New Waves In Metaethics

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Metaethics occupies a central place in analytical philosophy, and the last forty years has seen an upsurge of interest in questions about the nature and practice of morality. This collection presents original and ground-breaking research on metaethical issues from some of the very best of a new generation of philosophers working in this field.

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Genre : Philosophy
Author : Michael S. Brady
Publisher : Springer
Release : 2010-11-17
File : 310 Pages
ISBN-13 : 9780230294899


Normative Bedrock

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Joshua Gert presents an original and ambitious theory of the normative. Expressivism and non-reductive realism represent two very widely separated poles in contemporary discussions of normativity. But the domain of the normative is both large and diverse; it includes, for example, the harmful, the fun, the beautiful, the wrong, and the rational. It would be extremely surprising if either expressivism or non-reductive realism managed to capture all—or even the most important—phenomena associated with all of these notions. Normative Bedrock defends a response-dependent account of the normative that accommodates the kind of variation in response that some non-reductive realists downplay or ignore, but that also allows for the sort of straightforward talk of normative properties, normative truth, and substantive normative disagreement that expressivists have had a hard time respecting. One of the distinctive features of Gert's approach is his reliance, throughout, on an analogy between colour properties and normative properties. He argues that the appropriate response to a given instance of a normative property may often depend significantly on the perspective one takes on that instance: for example, whether one views it as past or future. Another distinctive feature of Normative Bedrock is its focus on the basic normative property of practical irrationality, rather than on the notion of a normative reason or the notion of the good. This simple shift of focus allow for a more satisfying account of the link between reasons and motivation, and helps to explain why and how some reasons can justify far more than they can require, and why we therefore need two strength values to characterize the normative capacities of practical reasons.

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Genre : Philosophy
Author : Joshua Gert
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Release : 2012-09-27
File : Pages
ISBN-13 : 9780191631863


The Bloomsbury Handbook Of Ethics

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Updated and expanded to represent the fundamental questions at the heart of philosophical ethics today, the second edition of The Bloomsbury Handbook of Ethics covers the key topics in metaethics and normative ethical theory. This edition includes 12 fully revised chapters, and 3 newly commissioned contributions from a range of esteemed academics who provide accessible introductions to their own areas of expertise. The first part of the book covers the field of metaethics, including subjects such as moral realism, expressivism, constructivism, practical reason, moral psychology, experimental ethics, and evolutionary ethics, as well as two new chapters that respond to ethical debates concerning moral relativism and moral responsibility that enable students and scholars to better navigate this complicated ethical terrain. Moving onto normative ethical theory, the second part of the book ranges across morality and religion, consequentialism, and particularism, as well as Kantian, virtue, feminist, and Confucian ethics. This comprehensive edition provides a one-stop resource for students of ethics, which includes updated detailed overviews of the field and methodological issues, as well as an appendix of additional resources, including technical terms in ethics.

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Genre : Philosophy
Author : Christian B. Miller
Publisher : Bloomsbury Publishing
Release : 2023-10-19
File : 465 Pages
ISBN-13 : 9781350217898


Normativity And Agency

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Christine M. Korsgaard has had a profound influence on moral philosophy over the past forty years. Through her writing and teaching she has developed a distinctive, rigorous, and historically informed way of thinking about ethics, agency, and the normative dimension of human life more generally. The twelve original essays in this volume are written in her honor on the occasion of her retirement from teaching. They engage questions that recur in her work: Why are we obligated to do what morality demands? What features of our nature make us subject to moral obligation? What does it mean to be autonomous and responsible for what we do? What do we owe to nonhuman animals? Contributors include Stephen Darwall, Kyla Ebels-Duggan, Barbara Herman, Richard Moran, Japa Pallikkathayil, Faviola Rivera-Castro, T.M. Scanlon, Tamar Schapiro, Sharon Street, David Sussman, Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, and David Velleman. These essays shed light on Korsgaard's own views while staking out provocative new positions on the topics that feature centrally in her own work.

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Genre : Philosophy
Author : Tamar Schapiro
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Release : 2022-07-14
File : 305 Pages
ISBN-13 : 9780192581853


Methodology And Moral Philosophy

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Many ethicists either accept the reflective equilibrium method or think that anything goes in ethical theorizing as long as the results are plausible. The aim of this book is to advance methodological thinking in ethics beyond these common attitudes and to raise new methodological questions about how moral philosophy should be done. What are we entitled to assume as the starting-point of our ethical inquiry? What is the role of empirical sciences in ethics? Is there just one general method for doing moral philosophy or should different questions in moral philosophy be answered in different ways? Are there argumentative structures and strategies that we should be encouraged to use or typical argumentative patterns that we should avoid? This volume brings together leading moral philosophers to consider these questions. The chapters investigate the prospects of empirical ethics, outline new methods of ethics, evaluate recent methodological advances, and explore whether different areas of moral philosophy are methodologically continuous or independent of one another. The aim of Methodology and Moral Philosophy is to make moral philosophers more self-aware and reflective of the way in which they do moral philosophy and also to encourage them to take part in methodological debates.

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Genre : Philosophy
Author : Jussi Suikkanen
Publisher : Routledge
Release : 2018-10-31
File : 242 Pages
ISBN-13 : 9780429839238


Morality And Epistemic Judgement

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Moral judgments attempt to describe a reality that does not exist, so they are all false. This is the moral error theory, a deeply troubling yet plausible view that is now one of the canonical positions in moral philosophy. The most compelling argument against it is the argument from analogy. According to this, the moral error theory should be rejected because it would seriously compromise our practice of making epistemic judgments-judgments about how we ought to form and revise our beliefs in light of our evidence-and could undermine systematic thought and reason themselves. Christopher Cowie provides a novel assessment of the recent attention paid to this topic in moral philosophy and epistemology. He reasons that the argument from analogy fails because moral judgments are unlike judgments about how we ought to form and revise our beliefs in light of our evidence. On that basis, a moral error theory does not compromise the practice of making epistemic judgments. The moral error theory may be true after all, Cowie concludes, and if it is then we will simply have to live with its concerning consequences.

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Genre : Philosophy
Author : Christopher Cowie
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Release : 2019-10-23
File : 268 Pages
ISBN-13 : 9780192580436


Unbelievable Errors

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Unbelievable Errors defends an error theory about all normative judgements: not just moral judgements, but also judgements about reasons for action, judgements about reasons for belief, and instrumental normative judgements. This theory states that normative judgements are beliefs that ascribe normative properties, but that normative properties do not exist. It therefore entails that all normative judgements are false. Bart Streumer also argues, however, that we cannot believe this error theory. This may seem to be a problem for the theory. But he argues that it makes this error theory more likely to be true, since it undermines objections to the theory and it makes it harder to reject the arguments for the theory. He then sketches how certain other philosophical theories can be defended in a similar way. He concludes that to make philosophical progress, we need to make a sharp distinction between a theory's truth and our ability to believe it.

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Genre : Philosophy
Author : Bart Streumer
Publisher : Oxford University Press
Release : 2017
File : 242 Pages
ISBN-13 : 9780198785897


Constructing Practical Reasons

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Our actions are informed by the consideration of reasons; reasons which constructivism suggests are not simply discovered, but made by us. This book examines this view, elaborating its basic idea into a fully-fledged account of practical reasons, making its theoretical commitments explicit, and defending it against well-known objections.

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Genre : Philosophy
Author : Andreas Müller
Publisher : Oxford University Press, USA
Release : 2021-01-10
File : 250 Pages
ISBN-13 : 9780198754329


Metaethics

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Metaethics: A Contemporary Introduction provides a solid foundation in metaethics for advanced undergraduates by introducing a series of puzzles that most metaethical theories address. These puzzles involve moral disagreement, reference, moral epistemology, metaphysics, and moral psychology. From there, author Mark van Roojen discusses the many positions in metaethics that people will take in reaction to these puzzles. Van Roojen asks several essential questions of his readers, namely: What is metaethics? Why study it? How does one discuss metaethics, given its inherently controversial nature? Each chapter closes with questions, both for reading comprehension and further discussion, and annotated suggestions for further reading.

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Genre : Philosophy
Author : Mark van Roojen
Publisher : Routledge
Release : 2015-06-12
File : 324 Pages
ISBN-13 : 9781317448693


The Routledge Handbook Of Practical Reason

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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.

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Genre : Philosophy
Author : Ruth Chang
Publisher : Routledge
Release : 2020-12-30
File : 685 Pages
ISBN-13 : 9781000337129