Taking Morality Seriously

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Taking Morality Seriously

David Enoch
Taking Morality Seriously Book PDF

Author : David Enoch
Publisher : OUP Oxford
Page : 308 pages
File Size : 42,5 Mb
Release : 2011-07-28
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780191618567

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Taking Morality Seriously by David Enoch Pdf

In Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism David Enoch develops, argues for, and defends a strongly realist and objectivist view of ethics and normativity more broadly. This view—according to which there are perfectly objective, universal, moral and other normative truths that are not in any way reducible to other, natural truths—is familiar, but this book is the first in-detail development of the positive motivations for the view into reasonably precise arguments. And when the book turns defensive—defending Robust Realism against traditional objections—it mobilizes the original positive arguments for the view to help with fending off the objections. The main underlying motivation for Robust Realism developed in the book is that no other metaethical view can vindicate our taking morality seriously. The positive arguments developed here—the argument from the deliberative indispensability of normative truths, and the argument from the moral implications of metaethical objectivity (or its absence)—are thus arguments for Robust Realism that are sensitive to the underlying, pre-theoretical motivations for the view.

The End of Morality

Richard Garner,Richard Joyce
The End of Morality Book PDF

Author : Richard Garner,Richard Joyce
Publisher : Routledge
Page : 222 pages
File Size : 41,7 Mb
Release : 2018-12-18
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781351122139

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The End of Morality by Richard Garner,Richard Joyce Pdf

According to the moral error theorist, all moral judgments are mistaken. The world just doesn’t contain the properties and relations necessary for these judgments to be true. But what should we actually do if we decided that we are in this radical and unsettling predicament—that morality is just a widespread and heartfelt illusion? One suggestion is to eliminate all talk and thought of morality (abolitionism). Another is to carry on believing it anyway (conservationism). And yet another is to treat morality as a kind of convenient fiction (fictionalism). We tend to think of moral thinking as valuable and useful (e.g., for motivating cooperative behavior), but we can also recognize that it can be harmful (e.g., hindering compromise) and even disastrous (e.g., inspiring support for militaristic propaganda). Would we be better off or worse off if we stopped basing decisions on moral considerations? This is a collection of twelve brand new chapters focused on a critical examination of the options available to the moral error theorist. After a general introduction outlining the topic, explaining key terminology, and offering suggestions for further reading, the chapters address questions like: • Is it true that the more that people are motivated by moral concerns, the more likely it is that society will be elitist, authoritarian, and dishonest? • Is an appeal to moral values a useful tool for helping resolve conflicts, or does it actually exacerbate conflicts? • Would it even be possible to abolish morality from our thinking? • If we were to accept a moral error theory, would it be feasible to carry on believing in morality in everyday contexts? • Might moral discourse be usefully modeled on familiar metaphorical language, where we can convey useful and important truths by uttering falsehoods? • Does moral thinking support or undermine a commitment to feminist goals? • What role do moral judgments play in addressing important decisions affecting climate change? The End of Morality: Taking Moral Abolitionism Seriously is the first book to thoroughly address these and other questions, systematically investigating the harms and benefits of moral thought, and considering what the world might be like without morality.

Moral Realism

Russ Shafer-Landau
Moral Realism Book PDF

Author : Russ Shafer-Landau
Publisher : Oxford University Press on Demand
Page : 333 pages
File Size : 52,8 Mb
Release : 2003-06-19
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780199259755

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Moral Realism by Russ Shafer-Landau Pdf

Moral Realism is a systematic defence of the idea that there are objective moral standards. In the tradition of Plato and G. E. Moore, Russ Shafer-Landau argues that there are moral principles that are true independently of what anyone, anywhere, happens to think of them. These principles are a fundamental aspect of reality, just as much as those that govern mathematics or the natural world. They may be true regardless of our ability to grasp them, and their truth is not a matter of their being ratified from any ideal standpoint, nor of being the object of actual or hypothetical consensus, nor of being an expression of our rational nature. Shafer-Landau accepts Plato's and Moore's contention that moral truths are sui generis. He rejects the currently popular efforts to conceive of ethics as a kind of science, and insists that moral truths and properties occupy a distinctive area in our ontology. Unlike scientific truths, the fundamental moral principles are knowable a priori. And unlike mathematical truths, they are essentially normative: intrinsically action-guiding, and supplying a justification for all who follow their counsel. Moral Realism is the first comprehensive treatise defending non-naturalistic moral realism in over a generation. It ranges over all of the central issues in contemporary metaethics, and will be an important source of discussion for philosophers and their students interested in issues concerning the foundations of ethics.

Taking Rights Seriously

Ronald Dworkin
Taking Rights Seriously Book PDF

Author : Ronald Dworkin
Publisher : A&C Black
Page : 457 pages
File Size : 46,5 Mb
Release : 2013-10-21
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781780938332

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Taking Rights Seriously by Ronald Dworkin Pdf

A landmark work of political and legal philosophy, Ronald Dworkin's Taking Rights Seriously was acclaimed as a major work on its first publication in 1977 and remains profoundly influential in the 21st century. A forceful statement of liberal principles - championing the legal, moral and political rights of the individual against the state - Dworkin demolishes prevailing utilitarian and legal-positivist approaches to jurisprudence. Developing his own theory of adjudication, he applies this to controversial public issues, from civil disobedience to positive discrimination. Elegantly written and cuttingly insightful, Taking Rights Seriously is one of the most important works of public thought of the last fifty years.

The Moral Landscape

Sam Harris
The Moral Landscape Book PDF

Author : Sam Harris
Publisher : Simon and Schuster
Page : 322 pages
File Size : 50,6 Mb
Release : 2011-09-13
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781439171226

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The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris Pdf

Sam Harris dismantles the most common justification for religious faith--that a moral system cannot be based on science.

The Normative Web

Terence Cuneo
The Normative Web Book PDF

Author : Terence Cuneo
Publisher : Clarendon Press
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 54,9 Mb
Release : 2010-03-04
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780191614811

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The Normative Web by Terence Cuneo Pdf

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.

Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics

David Owen Brink
Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics Book PDF

Author : David Owen Brink
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 394 pages
File Size : 52,6 Mb
Release : 1989-02-24
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0521359376

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Moral Realism and the Foundations of Ethics by David Owen Brink Pdf

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.

Taking Animals Seriously

David DeGrazia
Taking Animals Seriously Book PDF

Author : David DeGrazia
Publisher : Cambridge University Press
Page : 320 pages
File Size : 53,6 Mb
Release : 1996-07-13
Category : Nature
ISBN : 0521567602

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Taking Animals Seriously by David DeGrazia Pdf

This book distinguishes itself from much of the polemical literature on these issues by offering the most judicious and well-balanced account yet available of animals' moral standing, and related questions concerning their minds and welfare. Transcending jejune debates focused on utilitarianism versus rights, the book offers a fresh methodological approach with specific and constructive conclusions about our treatment of animals. David DeGrazia provides the most thorough discussion yet of whether equal consideration should be extended to animals' interests, and examines the issues of animal minds and animal well-being with an unparalleled combination of philosophical rigor and empirical documentation. His book is an important contribution to the field of animal ethics and will be read with special interest by all philosophers teaching such courses, as well as biologists, those professionally involved with animals, and general readers concerned about animal welfare.

Taking Suffering Seriously

William F. Felice
Taking Suffering Seriously Book PDF

Author : William F. Felice
Publisher : SUNY Press
Page : 272 pages
File Size : 52,5 Mb
Release : 1996-08-15
Category : Political Science
ISBN : 0791430626

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Taking Suffering Seriously by William F. Felice Pdf

Examines the evolution of collective human rights in international relations and argues that the concept of human rights must integrate group rights based on race/ethnicity, gender, class, and sexuality.

Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?

Russ Shafer-Landau
Whatever Happened to Good and Evil Book PDF

Author : Russ Shafer-Landau
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Page : 150 pages
File Size : 43,6 Mb
Release : 2004
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 0195168739

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Whatever Happened to Good and Evil? by Russ Shafer-Landau Pdf

This is a brief introduction to ethics, with a point of view. The book addresses "meta-ethical" questions that go beyond what most introductory ethics books address, which are "normative" theories (egoism, utilitarianism, etc.) and "applied" ethics (abortion, capital punishment, etc.).

The Status of Morality

Thomas L. Carson
The Status of Morality Book PDF

Author : Thomas L. Carson
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
Page : 227 pages
File Size : 42,7 Mb
Release : 2012-12-06
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9789400963061

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The Status of Morality by Thomas L. Carson Pdf

My interest in the issues considered here arose out of my great frustration in trying to attack the all-pervasive relativism of my students in introductory ethics courses at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. I am grateful to my students for forcing me to take moral relativism and skepticism seriously and for compelling me to argue for my own dogmatically maintained version of moral objectivism. The result is before the reader. The conclusions reached here (which can be described either as a minimal objectivism or as a moderate verson of relativism) are considerably weaker than those that I had expected and would have liked to have defended. I have arrived at these views kicking and screaming and have resisted them to the best of my ability. The arguments of this book are directed at those who deny that moral judgments can ever be correct (in any sense that is opposed to mistaken) and who also deny that we are ever rationally com pelled to accept one moral judgment as opposed to another. I have sought to take their views seriously and to fight them on their own grounds without making use of any assumptions that they would be unwilling to grant. My conclusion is that, while it is possible to refute the kind of extreme irrationalism that one often encounters, it is impossible to defend the kind of objectivist meta-ethical views that most of us want to hold, without begging the question against the non-objectivist.

Ethical Intuitionism

M. Huemer
Ethical Intuitionism Book PDF

Author : M. Huemer
Publisher : Springer
Page : 331 pages
File Size : 44,9 Mb
Release : 2007-12-14
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780230597051

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Ethical Intuitionism by M. Huemer Pdf

A defence of ethical intuitionism where (i) there are objective moral truths; (ii) we know these through an immediate, intellectual awareness, or 'intuition'; and (iii) knowing them gives us reasons to act independent of our desires. The author rebuts the major objections to this theory and shows the difficulties in alternative theories of ethics.

Taking Ourselves Seriously and Getting It Right [DECKLE EDGE]

Harry G. Frankfurt
Taking Ourselves Seriously and Getting It Right DECKLE EDGE Book PDF

Author : Harry G. Frankfurt
Publisher : Stanford University Press
Page : 115 pages
File Size : 41,6 Mb
Release : 2006-09-18
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780804768009

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Taking Ourselves Seriously and Getting It Right [DECKLE EDGE] by Harry G. Frankfurt Pdf

Harry G. Frankfurt begins his inquiry by asking, "What is it about human beings that makes it possible for us to take ourselves seriously?" Based on The Tanner Lectures in Moral Philosophy, Taking Ourselves Seriously and Getting It Right delves into this provocative and original question. The author maintains that taking ourselves seriously presupposes an inward-directed, reflexive oversight that enables us to focus our attention directly upon ourselves, and "[it] means that we are not prepared to accept ourselves just as we come. We want our thoughts, our feelings, our choices, and our behavior to make sense. We are not satisfied to think that our ideas are formed haphazardly, or that our actions are driven by transient and opaque impulses or by mindless decisions. We need to direct ourselves—or at any rate to believe that we are directing ourselves—in thoughtful conformity to stable and appropriate norms. We want to get things right." The essays delineate two features that have a critical role to play in this: our rationality, and our ability to love. Frankfurt incisively explores the roles of reason and of love in our active lives, and considers the relation between these two motivating forces of our actions. The argument is that the authority of practical reason is less fundamental than the authority of love. Love, as the author defines it, is a volitional matter, that is, it consists in what we are actually committed to caring about. Frankfurt adds that "The object of love can be almost anything—a life, a quality of experience, a person, a group, a moral ideal, a nonmoral ideal, a tradition, whatever." However, these objects and ideals are difficult to comprehend and often in conflict with each other. Moral principles play an important supporting role in this process as they help us develop and elucidate a vision that inspires our love. The first section of the book consists of the two lectures, which are entitled "Taking Ourselves Seriously" and "Getting It Right." The second section consists of comments in response by Christine M. Korsgaard, Michael E. Bratman, and Meir Dan-Cohen. The book includes a preface by Debra Satz.

The Evolution of Morality

Richard Joyce
The Evolution of Morality Book PDF

Author : Richard Joyce
Publisher : MIT Press
Page : 285 pages
File Size : 44,5 Mb
Release : 2007-08-24
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9780262263252

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The Evolution of Morality by Richard Joyce Pdf

Moral thinking pervades our practical lives, but where did this way of thinking come from, and what purpose does it serve? Is it to be explained by environmental pressures on our ancestors a million years ago, or is it a cultural invention of more recent origin? In The Evolution of Morality, Richard Joyce takes up these controversial questions, finding that the evidence supports an innate basis to human morality. As a moral philosopher, Joyce is interested in whether any implications follow from this hypothesis. Might the fact that the human brain has been biologically prepared by natural selection to engage in moral judgment serve in some sense to vindicate this way of thinking—staving off the threat of moral skepticism, or even undergirding some version of moral realism? Or if morality has an adaptive explanation in genetic terms—if it is, as Joyce writes, "just something that helped our ancestors make more babies"—might such an explanation actually undermine morality's central role in our lives? He carefully examines both the evolutionary "vindication of morality" and the evolutionary "debunking of morality," considering the skeptical view more seriously than have others who have treated the subject. Interdisciplinary and combining the latest results from the empirical sciences with philosophical discussion, The Evolution of Morality is one of the few books in this area written from the perspective of moral philosophy. Concise and without technical jargon, the arguments are rigorous but accessible to readers from different academic backgrounds. Joyce discusses complex issues in plain language while advocating subtle and sometimes radical views. The Evolution of Morality lays the philosophical foundations for further research into the biological understanding of human morality.

Against Decolonisation

Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò
Against Decolonisation Book PDF

Author : Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò
Publisher : Hurst Publishers
Page : 307 pages
File Size : 50,8 Mb
Release : 2022-06-30
Category : Philosophy
ISBN : 9781787388857

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Against Decolonisation by Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò Pdf

Decolonisation has lost its way. Originally a struggle to escape the West’s direct political and economic control, it has become a catch-all idea, often for performing ‘morality’ or ‘authenticity’; it suffocates African thought and denies African agency. Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò fiercely rejects the indiscriminate application of ‘decolonisation’ to everything from literature, language and philosophy to sociology, psychology and medicine. He argues that the decolonisation industry, obsessed with cataloguing wrongs, is seriously harming scholarship on and in Africa. He finds ‘decolonisation’ of culture intellectually unsound and wholly unrealistic, conflating modernity with coloniality, and groundlessly advocating an open-ended undoing of global society’s foundations. Worst of all, today’s movement attacks its own cause: ‘decolonisers’ themselves are disregarding, infantilising and imposing values on contemporary African thinkers. This powerful, much-needed intervention questions whether today’s ‘decolonisation’ truly serves African empowerment. Táíwò’s is a bold challenge to respect African intellectuals as innovative adaptors, appropriators and synthesisers of ideas they have always seen as universally relevant.