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Books > Humanities > Philosophy > Topics in philosophy > Ethics & moral philosophy
It is widely held in contemporary moral philosophy that moral agency must be explained in terms of some more basic account of human nature. This book presents a fundamental challenge to this view. Specifically, it argues that sympathy, understood as an immediate and unthinking response to another's suffering, plays a constitutive role in our conception of what it is to be human, and specifically in that conception of human life on which anything we might call a moral life depends.
A disciple of Kant and a significant factor in shaping Nietzsche's
thinking, Arthur Schopenhauer worked from the foundation that all
knowledge derives from our experience of the world but that our
experience is necessarily subjective and formed by our own
intellect and biases: reality, therefore, is but an extension of
our own will. In this essay, translated by THOMAS BAILEY SAUNDERS
(1860-1928) and first published in English in the 1890s,
Schopenhauer offers his outlook on human nature... and a
pessimistic one it is, for Schopenhauer saw life through a
Buddhist-like lens of desire leading to suffering, and the
abjuration of desire as the only path to temporary relief. Here,
the philosopher examines human institutions such as government,
human ideals such as free will, and human understanding of
character and morality, and finds underlying them a fatalistic
impulse driving culture from extremes of despotism to those of
anarchy, with little stopping along the way. Students of philosophy
and of 19th-century intellectualism will find this a fascinating
read.
The pioneering moral philosopher Annette Baier presents a series of
new and recent essays in ethics, broadly conceived to include both
engagements with other philosophers and personal meditations on
life. Baier's unique voice and insight illuminate a wide range of
topics. In the public sphere, she enquires into patriotism, what we
owe future people, and what toleration we should have for killing.
In the private sphere, she discusses honesty, self-knowledge, hope,
sympathy, and self-trust, and offers personal reflections on faces,
friendship, and alienating affection.
Each chapter can be read independently, so useful to a variety of
courses. It presupposes no prior knowledge, so useful for
introductory, as well as more advanced, courses. It enables
students to progress from practical issues to moral theories. It
introduces debates over controversial and topical moral and
political issues - drug laws, punishment, civil disobedience, and
global poverty. It presents clear and concise examination of key
concepts in moral and political theory - liberty, liberty-limiting
principles (harm, offence, paternalism, and harmless wrongdoing),
rights, equality and social justice.This title provides a clear and
concise introduction to moral and political philosophy which
critically analyzes arguments about controversial and topical
practical issues - drug laws, justifications of punishment, civil
disobedience, whether there is a duty to obey the law, and global
poverty.
The debate about the existence of climate change seems finally at
an end. We now have to decide what to do about it. Here, James
Garvey argues that the ultimate rationale for action on climate
change cannot be simply economic, political, scientific or social,
though no doubt our decisions should be informed by such things.
Instead, climate change is largely a moral problem. What we should
do about it depends on what matters to us and what we think is
right. This book is an introduction to the ethics of climate
change. It considers a little climate science and a lot of moral
philosophy, ultimately finding a way into the many possible
positions associated with climate change. It is also a call for
action, for doing something about the moral demands placed on both
governments and individuals by the fact of climate change. This is
a book about choices, responsibility, and where the moral weight
falls on our warming world. Articulate, provocative and
stimulating, this timely book will make a significant contribution
to one of the most important debates of our time .
This collection is a unique joint venture of teachers in, and
practitioners of military ethics. Representatives of each branch of
the Armed Forces, i.e. the Navy, the Army, the Air Force and the
Military Police, discuss their branch-specific experiences with
moral questions and dilemma's. The moral questions and dilemma's
which arise in their work are also discussed by certain
professional groups within the Armed Forces, such as the Military
Medical Service and the Military Psychological Service. Detailed
attention is given to how junior commanders can enhance morally
responsible behaviour within their unit. A substantial part of the
book focuses on teaching military ethics. It includes the Socratic
dialogue, decision-making skills, and a chapter containing
fictitious moral dilemmas that can be used as exercises. The book
is aimed at those responsible for training at military training
centres as well as at cadets, midshipmen and young officers. It
will also be an important tool for commanders preparing for a
mission. And it will be of use for all those concerned with the
subject of military ethics at policy and management level, both in
the armed forces and outside it. Military Ethics: The Dutch
Approach - A Practical Guide is an adapted translation of the main
chapters of the Dutch-language volume "Praktijkboek Militaire
Ethiek" (Practitioner's Guide Military Ethics).
If humans are purely physical, and if it is the brain that does the
work formerly assigned to the mind or soul, then how can it fail to
be the case that all of our thoughts and actions are determined by
the laws of neurobiology? If this is the case, then free will,
moral responsibility, and, indeed, reason itself would appear to be
in jeopardy. Nancey Murphy and Warren S. Brown here defend a
non-reductive version of physicalism whereby humans are (sometimes)
the authors of their own thoughts and actions.
Did My Neurons Make Me Do It? brings together insights from both
philosophy and the cognitive neurosciences to defeat
neurobiological reductionism. One resource is a "post-Cartesian"
account of mind as essentially embodied and constituted by
action-feedback-evaluation-action loops in the environment, and
"scaffolded" by cultural resources. Another is a non-mysterious
account of downward (mental) causation explained in terms of a
complex, higher-order system exercising constraints on lower-level
causal processes. These resources are intrinsically related: the
embeddedness of brain events in action-feedback loops is the key to
their mentality, and those broader systems have causal effects on
the brain itself.
With these resources Murphy and Brown take on two problems in
philosophy of mind: a response to the charges that physicalists
cannot account for the meaningfulness of language nor the causal
efficacy of the mental qua mental. Solutions to these problems are
a prerequisite to addressing the central problem of the book: how
can biological organisms be free and morally responsible? The
authors argue that the free-will problem is badly framed if it is
put in terms ofneurobiological determinism; the real issue is
neurobiological reductionism. If it is indeed possible to make
sense of the notion of downward causation, then the relevant
question is whether humans exert downward causation over some of
their own parts and processes. If all organisms do this to some
extent, what needs to be added to this animalian flexibility to
constitute free and responsible action? The keys are sophisticated
language and hierarchically ordered cognitive processes allowing
(mature) humans to evaluate their own actions, motives, goals, and
rational and moral principles.
'Spencer regarded the Principles of Ethics - of which The "Data of
Ethics and "Justice constitutes parts one and four respectively -
as the culmination and crowning achievement of the System of
Synthetic Philosophy, to which the other volumes on biology,
psychology, and sociology had been mere preliminaries' - Michael
Taylor, from the Introduction. In "Justice Spencer revisits the Law
of Equal Freedom which first appeared in "Social Statics and forms
the keystone of social morality.
'The best introduction to Deleuze, and to the collective writings
of Deleuze and Guattari, available yet! Claire Colebrook has
produced a truly accessible pathway into the labyrinthine
enchantments offered for contemporary thought by Deleuzianism,
making concepts clear, showing their political and theoretical
complexity, elaborating their social and artistic relevance. A
wonderful, lucid opening onto the new worlds of Deleuze.'Elizabeth
Grosz, Rutgers University'A wonderfully clear introduction to key
Deleuzian concepts and to their effectiveness in fields ranging
from ethics and politics to cinema, literary and cultural studies.
Claire Colebrook provides a series of effortless transitions from
Deleuze's philosophical concerns (eg: difference, representation,
desire and affect) to concrete problems in a variety of fields.
This book is an excellent guide to an important body of critical
thought.'Paul Patton, Professor of Philosophy, University of NSWA
genuine attempt to think differently, Gilles Deleuze's work
challenges, provokes and frustrates. Surprisingly practical as well
as innovative, it is now being seen as a 'must read' for students
and scholars across the humanities and social sciences. Claire
Colebrook's Understanding Deleuze offers a comprehensive and very
accessible introduction to his work. hink differently. It is built
on the notion of an immanent ethics: how can we have a political
and ethical theory without some external foundation such as the
subject or morality? He argues that the only way we can do this is
with a theory of the virtual, and he sees all life (not just
cyberculture) as virtual. Deleuze goes further than Foucault or
Derrida in questioning the boundaries of the subject and knowledge.
For Deleuze perception extends beyond the human, to animals,
machines and microorganisms.Deleuze's writing is challenging and
hard to read, and so far there is no introduction to his work.
Claire Colebrook's primer offers an accessible introduction to the
whole Deleuzian oeuvre, including the work he did with Guattari.
Almost everyone can run. Only very few can run a marathon. But what
is it for agents to be able to do things? This question, while
central to many debates in philosophy, is still awaiting a
comprehensive answer. The book provides just that. Drawing on some
valuable insights from previous works of abilities and making use
of possible world semantics, Jaster develops the "success view", a
view on which abilities are a matter of successful behavior. Along
the way, she explores the gradable nature of abilities, the
contextsensitivity of ability statements, the difference between
general and specific abilities, the relationship between abilities
and dispositions, and the ability to act otherwise. The book is
mandatory reading for anyone working on abilities, and provides
valuable insights for anyone dealing with agents' abilities in
other fields of philosophy. For this book, Romy Jaster has received
both the Wolfgang Stegmuller Prize and the De Gruyter Prize for
Analytical Philosophy of Mind or Metaphysics/Ontology.
Christos Yannaras pioneering critique of the concept of the right
of the individual is presented in English for the first time. This
central aspect of political theory (since Hegels Philosophy of
Right) summarizes the philosophical and cultural identity of the
paradigm of modernity, but the philosophical assumptions underlying
the concept of right have not hitherto been subject to scrutiny.
Yannaras shows that the starting-point of the concept of right is a
phenomenalistic naturalism, which presupposes an abstract concept
of the human subject as a fundamentally undifferentiated natural
individual. The question is also explored of how the priority
accorded to this concept of right is related to the contemporary
crisis of the modern politico-social paradigm, while a new preface
from the translator underlines the continued significance of
Yannaras proposal for Anglophone readers. Against the modern
concept of right with its illusion of objectivity, The Inhumanity
of Right sketches out the basic lines of a political theory that
prioritizes new social needs that reflect the relational character
of the human person.
This is the first edited collection to bring together classic
pieces and new work by leading scholars of Thomas Reid. The
contributors explore key elements of Reid's moral theory in an
organised and thematic way, offering a balanced and broad ranging
volume.
Value, Reality, and Desire is an extended argument for a robust
realism about value. The robust realist affirms the following
distinctive theses. There are genuine claims about value which are
true or false - there are facts about value. These value-facts are
mind-independent - they are not reducible to desires or other
mental states, or indeed to any non-mental facts of a
non-evaluative kind. And these genuine, mind-independent,
irreducible value-facts are causally efficacious. Values, quite
literally, affect us. These are not particularly fashionable
theses, and taken as a whole they go somewhat against the grain of
quite a lot of recent work in the metaphysics of value. Further,
against the received view, Oddie argues that we can have knowledge
of values by experiential acquaintance, that there are experiences
of value which can be both veridical and appropriately responsive
to the values themselves. Finally, these value-experiences are not
the products of some exotic and implausible faculty of 'intuition'.
Rather, they are perfectly mundane and familiar mental states -
namely, desires. This view explains how values can be
'intrinsically motivating', without falling foul of the widely
accepted 'queerness' objection. There are, of course, other
objections to each of the realist's claims. In showing how and why
these objections fail, Oddie introduces a wealth of interesting and
original insights about issues of wider interest - including the
nature of properties, reduction, supervenience, and causation. The
result is a novel and interesting account which illuminates what
would otherwise be deeply puzzling features of value and desire and
the connections between them.
The book has no illustrations or index. Purchasers are entitled to
a free trial membership in the General Books Club where they can
select from more than a million books without charge. Subjects:
Fishing; Social Science / Sociology / Rural; Sports
Francis BACON, in his Novum Organum, Robert BOYLE, in his Skeptical
Chemist and Rene DESCARTES, in his Discourse on Method; all of
these men were witnesses to the th scientific revolution, which, in
the 17 century, began to awaken the western world from a long
sleep. In each of these works, the author emphasizes the role of
the experimental method in exploring the laws of Nature, that is to
say, the way in which an experiment is designed, implemented
according to tried and tested te- niques, and used as a basis for
drawing conclusions that are based only on results, with their
margins of error, taking into account contemporary traditions and
prejudices. Two centuries later, Claude BERNARD, in his
Introduction to the Study of Experimental Medicine, made a
passionate plea for the application of the experimental method when
studying the functions of living beings. Twenty-first century
Biology, which has been fertilized by highly sophisticated
techniques inherited from Physics and Chemistry, blessed with a
constantly increasing expertise in the manipulation of the genome,
initiated into the mysteries of information techn- ogy, and
enriched with the ever-growing fund of basic knowledge, at times
appears to have forgotten its roots."
Phil Hutchinson engages with philosophers of emotion in both the
analytic and continental traditions. He advances a framework for
understanding emotion - world-taking cognitivism and argues that
reductionist accounts of emotion leave us in a state of poverty
regarding our understanding of the world and ourselves.
Morality and the Nature of Law explores the conceptual relationship
between morality and the criteria that determine what counts as law
in a given societythe criteria of legal validity. Is it necessary
condition for a legal system to include moral criteria of legal
validity? Is it even possible for a legal system to have moral
criteria of legal validity? The book considers the views of natural
law theorists ranging from Blackstone to Dworkin and rejects them,
arguing that it is not conceptually necessary that the criteria of
legal validity include moral norms. Further, it rejects the
exclusive positivist view, arguing instead that it is conceptually
possible for the criteria of validity to include moral norms. In
the process of considering such questions, this book considers
Raz's views concerning the nature of authority and Shapiro's views
about the guidance function of law, which have been thought to
repudiate the conceptual possibility of moral criteria of legal
validity. The book, then, articulates a thought experiment that
shows that it is possible for a legal system to have such criteria
and concludes with a chapter that argues that any legal system,
like that of the United States, which affords final authority over
the content of the law to judges who are fallible with respect to
the requirements of morality is a legal system with purely
source-based criteria of validity.
Honor For Us is the first contemporary philosophical inquiry into
the concept of honor. It is unique not only in its analysis of six
distinct concepts of honor, which includes an investigation into
the place of honor in religious thought and ethics, but also in its
interpretation of honor's prevalence in our own culture. Many would
like to discard honor altogether as "obsolete", but Sessions
contends that the concept of honor is poorly understood, standing
sorely in need of clarification. He argues that the notion of honor
remains viable in the face of powerful criticism, and that it has
important features which warrant our normative interest. While not
downplaying the "dark side" of honor (violence, sexism,
inegalitarianism, its abuse in religion), Sessions shows that honor
not only constitutes a descriptively useful concept but also
remains a potentially valuable concept for us today.
How we treat animals arouses strong emotions. Many people are
repulsed by photographs of cruelty to animals and respond
passionately to how we make animals suffer for food, science, and
sport. But is this, as some argue, a purely emotional issue? Are
there really no rational grounds for opposing our current treatment
of animals?
In Why Animal Suffering Matters, Andrew Linzey shows that when
analyzed impartially the rational case for extending moral
solicitude to all sentient beings is much stronger than many
suppose. Indeed, Linzey shows that many of the justifications for
inflicting animal suffering in fact provide grounds for protecting
them. Because animals, the argument goes, lack reason or souls or
language, harming them is not an offense. Linzey suggests that just
the opposite is true, that the inability of animals to give or
withhold consent, their inability to represent their interests,
their moral innocence, and their relative defenselessness all
compel us not to harm them. Linzey further shows that the arguments
in favor of three controversial practices--hunting with dogs, fur
farming, and commercial sealing--cannot withstand rational
critique. He considers the economic, legal, and political issues
surrounding each of these practices, appealing not to our emotions
but to our reason, and shows that they are rationally unsupportable
and morally repugnant.
Jeremy Bentham famously wrote of animals, "The question is not,
Can they reason? Nor, Can they talk? but Can they suffer?" In this
superbly argued and deeply engaging book, Andrew Linzey not only
shows that animals can and do suffer but also makes clear the harm
that is done not only to them but to us when we causethem to
suffer.
eproductive rights refers to a range of claims concerning
whether, when and how to have children. Beneath this clear
statement lays the most contentious political, legal, and cultural
issue in America today. Involving the self, the family, and the
State, women's reproductive rights generates much impassioned
argument but painfully little agreement. Topics and authors take on
diverse and often clashing positions, highlighting this issue's
complex and highly charged nature. Arranged alphabetically by
topic, articles representing racial and ethnic groups' experiences
figure prominently, as do the effects of age, class, education,
health, religion, and sexual preference on childbearing and
-rearing practices, in and out of wedlock. It also includes
articles on laws, court cases, political attitudes, prominent
activists, and technological advances as they relate to
reproductive rights. Entries are written by highly regarded
scholars, are cross-referenced, and conclude with suggested further
readings.
Designed to introduce and inform the reader to this extremely
difficult topic, Baer's ecumenical approach exposes us to a variety
of opinions from support for current abortion policies to the
building movement for fetal rights. Only reasoned opinions
supported by hard evidence are included, and no attempt was made to
mute the often incommensurable opinions expressed within. This book
will be a valuable resources for students, scholars, and any person
interested in learning about the multiplicity of perspectives on
this important issue that is at the heart of our current culture
wars.
Violence holds considerable philosophical interest, especially
today, and yet this concept has not been given sufficient attention
by contemporary philosophers. This is the first anthology of
philosophical essays on the nature and justifiability of violence.
The essays in this volume, taken from the last 100 years, explore a
range of philosophical issues pertaining to violence. Three basic
questions are scrutinized: 'What is violence?', 'Is violence always
wrong?', and 'Can violence be justified?'. Students and
Philosophers in political and moral philosophy, but also political
theorists, political scientists, and political sociologists, will
find this an important and valuable contribution.
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