The Second-Person Standpoint

The Second-Person Standpoint

Author: Stephen Darwall

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2009-09-30

Total Pages: 363

ISBN-13: 0674034627

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Why should we avoid doing moral wrong? The inability of philosophy to answer this question in a compelling manner—along with the moral skepticism and ethical confusion that ensue—result, Stephen Darwall argues, from our failure to appreciate the essentially interpersonal character of moral obligation. After showing how attempts to vindicate morality have tended to change the subject—falling back on non-moral values or practical, first-person considerations—Darwall elaborates the interpersonal nature of moral obligations: their inherent link to our responsibilities to one another as members of the moral community. As Darwall defines it, the concept of moral obligation has an irreducibly second-person aspect; it presupposes our authority to make claims and demands on one another. And so too do many other central notions, including those of rights, the dignity of and respect for persons, and the very concept of person itself. The result is nothing less than a fundamental reorientation of moral theory that enables it at last to account for morality’s supreme authority—an account that Darwall carries from the realm of theory to the practical world of second-person attitudes, emotions, and actions.


Moral Knowledge

Moral Knowledge

Author: Sarah McGrath

Publisher:

Published: 2019

Total Pages: 229

ISBN-13: 0198805411

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How fragile is our knowledge of morality, compared to other kinds of knowledge? Does knowledge of the difference between right and wrong fundamentally differ from knowledge of other kinds? Sarah McGrath offers new answers to these questions as she explores the possibilities, sources and characteristic vulnerabilities of moral knowledge.


Bioethics

Bioethics

Author: Bernard Gert

Publisher:

Published: 2006

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 0195159063

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This book is the result of over 30 years of collaboration among its authors. It uses the systematic account of our common morality developed by one of its authors to provide a useful foundation for dealing with the moral problems and disputes that occur in the practice of medicine. Theanalyses of impartiality, rationality, and of morality as a public system not only explain why some bioethical questions, such as the moral acceptability of abortion, cannot be resolved, but also provide a method for determining the correct answer for those occasions when a bioethical question hasa unique correct answer. This new edition includes an entire chapter that has been added to address the controversial issue of abortion within the authors' distinct framework. This book presents the latest revisions of the authors' original analyses of the concepts of death and disease, analyses that have had a significant impact on the field of bioethics. It also includes an added chapter on mental disorders, where the authors' definition influenced what psychiatryclassifies as a mental disorder, and so has had an impact that reveals beyond the field of bioethics. In this edition, the authors also offer a new, more developed perspective on the concept of valid or informed consent by considering what information physicians should be required to know before proposing screening, diagnostic testing, prescribing medications, or performing surgery. The book alsointegrates some of the important insights of the field of clinical epidemiology into its discussion of valid consent. Its account of paternalism and its justification, perhaps the most ubiquitous moral problem in medical ethics, has had considerable influence. Its discussion of euthanasia andphysician assisted suicide challenges the standard views that have been put forward by both proponents and opponents of physician assisted suicide and voluntary active euthanasia.


What Can Philosophy Contribute To Ethics?

What Can Philosophy Contribute To Ethics?

Author: James Griffin

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2015-10-29

Total Pages: 162

ISBN-13: 0191065447

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Ethics appears early in the life of a culture. It is not the creation of philosophers. Many philosophers today think that their job is to take the ethics of their society in hand, analyse it into parts, purge the bad ideas, and organize the good into a systematic moral theory. The philosophers' ethics that results is likely to be very different from the culture's raw ethics and, they think, being better, should replace it. But few of us, even among philosophers, settle real-life moral questions by consulting the Categorical Imperative or the Principle of Utility, largely because, if we do, we often do not trust the outcome or cannot even reliably enough decide what it is. By contrast, James Griffin explores the question what philosophers can reasonably expect to contribute to normative ethics or to the ethics of a culture. Griffin argues that moral philosophers must tailor their work to what ordinary humans' motivational capabilities, and he offers a new account of moral deliberation.


Morality and Political Violence

Morality and Political Violence

Author: C. A. J. Coady

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2007-10-08

Total Pages: 332

ISBN-13: 9780521560009

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Political violence in the form of wars, insurgencies, terrorism, and violent rebellion constitutes a major human challenge today as it has so often in the past. It is not only a challenge to life and limb, but also to morality itself. In this book, C. A. J. Coady brings a philosophical and ethical perspective to the subject. He places the problems of war and political violence in the frame of reflective ethics. In clear and accessible language, Coady reexamines a range of urgent problems pertinent to political violence against the background of a contemporary approach to just war thinking.


Natural Moralities

Natural Moralities

Author: David B Wong

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2009-03-03

Total Pages: 312

ISBN-13: 0199724849

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In this book, David B. Wong defends an ambitious and important new version of moral relativism. He does not espouse the type of relativism that says anything goes, but he does start with a relativist stance against alternative theories such that there need not be only one universal truth. Wong proposes that there can be a plurality of true moralities existing across different traditions and cultures, all with one core human question as to how we can all live together.


Bioethics

Bioethics

Author: Bernard Gert

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2006-02-16

Total Pages: 384

ISBN-13: 0190289325

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An updated and expanded successor to Culver and Gert's Philosophy in Medicine, this book integrates moral philosophy with clinical medicine to present a comprehensive summary of the theory, concepts, and lines of reasoning underlying the field of bioethics. Rather than concentrating narrowly on bioethics and investigating moral philosophy only marginally, the authors provide an explicit account of common morality and show how it applies to and is modified by the realities of clinical medicine. Such broader knowledge finds its specific practical application when one attempts to resolve the more complex and difficult cases. This book does not attempt to settle all controversial matters, but rather provides an ethical framework that various parties to the dispute can accept and use as a basis for reaching agreement. Thus, the authors' main goal is to facilitate ethical discussion. Their detailed analyses of death and disease maintain the theoretical objectivity of these concepts while recognizing their central role in social and medical practices. They also provide in-depth discussions of the central concepts and issues in bioethics: competence, consent, justification for moral rule violations, and confidentiality. Paternalism, one of the most pervasive problems in clinical medicine, is accorded special attention. All these concepts have been integrated and systematically grounded within common morality. The book is richly illustrated with discussions of clinical cases. The authors explicitly compare their position with other accounts of bioethics such as principlism, casuistry, and virtue theory. Their discussion of euthanasia and physician-assisted suicide clarifies and evaluates the recent legal decisions on these topics. The arguments throughout the volume stand out with characteristic clarity and cogency. A fresh and all-encompassing approach to bioethics that does not shy away from controversy, Bioethics: A Return to Fundamentals will interest not only students in philosophy of medicine and medical ethics courses, but also moral philosophers and bioethicists, as well as doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals.