Legal, Moral, and Metaphysical Truths
Legal, Moral, and Metaphysical Truths

Author: Kimberly Kessler Ferzan

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-04-14

Total Pages: 868

ISBN-13: 0191008974

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Perhaps more than any other scholar, Michael Moore has argued that there are deep and necessary connections between metaphysics, morality, and law. Moore has developed every contour of a theory of criminal law, from philosophy of action to a theory of causation. Indeed, not only is he the central figure in retributive punishment but his moral realist position places him at the center of many jurisprudential debates. Comprised of essays by leading scholars, this volume discusses and challenges the work of Michael Moore from one or more of the areas where he has made a lasting contribution, namely, law, morality, metaphysics, psychiatry, and neuroscience. The volume begins with a riveting contribution by Heidi Hurd, wherein she takes an unadorned and unabashed look at the man behind this monumental body of work, full of both triumphs and sadness. A number of essays focus on Moore's view of the purpose and justification of the criminal law, specifically his endorsement of retributivism and legal moralism. The book then addresses Moore's work in the various aspects of the general part of the criminal law, including Moore's position on how to understand criminal acts for double jeopardy purposes, Moore's claim that accomplice liability is superfluous, and Moore's views about the culpability of negligence, as well as the relationship between that view and proximate causation. Furthermore, the subject of defenses in criminal law is addressed, including self-defense, and also the intersection of psychiatry, psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and the criminal law. Also discussed are features of morality, and Moore's work in general jurisprudence. Finally, Moore concludes the volume with an essay that defends and delineates the features of his views.

Objectivity in Ethics and Law
Objectivity in Ethics and Law

Author: Michael S. Moore

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing

Published: 2004

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13:

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This volume collects six of Michael Moore's influential studies on moral and legal objectivity. Presented in an accessible format, the essays are brought together by a thought-provoking introduction. Contents: Introduction ETHICS Moral reality Moral reality revisited Good without God LAW Law as justice The plain truth about legal truth Legal reality: a naturalist approach to legal ontology NAME INDEX.

Causation and Responsibility
Causation and Responsibility

Author: Michael S. Moore

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2010-07-15

Total Pages: 635

ISBN-13: 0199599513

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The concept of causation is fundamental to ascribing moral and legal responsibility for events. Yet the relationship between causation and responsibility remains unclear. What precisely is the connection between the concept of causation used in attributing responsibility and the accounts of causal relations offered in the philosophy of science and metaphysics? How much of what we call causal responsibility is in truth defined by non-causal factors? This book argues that much of thelegal doctrine on these questions is confused and incoherent, and offers the first comprehensive attempt since Hart and Honoré to clarify the philosophical background to the legal and moral debates.The book first sets out the place of causation in criminal and tort law and outlines the metaphysics presupposed by the legal doctrine. It then analyses the best theoretical accounts of causation in the philosophy of science and metaphysics, and using these accounts criticises many of the core legal concepts surrounding causation - such as intervening causation, forseeability of harm and complicity. It considers and rejects the radical proposals to eliminate the notion of causation from law byusing risk analysis to attribute responsibility. The result of the analysis is a powerful argument for revising our understanding of the role played by causation in the attribution of legal and moral responsibility.

Placing Blame
Placing Blame

Author: Michael S. Moore

Publisher:

Published: 2010

Total Pages: 873

ISBN-13: 0199599491

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This is a collection of essays written by Moore which form a thorough examination of the theory of criminal responsibility. The author covers a wide range of topics, giving the book a coherence and unity which is rare in assembled essays. Perhaps the most significant feature of this book isMoore's espousal of a retributivist theory of punishment. This anti-utilitarian standpoint is a common thread throughout the book. It is also a trend which is currently manifesting itself in all areas of moral, political and legal philosophy, but Moore is one of the first to apply such attitudes sosytematically to criminal law theory. As such, this innovative, new book will be of great interest to all scholars in this field.

Legal, Moral, and Metaphysical Truths
Legal, Moral, and Metaphysical Truths

Author: Kimberly Kessler Ferzan

Publisher:

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 446

ISBN-13: 9780191773068

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Reviewing the work of legal philosopher Michael S. Moore, this volume examines how crimes ought to be defined, what justifies punishment, what moral commitments underlie the law, how our understanding of concepts such as causation impact law and morality, and how psychiatry and cognitive neuroscience relate to law.

Justice for Hedgehogs
Justice for Hedgehogs

Author: Ronald Dworkin

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2011-05-03

Total Pages: 521

ISBN-13: 0674071964

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The fox knows many things, the Greeks said, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. In his most comprehensive work, Ronald Dworkin argues that value in all its forms is one big thing: that what truth is, life means, morality requires, and justice demands are different aspects of the same large question. He develops original theories on a great variety of issues very rarely considered in the same book: moral skepticism, literary, artistic, and historical interpretation, free will, ancient moral theory, being good and living well, liberty, equality, and law among many other topics. What we think about any one of these must stand up, eventually, to any argument we find compelling about the rest. Skepticism in all its forms—philosophical, cynical, or post-modern—threatens that unity. The Galilean revolution once made the theological world of value safe for science. But the new republic gradually became a new empire: the modern philosophers inflated the methods of physics into a totalitarian theory of everything. They invaded and occupied all the honorifics—reality, truth, fact, ground, meaning, knowledge, and being—and dictated the terms on which other bodies of thought might aspire to them, and skepticism has been the inevitable result. We need a new revolution. We must make the world of science safe for value.

Mechanical Choices
Mechanical Choices

Author: Michael S. Moore

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2020-05-08

Total Pages: 613

ISBN-13: 0190863994

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Mechanical Choices details the intimate connection that exists between morality and law: the morality we use to blame others for their misdeeds and the criminal law that punishes them for these misdeeds. This book shows how both law and morality presuppose the accuracy of common sense, a centuries-old psychology that defines people as rational agents who make honorable choices and act for just reasons. It then shows how neuroscience is commonly taken to challenge these fundamental psychological assumptions. Such challenges--four in number--are distinguished from each other by the different neuroscientific facts from which they arise: the fact that human choices are caused by brain events; the fact that those choices don't cause the actions that are their objects but are only epiphenomenal to those choices; the fact that those choices are identical to certain physical events in the brain; and the fact that human subjects are quite fallible in their knowledge of what they are doing and why. The body of this book shows how such challenges are either based on faulty facts or misconceived as to the relevance of such facts to responsibility. The book ends with a detailed examination of the neuroscience of addiction, an examination which illustrates how neuroscience can help rather than challenge both law and morality in their quest to accurately define excuses from responsibility.

Theorizing Legal Punishment
Theorizing Legal Punishment

Author: Richard L. Lippke

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-02-06

Total Pages: 259

ISBN-13: 1003849482

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This book systematically defends an account of the institution of legal punishment that draws on both retributive and crime-prevention thinking. The work argues that legal punishment censures convicted offenders and thus morally communicates with them, any victims, and the broader community, while also serving to reduce future crime. The expressive or retributive element is assigned the lead role in this mixed account because it better captures the notion that members of society are to be held morally accountable for their failures to abide by defensible criminal prohibitions of various kinds. Despite this, it is conceded that the reduction of crime plays a vital role in justifying the institution of legal punishment and the book contains extended discussion of how and why this is so. Beyond its explication of the aims of legal punishment and their respective roles within a mixed theory, the study devotes separate chapters to sentencing, criminal procedure, and the imposition of fees and collateral legal consequences on individuals who have been convicted of crimes and fully served their sentences. In these ways, the work moves beyond discussion of the abstract aims of legal punishment to details of the institution’s internal structure and operations. The many historical deficiencies and failures of the institution are duly noted and the challenges they pose for punishment theorizing are examined. The book closes with discussion of the limited success of punishment institutions in apprehending, convicting, and punishing those who violate the law, including many who do so in serious ways. Alternatives to reliance on legal punishment institutions are briefly examined. In the end, retention of such institutions is urged although it is suggested that we ought to have modest expectations about their ultimate success. The work will be of interest to those working in the areas of Legal Philosophy and Criminology.

Law: Metaphysics, Meaning, and Objectivity
Law: Metaphysics, Meaning, and Objectivity

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2007-01-01

Total Pages: 315

ISBN-13: 9401205655

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Papers in philosophy of law by some of the younger cutting-edge contributors to the field. Two sets of issues of crucial current importance are taken up. The first part deals with issues of meaning and objectivity in the metaphysics of law. The second part is about rights theory. This volume will be required reading for anyone interested in philosophy of law, and also of use for those with broader interests in ethics, metaethics, and social and political philosophy.

Facts and Values
Facts and Values

Author: Giancarlo Marchetti

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2016-11-03

Total Pages: 440

ISBN-13: 1317354672

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This collection offers a synoptic view of current philosophical debates concerning the relationship between facts and values, bringing together a wide spectrum of contributors committed to testing the validity of this dichotomy, exploring alternatives, and assessing their implications. The assumption that facts and values inhabit distinct, unbridgeable conceptual and experiential domains has long dominated scientific and philosophical discourse, but this separation has been seriously called into question from a number of corners. The original essays here collected offer a diversity of responses to fact-value dichotomy, including contributions from Hilary Putnam and Ruth Anna Putnam who are rightly credited with revitalizing philosophical interest in this alleged opposition. Both they, and many of our contributors, are in agreement that the relationship between epistemic developments and evaluative attitudes cannot be framed as a conflict between descriptive and normative understanding. Each chapter demonstrates how and why contrapositions between science and ethics, between facts and values, and between objective and subjective are false dichotomies. Values cannot simply be separated from reason. Facts and Values will therefore prove essential reading for analytic and continental philosophers alike, for theorists of ethics and meta-ethics, and for philosophers of economics and law.