Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Moral philosophy'
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Agam-Segal, Reshef. "Cora Diamond's Moral Philosophy." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.486964.
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The dissertation explores and critically evaluates Cora Diamond's moral philosophy, understood as an adaptation ofWittgenstein's more general philosophical ideas and methods. In particular, it examines Diamond's 'Wittgensteinian aversion to theoretical thinking in ethics. Even loyal Wittgensteinians sometimes (mis)use Wittgenstein's ideas to advance various deniable theories, including forms of realism and anti-realism in moral philosophy, and varieties of ethical relativism and conservativism. Diamond's moral philosophy, by contrast, maintains a non-theoretical stance which, nevertheless, offers a satisfying philosophical alternative to theorybuilding. Part One distinguishes Diamond's 'realistic spirit' from Sabina Lovibond's philosophical realism. I argue that Lovibond's McDowellian quietism is covertly committed to various theses. I explain Diamond's rejection of Lovibond's conception of ethics as a subject matter, and the differences between their appeals to the ideas of form oflife, and their attacks on the conception oflanguage as rule-governed. Part Two argues that Elizabeth Anscombe's Wittgensteinian rejection of the notion ofself-legislation unwittingly reflects dogmatic views of our conceptual life. I explain how Diamond's use of the Wittgensteinian idea of a picture, and her clarification of the grammar of secondary uses, help in attaining a more realistic view of our conceptual life. This part, and the next, examines the importance of the imagination in ordinary uses oflanguage, and in philosophy. Part Three distinguishes Diamond's conception of grammar and language games from that of Norman Malcolm. It also distinguishes Diamond's conceptions of the imagination, of moral philosophy, and of the good of philosophy in general, from those ofIris Murdoch. I examine Malcolm's and Murdoch's views as reflected in their discussions of Anselm's ontological argument. Malcolm uses Wittgensteinian tools dogmatically, while Murdoch's correctives to Malcolm themselves tum out to verge on dogmatism. I show how Murdoch's views can be given a Wittgensteinian inflection without becoming philosophical theses. This, however, reveals that Diamond's realistic spirit must also struggle against temptations to disregard some possibilities of our conceptual life that are created by the Wittgensteinian philosophical vocabulary itself.
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Johnston, P. "Wittgenstein and moral philosophy." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1986. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.375906.
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Markey, Bren April. "Feminist methodologies in moral philosophy." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2016. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/9107.
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This thesis develops a critique of the methodology of mainstream academic moral philosophy, based on insights from feminist and more generally anti-oppressive political thought. The thesis consists of two parts. In the first, I loosely characterise a certain dominant methodology of philosophy, one based on giving an important epistemological role to existing, 'pre-theoretical' moral attitudes, such as intuitions. I then argue that such methodologies may be critiqued on the basis of theories that identify these moral attitudes as problematically rooted in oppressive social institutions, such as patriarchy and white supremacy; that is, I identify these attitudes as ideological, and so a poor guide to moral reality. In the second part, I identify and explore of a number of themes and tendencies from feminist, anti-racist, and other anti-oppressive traditions of research and activism, in order to draw out the implications of these themes for the methodology of moral philosophy. The first issue I examine is that of how, and how much, moral philosophers should use abstraction; I eventually use the concept of intersectionality to argue for the position that philosophers need to use less, and a different type of, abstraction. The second major theme I examine is that of ignorance, in the context of alternative epistemologies: standpoint epistemology and epistemologies of ignorance. I argue that philosophers must not take themselves to be well placed to understand, using solitary methodologies, any topic of moral interest. Finally, I examine the theme of transformation in moral philosophy. I argue that experiencing certain kinds of personal transformation may be an essential part of developing accurate ethical views, and I draw out the political implications of this position for the methodology of moral philosophy.
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Upton, H. R. "Moral theories and applied philosophy." Thesis, Swansea University, 2000. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.639288.
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This thesis aims to make a critical inquiry into the concept of a moral theory in relation to the ideas of applied ethics and applied philosophy. It defends the general possibility of theories of morality and, in the course of the work, attempts to establish the conditions that such a theory must meet. Particular attention is focused on the ideas of explanation and the contribution of a theory to the criteria for right action. It argues that since moral theories are taken to concern how we should act, anything properly having that title should be determinate of right action. A detailed investigation of the (alleged) principal types of theory leads to the conclusion that, with one exception, these are not actually sources of moral theories at all. It is argued that there are good reasons for rejecting the exception on other grounds. The thesis concludes by looking at the implications of these claims for applied ethics, and tries to outline an account of this form of inquiry in the absence of moral theories. The account is one that may hope to assuage some common misgivings about the subject by exhibiting it as unified with applied philosophy, and philosophy in general.
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Tang, Siu-Fu. "Modernity and Xunzi's moral philosophy." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2007. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.442907.
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Turner, Jonathan. "Political theory as moral philosophy." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2018. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:9b47b083-30aa-411d-a100-29aee7c34a3b.
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I argue against the claim that normative political theory is 'autonomous' with respect to moral philosophy. I take the simple view that political theory is a form of moral philosophy, and is differentiated by pragmatic rather than theoretically significant criteria. I defend this view by criticizing arguments for the autonomy thesis. In the first three chapters I introduce and analyse the autonomy thesis and provide a framework for understanding the various claims that are made in the literature. In Chapters 4 to 8 I proceed to criticize a series of arguments for the autonomy thesis. In Chapter 4 I explain why Kant's division of morality into ethics and right is not as useful as it may seem to those who wish to defend the autonomy thesis, and argues that Arthur Ripstein gives no reason to think that political philosophy is autonomous that can be endorsed independently of commitment to a Kantian normative theory. In Chapter 5 I examine the political liberal argument for the autonomy thesis, concluding that even if a freestanding political conception of justice can be regarded as autonomous, it does not follow that political philosophy can also. Chapters 6 to 8 tackle various political realist arguments for the autonomy thesis. In Chapter 6 I argue that political theory is not required to deal with empirical facts in any way that distinguishes it from moral philosophy, and any argument for its autonomy that is based on a prior claim about the purpose of political theorizing would be question-begging. In Chapters 7 and 8 I provide various arguments against the idea that there is a distinctively political form of normativity, and diagnose some of the mistaken assumptions about morality that I take to lie at the heart of the realist case. In Chapter 9 I conclude.
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Doggett, Tyler 1976. "Moral properties and moral imagination." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/28836.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2004.Includes bibliographical references (p. 71-73).
"Moral Realism" is about an argument against moral realism, why it is unsound, and what emerges from that. The argument is that if there were moral properties, they would be queerly related to non-moral properties and this is sufficient reason to think there are no moral properties. The argument is unsound for two reasons. The first emerges from consideration of sensational properties like being in pain or being in ecstasy-they bear the queer relation to non-sensational properties. The second emerges from consideration of vice properties like being an instance of greediness-they are not queerly related to non-moral properties. Analogies between moral and sensational properties are discussed. A disanalogy between the moral and sensational is important to "The Explanatory Gap" which discusses Levine's notion of an explanatory gap, relates it to the queer relation discussed in "Moral Realism," and criticizes one use to which it is put. The criticism emerges from consideration of the disanalogy between the moral and sensational: our moral imagination is considerably more limited than our sensational imagination. That there are limits to our moral imagination is interesting. "Imaginative Resistance" solves an old puzzle from Hume about the limits of our imaginative capacities, for example, the inability of some people (myself, for example) to imagine that baseless killing is morally permissible. Both the puzzle and solution illuminate the natures of imagination and possibility and the relation between them.
by Tyler Doggett.
Ph.D.
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Schaefer, G. Owen. "Moral enhancement and moral disagreement." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2014. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:cf152e03-a7a0-4877-b519-bd90dd253e89.
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At first glance, the project of moral enhancement (making people more moral) may appear uncontroversial and obviously worth supporting; surely it is a good idea to make people better. However, as the recent literature on moral enhancement demonstrates, the situation is not so simple – there is significant disagreement over the content of moral norms as well as appropriate means by which to manipulate them. This disagreement seriously threatens many proposals to improve society via moral enhancement. In my dissertation, I develop an understanding of how, exactly, disagreement poses problems for moral enhancement. However, I also argue that there is a way forward. It is possible to bring about moral improvement without commitment to particular and controversial moral norms, but instead relying on relatively uncontroversial ideas concerning morally reliable processes. The upshot is that, while attempting to directly manipulate people’s moral ideas is objectionable, it is relatively unproblematic to focus on helping people reason better and avoid akrasia, with the justified expectation that this will generally lead to moral improvement. We should, therefore, focus not on how to bring people in line with what we take to be the right ideas, motives or behaviors. Rather, we should look to helping people determine for themselves what being moral consists in, as well as help ensure that they act on those judgments. Traditional, non-moral education, it turns out, is actually one of the best moral enhancers we have. In fact, the tools of philosophy (which is, in many aspects, concerned with proper reasoning) are central to the project of indirect moral enhancement. Ultimately, one of the best ways to make people morally better may well be to make them better philosophers.
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Pryke, Miriam Jean Vivien Eve. "Being reasonably moral : Prichard and the mistake of moral philosophy." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2015. http://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/theses/being-reasonably-moral(3232777f-b36b-432e-8339-01c932d7cf32).html.
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The question ‘Why ought we to do what we think we ought to do?’ was said by H.A. Prichard to be an improper question, manifesting erroneous presuppositions about the nature of moral reasoning. Moral rationalists think it a legitimate question, and they maintain that we are rationally justified in acting as we are morally obliged to act. Anti-rationalists deny this claim: specifically, they deny that acting in accord with moral obligation is endorsed by practical rationality. In my dissertation I try to uncover the source of disagreement amongst these three views. I then propose a resolution by appealing to my interpretation of Plato’s version of moral rationalism. I argue that contemporary moral rationalists and antirationalists in fact share the presupposition(s) that Prichard regarded as erroneous and which are not found in Plato. However, Prichard misread Plato as a rationalist of the instrumental persuasion and also offered only the beginnings of a positive view on the nature of practical reason. Therefore he failed to recognize that Plato gives a good positive answer to the original question on which the rationality of morality does not depend upon endorsement from any external source. Even so, Prichard’s limited remarks on the nature of moral deliberation show intimations of a better conception of the nature of moral rationality than is assumed in the contemporary debate between moral rationalists and anti-rationalists. One proponent of a more developed conception of the nature of moral thinking in the spirit of Plato is Iris Murdoch, and from her work I sketch a conception of the relation between thought, words and moral experience that in my view offers a way to understand the rationality of morality that is truer to the phenomena.
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Palatnik, Nataliya. "Kant's Science of the Moral World and Moral Objectivity." Thesis, Harvard University, 2015. http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:23845444.
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Kant’s Science of the Moral World and Moral Objectivity
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Critics of Kant's moral philosophy often object that it cannot account for moral requirements that are both genuinely objective and contentful. Notwithstanding the long history of this dispute, Kantians have been unable to put these objections to rest. I argue that we can answer these objections and fully understand Kantian moral objectivity only if we consider Kant’s moral philosophy in light of his methodological and architectonic concerns.
My dissertation takes up this task by providing a new account of Kant’s conception of moral theory as a philosophical science: Kant’s moral philosophy, I argue, appropriates the central features of the then revolutionary method of Newtonian natural science for the investigation of practical cognition. Just as Newtonian science begins with a priori (largely mathematical) principles and then gradually "comes down to" particular concrete physics, so too Kantian moral philosophy begins with general a priori moral principles that then gradually translate into a system of particular requirements. The objectivity of the content of our practical thought develops as the background conditions of moral deliberation become progressively more inter-subjectively justifiable. This progress is possible only through co-deliberation and collective action demanded by the duty to make morality fully efficacious in our shared social world, that is, the duty to promote the highest good.
My account highlights the attractiveness of Kant’s conception of the relationship between a priori and empirical aspects of practical thought, between theory and practice, and enables its systematic defense against objections by later German Idealists, particularly by Hegel. I argue that Hegel’s polemic against Kant's account of morality is fundamentally a disagreement about the nature of philosophical science and its method, and adjudicating between their views requires adjudicating the methodological dispute itself. I offer a systematic assessment of the methodological grounds of Hegel’s approach and of his critique of Kant’s moral philosophy. I argue that (1) Hegel’s approach does not, on the whole, present a viable alternative to Kant’s moral theory and (2) Hegel’s challenge can be met, but only by appealing to developmental or genetic aspects of Kant’s conception of moral objectivity grounded in his views on the proper method and form of a philosophical science. I show that these aspects of Kant’s thought, generally overlooked by commentators and Kantian theorists, are indispensable to his moral theory and provide a basis for a fruitful engagement with contemporary issues in moral philosophy, such as questions about the nature and role of imperfect duties.Philosophy
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Thomas, Geoffrey. "The moral philosophy of T.H. Green." Oxford [Oxfordshire] : New York : Clarendon Press ; Oxford University Press, 1987. http://www.loc.gov/catdir/enhancements/fy0638/87031328-d.html.
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O'Connor, Patricia Jo. "The moral philosophy of Iris Murdoch." Thesis, University of Exeter, 1990. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.253061.
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Millar, Jason L. "Affecting moral judgment." Thesis, University of Ottawa (Canada), 2008. http://hdl.handle.net/10393/27715.
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Hagen, Daniel Scott. "Moral expertise and moral education : a Socratic account." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/84417.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2013.Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (pages 97-101).
What is virtue and can it be taught? These questions preoccupied Socrates and this dissertation offers a Socratic answer to them. In Chapter 1 ("Virtue as Expert Moral Knowledge") I develop and defend a novel interpretation of the Socratic thesis that virtue is a kind of knowledge. I argue that the relevant kind of knowledge of interest to Socrates is expert moral knowledge or moral expertise-a complex epistemic state that integrates practical knowledge, theoretical knowledge, and self-knowledge. This account unifies several seemingly disparate epistemological threads that run through Plato's Socratic dialogues, it helps us resolve other interpretive questions surrounding Socrates and Socratic philosophy, and it is philosophically attractive in its own right. In Chapter 2 ("Socrates the Educator and Socratic Education") I confront a puzzle about Socrates' status as a teacher. It's natural to think of him as one, yet (1) Socrates persistently denies that he is or ever was anyone's teacher, (2) he seems to think knowledge of some sort is necessary for being a teacher while disavowing knowledge himself, and (3) he argues on occasion that virtue-the thing he took to be most important of all-cannot be taught. I use the account from Chapter 1 to resolve this puzzle. I conclude the chapter by considering some of the further benefits of Socratic education and some of the limitations it faces. In Chapter 3 ("Moral Deference and Moral Development") I explore the interaction between expertise and education by examining Socratic policies regarding each. In particular, I consider how Socrates thinks we ought to interact with moral experts, and I consider how he thinks we ought to promote our own moral development (in light of the account of virtue from Chapter 1). I argue that while there appears to be a trade-off between deference and development, Socrates' characteristic method of inquiry, elenchus, offers a way to reconcile the two. I bookend the chapter with a discussion of some recent work in moral epistemology on the puzzle of pure moral deference. The Socratic perspective on deference and development supplies a new diagnosis of this puzzle.
by Daniel Scott Hagen.
Ph.D.
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Harman, Elizabeth 1975. "Moral Status." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/17645.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2003.Includes bibliographical references.
Chapters One through Three present the following view: (i) I explain moral status as follows: something has moral status just in case we have reasons not to cause harms to it simply in virtue of the badness of the harms for it. (ii) Moral status is not a matter of degree. (iii) A living thing has moral status just in case it is ever conscious. (iv) If something has moral status, then the strength of a moral reason not to harm it is proportional to the severity of the harm. In this view, all humans and animals that are ever conscious have moral status. Future consciousness is sufficient for present moral status. An embryo of any species that will actually be conscious in the future, presently has moral status. Living humans who were conscious but are not and never will be again do have moral status. Any being that dies before it is ever conscious lacks moral status, regardless of its potential. Mere potentiality to be a person is not sufficient for moral status. However, a being's potential future affects the severity of certain harms. There are stronger reasons to avoid causing the deaths of humans than to avoid causing the deaths of cats, because humans lose more in death than cats do. Chapters One through Three present the above view. I argue that this view can resolve certain apparent tensions within two different attractive combinations of views, and on this basis I argue that the above view should be adopted.
(cont.) Chapter Four, "Can We Harm and Benefit in Creating?" proposes a solution to the puzzle of actions that appear to be wrong in virtue of harming a particular individual, but where the individual would not have existed if the action had not been performed, so the individual is not made worse off by the action. Chapter Five, "Ethics Without Ethical Theory," defends part of the methodology of Chapters One through Four by defending the view that we can justifiably reach important substantive ethical conclusions without commitment to a particular ethical theory, or to a particular meta-ethical view.
by Elizabeth Harman.
Ph.D.
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CHAN, Hok Nam. "Reconstructing Xunzi's moral knowledge." Digital Commons @ Lingnan University, 2008. https://commons.ln.edu.hk/philo_etd/3.
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Reconstructing the content of Xunzi’s (荀子) moral knowledge is the main goal of this thesis. A first main task of this reconstruction is to provide a clarification of the content and functions of li. A second primary goal of the reconstruction is to discuss the roles and functions of the moral sage or morally superior person, junzi (君子), in Xunzi’s account of moral practice. The figure of the sage is important in explaining the rationale of li and exemplifying how to behave in accordance with the rules of proper conduct in different situations. As truth is essential to knowledge, it is crucial to understand how moral belief can be truth-apt within Xunzian theory. To that end, the thesis reinterprets the doctrine in terms of Railton’s subjective naturalism. In the literature on Xunzi’s moral thought, the problem of the cognitive status of moral judgment has been neglected, and this thesis attempts to remedy this oversight.
This thesis is divided into two parts. Part one mainly elucidates the content of Xunzi’s moral knowledge. It includes an exposition of the origin and several functions of li and the significance of the sage and his or her close relation with li. In part two, the argument focuses on whether Xunzi’s moral knowledge is truth-apt and reconstructs his position into terms of subjective naturalism.
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Shafer-Landau, Russell Scott. "Moral indeterminacy." Diss., The University of Arizona, 1992. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/185898.
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My dissertation focuses on issues of indeterminacy in ethics and the philosophy of law. My aim is to establish the existence of moral indeterminacy and to show how we can allow some degree of indeterminacy in both ethics and the law without necessarily abandoning objectivist positions that may withstand noncognitivist or legal realist criticisms. The dissertation is divided into two parts. In the first, I devote a chapter to each of three sources of moral indeterminacy. The first chapter focuses on the open texture of moral concepts. The second concentrates on value incommensurability, understood as incomparability among morally laden options. The third is devoted to what I call descriptive indeterminacy--situations where morally relevant features can be described in different, equally appropriate ways, and the moral verdict we reach will differ depending upon which description is selected. The second part of the dissertation is devoted to exploring the implications of indeterminacy for ethics and jurisprudence. Chapter Four is given over to metaethics, and is devoted to defending the compatibility of objectivism and indeterminacy. Chapter Five considers a miscellany of challenges to my conclusions in Chapter Four, and further develops the case for the compatibility of objectivism and indeterminacy. Chapter Six examines the structure of moral theories and argues that indeterminacy can be retained in either a rule-based ethic or one less sympathetic to the existence of generally-relevant moral properties. The last chapter is devoted to establishing the existence of ineliminable indeterminacy in any developed system of law.
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Stapelbroek, Koenraad Henricus. "Moral philosophy in Galiani's early political economy." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2004. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.616050.
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Davies, Christopher. "'Carrying the fire' : Cormac McCarthy's moral philosophy." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1002260.
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In this thesis, I argue that the question of ethics, despite claims to the contrary, is a central concern in Cormac McCarthy’s fiction. My principal contention, in this regard, is that an approach that is not reliant on conventional systems of meaning is needed if one is to engage effectively with the moral value of this writer’s oeuvre. In devising such an approach, I draw heavily on the ‘immoralist’ writings of Friedrich Nietzsche. The first chapter of the study contends that good and evil, terms central to conventional morality, do not occupy easily definable positions in McCarthy’s work. In the second chapter, the emphasis falls on the way in which language and myth’s mediation of reality informs choice. The final chapter focuses on the post-apocalyptic setting of The Road, in which normative systems of value are completely absent. It argues that, despite this absence, McCarthy presents a compassionate ethic that is able to find purchase in the harsh world depicted in the novel. Finally, then, this study argues that McCarthy’s latest novel, The Road, requires a reconsideration of the critical claim that his work is nihilistic and that it negates moral value.
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Thomas, Bradley Charles. "The Non-moral Basis of Cognitive Biases of Moral Intuitions." Digital Archive @ GSU, 2008. http://digitalarchive.gsu.edu/philosophy_theses/44.
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Against moral intuitionism, which holds that moral intuitions can be non-inferentially justified, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues that moral intuitions are unreliable and must be confirmed to be justified (i.e. must be justified inferentially) because they are subject to cognitive biases. However, I suggest this is merely a renewed version of the argument from disagreement against intuitionism. As such, I attempt to show that the renewed argument is subject to an analogous objection as the old one; many cognitive biases of moral intuitions result from biases of non-moral judgments. Thus, the unreliability of moral intuitions due to biases (and the reason inferential justification was required) can be removed by clearing up the non-moral biases. Accordingly, biases of moral intuitions do not threaten a slightly qualified version intuitionism which posits non-inferential justification of intuitions when non-moral biases are not present. I also present an empirical study that lends initial support to my argument.
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Haberman, Bonna Devora. "The intentionality view of moral experience : creating a moral philosophy of education." Thesis, University College London (University of London), 1986. http://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/10019609/.
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Cantrell, Michael A. Evans C. Stephen. "Kierkegaard and modern moral philosophy conceptual unintelligibility, moral obligations and divine commands /." Waco, Tex. : Baylor University, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2104/5297.
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Young, Benjamin Scott. "Moral Friction, Moral Phenomenology, and the Improviser." Scholar Commons, 2012. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/4264.
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This dissertation offers a phenomenology of that mode of self-interpretation in which it becomes possible for an interpreter to intentionally participate in the production of moral norms to which the interpreter himself or herself feels bound. Part One draws on Richard Rorty's notion of the "ironist" in order to thematize the phenomenon I call "moral friction"; a condition in which an interpreter becomes explicitly aware of the historical and cultural contingencies of their own moral vocabularies, practices, and concerns and as a result find themselves incapable of feeling the normative weight implicit in these. Part Two draws on Heidegger's existential analytic of human being, Gadamer's development of Hermeneutic Phenomenology, and Hegel's notion of "sublation" in order to map how novel interpretations can irreversibly displace the coherence of older interpretations. I call this form of interpretation "moral phenomenology." Finally, in Part Three, I utilize a selective phenomenology of musical improvisation to plot the unique temporal orientation of self-interpretation that results from intentionally deploying this irreversible displacement of older interpretations that involve normative moral implications. I call the form of life that is marked by this hermeneutic mode the "improviser." The result is a description of a form of life in which it becomes possible to explicitly participate in the production of moral norms within a historical and culturally contingent context that nevertheless preserves standards of rational justification for normative moral judgment without the need for atemporal first principles. The availability of this mode of self-interpretation displaces the sharp distinction between non-normative descriptive phenomenology and normative moral reasoning by placing the latter within a non-teleological historical practice that engages in the production of interpretations which irreversibly displace older interpretations--a practice that is governed by the critical cultivation of contingent moral norms within the open investigation into the good life for human being.
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Simak, Douglas B. "Acts, agents and moral assessment." Thesis, University of British Columbia, 1990. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/30995.
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A perennial problem in moral philosophy concerns the formulation of an acceptable account of 'right action'. Act utilitarianism is one popular account, and much of its initial appeal involves the fact that it is taken to have practical application. However, it is the very attempt to apply act utilitarianism which raises questions about its tenability. These concerns become acute in the face of uncertainty about what constitutes tenability with respect to a moral theory. These issues relate to questions of methodology.
One question concerning methodology involves the status of intuitions (in the sense of 'reflective judgements') in assessing moral theories and principles. Chapter one, Moral Methodology and Intuitions, examines the role of intuitions in theory assessment and, in particular, whether it is possible to avoid totally their employment. This question is explored with reference to the views of Peter Singer and John Rawls. The possibility of using the distinction between meta-ethics and normative ethics to avoid reliance on intuitions is considered.
Chapter two, A Formulation of AU, utilizes the distinctions among agent, action and motive to present act utilitarianism in the strongest possible light. This involves discussion of whether it is more plausible to
understand act utilitarianism in terms of actual or probable consequences. Finding neither account satisfactory, a fundamental question relevant to both models is then explored—what is the purpose of moral classification itself? With certain provisions, however, we return in the end to an actual consequences model for purposes of further exploration.
Chapter three, AU and the Issue of Self-defeatingness, examines the issue of whether act utilitarianism is self-defeating. While it is not strictly self-defeating, act utilitarianism does incorporate a certain 'brinkmanship' with valuable moral norms which damages its plausibility. The distinction between decision-making procedures and rightness-making characteristics becomes important at this point.
Act utilitarianism's account of moral responsibility seems to reduce the moral agent to a utility conductor and maximizer. Chapter four, The AU Moral Agent: Utility Machine, focuses on this problem, as well as related issues concerning basic values and the acts/omissions distinction. Chapter five, AU and Moral Responsibility, examines Bernard Williams' criticisms of act utilitarianism in terms of its implications for negative responsibility and integrity. Two different interpretations by prominant philosophers of Williams' critical suggestions about utilitarianism and integrity are examined and both are. found to be inadequate.
Chapter six, AU and Integrity, explores further the nature of act utilitarianism's threat to integrity. Act utilitarianism's construal of moral agency threatens the personal integrity of the moral agent by requiring the sacrifice of personal projects and commitments, and, with them, the near abandonment of the personal self. Since morality is supposed to be for persons, this is a crippling objection.Arts, Faculty of
Philosophy, Department of
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Levy, David K. "On moral understanding." Thesis, King's College London (University of London), 2004. http://sas-space.sas.ac.uk/1054/.
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I provide an explanation of moral understanding. I begin by describing decisions, especially moral ones. I detail ways in which deviations from an ideal of decision-making occur. I link deviations to characteristic critical judgments, e.g. being cavalier, banal, courageous, etc. Moral judgments are among these and carry a particular personal gravity. The question I entertain in following chapters is: how do they carry this gravity? In answering the question, I try “external” accounts of moral understanding. I distinguish between the ideas of a person and a life. The idea of a life essayed is of a network of relations to others. The character of those relations, e.g. friendship, is the object of our understanding of ourselves and our lives. I argue that one’s understanding of oneself conditions the context of decision-making. I elaborate one way of making moral understanding answerable to truth using Plato’s metaphysics in the Philebus. Truth is valued and truth is essential to the independence of the moral such that seeming right and being right are distinct. However, truth is neither primary nor exhaustive of morality, because we have additional distinct resources for morally judging others. I turn instead to an “internal” account of moral understanding to answer the question regarding the personal gravity of moral criticism. Using Winch’s work on universalizability and fellowship, I argue that our conception of others must be sufficient to reflect their individuality within our moral understanding. Second, using Gaita’s work on remorse and the lucidity of self-reflection, I argue that the truth about ourselves and the wrong we do others can arrest and constrain our moral understanding and our authority. Moral understanding operates in a social milieu: argument, conversation and rationality. Arguments are grounded in meanings with primary (shared) sense, but solicit agreement in secondary sense—of what is similar, of what follows. Meaning in the secondary sense can be necessarily practical, creating practical necessities within points of view. Accounting for the consequences and understanding of disagreement is identified as pressing. An original contribution is the idea of critical authority. One’s articulation of moral meaning is controlled via the critical authority expressed using critical vocabulary. Accepting another ’s critical authority is based, in differing domains, on our relation to them, e.g. friendship, trust, fellowship. The nature of inter-personal relations are delimited by the critical authority characteristic of those relations. Critical authority explains the independent and personal force of moral criticism. To be intelligible depends on accepting some critical authorities, though I allow for the intelligible repudiation of morality in some circumstances. Wronging someone is explained as denying his critical authority, thus denying his relation to oneself, and thereby undermining his place in the moral world. The consequence of wrongdoing is the disintegration of the moral world. I defend against Nagel’s realism and Korsgaard’s constructivism. Both are committed to judging individuals but their accounts of morality undermine the intelligibility of the personal gravity of moral criticism. Developing the idea of Moral Consensus, I defend myself against the related charge of relativism.
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Sim, Julius William. "Moral requirement and supererogation." Thesis, Keele University, 1996. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.309766.
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Charette, Pierre. "Nature, reasons, and moral meaningfulness." Thesis, McGill University, 2008. http://digitool.Library.McGill.CA:80/R/?func=dbin-jump-full&object_id=21923.
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The "anthropology of moral life", or "moral anthropology", is an approach to moral philosophy which I take to have been initiated by Peter Strawson, and developed, independently and in different ways, by David Wiggins and Daniel Dennett. I take the respective moral anthropologies of Wiggins and Dennett to be complementary, and I propose to synthesize them within a Dennettian framework. The framework involves the definition of a "rationally acceptable language". Descriptions and accounts stated in that language are ontologically interpreted in the light of Dennett's ontology, and the knowledge claims made in the language are assessed in the light of his epistemology, which I take to include a "thesis of anthropocentricity". That thesis, also propounded by Wiggins, confers a vindicatory character to those philosophical accounts to which it is directly related. Thus, both Wiggins' and Dennett's respective moral anthropologies have a strong vindicatory character in regard to common moral life. Moral anthropology shows how the dispositional constitution of the human species "underdetermines" (i.e. conditions and constrains, but does not determine) the standards of correctness by reference to which we morally assess conduct, sentiments and judgments, including judgments about what is "morally meaningful". Wiggins' moral anthropology proposes a largely Humean theory of human nature, as well as an insightful description of morality, and of the "unforsakeable" concerns, motives, purposes, needs, aspirations and expectations that are attached to it, and which as such vindicate it. Dennett's moral anthropology proposes an evolutionary theory of human nature, and relates it to a compatibilist account of moral responsibility, free will, and moral decision-making. Regarding the latter, Dennett emphasizes, given our predicament as limited but committed beings, the importance of deliberation-stopping maxims, which I take to play in his moral anthropology a role similar to thatL' "anthropologie de la vie morale", ou "anthropologie morale", consiste en une approche de la philosophie morale initiée, au sein de la tradition analytique, par Peter Strawson, et développée, de façons différentes et indépendantes, par David Wiggins ainsi que par Daniel Dennett. Je tiens les anthropologies morales respectives de Wiggins et de Dennett pour complémentaires, et je propose leur synthèse au sein d'un cadre doctrinal dennettien. Le cadre doctrinal en question inclut la définition d'un langage "rationellement acceptable". Les descriptions et comptes rendus énoncés dans ce langage sont interprétés ontologiquement à la lumière de l'ontologie de Dennett, et les énoncés candidats au statut de connaissance sont évalués selon son épistémologie, dont j'affirme qu'elle inclut la thèse de l' "anthropocentricité". Cette thèse, également défendue par Wiggins, confère aux comptes rendus philosophiques auxquelles elle est directement liée, un caractère de validation. Aussi les anthropologies morales respectives de Wiggins et de Dennett valident-elles toutes deux, en grande partie, la vie morale ordinaire. L'anthropologie morale montre comment la constitution dispositionnelle de l'espèce humaine sous-détermine (c'est-à-dire conditionne et contraint, sans pour autant déterminer) les standards de correction par référence auxquels nous évaluons moralement la conduite, les sentiments et les jugements, y compris les jugements portant sur la "signification morale". L'anthropologie morale de Wiggins propose une théorie largement humienne de la nature humaine, ainsi qu' une description pénétrante de la moralité, et des préoccupations, motifs, buts, besoins, aspirations et expectatives "inaliénables" qui y sont attachés, et qui en tant que tels la valident. L'anthropologie morale de Dennett propose une théorie évolutionniste de la nature humaine, et la relie à un compte rendu compatibiliste de la responsabilité morale, du libr
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Lerm, Jessica. "Moral reasons of our own." Doctoral thesis, University of Cape Town, 2015. http://hdl.handle.net/11427/16555.
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Includes bibliographical referencesThis thesis examines the idea of the second-personal reason, as advocated by Stephen Darwall in his influential book, The Second-Person Standpoint. A second-personal reason is a reason that exists not in the world, nor in a single individual's mind, but in the relationship between two (or more) people: second-personal reasons are reasons given to a first person by a second. The idea of second-personality is gaining ground in contemporary Metaethics - as well as in Psychology and the Philosophy of Mind - and this thesis aims to give a novel presentation of Darwall's Second-Personal metaethic that makes clear just why it is so popular. As I will present it, Darwall's Second-Personal account is a fresh kind of metaethic that promises to give us the 'best of both worlds', enjoying all the benefits of traditional metaethics, such as Realism and Neo-Kantianism, while simultaneously overcoming their respective defects. However, I go on to argue that Darwall's Second-Personal account ultimately fails. Contrary to initial appearances, Darwall's Second-Personal account does not present any significant advances, and, whatever advantages it does appear to possess, it possesses only by virtue of its covert, illicit appeal to Realism. In particular, I argue that we have no grounds for believing that there are indeed such things as second-personal reasons in the first place. After all, who are you to tell me what to do? In response to this criticism, I offer a new, different reading of Darwall's Second-Personal account, according to which it is not to be read as one amongst other metaethics, such as Realism or Neo-Kantianism. It is, rather, to be read as an entirely different approach to Metaethics. Taking my inspiration from Gilbert Ryle, I cash this out in terms of the Second-Personal account's reacting to the category-mistakenness of traditional Metaethics, by reconceiving moral reasons as belonging to a different kind of category altogether. When we understand morality correctly, as belonging to its proper category, then it follows that moral reasons are indeed second-personal. They are moral reasons of our own.
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Almeida, Michael James. "The impossibility of moral conflicts /." The Ohio State University, 1988. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=osu1487591658173621.
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Gibb, Michael. "The moral relationship." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2012. http://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:ecabe256-8462-40d6-a94b-8940ee4530d6.
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This thesis aims to articulate and defend a version of a 'relational moral theory.' Many philosophers have argued that the non-instrumental value of certain relationships, such as friendship and parenthood, can explain at least some of our moral obligations. A relational moral theory extends this thought by arguing that all, or most, of our moral judgements can be explained by the non-instrumental value of one or more interpersonal relationships. The plausibility of such views depend on the possibility of identifying a relationship that all moral agents share a 'moral relationship'. While the idea of such a relationship has featured in ethical writings as early as the Stoics, few attempts have been made to develop a rigorous and precise understanding of this relationship. This thesis therefore aims to articulate and defend a plausible understanding of the moral relationship, and then to use it as a basis for outlining the structure of a genuinely relational moral theory. It will argue that the moral relationship is best understood as a broad and inclusive relationship shared by all who are vulnerable to a distinct kind of 'second-order evil.' It will then argue that the value of this relationship can provide the basis for a relational form of a contractualist moral theory based on the work of T.M. Scanlon. Understanding the nature of the moral relationship, and the role it plays in such theories, will then be seen as a means of unifying, clarifying, and responding to a number of influential objections against such theories, including objections concerning its capacity to accommodate intuitions concerning cases of aggregation and our obligations to future persons.
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Altman, Megan Emily. "Heidegger and the Problem of Modern Moral Philosophy." Scholar Commons, 2015. http://scholarcommons.usf.edu/etd/5845.
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The guiding question of this project is, "Why does it count as a critique of Heidegger that he does not defend a particular moral position?" A standard criticism levied against Heidegger is that, since he has nothing positive to say about post-Enlightenment moral theory, he has nothing to contribute to moral philosophy, and this marks his greatest shortcoming as a philosopher. Why is there a demand for Heidegger, or any other philosopher, to theorize about morality, when we do not have this expectation for, say, aesthetics, theology, or various other regional domains of human life? Why should we expect Heidegger to theorize about what humans must be like in order to care about and engage in moral thought? Answering these questions involves an extended discussion of ways of understanding ethics in Western philosophical thought, as well as, Heidegger's own view of ethics.
I begin with a detailed exposition of the paradigmatic shift from premodern ethics, as it is based on an understanding of ethos (a form of life with its practical and normative dimensions), to modern conceptions of ethics based on Enlightenment (1750-1850) individualism and the fact-value distinction. This account of the history of ethics in philosophy attempts to demonstrate that the transition to modernity is marked by a schism between Being (ontology) and Ought (ethics) which makes any post-Enlightenment justification of ethics impossible (and helps us see why Heidegger always scoffs at the project of working out an ethics). My primary goal is to prove that Heidegger's appropriation of Aristotle's thought not only challenges the underlying metaphysical assumptions of mainstream moral philosophy, but also shows us a way back to the unity of ethics and ontology. My claim is that Being and Time is an ethics in the same way Nicomachean Ethics is an ethics: both are based on an understanding of the human ethos and attempt to show what is characteristic of a life that is structured by the "ought." This argument sets the stage for uncovering the underlying presuppositions governing two prominent objections raised against Heidegger: the existentialist and nihilistic critiques. I find that these critiques are grounded on the assumption of "ontological individualism." In contrast to this individualistic ontology of the social world, I argue that, for Heidegger, individuality is not an ontological or biological given; rather, it is a relatively rare accomplishment of members of a linguistic community. What is important, in Heidegger's view, is that the ethos is the ontological bedrock of ethics. The ethos does not offer us universal principles or morals rules of the kind modern morality seeks, but it does provide paths, ways of being, and possibilities for living meaningful lives. In the end, all we have are understandings of life in certain domains (art, religion, love, etc.) that provide character ideals that, together with meaningful goals and projects for the whole of our lives, make possible a flourishing ethos.
My secondary goal is to demonstrate that Heidegger undercuts the uncritical presuppositions of much of mainstream moral philosophy and provides an alternative account of ethics that picks up the stick from the other end. I formulate my thesis as an extension of the recent scholarship on Heidegger's work, arguing that Heidegger's emphasis on the human ethos puts forth a proper way of dwelling and Being-at-home within the current of the historical essence of a community. What is original about Heidegger's post-humanist ethics is that it denies the modern Being-Ought distinction and calls us to be ready and prepared to be claimed by Being. Refusing to give an absolute position to anthropomorphism, Heidegger's ethics serves as an attempt to specify what it is to be fully human in the sense of being a respondent who receives an understanding of Being and has to own up to the task of being claimed by Being. If I am correct, then it is a mistake to judge Heidegger's ethics according to whether he succeeds at formulating a list of responsibilities, rights, and obligations of individuals. Whereas modern moral theory is concerned with providing impartial and value-free guidelines and principles for individual behavior, Heidegger is asking about the conditions for the possibility of transforming how one lives. This puts the burden of proof on those who think there is something important about moral theory. The onus of proof rests with those who want to claim that a right way to be human exists and that there is an absolute, unchanging, timeless ground for understanding the right.
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Bates, Vincent Cecil. "Moral Concepts in the Philosophy of Music Education." Diss., Tucson, Arizona : University of Arizona, 2005. http://etd.library.arizona.edu/etd/GetFileServlet?file=file:///data1/pdf/etd/azu%5Fetd%5F1082%5F1%5Fm.pdf&type=application/pdf.
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Apeldoorn, Laurens van. "Human agency in Hobbes's moral and political philosophy." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2011. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.543598.
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Smith, Michael Andrew. "Motivation and moral realism." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.335725.
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Cullity, Garrett. "The moral demands of affluence." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1991. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.316739.
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Smith, Steven. "Metaphysical realism and moral realism." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1993. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.358535.
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Denham, Alison Edwina. "Metaphor and the moral imagination." Thesis, University of Oxford, 1989. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.314928.
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Torres, Jennifer M. "Virtuous Self-Love and Moral Competition." Scholarship @ Claremont, 2014. http://scholarship.claremont.edu/cmc_theses/981.
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At the start of NE IX.8 Aristotle says that the virtuous man acts for his friend’s sake and neglect his own interests (1168a), but only a few paragraphs later says that the virtuous self-lover will also sacrifice money, honors, and even his life, for the sake of his friend, all while he obtains what is most noble—virtuous acts (1169 a, 176). This leads us to the question: Is this really a sacrifice if the virtuous self-lover is profiting in some way? Is it possible for the virtuous friend to sacrifice her life for her friend’s sake while knowing he is ‘procuring the most noble good’ for himself at the same time? Or more generally, can the virtuous self-loving friend do things for his friend without his own interests in mind? Aristotle’s conception of self-love either a) prohibits the virtuous man for acting for his friends sake (during a moral competition), b) does not prohibit the virtuous man from acting for his friend’s sake, or c) enables him to act for his friends sake. I will discuss the following claims in Section III, where I will consider Julia Annas and Richard Krauts’ discussion on the matter.
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Tropman, Elizabeth L. "Moral realism and the new intuitionism." [Bloomington, Ind.] : Indiana University, 2006. http://gateway.proquest.com/openurl?url_ver=Z39.88-2004&rft_val_fmt=info:ofi/fmt:kev:mtx:dissertation&res_dat=xri:pqdiss&rft_dat=xri:pqdiss:3230540.
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Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of Philosophy, 2006.Title from PDF t.p. (viewed Dec. 4, 2008). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 67-08, Section: A, page: 3013. Adviser: David C. McCarty.
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Stewart, Todd M. "Should there be a moral epistemology." Diss., The University of Arizona, 2002. http://hdl.handle.net/10150/289799.
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What is moral epistemology? It is the attempt to construct a theory that explains whether and how moral beliefs are epistemically justified. This dissertation is an evaluation of this project. Should we develop a specialized, topic-specific epistemology that applies only to the domain of morality, or should we develop a perfectly general theory which can be applied to ethics as a special case? In chapter one, I argue that we should be very cautious about developing topic-specific epistemologies like moral epistemology, and that we are in need of a good reason to do so. I explore and ultimately reject several skeptical motivations for the pursuit of moral epistemology. In chapter two, I sketch an argument put forth by Sinnott-Armstrong that because there are strong limits on the degree to which we can convince those who doubt the truth of our ethical beliefs, therefore a weak form of skepticism is reasonable. This argument fails because it targets nothing distinctive about morality. In chapter three, I consider Harman's view that there is something about our best epistemology that forces us to deny the existence of ethical facts. I reject this argument because the presupposed epistemology risks collapsing into general skepticism. In chapter four, I develop a new argument for moral skepticism. Sometimes if a person has the justified belief that there is enough disagreement about a topic this belief can defeat the justifications for that person's own beliefs about that topic. Given apparent widespread ethical disagreement, this presents a difficult challenge. In chapter five, I attempt to defuse the epistemological problem generated by disagreement, arguing that it is reasonable to deny that there is enough moral disagreement for the argument developed in chapter four to apply. Finally, in chapter six I consider a non-skeptical motivation for the development of moral epistemology, namely that there might be a process of belief formation important to moral beliefs but not to other sorts of beliefs. I argue that the moral emotions seem to carry some epistemic force, and that better understanding the moral emotions does provide an incentive for further work on moral epistemology.
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Santana, Salomão dos Santos. "Clínica e moral em Nietzsche : psicologia moral como experiência de si." Pós-Graduação em Filosofia, 2014. https://ri.ufs.br/handle/riufs/5226.
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This dissertation has the task of highlighting the role of Nietzsche.s life experience in view of his philosophical and psychological production. Giving importance on how the philosopher understood himself, in his book Ecce Homo, in the Fragmentos Postumos and in his correspondence, and taking an interest in his |Clinica Moral| as a foundation for moral criticism, the present research aims at to demonstrate what Nietzsche´s philosophy owes to the meeting of his life.s experience and, especially, the disease. One sought to show that the philosopher, buy imputing his | moral psychology| to his illness, relating as well, like no other philosopher life and work, states that the illness is the nexus between one and another, being thus able to unfold the theme of Nietzsche.s health and disease to health and disease in Nietzsche and, more, psychology in Nietzsche to Nietzsche.s psychology . It is evident, therefore, that the first impulse and inspiration for Nietzsche´s philosophy arose from the need to take care of his own health, transforming all his work in medical records, a therapy that he himself used. Understanding the clinic as a space where one seeks healing, as a technique for restoring balance to the body and considering the body as the essence of nature (physis) that exists, one can take the philosophy of Nietzsche as engendering a new therapy: technique for the maintenance of the great health, departing from a new moral proposal, the moral of overcoming oneself.Esta dissertação tem a tarefa de evidenciar o papel da experiência de vida de Nietzsche diante de sua produção filosófica e psicológica. Dando importância como o filósofo se autoentendeu, em seu livro Ecce Homo, nos Fragmentos póstumos e em sua correspondência, e interessando-se por sua Clínica Moral , enquanto fundamento da crítica à moral, a presente pesquisa tem por objetivo demonstrar o que a Filosofia de Nietzsche deve ao seu encontro com a sua vivência e, sobretudo, a doença. Procurou-se mostrar que o filósofo, ao atribuir sua psicologia moral à sua doença, relacionando, assim, como nenhum outro filósofo, vida e obra, explicita que a enfermidade é o nexo entre uma e outra, podendo-se, dessa forma, desdobrar o tema em saúde e doença de Nietzsche para saúde e doença em Nietzsche e, mais, a psicologia em Nietzsche para psicologia de Nietzsche. Evidencia-se, assim, que o primeiro impulso e inspiração para o filosofar nietzschiano surgiu da necessidade de cuidar da própria saúde, transformando toda a sua obra em prontuário médico, uma terapia que ele próprio usou. Entendendo a clínica, espaço onde se procura a cura, como técnica de restaurar o equilíbrio do corpo e considerando o corpo como a essência da natureza (physis) existente, pode-se tomar a filosofia de Nietzsche como o engendramento de uma nova terapia: técnica de manutenção da grande saúde, a partir de uma nova proposta moral; a moral da superação de si.
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Lammer-Heindel, Christoffer Spencer. "Does the state have moral duties? State duty-claims and the possibility of institutionally held moral obligations." Diss., University of Iowa, 2012. https://ir.uiowa.edu/etd/3330.
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We commonly attribute to states and other institutional organizations moral duties and obligations. For example, it is widely held that the state has a moral duty to protect its citizens from external threats and (more contentiously) it is claimed that it ought to positively promote the welfare of its members. When we focus on the surface grammar of such institutional duty-claims, we see that they seem to differ from individual duty-claims only with respect to the subject of the claim. Whereas an institutional duty-claim asserts that an institution (e.g., the state) has a duty to do some action a, an individual duty-claim asserts that a particular individual person has a duty to a. For example, we might claim that parents ought to protect their children, or that a particular person, Doe, ought to take better care of his child. Many scholars have argued or at least assumed that institutions are ultimately just collections of individuals, and hence institutional duty-claims can be analyzed in terms of claims about individuals' duties and obligations. Other scholars have rejected this reductive approach to institutional duty-claims as well as the individualist assumption upon which it is premised--viz., that institutions are nothing "over and above" individuals. Instead, it is argued that at least some institutional organizations are moral agents in their own right which have duties and obligations that are uniquely their own. According to this antireductive holist approach, at least some institutional duty-claims resist being analyzed into claims about individuals' duties and obligations. My aim in this dissertation is to clarify what is meant when we assert that the state (or some other institutional organization) has moral duties, and I do so by entering into dialogue with both the reductive individualist and antireductive holist views.
In Chapter One I situate and motivate my project by reference to two well-known debates in which claims about the state's duties play an inescapably central role; viz., the debate concerning the propriety of using so-called "enhanced interrogation techniques" in the War on Terror and the debate surrounding the most recent reforms to the health care system here in the United States. Since my aim is to shed light on the meaning of and truth-makers for institutional duty-claims, I devote Chapter Two to the task of clarifying what we mean and imply when we advance duty-claims in what we may assume to be paradigmatic circumstances: namely, those circumstances in which an individual is said to have a duty to do something or another. I then frame the further investigation into the meaning and significance of institutional duty-claims as one which has the aim of revealing whether the phrase 'has a duty' has a univocal, analogous, or equivocal signification across institutional and individual contexts.
In Chapter Three I take up the task of characterizing and distinguishing the relevant reductive individualist and antireductive holist viewpoints, considering both historically significant and contemporary versions of each. In Chapter Four I present and critically evaluate a rather influential argument in favor of institutional moral agency, which, if true, would vindicate the antireductive holist approach. I conclude that chapter by arguing that, contrary to the claims made by those who defend institutional agency, we are unjustified in believing that institutions possess those properties requisite for moral agency. Having set aside what I take to be a "best-case" for an antireductive holism, I turn, in Chapter Five, to the task of making plausible the reductive individualist approach. In doing so, I propose that some institutional duty-claims actually resist reduction to claims about individuals' duties and that such claims are thus better understood as claims about the extrinsic value of an institutional arrangement.
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Bobro, Marc Elliott. "G.W. Leibniz : personhood, moral agency, and meaningful immortality /." Thesis, Connect to this title online; UW restricted, 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/1773/5695.
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Robertson, Simon. "Rejecting moral obligation." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2005. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/13225.
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The thesis argues that, were there any moral obligations, they would be categorical; but there are no categorical requirements on action; therefore, there are no moral obligations. The underlying claim is that, because of this, morality itself rests on a mistaken view of normativity. The view of categoricity I provide rests on there being 'external reasons' for action. Having explained the connections between oughts (in particular the ought of moral obligation) and reasons for action in the first part of the thesis, I then develop and defend a version of reasons internalism that I call 'recognitional internalism'. The basic idea, which is not itself incompatible with categoricity, is that to have a reason one must be able to recognise that one has that reason. However, I work this basic claim into a substantive truth-condition for reason-statements and argue that the reasons one is able to recognise are controlled by one's subjective motives. I use this to argue that there are no categorical moral obligations. Nonetheless, I also argue that the substantive challenge internalism poses morality is importantly different, indeed more pressing, than usually thought. This is to justify the objective supremacy of the reasons for action constitutive of moral obligation.
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Sartorio, Ana Carolina 1972. "The causal and the moral." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 2003. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/17580.
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Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 2003.Includes bibliographical references (p. 91-92).
My dissertation is about the following two questions: The causal question: When is something a cause of something else? The moral question: When is someone morally responsible for something? I examine the way in which these questions overlap. I argue that, in some important respects, the relation between the causal and the moral question is tighter than people have taken it to be, but, in other important respects, it is looser than people have taken it to be. The dissertation consists of three chapters. Each of the chapters is a self-contained paper, but the three papers are interconnected in various ways. Chapters 1 and 2 are concerned with how the causal question and the moral question intersect, and Chapter 3 is concerned with how they come apart. In Chapter 1, I lay out a view of causation according to which causing is a particular way of making a difference. I show that an advantage of this view is that it carves up a concept of cause that is particularly well suited for the work causation does in moral theory. In Chapter 2, I argue that a moral asymmetry that exists between actions and omissions has a causal basis. I argue that the conditions under which actions and omissions make us morally responsible are different, and that this is so because the causal powers of actions and omissions are different. In Chapter 3, I argue against the received view about the relation between causation and moral responsibility, according to which being responsible for something requires causing it. I offer an alternative picture according to which causation is a necessary condition for the transmission of responsibility, although not for the existence of responsibility itself.
by Ana Carolina Sartorio.
Ph.D.
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Lind, Marcia Susan. "Emotions and Hume's moral theory." Thesis, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1988. http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/14740.
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Lawton, Christopher. "Rational argument in moral philosophy : some implications of Gordon Baker's therapeutic conception of philosophy." Thesis, Edge Hill University, 2015. http://repository.edgehill.ac.uk/7777/.
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This work is an investigation into philosophical method and rational argument in moral philosophy. It makes an original contribution to human understanding, by taking some of the tools and techniques that Gordon Baker identifies in the later work of Wittgenstein, and using them as a way of fending for oneself in an area of philosophy that neither Baker, nor Wittgenstein, wrote on. More specifically, a discussion of some different aspects of the contemporary literature on Dancy’s (2004) moral particularism is used as a vehicle for illustrating how Baker’s therapeutic conception of philosophy offers alternative possibilities for how we can do philosophy, and what counts as rational argument in moral philosophy. I maintain that, by considering some indicative ways in which Baker’s therapeutic approach to philosophy can dissolve, rather than solve, the kinds of perplexities found in the existing literature on Dancy’s (2004) moral particularism, we can liberate ourselves from the traditional/theoretical view of how we ought to do philosophy, and an understanding of rational argument in moral philosophy, to which we need not be committed.
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Woodford, Nicole Frances. "Moral luck : control, choice, and virtue." Thesis, University of Hull, 2016. http://hydra.hull.ac.uk/resources/hull:15196.
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In this thesis I propose a solution to the problem of moral luck. It is sometimes assumed that luck has no bearing on morality. However, Bernard Williams and Thomas Nagel, in their papers entitled ‘Moral Luck’, show how this assumption could be erroneous. When making moral judgements it is usually thought that we abide by the ‘Control Principle’. This principle requires any moral judgements about an individual to be made only in cases where they were in control of their actions. The problem of moral luck arises because many moral judgements appear to contradict the Control Principle. My aims in this work are two-fold. First, I disambiguate concepts of luck and moral luck by conceptualising both in light of a Hybrid Account of Luck (HAL). In order to understand moral luck, the concept of luck itself needs to be understood. I begin by distinguishing luck from similar concepts and go on to defend a particular version of HAL that can be adapted to identify genuine cases of moral luck. Second, I propose a possible solution to the problem of moral luck based primarily on a critique of some of Nagel’s basic presuppositions regarding the issue in conjunction with a defence of Terence Irwin’s interpretation of Aristotle’s complex theory of moral responsibility. By giving a number of examples, I hope to establish that there is circumstantial moral luck and resultant moral luck, and that Aristotle’s conditions for moral responsibility can provide an adequate justification for praise and blame in these cases.
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Cooper, James A., and res cand@acu edu au. "The Cognitive Anatomy of Moral Understanding and the Moral Education Question: A study in the philosophy of moral education." Australian Catholic University. School of Religious Education, 2008. http://dlibrary.acu.edu.au/digitaltheses/public/adt-acuvp180.20112008.
Full textAbstract:
This study investigates the problem of contemporary interpretations of the moral education question, as informed by rival moral-philosophical and epistemological traditions. In this study, the moral education question is taken to mean, ‘What educational form and content may best assist students in becoming ethically minded and morally good people?’ Accordingly, this necessitates a consideration of what is meant by morality and what are the central characteristics of the moral life (i.e. moral philosophical perspectives), as well as how such accounts of morality are seen to relate to the educational aims of knowledge and intellectual development (i.e. underlying epistemology).This study shows that current interpretations of moral education (as efforts to ‘teach values’) are predominantly informed by the ‘juridical ethical tradition,’which, in turn, is underpinned by a distinctive epistemology (or ‘Juridicalism’).The thesis proposes that Juridicalism is philosophically contestable because it leads to a partially distorted conception of the moral life and hence of moral education. Generally, by regarding the cognitive dimensions of moral thought and action as separate from and independent of the emotional-volitional dimensions, Juridicalism is an obstacle to understanding the proper moral educational task of schools. Notably, Juridicalism leads to a questionable emphasis on the importance of ‘values’, as expressed in generally agreed rules and principles, as opposed to particular and substantive moral judgements.A critique of Juridicalism is developed, focussing on its underlying conception of human reason as inspired by a distinctly Modern mind-body/world dualism argue that the fragmented and reductive epistemology of Juridicalism signals the need for a richer and more variegated theory of cognition, marked specifically by an integrated anthropology and substantive theory of reason. Further, such an epistemology is located in the realist philosophy of classical antiquity particularly within the Aristotelian tradition. I propose a defence of what I call ‘Classical Realism’, in contrast to Juridicalism, highlighting its distinctively integrated account of the mind/soul and body/world relationship, and substantive conception of practical rationality or moral understanding. Classical Realism also makes central the notion of knowledge as ‘vision’ in order to explain how the rational and affective dimensions of human nature come together in moral thought and action. Finally, the moral education question is reconsidered in light of the visional ethical perspective emerging from Classical Realism. In this light I interpret the moral education question as a matter of nurturing the (intellectual) capacity for and habit of correct vision and, relatedly, moral judgement. Further, this task is shown to be vitally connected with the school’s focus on developing knowledge and the intellect through the teaching of traditional academic and practical disciplines. Some initial comments are made concerning the pedagogical implications of such an interpretation, while some associated challenges and questions for further research are highlighted.
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Cooper, James. "The cognitive anatomy of moral understanding and the moral education question: A study in the philosophy of moral education." Thesis, Australian Catholic University, 2008. https://acuresearchbank.acu.edu.au/download/16b8d52969ea9ff682a69b61b961d450653f053745b3ce5926b2e3da886f6a5a/1680168/64830_downloaded_stream_55.pdf.
Full textAbstract:
This study investigates the problem of contemporary interpretations of the moral education question, as informed by rival moral-philosophical and epistemological traditions. In this study, the moral education question is taken to mean, 'What educational form and content may best assist students in becoming ethically minded and morally good people?' Accordingly, this necessitates a consideration of what is meant by morality and what are the central characteristics of the moral life (i.e. moral philosophical perspectives), as well as how such accounts of morality are seen to relate to the educational aims of knowledge and intellectual development (i.e. underlying epistemology).