
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Book Description
The essays in this collection belong to the tradition of naturalism in ethics. The tradition goes back to the beginnings of moral philosophy in ancient Greek thought. Its program is to explain moral thought and action as wholly natural phenomena. Its aim, in other words, is to explain such thought and action without recourse to either a reality separate from that of the natural world or volitional powers that operate independently of natural forces. Its greatest exponent in ancient thought was Aristotle. In modern thought Hume and Freud stand out as the most influential contributors to the tradition. All three thinkers made the study of human psychology fundamental to their work in ethics. All three built their theories on studies of human desires and emotions and assigned to reason the role of guiding the actions that spring from our desires and emotions toward ends that promise self-fulfillment and away from ends that are self-destructive. The collection's essays draw inspiration from their ideas. Its twelve principal essays are arranged to follow the lead of Aristotle's and Hume's ethics. The first three survey and examine general theories of emotion and motivation. The next two focus on emotions that are central to human sociability and that contemporary Anglo-American philosophers discuss under the rubric of reactive attitudes. Turning to distinctively cognitive powers necessary for moral thought and action, the sixth and seventh essays discuss the role of empathy in moral judgment and defend Bernard Williams's controversial account of practical reason. The final five essays use the studies in moral psychology of the previous chapters to treat questions in ethics and social philosophy. The treatment of these questions exemplifies the implementation of a naturalist program in these disciplines.
Author: Martin Hähnel
Publisher: Springer Nature
ISBN: 3030375765
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 454
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Book Description
This book features many of the leading voices championing the revival of Neo-Aristotelian Ethical Naturalism (AN) in contemporary philosophy. It addresses the whole range of issues facing this research program at present. Coverage in the collection identifies differentiations, details standpoints, and points out new perspectives. This volume answers a need: AN is quite new to contemporary philosophy, despite its deep roots in the history of philosophy. As yet, there are many unanswered questions regarding its relation to contemporary views in metaethics. It is certainly not equivalent to dominant naturalistic approaches to metaethics in Anglophone philosophy. Indeed, it is not obviously incompatible with some approaches identified as nonnaturalistic. Further, there are controversies regarding the views of the first wave of virtue revivalists. The work of G.E.M. Anscombe and Philippa Foot is frequently misunderstood, despite the fact that they are important figures in the contemporary revival. This volume details a robust approach to ethics by situating it within the context of human life. It will help readers to better understand how AN raises deep questions about the relation of action and its evaluation to human nature. Neo-Aristotelians argue that something like the traditional cardinal virtues, practical wisdom, temperance, justice and courage, are qualities that perfect human reason and desire.
Author: William Ritchie Sorley
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Ethics, Evolutionary
Languages : en
Pages : 362
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Book Description
Author: Mario De Caro
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231508875
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 378
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Book Description
Normativity concerns what we ought to think or do and the evaluations we make. For example, we say that we ought to think consistently, we ought to keep our promises, or that Mozart is a better composer than Salieri. Yet what philosophical moral can we draw from the apparent absence of normativity in the scientific image of the world? For scientific naturalists, the moral is that the normative must be reduced to the nonnormative, while for nonnaturalists, the moral is that there must be a transcendent realm of norms. Naturalism and Normativity engages with both sides of this debate. Essays explore philosophical options for understanding normativity in the space between scientific naturalism and Platonic supernaturalism. They articulate a liberal conception of philosophy that is neither reducible to the sciences nor completely independent of them yet one that maintains the right to call itself naturalism. Contributors think in new ways about the relations among the scientific worldview, our experience of norms and values, and our movements in the space of reason. Detailed discussions include the relationship between philosophy and science, physicalism and ontological pluralism, the realm of the ordinary, objectivity and subjectivity, truth and justification, and the liberal naturalisms of Donald Davidson, John Dewey, John McDowell, and Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Author: Sofia Bonicalzi
Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing
ISBN: 1443859370
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 215
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Book Description
In this collection of essays, several authors, belonging to different generations and philosophical traditions, discuss ample ethical and metaethical issues together with their relations to questions of applied ethics. The volume provides a wide account of some of the main topics in these fields, thus dealing with nearly everything that human beings hold as valuable. Expert scholars and young researchers contribute to this virtual symposium, reframing the current philosophical debates about the definition and the history of the concept of Naturalism, the different declinations of Kantian Constructivism, the functioning of Rational Choice Theory, the complex role played by Neuroscience in redefining the contours of ethical theories and bioethics, the puzzles of Deontic Logic, and the bases of Animal Ethics. Divided into three sections, presented by comprehensive introductions by Sofia Bonicalzi, Leonardo Caffo and Mattia Sorgon, the present collection includes contributions by Martina Belmonte, Michele Borri, Luciana Ceri, Guglielmo Feis, Matteo Grasso, Andrea Lavazza, Sarah Songhorian, and Francesca Vitale. Each author develops a distinctive and independent position, while critically engaging with the central themes of contemporary reflection. This new, major study will benefit moral philosophers, philosophers of science, and scientists concerned with bioethics, while at the same time stimulating and challenging anyone who is curious about the nature and the origins of ethical and metaethical enquiries.
Author: Philip Pettit
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0190904933
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 401
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Book Description
Imagine a human society, perhaps in pre-history, in which people were generally of a psychological kind with us, had the use of natural language to communicate with one another, but did not have any properly moral concepts in which to exhort one another to meet certain standards and to lodge related claims and complaints. According to The Birth of Ethics, the members of that society would have faced a set of pressures, and made a series of adjustments in response, sufficient to put them within reach of ethical concepts. Without any planning, they would have more or less inevitably evolved a way of using such concepts to articulate desirable patterns of behavior and to hold themselves and one another responsible to those standards. Sooner or later, they would have entered ethical space. While this central claim is developed as a thesis in conjectural history or genealogy, the aim of the exercise is philosophical. Assuming that it explains the emergence of concepts and practices that are more or less equivalent to ours, the story offers us an account of the nature and role of morality. It directs us to the function that ethics plays in human life and alerts us to the character in virtue of which it can serve that function. The emerging view of morality has implications for the standard range of questions in meta-ethics and moral psychology, and enables us to understand why there are divisions in normative ethics like that between consequentialist and Kantian approaches.
Author: Jack Ritchie
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317493583
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 229
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Book Description
Many contemporary Anglo-American philosophers describe themselves as naturalists. But what do they mean by that term? Popular naturalist slogans like, "there is no first philosophy" or "philosophy is continuous with the natural sciences" are far from illuminating. "Understanding Naturalism" provides a clear and readable survey of the main strands in recent naturalist thought. The origin and development of naturalist ideas in epistemology, metaphysics and semantics is explained through the works of Quine, Goldman, Kuhn, Chalmers, Papineau, Millikan and others. The most common objections to the naturalist project - that it involves a change of subject and fails to engage with "real" philosophical problems, that it is self-refuting, and that naturalism cannot deal with normative notions like truth, justification and meaning - are all discussed. "Understanding Naturalism" distinguishes two strands of naturalist thinking - the constructive and the deflationary - and explains how this distinction can invigorate naturalism and the future of philosophical research.
Author: Tom Angier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108422632
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 359
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Book Description
How do ethical norms relate to human nature? This comprehensive and interdisciplinary volume surveys the latest thinking on natural law.
Author: Bruce N. Waller
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262553813
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 365
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Book Description
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.
