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Author: Geoffrey Sayre-McCord
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801495410
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
This collection of influential essays illustrates the range, depth, and importance of moral realism, the fundamental issues it raises, and the problems it faces.
Author: Geoffrey Sayre-McCord
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 9780801495410
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 340
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Book Description
This collection of influential essays illustrates the range, depth, and importance of moral realism, the fundamental issues it raises, and the problems it faces.
Author: David Owen Brink
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521359375
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 394
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Book Description
A systematic analysis considers the objectivity of ethics, the relationship between the moral point of view and a scientific or naturalist worldview and its role in a person's rational lifespan.
Author: Alexander B. Hyun
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
This dissertation is a defense of moral realism. By moral realism, I mean the conjunction of three claims: (i) Descriptive cognitivism, according to which moral judgments are descriptive beliefs that aim to represent the world accurately; (ii) The success thesis, according to which some moral judgments are true; and (iii) The objectivity thesis, according to which the true moral judgments are objectively true, in the sense that their truth does not constitutively depend on the attitudes of some actual or idealized agent. The purpose of my dissertation is to argue in favor of the success and objectivity theses. In Chapter 1, I argue in favor of externalism about normative reasons, thereby defending both the success and objectivity theses from influential objections. Roughly, externalism about normative reasons states that there are some external reasons for action, i.e., reasons to do some act that do not depend on the desires of the agent whose reasons they are. I argue for externalism by appealing to epistemic normativity. While others have appealed to epistemic normativity to defend externalism, such appeals are normally aimed at undermining arguments against externalism. In contrast, I develop a more ambitious use of epistemic normativity that aims to provide a direct argument for the truth of externalism. Specifically, I argue that there exist practical epistemic facts - facts to the effect that we epistemically ought to perform certain actions - and that these facts entail the existence of external reasons for action. I also bolster this argument for externalism by seeking to refute the formidable challenges to externalism that have recently been offered by Kate Manne and Julia Markovits. In Chapter 2, I defend a version of the increasingly influential 'companions in guilt' argument for moral facts, thereby establishing the success thesis. My favored version of this argument goes as follows: (1) If there are no moral facts, then there are no practical epistemic facts; (2) there are practical epistemic facts; (3) so, there are moral facts. The second premise, which is known as the 'Ontological Premise, ' is defended at length in Chapter 1. I offer a presumptive case for the first premise, which is known as the 'Parity Premise, ' by arguing that the four most formidable arguments against moral facts suggest equally-plausible arguments against practical epistemic facts. I then argue that my argument's atypical appeal to practical epistemic facts allows it to address recent objections to the companions in guilt argument that have been offered by Christopher Heathwood and Stephen Ingram. In the third and final chapter of my dissertation, I respond to the 'puzzle of pure moral deference, ' a challenge to the objectivity thesis that has been most forcefully pressed by Sarah McGrath. According to this challenge, moral anti-realism can explain why moral deference seems intuitively problematic to many of us, whereas moral realism cannot explain why this is so; and we therefore have reason to accept anti-realism instead of realism. I develop three independent rebuttals to this challenge. First, I object to the four main anti-realist accounts of our discomfort with moral deference, thereby undermining the claim that moral anti-realism provides an explanation of this discomfort. Second, I develop a dilemma for the proponent of the puzzle of pure moral deference, arguing that either the anti-realist cannot provide the needed explanation, or else the realist can do so. Finally, I offer a novel, realist-friendly account of our discomfort with moral deference that builds on extant realist accounts. In brief, I argue that a lot of people's discomfort can plausibly be explained by appealing to the fact that moral deference is both unfair and bad for society.
Author: Peter Singer
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0191084395
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 288
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Book Description
In the first two volumes of On What Matters Derek Parfit argues that there are objective moral truths, and other normative truths about what we have reasons to believe, and to want, and to do. He thus challenges a view of the role of reason in action that can be traced back to David Hume, and is widely assumed to be correct, not only by philosophers but also by economists. In defending his view, Parfit argues that if there are no objective normative truths, nihilism follows, and nothing matters. He criticizes, often forcefully, many leading contemporary philosophers working on the nature of ethics, including Simon Blackburn, Stephen Darwall, Allen Gibbard, Frank Jackson, Peter Railton, Mark Schroeder, Michael Smith, and Sharon Street. Does Anything Really Matter? gives these philosophers an opportunity to respond to Parfit's criticisms, and includes essays on Parfit's views by Richard Chappell, Andrew Huddleston, Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek and Peter Singer, Bruce Russell, and Larry Temkin. A third volume of On What Matters, in which Parfit engages with his critics and breaks new ground in finding significant agreement between his own views and theirs, is appearing as a separate companion volume.
Author: Robinson dos Santos
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110574519
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
The debate between moral realism and antirealism plays an important role in contemporary metaethics as well as in the interpretation of Kant’s moral philosophy. This volume aims to clarify whether, and in what sense, Kant is a moral realist, an antirealist, or something in-between. Based on an explication of the key metaethical terms, internationally recognized Kant scholars discuss the question of how Kant’s moral philosophy should be understood in this regard. All camps in the metaethical field have their inhabitants: Some contributors read Kant’s philosophy in terms of a more or less robust moral realism, objectivism, or idealism, and some of them take it to be a version of constructivism, constitutionism, or brute antirealism. In any case, all authors introduce and defend their terminology in a clear manner and argue thoughtfully and refreshingly for their positions. With contributions of Stefano Bacin, Jochen Bojanowski, Christoph Horn, Patrick Kain, Lara Ostaric, Fred Rauscher, Oliver Sensen, Elke Schmidt, Dieter Schönecker, and Melissa Zinkin.
Author: Robinson dos Santos
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG
ISBN: 3110572346
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 242
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Book Description
The debate between moral realism and antirealism plays an important role in contemporary metaethics as well as in the interpretation of Kant’s moral philosophy. This volume aims to clarify whether, and in what sense, Kant is a moral realist, an antirealist, or something in-between. Based on an explication of the key metaethical terms, internationally recognized Kant scholars discuss the question of how Kant’s moral philosophy should be understood in this regard. All camps in the metaethical field have their inhabitants: Some contributors read Kant’s philosophy in terms of a more or less robust moral realism, objectivism, or idealism, and some of them take it to be a version of constructivism, constitutionism, or brute antirealism. In any case, all authors introduce and defend their terminology in a clear manner and argue thoughtfully and refreshingly for their positions. With contributions of Stefano Bacin, Jochen Bojanowski, Christoph Horn, Patrick Kain, Lara Ostaric, Fred Rauscher, Oliver Sensen, Elke Schmidt, Dieter Schönecker, and Melissa Zinkin.
Author: Simon Blackburn
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0195359801
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 271
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Book Description
This volume collects some influential essays in which Simon Blackburn, one of our leading philosophers, explores one of the most profound and fertile of philosophical problems: the way in which our judgments relate to the world. This debate has centered on realism, or the view that what we say is validated by the way things stand in the world, and a variety of oppositions to it. Prominent among the latter are expressive and projective theories, but also a relaxed pluralism that discourages the view that there are substantial issues at stake. The figure of the "quasi-realist" dramatizes the difficulty of conducting these debates. Typically philosophers thinking of themselves as realists will believe that they alone can give a proper or literal account of some of our attachments--to truth, to facts, to the independent world, to knowledge and certainty. The quasi-realist challenge, developed by Blackburn in this volume, is that we can have those attachments without any metaphysic that deserves to be called realism, so that the metaphysical picture that goes with our practices is quite idle. The cases treated here include the theories of value and knowledge, modality, probability, causation, intentionality and rule-following, and explanation. A substantial new introduction has been added, drawing together some of the central themes. The essays articulate a fresh alternative to a primitive realist/anti-realist opposition, and their cumulative effect is to yield a new appreciation of the delicacy of the debate in these central areas.
Author: Sam Harris
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 143917122X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 322
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Book Description
Sam Harris dismantles the most common justification for religious faith--that a moral system cannot be based on science.
Author: John Casey
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1135021627
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 208
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Book Description
First published in 1971, the five essays in this book were written by young philosophers at Cambridge at that time. They focus on two major questions of ethical theory: ‘What is it to judge morally?’ and ‘What makes a reason a moral reason?’. The book explores the relation of moral judgements to attitudes, emotions and beliefs as well as the notions of expression, agency, and moral responsibility.
Author: Terence Cuneo
Publisher: Clarendon Press
ISBN: 0191614815
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 272
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Book Description
Antirealist views about morality claim that moral facts or truths do not exist. Do these views imply that other types of normative facts, such as epistemic ones, do not exist? The Normative Web develops a positive answer to this question. Terence Cuneo argues that the similarities between moral and epistemic facts provide excellent reason to believe that, if moral facts do not exist, then epistemic facts do not exist. But epistemic facts, it is argued, do exist: to deny their existence would commit us to an extreme version of epistemological skepticism. Therefore, Cuneo concludes, moral facts exist. And if moral facts exist, then moral realism is true. In so arguing, Cuneo provides not simply a defense of moral realism, but a positive argument for it. Moreover, this argument engages with a wide range of antirealist positions in epistemology such as error theories, expressivist views, and reductionist views of epistemic reasons. If the central argument of The Normative Web is correct, antirealist positions of these varieties come at a very high cost. Given their cost, Cuneo contends, we should find realism about both epistemic and moral facts highly attractive.
