From Psychology to Morality

From Psychology to Morality
Author: John Deigh
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 411
Release: 2018-07-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0190878614

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.

Moral Virtue and Nature

Moral Virtue and Nature
Author: Stephen R. Brown
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Total Pages: 161
Release: 2008-04-10
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1441146474

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.

Aristotelian Naturalism

Aristotelian Naturalism
Author: Martin Hähnel
Publisher: Springer Nature
Total Pages: 454
Release: 2020-04-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3030375765

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.

Ethical Naturalism

Ethical Naturalism
Author: Susana Nuccetelli
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 271
Release: 2011-12-08
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1139503898

Ethical naturalism is narrowly construed as the doctrine that there are moral properties and facts, at least some of which are natural properties and facts. Perhaps owing to its having faced, early on, intuitively forceful objections by eliminativists and non-naturalists, ethical naturalism has only recently become a central player in the debates about the status of moral properties and facts which have occupied philosophers over the last century. It has now become a driving force in those debates, one with sufficient resources to challenge not only eliminativism, especially in its various non-cognitivist forms, but also the most sophisticated versions of non-naturalism. This volume brings together twelve new essays which make it clear that, in light of recent developments in analytic philosophy and the social sciences, there are novel grounds for reassessing the doctrines at stake in these debates.

The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Ethics

The Cambridge Companion to Natural Law Ethics
Author: Tom Angier
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 359
Release: 2019-11-07
Genre: Law
ISBN: 1108422632

How do ethical norms relate to human nature? This comprehensive and interdisciplinary volume surveys the latest thinking on natural law.

Against Moral Responsibility

Against Moral Responsibility
Author: Bruce N. Waller
Publisher: MIT Press
Total Pages: 365
Release: 2024-12-10
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0262553813

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.

The Birth of Ethics

The Birth of Ethics
Author: Philip Pettit
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2018-10-15
Genre: Law
ISBN: 0190904933

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.

Knowing the Natural Law

Knowing the Natural Law
Author: Steven J. Jensen
Publisher: CUA Press
Total Pages: 249
Release: 2015-03-26
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 081322733X

Knowing the Natural Law traces the thought of Aquinas from an understanding of human nature to a knowledge of the human good, from there to an account of ought-statements, and finally to choice, which issues in human actions. The much discussed article on the precepts of the natural law (I-II, 94, 2) provides the framework for a natural law rooted in human nature and in speculative knowledge. Practical knowledge is itself threefold: potentially practical knowledge, virtually practical knowledge, and fully practical knowledge.

Ethical Studies

Ethical Studies
Author: Robert A. Bowie
Publisher: Nelson Thornes
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2004
Genre: Juvenile Nonfiction
ISBN: 9780748780792

A detailed treatment of ethics, preparing students for the methods of study expected in higher education. Covering the major western theories and their religious connections, as well as a series of pertinent contemporary ethical issues. This second edition has been substantially updated to provide comprehensive coverage of the Religious Ethics requirements of all major awarding bodies.