Unprincipled Virtue

Unprincipled Virtue PDF

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.

Unprincipled Virtue

Unprincipled Virtue PDF

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.

Knowledge, Virtue, and Action

Knowledge, Virtue, and Action PDF

Author: Tim Henning

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2013-09-23

Total Pages: 282

ISBN-13: 1136227245

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This volume brings together recent work by leading and up-and-coming philosophers on the topic of virtue epistemology. The prospects of virtue-theoretic analyses of knowledge depend crucially on our ability to give some independent account of what epistemic virtues are and what they are for. The contributions here ask how epistemic virtues matter apart from any narrow concern with defining knowledge; they show how epistemic virtues figure in accounts of various aspects of our lives, with a special emphasis on our practical lives. In essence, the essays here put epistemic virtues to work.

Virtue’s Reasons

Virtue’s Reasons PDF

Author: Noell Birondo

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2017-02-17

Total Pages: 318

ISBN-13: 1315314231

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Virtues and reasons are two of the most fruitful and important concepts in contemporary moral philosophy. Many writers have commented upon the close connection between virtues and reasons, but no one has done full justice to the complexity of this connection. It is generally recognized that the virtues not only depend upon reasons, but also sometimes provide them. The essays in this volume shed light on precisely how virtues and reasons are related to each other and what can be learned by exploring this relationship. Virtue’s Reasons is divided into three sections, each of them devoted to a general issue regarding the relationship between virtues and reasons. 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 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. This book will be of major interest to scholars working on virtue theory, the nature of moral character, and normative ethics.

Repression, Integrity and Practical Reasoning

Repression, Integrity and Practical Reasoning PDF

Author: G. Jaeger

Publisher: Springer

Published: 2012-06-19

Total Pages: 179

ISBN-13: 1137017864

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Repression receives little attention in philosophical literature. This study of cases of repression that inhibit an agent's deliberative access to his reasons argues that an agent cannot correctly deliberate about a reason to overcome repression as if he did so, he would already have overcome repression and so would have no reason to do so.

Practical Autonomy and Bioethics

Practical Autonomy and Bioethics PDF

Author: James Stacey Taylor

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2010-07-01

Total Pages: 396

ISBN-13: 113525530X

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This is the first volume in which an account of personal autonomy is developed that both captures the contours of this concept as it is used in social philosophy and bioethics, and is theoretically grounded in, and a part of, contemporary autonomy theory. James Stacey Taylor’s account is unique as it is explicitly a political one, recognizing that the attribution of autonomy to agents is dependent in part on their relationships with others and not merely upon their own mental states. The volume is distinctive in its examples, which touch on the ethics of using inducements to encourage persons to participate in medical research, the ethical issues associated with the use of antibiotics, and the ethical basis for both patient confidentiality and informed consent.

In Praise of Desire

In Praise of Desire PDF

Author: Nomy Arpaly

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2014

Total Pages: 337

ISBN-13: 0199348162

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"'In Praise of Desire' aims to show that ordinary desires belong at the heart of moral psychology, basing its thesis on a doctrine called Spare Conativism. It gives a full defence of the central role intrinsic desires have in our moral lives".

Practical Intelligence and the Virtues

Practical Intelligence and the Virtues PDF

Author: Daniel C. Russell

Publisher: OUP Oxford

Published: 2009-04-30

Total Pages: 459

ISBN-13: 0191569887

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One of the most important developments in modern moral philosophy is the resurgence of interest in the virtues. In this new book, Daniel Russell explores two important hopes for such an approach to moral thought: that starting from the virtues should cast light on what makes an action right, and that notions like character, virtue, and vice should yield a plausible picture of human psychology. Russell argues that the key to each of these hopes is an understanding of the cognitive and deliberative skills involved in the virtues. If right action is defined in terms of acting generously or kindly, then these virtues must involve skills for determining what the kind or generous thing to do would be on a given occasion. Likewise, Russell argues that understanding virtuous action as the intelligent pursuit of virtuous goals yields a promising picture of the psychology of virtue. This book develops an Aristotelian account of the virtue of practical intelligence or 'phronesis'—an excellence of deliberating and making choices—which Russell argues is a necessary part of every virtue. This emphasis on the roots of the virtues in the practical intellect contrasts with ambivalence about the practical intellect in much recent work on the virtues—a trend Russell argues is ultimately perilous for virtue theory. This book also takes a penetrating look at issues like the unity of the virtues, responsibility for character, and that elusive figure, 'the virtuous person'. Written in a clear and careful manner, Practical Intelligence and the Virtues will appeal to philosophers and students alike in moral philosophy and moral psychology.

From Valuing to Value

From Valuing to Value PDF

Author: David Sobel

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2016-11-03

Total Pages: 352

ISBN-13: 0191021261

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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.