Experimental moral philosophy emerged as a methodology in the last decade of the twentieth century, as a branch of the larger experimental philosophy (X-Phi) approach. Experimental moral philosophy is the empirical study of moral intuitions, judgments, and behaviors. Like other forms of experimental philosophy, it involves gathering data using experimental methods and using these data to substantiate, undermine, or revise philosophical theories. In this case, the theories in question concern the nature of (...) class='Hi'>moral reasoning and judgment; the extent and sources of moral obligations; the nature of a good person and a good life; even the scope and nature of moral theory itself. This entry begins with a brief look at the historical uses of empirical data in moral theory and goes on to ask what, if anything, is distinctive about experimental moral philosophy—how should we distinguish it from related work in empirical moral psychology? After discussing some strategies for answering this question, the entry examines two of the main projects within experimental moral philosophy, and then discusses some of the most prominent areas of research within the field. As we will see, in some cases experimental moral philosophy has opened up new avenues of investigation, while in other cases it has influenced longstanding debates within moral theory. (shrink)

Experimental moral philosophy began to emerge as a methodology inthe last decade of the twentieth century, a branch of the largerexperimental philosophy approach. From the beginning,it has been embroiled in controversy on a number of fronts. Somedoubt that it is philosophy at all. Others acknowledge that it isphilosophy but think that it has produced modest results at best andconfusion at worst. Still others think it represents an important advance., Before the research program can be evaluated, we (...) should have someconception of its scope. But controversy surrounds questionsabout its boundaries as well. Uncontroversially, the distinctionbetween experimental and non-experimental philosophy is not identicalto the distinction between a posteriori and a prioriphilosophy. Experimental evidence is a proper subset of empiricalevidence, which is itself a subset of a posteriorievidence. Can any more be said?, L1: A child raised in a particular linguistic community almostinevitably ends up speaking an idiolect of the local language despitelack of sufficient explicit instruction, lack of extensive negativefeedback for mistakes, and grammatical mistakes by caretakers., character, moral | cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism, moral | emotion | ethics: virtue | intuition | moral anti-realism | moral psychology: empirical approaches | moral realism | moral relativism | well-being, Copyright © 2014 byMark Alfano Don Loeb, View this site from another server:. (shrink)

The first book of its kind, Buddhist Moral Philosophy: An Introduction introduces the reader to contemporary philosophical interpretations and analyses of Buddhist ethics. It begins with a survey of traditional Buddhist ethical thought and practice, mainly in the Pali Canon and early Mahāyāna schools, and an account of the emergence of Buddhist moral philosophy as a distinct discipline in the modern world. It then examines recent debates about karma, rebirth and nirvana, well-being, normative ethics, moral (...) objectivity, moral psychology, and the issue of freedom, responsibility and determinism. The book also introduces the reader to philosophical discussions of topics in socially engaged Buddhism such as human rights, war and peace, and environmental ethics. (shrink)

The author presents and defends three theses: (1) "the first is that it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy; that should be laid aside at any rate until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology." (2) "the second is that the concepts of obligation, And duty... And of what is morally right and wrong, And of the moral sense of 'ought', Ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible...." (3) "the (...) third thesis is that the differences between the well-Known english writers on moral philosophy from sidgwick to the present day are of little importance." (staff). (shrink)

In this new and enlarged edition of a standard introduction to moral philosophy, Raphael shows in clear and simple language the connections between abstract ethics and practical problems in law, government, medicine, and the social sciences in general. Moral Philosophy deals with six main areas. First, it looks at the two opposed traditions of naturalism and rationalism, and considers more recent discussion in terms of logic and language. Next, it explores the attractions and defects of Utilitarianism, (...) and then turns to its main rival, Kantian ethics, which Raphael favors in a modified form. The third section shows how different moral views are related to different theories about justice and liberty. The fourth examines the problem of free will and determinism in the context of the presuppositions of science, especially in the social sciences. This second edition enlarges the relation of moral philosophy to other concerns, with two new chapters: one on ethics and evolution, the other on medical ethics. (shrink)

In this paper moral philosophy of Mahrishi Valmiki discussed on the basis of his ideas in the Ramayana.

Macmillan papermac 3003. Bibliography: p. 80-81.

Moral Philosophy and Moral Education considers the interconnections of ethics, education, and the philosophy of culture as related to the human concern with self-knowledge. The individual self finds its inner life writ large in the forms of culture such as religion, art, and history. Such forms of cultural life represent and embody normative ideals that can provide the necessary content to shape the character and the conduct of civic life. Thora Ilin Bayer draws upon the ancient (...) Greek view of education as paideia and the conception of Bildung of the German idealist philosophers. These two ideas of education aim at the development of the whole person as distinct from training in a particular skill, subject matter, technique, or occupation. The education of the whole person aims at the production in the individual of a broad mental outlook harmoniously joined with a knowledge of the great perspectives and principles of human culture as it takes its various shapes within the history of humanity. Moral philosophy requires both culture and the individual as its terms of inquiry, and moral education requires a vision of how to have these two terms interact to form a whole. (shrink)

Here is an overview of what is to come. In Sections I and II, I will sketch two of the projects frequently pursued by moral philosophers, and the methods typically invoked in those projects. I will argue that these projects presuppose (or at least suggest) a particular sort of account of the mental representation of human value systems, since the methods make sense only if we assume a certain kind of story about how the human mind stores information about (...) values. The burden of my argument in Section III will be that while the jury is still out, there is some evidence suggesting that this account of mental representation is mistaken. If it is mistaken, it follows that two of the central methods of moral philosophy have to be substantially modified, or perhaps abandoned, and that the goals philosophers have sought to achieve with these methods may themselves be misguided. I fear that many of my philosophical colleagues will find this a quite radical suggestion. But if anything is clear in this area, it is that the methods we will be considering have not been conspicuously successful, though it certainly has not been for want of trying. So perhaps it is time for some radical, empirically informed rethinking of goals and methods in these parts of moral philosophy. (shrink)

Moral philosophy continues to be enriched by an ongoing empirical turn,mainly through contributions from neuroscience, biology, and psychology. Thusfar, cultural anthropology has largely been missing. A recent and rapidly growing‘ethical turn’ within cultural anthropologynow explicitly and systematically studiesmorality. This research report aims to introduce to an audience in moral philosophyseveral notable works within the ethical turn. It does so by critically discussing theethical turn’s contributions to four topics: the definition of morality, the nature ofmoral change and progress, (...) the truth of moral relativism, and attempts to debunkmorality. The ethical turn uncovers a richer picture of moral phenomena on theintersubjective level, one akin to a virtue theoretic focus on moral character, withstriking similarities of moral phenomena across cultures. Perennial debates are notsettled but the ethical turn strengthens moral philosophy’s empirical turn and itrewards serious attention from philosophers. (shrink)

What is moral philosophy? That is the question with which this important volume grapples. Its starting point is the famous critique made in 1958 by Elizabeth Anscombe, who argued that moral philosophy begins from a mistake: that it is fundamentally wrong about the sort of concept that the word 'moral' represents. Anscombe rejected moral philosophy as it was then practised. She offered instead a blueprint for the task moral philosophers must embrace if (...) they are to speak intelligibly to society about good and bad, right and wrong, duty and obligation. The chapters in this book are inspired by Anscombe's classic text. One of the most powerful voices here, among many authoritative voices, is that of Philippa Foot – Anscombe's lifelong friend – who asserts that 'any account of practical reason evacuated of an understanding of what human beings need to flourish is inadequate and must be rejected.'. (shrink)

This essay challenges widespread talk about morality's ‘normativity’. My principal target is not any specific claim or thesis in the burgeoning literature on ‘normativity’, however. Rather, I aim to discourage the use of the word among moral philosophers altogether and to reject a claim to intradisciplinary authority that is both reflected in and reinforced by the role the word has come to play in the discipline. My hope is to persuade other philosophers who, like me, persist in being interested (...) in long-standing questions about our morals to be considerably more suspicious about the word's actual value for us and to see those studying ‘normativity’ itself as having little to offer us when it comes to posing our questions about morals and debating the answers to them. (shrink)

Ordinary moral thought often commits what social psychologists call 'the fundamental attribution error '. This is the error of ignoring situational factors and overconfidently assuming that distinctive behaviour or patterns of behaviour are due to an agent's distinctive character traits. In fact, there is no evidence that people have character traits in the relevant sense. Since attribution of character traits leads to much evil, we should try to educate ourselves and others to stop doing it.

Dramatic changes in the understanding of nature and turbulent debates in religion marked seventeenth century moral philosophy. Many of the most important works of the century were attempts to defend new moral concepts or to recast old ones, as a way of responding to new doctrines in religion, epistemology, ad metaphysics. Many others were attempts to show that traditional conceptions of value, or elements of them, did not after all require revision. Moral concepts depend, or might (...) be taken to depend, upon our conception of the world in various ways. The first section of this chapter presents a basic form of a challenge to traditional views arising from new conceptions of God and the world in the seventeenth century together with four basic questions that arise out of this challenge. The second and third sections present responses to these questions drawn from the most revisionary and systematic moral doctrines of the century, those of Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) and Benedictus Spinoza (1632-1677). The final sections uses these philosophers as points of reference for the understanding of major trends of seventeenth century moral philosophy. Very roughly, moral philosophy in the century presents an arc of radicalism, with earlier figures such as Grotius and Descartes building toward criticism of traditional views, Hobbes and Spinoza presenting the most biting and direct revisions, and later figures such as Cumberland, Pufendorf, and Locke working to reconcile traditional views and new scientific and theological doctrines. (shrink)

Any acceptable account of moral epistemology must accord with the following points. (1) Different people acquire seemingly very different moralities. (2) All normal people acquire a moral sense, whether or not they are given explicit moral instruction. Language resembles morality in these ways. There is considerable evidence from linguistics for linguistic universals. This suggests that (3) despite the first point, there are moral universals. If so, it might be possible to develop a moral epistemology that (...) is analogous to the theory of universal grammar in linguistics. In what follows, I will try to sketch what might be involved in such a moral epistemology. (shrink)

This anthology contains excerpts from some thirty-two important seventeenth- and eighteenth-century moral philosophers. Including a substantial introduction and extensive bibliographies, the anthology facilitates the study and teaching of early modern moral philosophy in its crucial formative period. As well as well-known thinkers such as Hobbes, Hume, and Kant, there are excerpts from a wide range of philosophers never previously assembled in one text, such as Grotius, Pufendorf, Nicole, Clarke, Leibniz, Malebranche, Holbach and Paley. Originally issued as a (...) two-volume edition in 1990, the anthology is now re-issued with a new foreword by Professor Schneewind, as a one-volume anthology to serve as a companion to his highly successful history of modern ethics, The Invention of Autonomy. The anthology provides many of the sources discussed in The Invention of Autonomy and taken together the two volumes will be an invaluable resource for the teaching of the history of modern moral philosophy. (shrink)

Despite being somewhat long in the tooth at the time, Aristotle, Hume and Kant were still dominating twentieth century moral philosophy. Much of the progress made in that century came from a detailed working through of each of their approaches by the expanding and increasingly professionalized corps of academic philosophers. And this progress can be measured not just by the quality and sophistication of moral philosophy at the end of that century, but also by the narrowing (...) of some of the gaps between Aristotelian, Humean and Kantian philosophers. (shrink)

© Editorial matter and selection, 2008 Deborah Cook. Introduction Moral philosophy used to be full of promises. In ancient times, it aimed at providing a guide to the good life that integrated moral matters with other concerns. In modern times, it set out to present a supreme principle of morality from which a full-blown system of obligations and permissions was meant to be derived, guiding or constraining our conduct. However, if Adorno is to be believed, the promises (...) of moral philosophy have not been fulfilled: neither the good life, nor even the moral life, is currently available. In this sense, his position can be characterized as a negative moral philosophy. What makes this position interesting is why Adorno thinks that both the good life and the moral life are blocked and what implications he draws from this in terms of criticizing the dominant strands of modern moral philosophy and suggesting how we should live our distorted and deformed lives. In this chapter we shall look at each of these aspects and ask the following questions: 1. Why can no one live the right life in our current social world? 2. Why does the task of moral philosophy today consist essentially in the critique of moral philosophy? 3. Does Adorno say anything about how we should live, or is his negative moral philosophy devoid of any practical guidance? The impossibility of right living today Adorno is not alone in thinking that something is problematic about ethical practice and theory in the modern social world. For example, contemporary Aristotelians often lament the breakdown of traditional social practices which underwrote the exercise of the virtues. (shrink)

Although this collection of articles is not formally a commentary on Elizabeth Anscombe's famous article of the same title, in which she criticised the moral philosophy prevalent in 1958, a number of the contributors do take Anscombe's work as a starting point. Taken together the collection could be seen as a demonstration of the extent to which moral philosophers have since attempted to answer Anscombe's challenge, and to develop an approach to their subject which, while psychologically plausible, (...) is neither based on divine law nor permissive of the impermissible. (shrink)

It is well known the harmful effects that savage capitalism has been causing to the environment since its introduction in a sphere in which a different logic and approach to nature are the essential conditions for the maintenance of the ecosystem and its complex relations between humans and non-human organisms. The amazon rainforest is a portion of the planet in which for thousands of years its human dwellers have been interacting with nature that it is understood beyond its physical condition. (...) Thus, to what extent Amazonian’s approaches to nature could be considered as a moral philosophy through which the way of conceptualizing nature and its non-human denizens enhances the continuity of life and the intimate relations between entities? To answer this question, I will explore the cosmological system of the Shuar of the Ecuadorian Amazon with whom I lived for 5 months between July and November 2018, and thereby elucidate the spiritual relations that this society has with the metaphysical domain of nature. (shrink)

This paper is concerned with the ethics of popularizing moral philosophy. In particular, it addresses the question of whether ethicists engaged in public debates should restrict themselves to acting as impartial informants or moderators rather than advocates of their own moral opinions. I dismiss the idea that being an impartial servant to moral debates is the default or even the only defensible way to publicly exercise ethical expertise and thus, to popularize moral philosophy. Using (...) a case example from the public debate about the human use of nonhuman animals, I highlight the benefits and risks of endorsing an advocate’s and a teacher’s or moderator’s role, respectively. I argue for a general requirement of judgment transparency which entails that the publicly engaged philosopher ought to be clear and consistent about the type of role she takes on, her publicly advanced opinions generally ought to be her professional ones and that she ought to flag her private opinions. I finally show that, despite general concerns about conflicts of interest, exercising ethical expertise and engaging in advocacy, i.e., acting as if one were a moral expert, are not incompatible modes of public engagement for the moral philosopher. (shrink)

Several recent articles have weighed in on the question of whether moral philosophers can be counted as moral experts. One argument denying this has been rejected by both sides of the debate. According to this argument, the extent of disagreement in modern moral philosophy prevents moral philosophers from being classified as moral experts. Call this the Argument From Disagreement. In this article, I defend a version of AD. Insofar as practical issues in moral (...) philosophy are characterized by disagreement between moral philosophers who are more or less equally well credentialed on the issue, non-philosophers have no good reasons to defer to their views. (shrink)

Although this collection of articles is not formally a commentary on Elizabeth Anscombe's famous article of the same title, in which she criticized the moral philosophy prevalent in 1958, a number of the contributors consider Anscombe's work as a starting point. The collection can be interpreted as a demonstration of the extent to which moral philosophers have since attempted to respond to Anscombe's challenge, and to develop an approach to their subject which is neither based on divine (...) law nor permissive of the impermissible. (shrink)

Probably to most students of Moral Philosophy there comes a time when they feel a vague sense of dissatisfaction with the whole subject. And the sense of dissatisfaction tends to grow rather than to diminish. It is not so much that the positions, and still more the arguments, of particular thinkers seem unconvincing, though this is true. It is rather that the aim of the subject becomes increasingly obscure. "What," it is asked, "are we really going to learn (...) by Moral Philosophy?" "What are books on Moral Philosophy really trying to show, and when their aim is clear, why are they so unconvincing and artificial?" And again: "Why is it so difficult to substitute anything better?" Personally, I have been led by growing dissatisfaction of this kind to wonder whether the reason may not be that the subject, at any rate as usually understood, consists in the attempt to answer an improper question. And in this article, I shall venture to contend that the existence of the whole subject, as usually understood, rests on a mistake, and on a mistake parallel to that on which rests, as I think, the subject usually called the Theory of Knowledge. (shrink)

Neither moral philosophy nor history provides a satisfactory explanation for Oskar Schindler's extraordinary rescue of more than 1,200 Jews during the Holocaust. Thomas Keneally's Schindler's Ark does. Although Schindler's Ark is technically a work of fiction, that generic label obscures its contribution as a fictionalised account of true events. By using a novelist's tools to tell an historical story, Keneally allows us to make inferences as to the motives of his protagonist and thereby helps us to understand what (...) propelled the moral behaviour of Oskar Schindler. (shrink)

Commonsense moral thinking holds that people have doxastic, contemplative, and expressive duties, that is, duties to or not to believe, seriously consider, and express certain ideas. This paper argues that moral and political philosophers face a high risk of violating any such duties, both because of the sensitivity and difficult of the subject matter, and because of various pernicious biases and influences philosophers face. We argue this leads to a dilemma, which we will not try to solve. Either (...) philosophers should reduce their risk by avoiding sensitive issues where they are likely to violate such duties or, for one reason or another, philosophers are to some degree exempt from such duties when doing their work. Either horn of the dilemma, we argue, has unpalatable implications. (shrink)

Firmly established as the standard text for undergraduate courses in ethics, this concise, lively book takes the reader on an in-depth tour of the major moral theories, always illustrating abstract ideas with concrete examples. Separate, self-contained chapters examine such theories as Egoism, Kantianism, Utilitarianism, Virtue Ethics, and the Social Contract Theory. Through this conceptual framework, the text addresses timely and provocative issues, including abortion, racism, euthanasia, poverty, marijuana, homosexuality, the death penalty, and vegetarianism. The text's versatility makes it an (...) ideal choice for use not only in ethical theory courses, but also in applied ethics courses of all kinds. (shrink)

ARCHIVES INTERNATIONALES D'HISTOIRE DES IDEES INTERNATIONAL ARCHIVES OF THE HISTORY OF IDEAS 33 PAUL J. OLSCAMP The Moral Philosophy of George Berkeley ..

The process of making ethical judgments is much more complex than studying only personal moral philosophy variables (idealism and relativism). The renewed interest in epistemic values (virtue and vice epistemology) in contemporary philosophy has shown significant relevance to understanding ethical behavior and such values may be better predictors than studying only idealism and relativism. The purpose of this exploratory study is to examine employees’ personal moral philosophies, optimism, epistemic values, and various organizational unethical practices as compared (...) to their managers. We used Rawwas’ items of epistemology in this study. The sample consisted of 262 managers and employees. The results revealed that managers were more sensitive to organizational unethical practices, scored less on epistemic vices, less on absolutism, and more on exceptionalism than employees were. However, there was no difference between managers and employees related to moderate and minor unethical organizational practices, situationism, subjectivism, optimism, and epistemic virtues. We provided discussion of the results and implications. (shrink)

This paper lays out the moral theory of philosopher and educator Maria Montessori (1870–1952). Based on a moral epistemology wherein moral concepts are grounded in a well-cultivated moral sense, Montessori develops a threefold account of moral life. She starts with an account of character as an ideal of individual self-perfection through concentrated attention on effortful work. She shows how respect for others grows from and supplements individual character, and she further develops a notion of social (...) solidarity that goes beyond cooperation toward shared agency. Partly because she attends to children's ethical lives, Montessori highlights how character, respect, and solidarity all appear first as prereflective, embodied orientations of agency. Full moral virtue takes up prereflective orientations reflectively and extends them through moral concepts. Overall, Montessori's ethic improves on features similar to some in Nietzschean, Kantian, Hegelian, or Aristotelian ethical theories while situating these within a developmental and perfectionist ethics. (shrink)

(1) For much of this century, moral philosophy has been constrained by the supposed absolute gap between is andought, and the consequent belief that the facts of life cannot of themselves yield an ethical blueprint for future action. For this reason, ethics has sustained an eerie existence largely apart from science. Its most respected interpreters still believe that reasoning about right and wrong can be successful without a knowledge of the brain, the human organ where all the decisions (...) about right and wrong are made. Ethical premises are typically treated in the manner of mathematical propositions: directives supposedly independent of human evolution, with a claim to ideal, eternal truth. (shrink)

Examining Thomas Hill Green's moral philosophy, Thomas defends a radically new perception of Green as an independent thinker rather than a devoted partisan of Kant or Hegel. Green's moral philosophy, argues Thomas, includes a widely misunderstood defense of free will, an innovative model of deliberation that rejects both Kantian and Humean conceptions of practical reason, a barely recognized theory of character, and an account of moral objectivity that involves no dependence on religion--all of which yield (...) a coherent body of moral philosophy that raises important problems neglected in contemporary ethics. (shrink)

This chapter presents a general account of the speculative and practical moral philosophy of eighteenth-century Scotland. It gives particular attention to three topics: the Scottish insistence that moral philosophy is an empirical, or ‘experimental’, science, grounded in what might now be called a phenomenology of the moral life, and intimately connected with the other elements of the ‘science of man’; the project of combining Hutchesonian moral sense theory with a Butlerian faculty of conscience; and (...) the attempt to combine an empirical and broadly anti-rationalist moral philosophy—a moral philosophy that had a central place for the concept of virtue, with a natural jurisprudence taken from Grotius and, especially, Pufendorf. Particular attention is paid to the practical moral philosophy which was the focus of much of the teaching of moral philosophy in Scotland. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Introduction Descartes' Ethics Spinoza's Ethics Leibniz's Ethics Conclusion.

This book lays out and examines three central aspects of the moral philosophy of Dietrich von Hildebrand: his notions of value, value response, and value blindness. This discussion is supplemented by analysis of the relationship between happiness and morality in von Hildebrand. Martin Cajthaml is the main author of the book; Vlastimil Vohánka contributed most of chapter 5.

Pt. 1. The Practice Of Prudence. 1.The Moral in the Theater of the World -- pt. 2. The Labor Of The Negative. 2.Terrorism: The Ideology of Identity -- 3. Psycho-Sociopathy: The Counterfeit of Conscience -- 4. The Technological Person: The Dominance of Desire.

This is the text of The Lindley Lecture for 1963, given by Richard B. Brandt (1910-1997), an American philosopher.

In moral philosophy the problem of virtue has been neglected for a long time. The renaissance of the ethics of vitrues goes back to the 60ies. It had shad light on many problematic issues of the ethic of rules, i. e. of deontologism and utilitarism, and presented itself as an alternative approach. Instead of the question "How should we act?" it focused on the question of the moral subject, i. e. on the problem of moral chracter. (...) The paper examnies some of the problems of the ethics of virtues. It deals with various definitions of the concept of virtue, as well as with the question wether it is to compete with the ethics of rules, or it is more probable today, that the two will enrich one another. The author also asks, whether the ethics of virues is still a valid ethical theory in our times. (shrink)