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Author: Peter Königs Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG ISBN: 3110750198 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 154
Book Description
One the most interesting debates in moral philosophy revolves around the significance of empirical moral psychology for moral philosophy. Genealogical arguments that rely on empirical findings about the origins of moral beliefs, so-called debunking arguments, take center stage in this debate. Looking at debunking arguments based on evidence from evolutionary moral psychology, experimental ethics and neuroscience, this book explores what ethicists can learn from the science of morality, and what they cannot. Among other things, the book offers a new take on the deontology/utilitarianism debate, discusses the usefulness of experiments in ethics, investigates whether morality should be thought of as a problem-solving device, shows how debunking arguments can tell us something about the structure of philosophical debate, and argues that debunking arguments lead to both moral and prudential skepticism. Presenting a new picture of the relationship between empirical moral psychology and moral philosophy, this book is essential reading for moral philosophers and moral psychologists alike.
Author: Peter Königs Publisher: Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co KG ISBN: 3110750198 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 154
Book Description
One the most interesting debates in moral philosophy revolves around the significance of empirical moral psychology for moral philosophy. Genealogical arguments that rely on empirical findings about the origins of moral beliefs, so-called debunking arguments, take center stage in this debate. Looking at debunking arguments based on evidence from evolutionary moral psychology, experimental ethics and neuroscience, this book explores what ethicists can learn from the science of morality, and what they cannot. Among other things, the book offers a new take on the deontology/utilitarianism debate, discusses the usefulness of experiments in ethics, investigates whether morality should be thought of as a problem-solving device, shows how debunking arguments can tell us something about the structure of philosophical debate, and argues that debunking arguments lead to both moral and prudential skepticism. Presenting a new picture of the relationship between empirical moral psychology and moral philosophy, this book is essential reading for moral philosophers and moral psychologists alike.
Author: Michael Bergmann Publisher: Berkeley Tanner Lectures ISBN: 0199669775 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 321
Book Description
Fourteen original essays by philosophers, theologians, and social scientists explore the challenges to moral and religious belief posed by disagreement and evolution. The collection represents both sceptical and non-skeptical positions about morality and religion, cultivates new insights, and moves the discussion forward in illuminating ways.
Author: Uri D. Leibowitz Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0191084263 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 327
Book Description
How far should our realism extend? For many years philosophers of mathematics and philosophers of ethics have worked independently to address the question of how best to understand the entities apparently referred to by mathematical and ethical talk. But the similarities between their endeavours are not often emphasised. This book provides that emphasis. In particular, it focuses on two types of argumentative strategies that have been deployed in both areas. The first--debunking arguments--aims to put pressure on realism by emphasising the seeming redundancy of mathematical or moral entities when it comes to explaining our judgements. In the moral realm this challenge has been made by Gilbert Harman and Sharon Street; in the mathematical realm it is known as the 'Benacerraf-Field' problem. The second strategy--indispensability arguments--aims to provide support for realism by emphasising the seeming intellectual indispensability of mathematical or moral entities, for example when constructing good explanatory theories. This strategy is associated with Quine and Putnam in mathematics and with Nicholas Sturgeon and David Enoch in ethics. Explanation in Ethics and Mathematics addresses these issues through an explicitly comparative methodology which we call the 'companions in illumination' approach. By considering how argumentative strategies in the philosophy of mathematics might apply to the philosophy of ethics, and vice versa, the papers collected here break new ground in both areas. For good measure, two further companions for illumination are also broached: the philosophy of chance and the philosophy of religion. Collectively, these comparisons light up new questions, arguments, and problems of interest to scholars interested in realism in any area.
Author: Joshua May Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0192539604 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 288
Book Description
The burgeoning science of ethics has produced a trend toward pessimism. Ordinary moral thought and action, we're told, are profoundly influenced by arbitrary factors and ultimately driven by unreasoned feelings. This book counters the current orthodoxy on its own terms by carefully engaging with the empirical literature. The resulting view, optimistic rationalism, shows the pervasive role played by reason our moral minds, and ultimately defuses sweeping debunking arguments in ethics. The science does suggest that moral knowledge and virtue don't come easily. However, despite the heavy influence of automatic and unconscious processes that have been shaped by evolutionary pressures, we needn't reject ordinary moral psychology as fundamentally flawed or in need of serious repair. Reason can be corrupted in ethics just as in other domains, but a special pessimism about morality in particular is unwarranted. Moral judgment and motivation are fundamentally rational enterprises not beholden to the passions.
Author: Richard Joyce Publisher: Oxford University Press ISBN: 0198754876 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 285
Book Description
This volume draws together Richard Joyce's work from the last decade on moral skepticism, the view that there is no such thing as moral knowledge. Joyce's radical view is that in making moral judgments speakers attempt to state truths but that the world isn't furnished with the properties and relations necessary to render such judgments true.
Author: John Fraser Publisher: ISBN: Category : Apologetics Languages : en Pages : 267
Book Description
Recent debates in the area of metaethics and moral epistemology have centered around evolutionary debunking arguments (EDAs). These arguments purport to show that the conclusions of Darwinian evolution pose a serious problem for moral knowledge. I argue that attempts to resolve the issues around debunking arguments from a non-theistic framework fail. I also agree with some atheists who argue that the evidence shows universal benevolence to be an attitude-independent moral truth. I then show that non-theistic approaches do not adequately account for this, whereas theism does. Theism not only explains the cosmic coincidence between our moral beliefs and moral facts, but it also explains the deeper cosmic coincidence between universal benevolence and human flourishing. I examine several prominent EDAs, with particular attention given to those of Sharon Street, Richard Joyce, and Michael Ruse, as well as several other less well-known arguments. Some EDAs aim at undermining moral realism in general, while others target certain moral intuitions. I examine both types of EDA, along with some preliminary objections aimed at keeping EDAs from getting off the ground. Various counterarguments from moral realists are examined, including general objections that EDAs overreach into other domains besides morality, as well as extended discussion of third-factor arguments which attempt to neutralize the debunking challenge by arguing that evolution could select for some third factor which correlates with moral truths. I argue that all of these non-theistic responses by moral realists fail due to the fact that they are question-begging or illegitimate attempts to shift the burden of proof. The solution proposed by debunkers to the challenge to moral realism is to adopt moral antirealism. Special attention is given to Street’s Humean metaethical constructivism, which she thinks provides the only way to evade moral skepticism in the light of debunking arguments. I argue that antirealism does not avoid skepticism because it is a form of skepticism. Non-theistic arguments between debunkers and moral realists result in a standoff in which both sides have to beg important questions. Very little attention has been given in the literature to possible implications of EDAs for theistic views. This dissertation aims at providing a remedy for this.
Author: Jussi Suikkanen Publisher: Routledge ISBN: 0429839235 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 242
Book Description
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.
Author: Anab Whitehouse Publisher: Bilquees Press ISBN: Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 304
Book Description
Debunking A Moral Landscape takes on the ideas of Sam Harris using his own chosen tools -- namely, reason and science. When those tools are turned back on his book, The Moral Landscape, one comes to understand that his perspective is very much like an onion since, after one peels away the various decaying layers of philosophy, reasoning, and science, there is really nothing left at the heart of his worldview. Sam Harris has been raised by many his many followers and admirers to an emperor-like status. Nonetheless, in reality, this would-be emperor has no genuine clothes of royalty since the material from which his conceptual garments are woven are fairly common, if not threadbare. In fact, his ideas are clothed in a way that gives them the appearance of being fashioned in a very sturdy and reliable manner, but such appearances are little more than an illusion. He often claims that his kingdom is ruled through reason and science. Yet, when the topography of his ideas are carefully explored, there are many problems to be found hiding in the nooks and crannies of his thought processes. His reasoning is not always rational; his science is not always factual; and his explanations are often problematic. Furthermore, he asserts that faith is for the naive and foolish, but his perspective is glued together by a variety of different grades of faith -- some of them quite faulty -- which he calls by other names such as: well-being, probability, theory, hypothesis, science, randomness, evolution, neurobiology, reason, and so on. Sam Harris has harsh words for religious extremists -- as well he should. However, he apparently fails to understand how his own position incorporates a brand of irreligious fundamentalism that is inclined to be just as blind and unyielding as the religious people whom he wishes to criticize. Debunking A Moral Landscape doesn't just criticize the perspective which is developed in Sam Harris' latest book, The Moral Landscape, the former book introduces a variety of constructive ideas with respect to moral philosophy, political philosophy, evolution, science, the process of reasoning, and methodology that grows out of the process through which the problems and errors that are present in Sam Harris' The Moral Landscape are corrected and refined.
Author: Richard Joyce Publisher: MIT Press ISBN: 0262263254 Category : Philosophy Languages : en Pages : 285
Book Description
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.
Author: Peter Königs
Author: Peter Königs
Author: Hanno Sauer
Author: Michael Bergmann
Author: Uri D. Leibowitz
Author: Joshua May
Author: Richard Joyce
Author: John Fraser
Author: Jussi Suikkanen
Author: Anab Whitehouse
Author: Richard Joyce