Suchergebnisse

Situating Sellars's ethical in the contemporary landscape -- Sellars's synoptic vision -- A new naturalism -- Moral judgments as shared intentions -- What are Sellarsian we-intentions? -- Practical reasoning and the logic of intentions -- Material practical inference -- Cooperative rationality and we-intentions -- Defeasible rules and the particularist challenge -- Rules, pattern-governed behavior, and collective attitudes -- Moral motivation 1, against the humean account -- Moral motivation 2, Sellars's Kantian account -- Against moral foundationalism -- Categorical validity and the necessity of community -- Sellars's mistaken formalism -- Sellars's ethical naturalism.

The divine purpose theory (DPT)—according to which that human life is meaningful to the extent that it fulfills some purpose or plan to which God has directed us—encounters well-known Euthyphro problems. Some theists attempt to avoid these problems by appealing to God's essential goodness, à la the modified divine command theory (DCT) of Adams and Alston. However, recent criticisms of the modified DCT show its conception of God's goodness to be incoherent; and these criticisms can be shown to present an analogous set of problems for the DPT. Further, the argument can be extended to any account of meaningfulness according to which the value of what humans do can only be conferred by God. Thus, it would seem that there is no tenable version of the view that meaningfulness is conferred on human life by some act or attitude of God's.

The free will theodicy (a standard theistic response to the problem of evil) places significant value on free will: free will is of such substantial value, that God's gift of free will to humans was justified, even though this gift foreseeably (and regularly) results in the most monstrous of evils. I will argue that when a state criminalizes sin (by punishing producers of sinful materials such as illicit drugs, or punishing consumers), it can restrict or eliminate citizens' exercise of metaphysical free will with respect to choosing to partake in or refrain from these activities. Given the value placed on free will in the free will theodicy, theists who endorse this theodicy should thus oppose the criminalization of what I will call Millian sins—that is, actions which are immoral, but which do not directly harm another person. In other words, such theists should oppose legal moralism.

Recent defenders of the divine command theory like Adams and Alston have confronted the Euthyphro dilemma by arguing that although God's commands make right actions right, God is morally perfect and hence would never issue unjust or immoral commandments. On their view, God's nature is the standard of moral goodness, and God's commands are the source of all obligation. I argue that this view of divine goodness fails because it strips God's nature of any features that would make His goodness intelligible. An adequate solution to the Euthyphro dilemma may require that God be constrained by a standard of goodness that is external to Himself – itself a problematic proposal for many theists.

This book shows how a sophisticated version of pragmatism, resting on a novel conception of rationality, can justify a range of important practices, including our practices of moral and epistemic evaluation, as well as our practice of making judgments regarding free will and moral responsibility

"This is the first volume devoted exclusively to the practical philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars. It features original essays by leading Sellars scholars that examine his ethical theory, his theory of practical reasoning, and his theory of intentional agency. While most scholarship on Sellars's philosophy has focused on his epistemology, metaphysics, or philosophy of language and mind, Sellars himself regarded his practical philosophy as central to his overall project of situating rational beings within the natural order. The chapters in this volume address this neglected area of Sellars's philosophy. The chapters are divided into thematic sections covering Sellars's theory of we-intentions - influential in contemporary debates on collective intentionality - naturalism and the manifest image, and the moral point of view. Together, they demonstrate how Sellars's practical philosophy contributes to important debates in contemporary philosophy regarding, for example, expressivist approaches to moral thought and group agency in the collective intentionality literature. Ethics, Practical Reasoning, Agency: Wilfrid Sellars's Practical Philosophy will appeal to scholars and advanced students interested in Wilfrid Sellars, American philosophy, and ethics"--

"This is the first volume devoted exclusively to the practical philosophy of Wilfrid Sellars. It features original essays by leading Sellars scholars that examine his ethical theory, his theory of practical reasoning, and his theory of intentional agency. While most scholarship on Sellars's philosophy has focused on his epistemology, metaphysics, or philosophy of language and mind, Sellars himself regarded his practical philosophy as central to his overall project of situating rational beings within the natural order. The chapters in this volume address this neglected area of Sellars's philosophy. The chapters are divided into thematic sections covering Sellars's theory of we-intentions - influential in contemporary debates on collective intentionality - naturalism and the manifest image, and the moral point of view. Together, they demonstrate how Sellars's practical philosophy contributes to important debates in contemporary philosophy regarding, for example, expressivist approaches to moral thought and group agency in the collective intentionality literature. Ethics, Practical Reasoning, Agency: Wilfrid Sellars's Practical Philosophy will appeal to scholars and advanced students interested in Wilfrid Sellars, American philosophy, and ethics"--

Drawing on a rich pragmatist tradition, this book offers an account of the different kinds of 'oughts', or varieties of normativity, that we are subject to, and contends that there is no conflict between normativity and the world as science describes it. The authors argue that normative claims aim to evaluate, to urge us to do or not do something, and to tell us how a state of affairs ought to be. These claims articulate forms of action-guidance that are different in kind from descriptive claims, with a wholly distinct practical and expressive character. This account suggests that there are no normative facts, and so nothing that needs any troublesome shoehorning into a scientific account of the world. This work explains that, nevertheless, normative claims are constrained by the world, and are answerable to reason and argumentation, in a way that makes them truth-apt and objective

Drawing on a rich pragmatist tradition, this work offers an account of the different kinds of 'oughts', or varieties of normativity, that we are subject to contends that there is no conflict between normativity and the world as science describes it. The authors argue that normative claims aim to evaluate, to urge us to do or not do something, and to tell us how a state of affairs ought to be. These claims articulate forms of action-guidance that are different in kind from descriptive claims, with a wholly distinct practical and expressive character. This account suggests that there are no normative facts, and so nothing that needs any troublesome shoehorning into a scientific account of the world.