Value Judgement: Improving Our Ethical Beliefs
James Griffin
Language: English
Pages: 192
ISBN: 0198752318
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In this elegantly written book James Griffin offers a fresh examination of the fundamental questions of ethics. At the heart of the book lies the question of how we can improve our ethical judgements and beliefs. In addressing this central dilemma, Griffin discusses such key issues of moral philosophy as defining a good life, locating the boundaries of the natural world, how values relate to the world, judging the limits human capacity, and where moral norms originate. Beyond these considerations, he gives a critical assessment of the aims of such prominent philosophical traditions as utilitarianism, deontology, and virtue ethics. Value Judgement gives a clear and compelling depiction of moral philosophy which will interest readers of all levels.
The Cambridge Companion to Quine (Cambridge Companions to Philosophy)
The Development from Kant to Hegel: With Chapters on the Philosophy of Religion
What is Philosophy? (European Perspectives in Social Thought and Cultural Criticism)
'understanding', 'perception') on the one side and 'desire' (or 'feeling', 'sentiment', 'passion') on the other, as marking two largely independent manifestations of the human mind. They thus have to explain how reason and desire interact, or should interact, and from the time of Plato they have resorted to political metaphors. Those philosophers of a rational bent (for example, Plato and Kant) assign 'reason' a commanding authority over human life. Others of an anti-theoretical, empirical bent
certain interests'. And this semantic analysis seems to be an analysis in just Moore's prohibited sense. What is more, it looks promisingly naturalist. We should say that a tree had good roots, because roots anchor and feed, and these roots do just that. Such judgements seems to be well within the bounds of the natural 'world. Now, I think that most nouns that can be modified by 'good' apply to things with a function or role or purpose, and that the modifier 'good' applies when they fulfil the
might reasonably expect to follow. It is not that piecemeal appeal to intuition shows nothing. It is just that the doubts that it raises are very strong. 1 It may well be that some intuitions are as sound moral beliefs as we shall ever get. Others, however, clearly are not, and there are no internal marks distinguishing the first lot from the second. Intuitions, despite the misleading suggestion in their name of a special sort of perception into moral reality, are just beliefs. Some of those
description usually offered is 'deliberately killing the innocent'. Yet the sailors deliberately kill the innocent cabin-boy, and the workers deliberately dynamite the innocent fat tourist. Perhaps the most common approach is to identify prohibited kinds and then offer a further account of exceptions--say, competing obligations that outweigh the prohibition. But we cannot respond that in the cabin-boy and grotto cases the wrongness of the act is outweighed by the amount of good at stake, because
remarks: '[T]he grim society of China did not give me the chance to understand and pursue life. I thought of Chai Ling's words: "We use courage that defies death to fight for the life that's worth living." I remembered the words of the four intellectuals: "We do not seek death; we seek genuine life"' ( Lu 1990: 211). 11. This explanation of 'can't' may look culture-bound. It may still seem to rest on modern Western conceptions of 'suitable settled dispositions', 'sustainable social order', and
