Perspectives On Ignorance From Moral And Social Philosophy

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Perspectives on Ignorance from Moral and Social Philosophy

Author : Rik Peels
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 246 pages
File Size : 49,9 Mb
Release : 2019-12-10
Category : Electronic
ISBN : 0367873990

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Perspectives on Ignorance from Moral and Social Philosophy by Rik Peels Pdf

This edited collection focuses on the moral and social dimensions of ignorance--an undertheorized category in analytic philosophy. Contributors address such issues as the relation between ignorance and deception, ignorance as a moral excuse, ignorance as a legal excuse, and the relation between ignorance and moral character. In the moral realm, ignorance is sometimes considered as an excuse; some specific kind of ignorance seems to be implied by a moral character; and ignorance is closely related to moral risk. Ignorance has certain social dimensions as well: it has been claimed to be the engine of science; it seems to be entailed by privacy and secrecy; and it is widely thought to constitute a legal excuse in certain circumstances. Together, these contributions provide a sustained inquiry into the nature of ignorance and the pivotal role it plays in the moral and social domains.

Perspectives on Ignorance from Moral and Social Philosophy

Author : Rik Peels
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 282 pages
File Size : 44,7 Mb
Release : 2016-06-23
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781317369547

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Perspectives on Ignorance from Moral and Social Philosophy by Rik Peels Pdf

This edited collection focuses on the moral and social dimensions of ignorance—an undertheorized category in analytic philosophy. Contributors address such issues as the relation between ignorance and deception, ignorance as a moral excuse, ignorance as a legal excuse, and the relation between ignorance and moral character. In the moral realm, ignorance is sometimes considered as an excuse; some specific kind of ignorance seems to be implied by a moral character; and ignorance is closely related to moral risk. Ignorance has certain social dimensions as well: it has been claimed to be the engine of science; it seems to be entailed by privacy and secrecy; and it is widely thought to constitute a legal excuse in certain circumstances. Together, these contributions provide a sustained inquiry into the nature of ignorance and the pivotal role it plays in the moral and social domains.

Ignorance and Moral Responsibility

Author : Michael J. Zimmerman
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 393 pages
File Size : 51,7 Mb
Release : 2023-02-08
Category : Ignorance (Theory of knowledge)
ISBN : 9780192859570

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Ignorance and Moral Responsibility by Michael J. Zimmerman Pdf

Michael J. Zimmerman investigates the relation between ignorance and moral responsibility. He begins with the presentation of a case in which a tragedy occurs, one to which many people have unwittingly contributed, and addresses the question of whether their ignorance absolves them of blame for what happened. Inspection of the case issues in the Argument from Ignorance, whose conclusion is that, to be blameworthy for one's behaviour and its consequences, one must at some time in the history of that behaviour have known that one was engaged in wrongdoing-a thesis that threatens to undermine many everyday ascriptions of responsibility. This argument is examined and refined in ensuing chapters by way of, first, a detailed inquiry into the nature of moral responsibility, ignorance, and control, all of which play a crucial role in the argument, and then an application of the fruits of this investigation to the question of whether and how someone might be to blame for behaviour that stems from either culpable ignorance, negligence, recklessness, or the kind of fundamental moral ignorance that often characterizes evildoers. The Argument from Ignorance implies that in a great many such cases the agent has an excuse for the wrongdoing in question. This is a disturbing verdict, and in the final chapter challenges to the argument are entertained. Despite the merits of some of these challenges, it is held that the argument, revised one last time, survives them.

Making Morality Work

Author : Holly M. Smith
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 448 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2018-04-13
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780192547637

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Making Morality Work by Holly M. Smith Pdf

Most of us hope to do what morality requires of us. But what if we can't figure out what it does require? A soldier may know that morality requires him not to kill an innocent civilian but he can't tell whether the driver of a suspicious car is an innocent civilian or a terrorist about to detonate a bomb. Holly M. Smith addresses this problem in Making Morality Work by asking whether we should reject moral codes that can't be used by anyone hampered by inadequate information. When considering questions of morality, we call on moral theories to play both a theoretical and a practical role. These theories provide accounts of what makes actions right or wrong, and also provide a standard by which agents can guide their own conduct. It is usually assumed that a single theory can serve both roles, but limited knowledge often prevents people from using traditional normative theories to make decisions. Smith examines three major strategies for addressing this 'epistemic problem' in morality before developing an innovative solution that overcomes the weaknesses of prior approaches. Making Morality Work opens a path towards resolving a deep problem in moral life.

The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Responsibility

Author : Maximilian Kiener
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 669 pages
File Size : 46,6 Mb
Release : 2023-11-07
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781000990171

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The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Responsibility by Maximilian Kiener Pdf

The philosophical inquiry of responsibility is a major and fast-growing field. It not only features questions around free will and moral agency but also addresses various challenges in the social, institutional, and legal contexts in which people are being held responsible. The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Responsibility is an outstanding survey and exploration of these issues. Comprised of forty-one chapters by an international team of contributors, the Handbook is divided into three clear parts – on the history, the theory, and the practice of responsibility – within which the following key topics are examined: responsibility and wrongdoing responsibility and determinism the scope of responsibility the responsibility of individuals within society the concepts of responsibility the conditions and challenges of responsibility the practices of being and holding responsible the ethics and politics of responsibility responsibility in the law. Including suggestions for further reading at the end of each chapter, The Routledge Handbook of Philosophy of Responsibility provides an extremely useful guide to the topic. It will be valuable reading for students and researchers in philosophy and applied ethics, as well as for those in related fields such as politics, law, and policymaking.

The Routledge Handbook of Collective Responsibility

Author : Saba Bazargan-Forward,Deborah Tollefsen
Publisher : Taylor & Francis
Page : 539 pages
File Size : 55,5 Mb
Release : 2020-04-19
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781351607575

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The Routledge Handbook of Collective Responsibility by Saba Bazargan-Forward,Deborah Tollefsen Pdf

The Routledge Handbook of Collective Responsibility comprehensively addresses questions about who is responsible and how blame or praise should be attributed when human agents act together. Such questions include: Do individuals share responsibility for the outcome or are individuals responsible only for their contribution to the act? Are individuals responsible for actions done by their group even when they don’t contribute to the outcome? Can a corporation or institution be held morally responsible apart from the responsibility of its members? The Handbook’s 35 chapters—all appearing here for the first time and written by an international team of experts—are organized into four parts: Part I: Foundations of Collective Responsibility Part II: Theoretical Issues in Collective Responsibility Part III: Domains of Collective Responsibility Part IV: Applied Issues in Collective Responsibility Each part begins with a short introduction that provides an overview of issues and debates within that area and a brief summary of its chapters. In addition, a comprehensive index allows readers to better navigate the entirety of the volume’s contents. The result is the first major work in the field that serves as an instructional aid for those in advanced undergraduate courses and graduate seminars, as well as a reference for scholars interested in learning more about collective responsibility.

Ways to be Blameworthy

Author : Elinor Mason
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 192 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2019-02-21
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780192570215

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Ways to be Blameworthy by Elinor Mason Pdf

There must be some connection between our deontic notions, rightness and wrongness, and our responsibility notions, praise- and blameworthiness. Yet traditional approaches to each set of concepts tend to take the other set for granted. This book takes an integrated approach to these questions, drawing on both ethics and responsibility theory, and thereby illuminating both sets of concepts. Elinor Mason describes this as 'normative responsibility theory': the primary aim is not to give an account of the conditions of agency, but to give an account of what sort of wrong action makes blame fitting. She presents a pluralistic view of both obligation and blameworthiness, identifying three different ways to be blameworthy, corresponding to different ways of acting wrongly. First, ordinary blameworthiness is essentially connected to subjective wrongness, to acting wrongly by one's own lights. Subjective obligation, and ordinary blame, apply only to those who are within our moral community, who understand and share our value system. By contrast, detached blame can apply even when the agent is outside our moral community, and has no sense that her act is morally wrong. In detached blame, the blame rather than the blameworthiness is fundamental. Finally, agents can take responsibility for some inadvertent wrongs, and thus become responsible. This third sort of blameworthiness, 'extended blameworthiness', applies when the agent understands the objective wrongness of her act, but has no bad will. In such cases, the social context may be such that the agent should take responsibility, and accept ordinary blame from the wronged party.

Getting Our Act Together

Author : Anne Schwenkenbecher
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 174 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2020-12-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781000290905

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Getting Our Act Together by Anne Schwenkenbecher Pdf

Together we can often achieve things that are impossible to do on our own. We can prevent something bad from happening, or we can produce something good, even if none of us could do it by ourselves. But when are we morally required to do something of moral importance together with others? This book develops an original theory of collective moral obligations. These are obligations that individual moral agents hold jointly but not as unified collective agents. The theory does not stipulate a new type of moral obligation but rather suggests that to think of some of our obligations as joint or collective is the best way of making sense of our intuitions regarding collective moral action problems. Where we have reason to believe that our efforts are most efficient as part of a collective endeavor, we may incur collective obligations together with others who are similarly placed as long as we are able to establish compossible individual contributory strategies towards that goal. The book concludes with a discussion of 'massively shared obligations' to major-scale moral problems such as global poverty. Getting Out Act Together: A Theory of Collective Moral Obligations will appeal to researchers and advanced students working in moral, political and social philosophy, philosophy of action, social epistemology and philosophy of social science.

Ignorance and Moral Obligation

Author : Michael J. Zimmerman
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 176 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2014-03-27
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780191002687

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Ignorance and Moral Obligation by Michael J. Zimmerman Pdf

Ignorance and Moral Obligation concerns whether and how our ignorance about ourselves and our circumstances affects what our moral obligations and moral rights are. Michael J. Zimmerman begins by distinguishing three well-established views about the nature of moral obligation: the Objective, Subjective, and Prospective Views. Some philosophers have attempted to reconcile the three views in question, but these attempts are shown to fail. The question thus arises: which of the three views ought to be accepted and which rejected? Zimmerman argues that, in light of the ignorance that besets us, the Objective and Subjective Views should be rejected and the Prospective View accepted. The argument is based on close consideration of a kind of case provided by Frank Jackson, one in which an agent has deficient evidence regarding the outcomes of his options. Many objections to this argument are entertained and rebutted, by means of which the Prospective View is itself elaborated and defended. Among those who accept the Prospective View, the primary motivation for doing so has often been that of finding a useful guide to action, but Zimmerman argues that the Prospective View can be only of strictly limited help in providing such a guide. Finally, he addresses some implications that the Prospective View has regarding the nature of moral rights. Our possession of moral rights is precarious, being dependent on the evidence possessed by others. Once again, several objections are entertained and rebutted. The distinction between rights and desert is stressed, and the relevance of risk to rights is explored.

The Oxford Handbook of Moral Responsibility

Author : Dana Kay Nelkin,Derk Pereboom
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 783 pages
File Size : 49,8 Mb
Release : 2022
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780190679309

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The Oxford Handbook of Moral Responsibility by Dana Kay Nelkin,Derk Pereboom Pdf

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.

Responsible Belief

Author : Rik Peels
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 289 pages
File Size : 53,7 Mb
Release : 2017
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780190608118

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Responsible Belief by Rik Peels Pdf

What we believe and what we do not believe has a great impact on what we do and fail to do. Hence, if we want to act responsibly, we should believe responsibly. However, do we have the kind of control over our beliefs that such responsibility for our beliefs seems to require? Do we have certain obligations to control or influence our beliefs on particular occasions? And do we sometimes believe responsibly despite violating such obligations, namely because we are excused by, say, indoctrination or ignorance? By answering each of these questions, Rik Peels provides a theory of what it is to believe responsibly. He argues that we lack control over our beliefs, but that we can nonetheless influence our beliefs by performing actions that make a difference to what we believe. We have a wide variety of moral, prudential, and epistemic obligations to perform such belief-influencing actions. We can be held responsible for our beliefs in virtue of such influence on our beliefs. Sometimes, we believe responsibly despite having violated such obligations, namely if we are excused, by force, ignorance, or luck. A careful consideration of these excuses teaches us, respectively, that responsible belief entails that we could have failed to have that belief, that responsible belief is in a specific sense radically subjective, and that responsible belief is compatible with its being a matter of luck that we hold that belief.

Scientific Testimony

Author : Mikkel Gerken
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 321 pages
File Size : 52,7 Mb
Release : 2022-08-18
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780192599193

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Scientific Testimony by Mikkel Gerken Pdf

Scientific Testimony concerns the roles of scientific testimony in science and society. The book develops a positive alternative to a tradition famously expressed by the slogan of the Royal Society Nullius in verba ("Take nobody's word for it"). This book argues that intra-scientific testimony—i.e., testimony between collaborating scientists—is not in conflict with the spirit of science or an add-on to scientific practice. On the contrary, intra-scientific testimony is a vital part of science. This is illustrated by articulating epistemic norms of intra-scientific testimony and arguing that they are vital to scientific methodology on a par with other scientific norms governing scientific observation and data analysis. The book also provides an account of public scientific testimony—i.e., scientific testimony to the lay population. This is done by integrating philosophical resources with empirical research on the science of science communication. For example, various misconceptions about science and folk epistemological biases are diagnosed as factors that contribute to science skepticism. This diagnosis provides the basis for developing novel norms for science communication that are sensitive to the psychological and social obstacles to laypersons' uptake of it. Finally, the volume discusses how public scientific testimony is best embedded in society and argues that it is critical for societies that pursue the ideals of deliberative democracy. Scientific Testimony draws on philosophy of science, social epistemology, and empirical research to provide a wide-ranging account of the roles of scientific testimony within scientific practice and within the wider society.

The Routledge Handbook of Practical Reason

Author : Ruth Chang,Kurt Sylvan
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 685 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2020-12-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781000337129

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The Routledge Handbook of Practical Reason by Ruth Chang,Kurt Sylvan Pdf

Over the last several decades, questions about practical reason have come to occupy the center stage in ethics and metaethics. The Routledge Handbook of Practical Reason is an outstanding reference source to this exciting and distinctive subject area and is the first volume of its kind. Comprising thirty-six chapters by an international team of contributors, the Handbook provides a comprehensive overview of the field and is divided into five parts: Foundational Matters Practical Reason in the History of Philosophy Philosophy of Practical Reason as Action Theory and Moral Psychology Philosophy of Practical Reason as Theory of Practical Normativity The Philosophy of Practical Reason as the Theory of Practical Rationality The Handbook also includes two chapters by the late Derek Parfit, ‘Objectivism about Reasons’ and ‘Normative Non-Naturalism.’ The Routledge Handbook of Practical Reason is essential reading for philosophy students and researchers in metaethics, philosophy of action, action theory, ethics, and the history of philosophy.

The Ethics and Law of Omissions

Author : Dana Kay Nelkin,Samuel C. Rickless
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 288 pages
File Size : 51,8 Mb
Release : 2017-10-05
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780190683467

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The Ethics and Law of Omissions by Dana Kay Nelkin,Samuel C. Rickless Pdf

This edited volume of new essays explores the principles that govern moral responsibility and legal liability for omissive conduct--behavior that did not occur. Many contributors here try to make sense of the possibility of moral responsibility for omissions, including those that occur unwittingly. The disagreements among them concern the grounds of moral responsibility in these cases: the constellation of states and traits that constitute the self, or the quality of one's will, or exercises of evaluative judgment, or the ability and opportunity to avoid the omission, or the tracing back to a time when one had the witting ability to take steps to avoid future omission. Some contributors consider whether omissions need to be under one's control if one is to be morally responsible for them, as well as which sense of "control" is relevant, if it is, to the question of moral responsibility. Yet others consider whether it is possible for an agent to be morally responsible for an omission that she could not have avoided. On the legal side, contributors also consider various issues concerning the status of omissions in the law: whether circumstances that are usually described as involving legal liability for omissions are better described as involving legal liability for entire courses of conduct; the conditions (such as creation of the peril) under which one can be legally liable for an omission to rescue; why a defendant's legal guilt for a crime can be predicated on an omission to act only if the defendant was under a legal duty to engage in the omitted act; and whether this "duty requirement" is grounded in the desirability of shielding from legal liability those who are not criminally culpable or in the constraint that one's body and property may not be appropriated for the general good. Included with the essays is an introduction to the topic by the volume editors. The book will be of interest to moral philosophers, philosophers of law, and other legal scholars.

The Mismeasure of the Self

Author : Alessandra Tanesini
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Page : 241 pages
File Size : 52,9 Mb
Release : 2021
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780198858836

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The Mismeasure of the Self by Alessandra Tanesini Pdf

The Mismeasure of the Self is dedicated to vices that blight many lives. They are the vices of superiority, characteristic of those who feel entitled, superior and who have an inflated opinion of themselves, and those of inferiority, typical of those who are riddled with self-doubt and feel inferior. Arrogance, narcissism, haughtiness, and vanity are among the first group. Self-abasement, fatalism, servility, and timidity exemplify the second. This book shows these traits to be to vices of self-evaluation and describes their pervasive harmful effects in some detail. Even though the influence of these traits extends to any aspect of life, the focus of this book is their damaging impact on the life of the intellect. Tanesini develops and defends a view of these vices that puts vicious motivations at their core. The analyses developed in this work build on empirical research in attitude psychology and on philosophical theories in virtue ethics and epistemology. The book concludes with a positive proposal for weakening vice and promoting virtue.