Unprincipled Virtue

Unprincipled Virtue

Author: Nomy Arpaly

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 0195179765

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Conventional thinking about the mind, dating back to Aristotle envisions the emotions as being directed and determined by rational thought. The author argues that the conventional picture of rationality is fundamentally false and has little to do with how real human beings actually behave.


Unprincipled Virtue

Unprincipled Virtue

Author: Nomy Arpaly

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA

Published: 2003

Total Pages: 214

ISBN-13: 0195152042

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Conventional thinking about the mind, dating back to Aristotle, envisions the emotions as being directed and determined by rational thought. The author argues that the conventional picture of rationality is fundamentally false and has little to do with how real human beings actually behave.


In Praise of Desire

In Praise of Desire

Author: Nomy Arpaly

Publisher:

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0199348162

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Joining the ancient debate over the roles of reason and appetite in the moral mind, In Praise of Desire takes the side of appetite. The book makes the claim that acting for moral reasons, acting in a praiseworthy manner, and acting out of virtue amount to nothing more than acting out of intrinsic desires for the right or the good, correctly conceived. In Praise of Desire shows that a desire-centered moral psychology can be richer than philosophers commonly think, accommodating the full complexity of moral life.


Merit, Meaning, and Human Bondage

Merit, Meaning, and Human Bondage

Author: Nomy Arpaly

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2009-08-15

Total Pages: 158

ISBN-13: 1400824508

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Perhaps everything we think, feel, and do is determined, and humans--like stones or clouds--are slaves to the laws of nature. Would that be a terrible state? Philosophers who take the incompatibilist position think so, arguing that a deterministic world would be one without moral responsibility and perhaps without true love, meaningful art, and real rationality. But compatibilists and semicompatibilists argue that determinism need not worry us. As long as our actions stem, in an appropriate way, from us, or respond in some way to reasons, our actions are meaningful and can be judged on their moral (or other) merit. In this highly original work, Nomy Arpaly argues that a deterministic world does not preclude moral responsibility, rationality, and love--in short, meaningful lives--but that there would still be something lamentable about a deterministic world. A person may respond well to reasons, and her actions may faithfully reflect her true self or values, but she may still feel that she is not free. Arpaly argues that compatibilists and semicompatibilists are wrong to dismiss this feeling--for which there are no philosophical consolations--as philosophically irrelevant. On the way to this bittersweet conclusion, Arpaly sets forth surprising theories about acting for reasons, the widely accepted idea that "ought implies can," moral blame, and more.


On Virtue Ethics

On Virtue Ethics

Author: Rosalind Hursthouse

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 286

ISBN-13: 0198238185

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Virtue ethics is perhaps the most important development within late 20th-century moral philosophy. Rosalind Hursthouse presents an exposition and defence of her neo-Aristotelian version of virtue ethics.


Virtue’s Reasons

Virtue’s Reasons

Author: Noell Birondo

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2017-02-17

Total Pages: 218

ISBN-13: 131531424X

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This collection sheds light on precisely how virtues and reasons are related to each other and what can be learned by exploring this relationship. The first section analyzes how the virtues may be related to, or linked with, normative reasons in ways that improve our understanding of what constitutes virtuous character and ethical agency. The second section explores the reasons moral agents have for cultivating the virtues of character and how the virtues impact moral responsiveness or development. The final section examines how reasons can be employed in understanding the nature of virtue, and how specific virtues, like modesty and practical wisdom, interact with reasons.


From Valuing to Value

From Valuing to Value

Author: David Sobel

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-11-17

Total Pages: 471

ISBN-13: 0192507532

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Subjective accounts of well-being and reasons for action have a remarkable pedigree. The idea that normativity flows from what an agent cares about-that something is valuable because it is valued-has appealed to a wide range of great thinkers. But at the same time this idea has seemed to many of the best minds in ethics to be outrageous or worse, not least because it seems to threaten the status of morality. Mutual incomprehension looms over the discussion. From Valuing to Value, written by an influential former critic of subjectivism, owns up to the problematic features to which critics have pointed while arguing that such criticisms can be blunted and the overall view rendered defensible. In this collection of his essays David Sobel does not shrink from acknowledging the real tension between subjective views of reasons and morality, yet argues that such a tension does not undermine subjectivism. In this volume the fundamental commitments of subjectivism are clarified and revealed to be rather plausible and well-motivated, while the most influential criticisms of subjectivism are straightforwardly addressed and found wanting.


The Ethics of Care and Empathy

The Ethics of Care and Empathy

Author: Michael Slote

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2007-08-07

Total Pages: 278

ISBN-13: 1134002696

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Eminent moral philosopher Michael Slote argues that care ethics presents an important challenge to other ethical traditions and that a philosophically developed care ethics should, and can, offer its own comprehensive view of the whole of morality. Taking inspiration from British moral sentimentalism and drawing on recent psychological literature on empathy, he shows that the use of that notion allows care ethics to develop its own sentimentalist account of respect, autonomy, social justice, and deontology. Furthermore, he argues that care ethics gives a more persuasive account of these topics than theories offered by contemporary Kantian liberalism. The most philosophically rich and challenging exploration of the theory and practice of care to date, The Ethics of Care and Empathy also shows the manifold connections that can be drawn between philosophical issues and leading ideas in the fields of psychology, education, and women's studies.


Writing Combat and the Self in Early Modern English Literature

Writing Combat and the Self in Early Modern English Literature

Author: Jennifer Feather

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2011-12-22

Total Pages: 400

ISBN-13: 113701041X

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By examining these competing depictions of combat that coexist in sixteenth-century texts ranging from Arthurian romance to early modern medical texts, this study reveals both the importance of combat in understanding the humanist subject and the contours of the previously neglected pre-modern subject.


Epistemic Situationism

Epistemic Situationism

Author: Abrol Fairweather

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2017-04-05

Total Pages: 267

ISBN-13: 0191512524

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This volume is the first sustained examination of epistemic situationism: the clash between virtue epistemology and the situationist hypothesis inspired by research in empirical psychology. Situationism began as a challenge to the psychology of character traits, targeting ethical theories that presuppose a trait psychology. Psychological research suggests that (often trivial) environmental variables have greater explanatory power than character traits. Epistemology pursues questions about the nature of knowledge. While there are internal differences within virtue epistemology between responsibilists and reliabilists, they all analyze knowledge in terms of epistemic virtues and vices. However, despite promising normative results, virtue epistemology appears to assume the same character-based psychology as virtue ethics does. Until recently, virtue epistemology and situationism were separate literatures, but philosophers have begun to examine the apparent incompatibility between situationist psychology and virtue epistemology. Much of the psychological research that raises questions about the empirical adequacy of the moral psychology of virtue ethics also appears to raise doubts about the empirical adequacy of the epistemic psychology assumed by virtue epistemology. Responsibilist virtue epistemology appears particularly vulnerable because epistemic virtues like open mindedness, conscientiousness and intellectual courage are traits of intellectual character, but reliabilist virtue epistemology appeals to the psychology of cognitive skills, abilities, and competences that may be similarly vulnerable. The essays in this volume take up this new problem of epistemic situationism from multiple points of view - some sceptical or revisionary, others conservative.