Moral Discourse and Practice

Philosophy / By /
Moral Discourse and Practice

Author: Stephen L. Darwall

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

ISBN: 0195107497

Category: Philosophy

Page: 422

View: 622

What are ethical judgments about? And what is their relation to practice? How can ethical judgment aspire to objectivity? The past two decades have witnessed a resurgence of interest in metaethics, placing questions such as these about the nature and status of ethical judgment at the very center of contemporary moral philosophy.Moral Discourse and Practice: Some Philosophical Approaches is a unique anthology which collects important recent work, much of which is not easily available elsewhere, on core metaethical issues. Naturalist moral realism, once devastated by the charge of "naturalistic fallacy," has been reinvigorated, as have versions of moral realism that insist on the discontinuity between ethics and science. Irrealist, expressivist programs have also developed with great subtlety, encouraging the thought that a noncognivist account may actually be able to explain ethical judgments' aspirations to objectivity. Neo-Kantian constructivist theories have flourished as well, offering hope that morality can be grounded in a plausible conception of reasonable conduct. Together, the positions advanced in the essays collected here address these recent developments, constituting a rich array of approaches to contemporary moral philosophy's most fundamental debates. An extensive introduction by Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton is also included, making this volume the most comprehensive and up-to-date work of its kind. Moral Discourse is ideally suited for use in courses in contemporary ethics, ethical theory, and metaethics.

Morality Without Foundations

Philosophy / By /
Morality Without Foundations

Author: Mark Timmons

Publisher: Oxford University Press on Demand

ISBN: 9780195176544

Category: Philosophy

Page: 280

View: 366

Morality Without Foundations investigates fundamental metaethical questions about the meaning, truth, and justification of moral thought and discourse. Mark Timmons maintains that all versions of descriptivism in ethics, particularly certain accounts of moral realism, fail. He argues instead that a correct metaethical theory should embrace some version of non-descriptivism. Timmons defends what he calls "assertoric non-descriptivism" which, unlike traditional non-descriptivist views, holds that moral sentences are typically used to make genuine assertions. In defending this view, he exploits contextual semantics, providing him with the semantic flexibility to develop an irrealist account of moral discourse.Timmons goes on to support a contextualist moral epistemology, completing his overall version of contextualism in ethics. Like his foundationalist rivals, Timmons recognizes that there are moral beliefs that are epistemically basic in providing a basis for the justification of non-basic moral beliefs. Yet, he agrees with the coherentist in maintaining that there are no intrinsically justified beliefs that can serve as a single foundation for a system of moral knowledge. Timmons ultimately finds that regresses of justification of moral belief end with contextually basic beliefs--moral beliefs which, in the relevant context, are responsibly held, but in other contexts might not be suitable as regress stoppers.Timmons' novel defense of morality without foundations offers provocative reading for philosophers working in the areas of ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. Yet, written with the student in mind, his lucid presentation of difficult ideas makes this book accessible to students and newcomers to the field of metaethics.

Moral Entanglements

Social Science / By /
Moral Entanglements

Author: Stefan Bargheer

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

ISBN: 9780226543963

Category: Social Science

Page: 336

View: 576

At the center of Stefan Bargheer’s account of bird watching, field ornithology, and nature conservation in Britain and Germany stands the question of how values change over time and how individuals develop moral commitments. Using life history data derived from written narratives and oral histories, Moral Entanglements follows the development of conservation from the point in time at which the greatest declines in bird life took place to the current efforts in large-scale biodiversity conservation and environmental policy within the European Union. While often depicted as the outcome of an environmental revolution that has taken place since the 1960s, Bargheer demonstrates to the contrary that the relevant practices and institutions that shape contemporary conservation have evolved gradually since the early nineteenth century. Moral Entanglements further shows that the practices and institutions in which bird conservation is entangled differ between the two countries. In Britain, birds derived their meaning in the context of the game of bird watching as a leisure activity. Here birds are now, as then, the most popular and best protected taxonomic group of wildlife due to their particularly suitable status as toys in a collecting game, turning nature into a playground. In Germany, by contrast, birds were initially part of the world of work. They were protected as useful economic tools, rendering services of ecological pest control in a system of agricultural production modeled after the factory shop floor. Based on this extensive analysis, Bargheer formulates a sociology of morality informed by a pragmatist theory of value.

Morality

Social Science / By /
Morality

Author: Jarrett Zigon

Publisher: Berg

ISBN: 9781847886149

Category: Social Science

Page: 153

View: 894

Morality: An Anthropological Perspective provides the first account of anthropological approaches to the question of morality. By considering how morality is viewed and enacted in different cultures, and how it is related to key social institutions such as religion, law, gender, sexuality and medical practice, Morality takes a closer look at some of the most central questions of the morality debates of our time. The book combines theory with practical case studies for student use. Drawing on anthropological, philosophical and general social scientific literature, the book will be useful for both undergraduate students and researchers. Accessibly written, Morality provides a unique and wide-ranging perspective on morality, and will be essential reading for those interested in this important contemporary debate.

Ethical Sentimentalism

Philosophy / By /
Ethical Sentimentalism

Author: Remy Debes

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

ISBN: 9781108618762

Category: Philosophy

Page:

View: 145

In recent years there has been a tremendous resurgence of interest in ethical sentimentalism, a moral theory first articulated during the Scottish Enlightenment. Ethical Sentimentalism promises a conception of morality that is grounded in a realistic account of human psychology, which, correspondingly, acknowledges the central place of emotion in our moral lives. However, this promise has encountered its share of philosophical difficulties. Chief among them is the question of how to square the limited scope of human motivation and psychological mechanism - so easily influenced by personal, social, and cultural circumstance - with the seeming universal scope and objective nature of moral judgment. The essays in this volume provide a comprehensive evaluation of the sentimentalist project with a particular eye to this difficulty. Each essay offers critical clarification, innovative answers to central challenges, and new directions for ethical sentimentalism in general.

The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism

Political Science / By /
The Political Philosophy of Poststructuralist Anarchism

Author: Todd May

Publisher: Penn State Press

ISBN: 9780271028897

Category: Political Science

Page: 177

View: 958

The political writings of the French poststructuralists have eluded articulation in the broader framework of general political philosophy primarily because of the pervasive tendency to define politics along a single parameter: the balance between state power and individual rights in liberalism and the focus on economic justice as a goal in Marxism. What poststructuralists like Michel Foucault, Gilles Deleuze, and Jean-Fran&çois Lyotard offer instead is a political philosophy that can be called tactical: it emphasizes that power emerges from many different sources and operates along many different registers. This approach has roots in traditional anarchist thought, which sees the social and political field as a network of intertwined practices with overlapping political effects. The poststructuralist approach, however, eschews two questionable assumptions of anarchism, that human beings have an (essentially benign) essence and that power is always repressive, never productive. After positioning poststructuralist political thought against the background of Marxism and the traditional anarchism of Bakunin, Kropotkin, and Proudhon, Todd May shows what a tactical political philosophy like anarchism looks like shorn of its humanist commitments&—namely, a poststructuralist anarchism. The book concludes with a defense, contra Habermas and Critical Theory, of poststructuralist political thought as having a metaethical structure allowing for positive ethical commitments.

Disturbing Argument

Language Arts & Disciplines / By /
Disturbing Argument

Author: Catherine Palczewski

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9781317652854

Category: Language Arts & Disciplines

Page: 451

View: 281

This edited volume represents the best of the scholarship presented at the 18th National Communication Association/American Forensic Association Conference on Argumentation. This biennial conference brings together a lively group of argumentation scholars from a range of disciplinary approaches and a variety of countries. Disturbing Argument contains selected works that speak both to the disturbing prevalence of violence in the contemporary world and to the potential of argument itself, to disturb the very relations of power that enable that violence. Scholars’ essays analyze a range of argument forms, including body and visual argument, interpersonal and group argument, argument in electoral politics, public argument, argument in social protest, scientific and technical argument, and argument and debate pedagogy. Contributors study argument using a range of methodological approaches, from social scientifically informed studies of interpersonal, group, and political argument to humanistic examinations of argument theory, political discourse, and social protest, to creatively informed considerations of argument practices that truly disturb the boundaries of what we consider argument.

Basil Bernstein

EDUCATION / By /
Basil Bernstein

Author: Rob Moore

Publisher: Routledge

ISBN: 9780415577038

Category: EDUCATION

Page: 226

View: 246

"The book provides a detailed yet clear introduction to the sociology of Basil Bernstein that will be accessible to those not already familiar with it, but also of interest to those who are. It locates his thinking within the history of the field of British sociology in his life-time, explores the classical sources in Durkheim and Marx, and shows how a world-wide network of scholars continues to apply and further develop his ideas. His later ideas about knowledge structures are applied to Bernstein himself in terms of a historical analysis of the fields of British sociology and the sociology of education and his position within them. The book is, in this way, about British sociology and education as well as about Bernstein and intends to provide a provocative and challenging account of both. The book is organised in four main sections that deal with: theory, research, control and pedagogy. It explores the major areas of his work and shows their inter-relatedness and their development over time. Although Bernstein had a special interest in education, he did not see himself a sociologist of education alone. His was a broad and wide-ranging programme in the social sciences and it is in these terms that his work is presented in this book"--

Morality Without Foundations

Ethics / By /
Morality Without Foundations

Author: Mark Timmons

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

ISBN: 9780195117318

Category: Ethics

Page: 282

View: 278

Morality Without Foundations investigates fundamental metaethical questions about the meaning, truth, and justification of moral thought and discourse. Mark Timmons maintains that all versions of descriptivism in ethics, particularly certain accounts of moral realism, fail. He argues instead that a correct metaethical theory should embrace some version of non-descriptivism. Timmons defends what he calls "assertoric non-descriptivism" which, unlike traditional non-descriptivist views, holds that moral sentences are typically used to make genuine assertions. In defending this view, he exploits contextual semantics, providing him with the semantic flexibility to develop an irrealist account of moral discourse. Timmons goes on to support a contextualist moral epistemology, completing his overall version of contextualism in ethics. Like his foundationalist rivals, Timmons recognizes that there are moral beliefs that are epistemically basic in providing a basis for the justification of non-basic moral beliefs. Yet, he agrees with the coherentist in maintaining that there are no intrinsically justified beliefs that can serve as a single foundation for a system of moral knowledge. Timmons ultimately finds that regresses of justification of moral belief end with contextually basic beliefs--moral beliefs which, in the relevant context, are responsibly held, but in other contexts might not be suitable as regress stoppers. Timmons' novel defense of morality without foundations offers provocative reading for philosophers working in the areas of ethics, epistemology, and metaphysics. Yet, written with the student in mind, his lucid presentation of difficult ideas makes this book accessible to students and newcomers to the field of metaethics.