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A major voice in late twentieth-century philosophy, Alan Donagan is distinguished for his theories on the history of philosophy and the nature of morality. The Philosophical Papers of Alan Donagan, volumes 1 and 2, collect 28 of Donagan's most important and best-known essays on historical understanding and ethics from 1957 to 1991. Volume 2 addresses issues in the philosophy of action and moral theory. With papers on Kant, von Wright, Sellars, and Chisholm, this volume also (...) covers a range of questions in applied ethics--from the morality of Truman's decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to ethical questions in medicine and law. (shrink)

Linked by Donagan's commitment to the central importance of history for philosophy and his interest in problems of historical understanding, these essays represent the remarkable scope of Donagan's thought.

With papers on Kant, von Wright, Sellars, and Chisholm, this volume also covers a range of questions in applied ethics—from the morality of Truman's decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to ethical questions in medicine ...

In this reinterpretation and reconstruction of Spinoza's thought, Donagan (humanities, Caltech) demonstrates that it was Spinoza's unique usage of traditional philosophical vocabulary that resulted in the history of misunderstanding that is his continuing fate. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

This book, first published in 1987, investigates what distinguishes the part of human behaviour that is action from the part that is not. The distinction was clearly drawn by Socrates, and developed by Aristotle and the medievals, but key elements of their work became obscured in modern philosophy, and were not fully recovered when, under Wittgenstein’s influence, the theory of action was revived in analytical philosophy. This study aims to recover those elements, and to analyse them in terms of a (...) defensible semantics on Fregean lines. Among its conclusions: that actions are bodily or mental events that are causally explained by their doers’ propositional attitudes, especially by their choices or fully specific intentions; that choice cannot be reduced to desire and belief, and hence that the traditional concept of will as intellectual appetite must be revived. (shrink)

Joseph Boyle raises important questions about the place of the double-effect exception in absolutist moral theories. His own absolutist theory (held by many, but not all, Catholic moralists), which derives from the principles that fundamental human goods may not be intentionally violated, cannot dispense with such exceptions, although he rightly rejects some widely held views about what they are. By contrast, Kantian absolutist theory, which derives from the principle that lawful freedom must not be violated, has a corollary – that (...) it is a duty, where possible, to coerce those who try to violate lawful freedom – which makes superfluous many of the double-effect exceptions Boyle allows. Other implications of the two theories are contrasted. Inter alia , it is argued that, in Boyle's theory, that a violation of a fundamental human good can be viewed as a cost proportionate to a benefit obtained, cannot yield a double-effect exception to the prohibition of intentionally violating that good, because paying a cost cannot be unintentional. Keywords: cost-benefit analysis, double effect, intention, side effect CiteULike Connotea Del.icio.us What's this? (shrink)

The fundamental causal concept in Chisholm's theory of agency is that of causally contributing to, a generic concept covering both event-causal contributors (members of sets of nonredundant jointly sufficient conditions) and agent-causal contributors (not members of sets of jointly sufficient conditions). Chisholm's elucidation of agent-causation is explored and defended against objections. It is then argued that Chisholm's ontology, in particular in its treatment of the concept of an evert, generates difficulties for his theory of agency oi which two are explored: (...) (i) that it is hard to reconcile with Chisholm's own apparent analysis of the distinction between intentional and unintentional actions; and (ii) that it entails that every causal contributing has an infinite set of causal contributors, which is in conflict with the principle that any set of nonredundant conditions that are jointly sufficient for the occurrence of an event are so by the nature of things, and not by virtue of some further event. (shrink)

Sidgwick's Methods of Ethics appears to defend a revised utilitarianism against both egoism and intuitionism, while conceding that the practical results of enlightened egoism largely coincide with those of utilitarianism, and that the utilitarian greatest happiness principle can be justified only as a fundamental intuition. It is true that Sidgwick was distressed by the description of his treatment of intuitional morality as ‘mere hostile criticism from the outside', and protested that that morality ‘is my own … as much as it (...) is any man's; it is, as I say, the “Morality of Common Sense”, which I only attempt to represent so far as I share it’. However, he could not well have denied that, in The Methods of Ethics, the endorsement tentatively accorded to intuitional morality as a system is in the end withdrawn. Ultimately it is concluded that utilitarianism can define and correct what intuitional morality is vague or mistaken about, and can complete what common sense does not venture to treat at all. (shrink)

The fundamental causal concept in Chisholm's theory of agency is that of causally contributing to, a generic concept covering both event-causal contributors and agent-causal contributors. Chisholm's elucidation of agent-causation is explored and defended against objections. It is then argued that Chisholm's ontology, in particular in its treatment of the concept of an evert, generates difficulties for his theory of agency oi which two are explored: that it is hard to reconcile with Chisholm's own apparent analysis of the distinction between intentional (...) and unintentional actions; and that it entails that every causal contributing has an infinite set of causal contributors, which is in conflict with the principle that any set of nonredundant conditions that are jointly sufficient for the occurrence of an event are so by the nature of things, and not by virtue of some further event. (shrink)

The fundamental causal concept in Chisholm's theory of agency is that of causally contributing to, a generic concept covering both event-causal contributors (members of sets of nonredundant jointly sufficient conditions) and agent-causal contributors (not members of sets of jointly sufficient conditions). Chisholm's elucidation of agent-causation is explored and defended against objections. It is then argued that Chisholm's ontology, in particular in its treatment of the concept of an evert, generates difficulties for his theory of agency oi which two are explored: (...) (i) that it is hard to reconcile with Chisholm's own apparent analysis of the distinction between intentional and unintentional actions; and (ii) that it entails that every causal contributing has an infinite set of causal contributors, which is in conflict with the principle that any set of nonredundant conditions that are jointly sufficient for the occurrence of an event are so by the nature of things, and not by virtue of some further event. (shrink)

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1981, given by Alan Donagan.

This book contains the collected papers of Alan Donagan on topics in the philosophy of religion. Donagan was respected as a leading figure in American moral philosophy. His untimely death in 1991 prevented him from collecting his philosophical reflections on religion, particularly Christianity, and its relation to ethics and other concerns. This collection, therefore, constitutes the fullest expression of Donagan's thought on Christianity and ethics, in which it is possible to discern the outlines of a coherent, (...) overarching theory. Editor Anthony Perovich has supplied a useful introduction, which brings Donagan's work into focus and brings out the unifying themes in the essays. (shrink)