Ethics Done Right
Author: Elijah Millgram
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Published: 2005-07-14
Total Pages: 370
ISBN-13: 9780521839433
DOWNLOAD EBOOKExamines how practical reasoning can be put into the service of ethical and moral theory.
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Ethical Reasoning: Theory and Application
Author: Andrew Kernohan
Publisher: Broadview Press
Published: 2020-09-30
Total Pages: 170
ISBN-13: 1770487611
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe philosophical tradition has given rise to many competing moral theories. Virtue ethics encourages the flourishing of the person, theories of justice and rights tell us to act according to principles, and consequentialist theories advise that we seek to bring about good ends. These varied theories highlight the morally relevant features of the problems that we encounter both in everyday personal interactions and on a broader social scale. When used together, they allow us to address moral conflicts by balancing a plurality of reasons in order to reach nuanced ethical decisions. In Ethical Reasoning: Theory and Application, Andrew Kernohan guides the reader through the basics of these moral theories, showing their strengths and weaknesses and emphasizing the ways in which competing moral reasons can be collectively employed to guide decision-making. Throughout, the focus is on practical applications and on how each theory can play a role in solving problems and addressing issues. Numerous questions and exercises are provided to encourage active reflection and retention of information.
Ethics and Practical Reason
Author: Garrett Cullity
Publisher: Clarendon Press
Published: 1997-11-20
Total Pages: 434
ISBN-13: 019158357X
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThese thirteen new, specially written essays by a distinguished international line-up of contributors, including some leading contemporary moral philosophers, give a rich and varied view of current work on ethics and practical reason. The three main perspectives on the topic, Kantian, Humean, and Aristotelian, are all well represented. The editors' introduction provides a valuable introductory survey of the topic, putting the individual essays in context. Ethics and Practical Reason will be essential reading for scholars, postgraduates, and upper-level undergraduates working in this area. - ;These thirteen new, specially written essays by a distinguished international line-up of contributors, including some leading contemporary moral philosophers, give a rich and varied view of current work on ethics and practical reason. The three main perspectives on the topic, Kantian, Humean, and Aristotelian, are all well represented. Issues covered include: the connection between reason and motivation; the source of moral reasons and their relation to reasons of self-interest; the relation of practical reason to value, to freedom, to responsibility, and to feelings. The editors' introduction provides a valuable introductory survey of the topic, putting the individual essays in context. Ethics and Practical Reason will be essential reading for scholars, postgraduates, and upper-level undergraduates working in this area. -
Re-Reasoning Ethics
Author: Barry Hoffmaster
Publisher: MIT Press
Published: 2018-05-04
Total Pages: 317
ISBN-13: 0262037696
DOWNLOAD EBOOKHow developing a more expansive, non-formal conception of reason produces richer ethical understandings of human situations, explored and illustrated with many real examples. In Re-Reasoning Ethics, Barry Hoffmaster and Cliff Hooker enhance and empower ethics by adopting a non-formal paradigm of rational deliberation as intelligent problem-solving and a complementary non-formal paradigm of ethical deliberation as problem-solving design to promote human flourishing. The non-formal conception of reason produces broader and richer ethical understandings of human situations, not the simple, constrained depictions provided by moral theories and their logical applications in medical ethics and bioethics. Instead, it delivers and vindicates the moral judgment that complex, contextual, and dynamic situations require. Hoffmaster and Hooker demonstrate how this more expansive rationality operates with examples, first in science and then in ethics. Non-formal reason brings rationality not just to the empirical world of science but also to the empirical realities of human lives. Among the many real cases they present is that of how women at risk of having children with genetic conditions decide whether to try to become pregnant. These women do not apply the formal principle of maximizing expected utility (as advised by genetic counselors) and instead imagine scenarios of what their lives could be like with an affected child and assess whether they could accept the worst of these scenarios. Hoffmaster and Hooker explain how moral compromise and a liberated, extended, and enriched reflective equilibrium expand and augment rational ethical deliberation and how that deliberation can rationally design ethical practices, institutions, and policies.
Reason and Morality
Author: Alan Gewirth
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Published: 1978
Total Pages: 406
ISBN-13: 0226288765
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"Most modern philosophers attempt to solve the problem of morality from within the epistemological assumptions that define the dominant cultural perspective of our age. Alan Gewirth's Reason and Morality is a major work in this ongoing enterprise. Gewirth develops, with patience and skill, what he calls a 'modified naturalism' in which morality is derived by logic alone from the concept of action. . . . I think that the publication of Reason and Morality is a major event in the history of moral philosophy. It develops with great power a new and exciting position in ethical naturalism. No one, regardless of philosophical stance, can read this work without an enlargement of mind. It illuminates morality and agency for all."—E. M. Adams, The Review of Metaphysics "This is a fascinating study of an apparently intractable problem. Gewirth has provided plenty of material for further discussion, and his theory deserves serious consideration. He is always aware of possible rejoinders and argues in a rigorous manner, showing a firm grasp of the current state of moral and political philosophy."—Mind
Trust, Ethics and Human Reason
Author: Olli Lagerspetz
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2015-11-19
Total Pages: 218
ISBN-13: 1441109196
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe variety of approaches to the concept of trust in philosophy reflects the fact that our worries are diverse, from the Hobbesian concern for the possibility of rational cooperation to Wittgenstein's treatment of the place of trust in knowledge. To speak of trust is not only to describe human action but also to take a perspective on it and to engage with it. Olli Lagerspetz breathes new life into the philosophical debate by showing how questions about trust are at the centre of any in-depth analyses of the nature of human agency and human rationality and that these issues, in turn, lie at the heart of philosophical ethics. Ideal for those grappling with these issues for the first time, Trust, Ethics and Human Reason provides a thorough and impassioned assessment of the concept of trust in moral philosophy.
Explaining the Reasons We Share
Author: Mark Andrew Schroeder
Publisher:
Published: 2014
Total Pages: 273
ISBN-13: 0198713800
DOWNLOAD EBOOKNormative ethical theories generally purport to be explanatory--to tell us not just what is good, or what conduct is right, but why. Drawing on both historical and contemporary approaches, Mark Schroeder offers a distinctive picture of how such explanations must work, and of the specific commitments that they incur. According to Schroeder, explanatory moral theories can be perfectly general only if they are reductive, offering accounts of what it is for something to be good, right, or what someone ought to do. So ambitious, highly general normative ethical theorizing is continuous with metaethical inquiry. Moreover, he argues that such explanatory theories face a special challenge in accounting for reasons or obligations that are universally shared, and develops an autonomy-based strategy for meeting this challenge, in the case of requirements of rationality. Explaining the Reasons We Share pulls together over a decade of work by one of the leading figures in contemporary metaethics. One new and ten previously published papers weave together treatments of reasons, reduction, supervenience, instrumental rationality, and legislation, to paint a sharp contrast between two plausible but competing pictures of the nature and limits of moral explanation--one from Cudworth and one indebted to Kant. A substantive new introduction provides a map to reading these essays as a unified argument, and qualifies their conclusions in light of Schroeder's current views. Along with its sister volume, Expressing Our Attitudes, this volume advances the theme that metaethical inquiry is continuous with other areas of philosophy.
Moral Dealing
Author: David Gauthier
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Published: 2019-05-15
Total Pages: 383
ISBN-13: 1501745794
DOWNLOAD EBOOKDavid Gauthier is one of the most outstanding and influential philosophers working in moral theory today, and his book Morals by Agreement (1986) has established him as a preeminent defender of contractarian moral theory. This volume brings together a selection of his best essays on contractarianism, many of which have become difficult to find.
Ethics, Faith, and Reason
Author: Richard Taylor
Publisher: Prentice Hall
Published: 1985
Total Pages: 152
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOK"In this book, the author revives the ancient moral ideas of virtue, happiness, and pride rather than analyzing such concepts as moreal right and wrong, moral obligation, and so on." From back cover.
Reasons
Author: Eric Wiland
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2012-05-17
Total Pages: 201
ISBN-13: 1441187332
DOWNLOAD EBOOKWhen we say we 'act for a reason', what do we mean? And what do reasons have to do with being good or bad? Introducing readers to a foundational topic in ethics, Eric Wiland considers the reasons for which we act. You do things for reasons, and reasons in some sense justify what you do. Further, your reasons belong to you, and you know the reasons for which you act in a distinctively first-personal way. Wiland lays out and critically reviews some of the most popular contemporary accounts of how reasons can function in all these ways, accounts such as psychologism, factualism, hybrid theories, constitutivist theories, and finally Anscombean views of reasons. Reasons also includes a brief guide to further reading to help readers master this important topic in contemporary writing in ethics and the philosophy of action.
