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Noncognitivism and Autonomy Eamonn Callan
Document generated on 09/23/2021 5:34 p.m. Philosophical Inquiry in Education Noncognitivism and Autonomy Eamonn Callan Volume 23, Number 2, 2016 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1070470ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1070470ar See table of contents Publisher(s) Canadian Philosophy of Education Society ISSN 2369-8659 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this document Callan, E. (2016). Noncognitivism and Autonomy. Philosophical Inquiry in Education, 23(2). https://doi.org/10.7202/1070470ar Copyright ©, 2016 Eamonn Callan This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ Noncognitivism and Autonomy Eamonn Callan, University of Alberta The supposed failure of ethical cognitivism is the beginning of one com mon argument for the ideal of personal autonomy and its supporting social practices. The argument can be summarized as follows. There is no ethical knowledge that could conceivably be available to us, or at least all current claims to such knowledge are doubtful to a degree that makes them untenable. Therefore, experts to whose authority we should defer regarding ethical deci sions simply do not exist. That is tantamount to saying we should act autonomously in making ethical decisions and, if we are to grant the capacity and liberty to make such decisions to others, we need to develop educational and other social practices that nurture the relevant capacity and bestow the necessary liberty. -
"Fictionalism: Morality and Metaphor"
- 1 - Fictionalism: Morality and metaphor Richard Joyce Penultimate draft of paper appearing in F. Kroon & B. Armour-Garb (eds.), Philosophical Fictionalism (Oxford University Press, forthcoming). 1. Introduction Language and reflection often pull against each other. Ordinary ways of talking appear to commit speakers to ontologies that may, upon reflection, be deemed problematic for a variety of empirical, metaphysical, and/or epistemological reasons. The use of moral discourse, for example, appears to commit speakers to the existence of obligation, evil, desert, praiseworthiness (and so on), while metaethical reflection raises a host of doubts about how such properties could exist in the world and how we could have access to them if they did. One extreme solution to the tension is to give up reflection—to become like those “honest gentlemen” of England, as Hume described them, who “being always employ’d in domestic affairs, or amusing themselves in common recreations, have carried their thoughts very little beyond those objects” (Treatise 1.4.7.14). Hume sounds a touch envious of the unreflective idyll, but the very fact that he is penning a treatise on human nature shows that this is not a solution available to him; and, likewise, the very fact that you are reading this chapter shows that it’s unlikely to be a solution for you. Another extreme solution to the tension is to give up language—not in toto, of course, but selectively: to stop using those elements of discourse that are deemed to have unacceptable commitments. How radical this eliminativism is will depend on the nature of the problem. -
The Theory of Justice
Syllabus of the course: The Theory of Justice Утверждена Академическим советом ООП Протокол № 1от «31» августа 2018 г. Pre-requisites This course is based on knowledge and competences which were provided by the following disciplines: ● History of Philosophy ● General Ethics ● Analytic Ethics ● Political Philosophy ● Political Science Course Type: Elective Learning Objectives The objective of the course make the students familiar with the major contemporary theories of justice and the development of the necessary analytic skills of evaluation of any normative conception of justice as well as the capacity to participate in the public discourse on justice, which is about to emerge. Course Plan Ethics, Morality, Justice Language, Logic and Meaning of Justice Utilitarian Theory of Justice The Theory of Justice of John Rawls The Justice of Political Liberalism Libertarian Theory of Justice by Robert Nozick Justice by Agreement by David Gauthier Marxism as a Theory of Justice Feminism and Justice Communitarian Critique of Justice Just War Theory The Russian Historical Discourse of Justice 1. Ethics, Morality, Justice Ethics. The meaning of Ethics and Morality. Ethical Theory, General Ethics and Individual Ethics. The History of Morality. The Sociology of Morality. The Psychology of Morality. The stages of moral growth. Moralism, Immoralism, Amoralism. Human nature. Ethical skepticism. Metaethics. Theories of Metaethics. Naturalism. Emotivism. Universal Prescriptivism. Intuitivism. The nature of moral concepts. Good and Evil. Moral Relativism. Sentimentalism. Normative Morals. Moral Theory. Egoism. Psychological Egoism. Religious Ethics. Convention. Particularism. Teleological Ethics. Consequentialism. Utilitarianism. Hedonism. Deontology. Kant’s categorical imperative. Virtue Ethics. Morality and Rationality. Negative versus Politive Rights and Duties. Elitism. Applied Ethics. -
"Fictionalism in Metaethics"
- 1 - Fictionalism in metaethics Richard Joyce Penultimate draft of paper appearing in D. Plunkett & T. McPherson (eds.), Routledge Handbook of Metaethics (forthcoming). 1. Introduction Looking back, it is clear that humans have held massively mistaken beliefs about virtually every aspect of the world: the place of the Earth in the universe, the physical nature of everyday objects, where living things come from and how they reproduce, what happens to us when we die, and so forth. We are pretty good at getting things wrong. Often these errors can be corrected while the key concepts are revised rather than rejected. We didn’t decide that the Earth, stars, animals, death, etc., don’t exist; rather, we rectified our false beliefs about them and carried on talking about these topics (now, hopefully, more truly). Sometimes, however, the errors are so entrenched that the concepts in question seem beyond salvaging. Regarding angels, vitalistic life force, karmic reincarnation, tapu, supernatural divination, phlogiston, astrology, and so on, we didn’t simply undertake an internal correction to the concepts in question, but rather decided that the whole conceptual framework in question was faulty. It will be widely agreed that humans have held massively mistaken beliefs about morality. These mistakes may pertain to the substantive content of morality (believing that women should be subservient to men, for example) or to the general nature of morality (believing that God’s will determines moral properties, for example). (One might try to reduce the extent of moral error by plumping for a form of radical relativism, but then one would have to ascribe false beliefs about morality to all those absolutists.) Many philosophers maintain (or hope) that these mistakes in moral thinking are of the former variety, such that our moral concepts can be patched up and we can carry on talking (now, hopefully, more truly) about right and wrong, virtue and vice, obligations and responsibilities, and so on. -
Ethical Realism/Moral Realism Ethical Propositions That Refer to Objective Features May Be True If They Are Free of Subjectivis
Metaethics: Cognitivism Metaethics: What is morality, or “right”? Normative (prescriptive) ethics: How should people act? Descriptive ethics: What do people think is right? Applied ethics: Putting moral ideas into practice Thin moral concepts Thick moral concepts more general: good, bad, right, and wrong more specic: courageous, inequitable, just, or dishonest Centralism- thin concepts are antecedent to the thick ones Non-centralism- thick concepts are a sucient starting point for understanding thin ones because thin and thick concepts are equal. Normativity is a non-excisable aspect of language and there is no way of analyzing thick moral concepts into a purely descriptive element attached to a thin moral evaluation, thus undermining any fundamental division between facts and norms. Cognitivism ethical propositions are truth-apt (can be true or false), unlike questions or commands Ethical subjectivism/moral anti-realism Ethical realism/moral realism True ethical propositions are a function of subjective features Ethical propositions that refer to objective features may be true if they are free of subjectivism Moral relativism Moral universalism/ Robust and Minimal Robust moral objectivism/ nobody is objectively right or wrong universal morality 1. Semantic thesis: moral predicates 3. Metaphysical thesis: the facts in regards to diagreements about are to refer to moral properties so and properties of #1 are robust-- moral questions a system of ethics, or a universal ethic, moral statements represent moral their metaphysical status is not applies universally to "all" facts, and express propositions that relevantly dierent from ordinary are true or false non-moral facts and properties Cultural relativism not all forms of moral universalism 2. -
Truth: in Ethics and Elsewhere
ANALYTIC TEACHING Vol. 19, No 1 Truth: In Ethics and Elsewhere This paper was presented at the North American Association for Community of Inquiry (NAACI) conference held in La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA, in July, 1998. Susan T. Garder All truths wait in all things, They neither hasten their own discovery nor resist it .... Walt Whitman, «Song of Myself» THE SEDUCTION OF RELATIVITY t is popular to make the claim, particularly when it comes to questions of value, that there is no I such thing as «truth.» For some, a belief in social or cultural relativism is the source of such scepticism. Such individuals would argue that it is chauvinistic arrogance to believe that just because, from one’s own point of view, practices carried out by other cultures appear to be immoral, e.g., cliterodectomies on unwilling young women, that somehow they are immoral per se. Others would argue for an even more radical form of relativism, no doubt stemming from a misguided view of equal- ity, namely that any individual viewpoint is a good (or bad) as anyone else’s: «from my point of view `x’ is immoral, but I wouldn’t dream of saddling anyone else with my morals.» Still others believe that, despite the drawbacks of a relativistic position, they must nonetheless remain sceptical about the possi- bility of truth in ethics in order to distance themselves from those who have inflicted enormous harm on others in the name of having a privileged access to truth. The Spanish inquisition, the holocaust, the decimation of indigenous people, were all carried out by individuals most of whom believed that they had truth on their side. -
Eritis Sicut Deus: Moral Theory and the Sin of Pride
View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Asbury Theological Seminary Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers Volume 3 Issue 4 Article 4 10-1-1986 Eritis Sicut Deus: Moral Theory and the Sin of Pride Gilbert Meilaender Follow this and additional works at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy Recommended Citation Meilaender, Gilbert (1986) "Eritis Sicut Deus: Moral Theory and the Sin of Pride," Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers: Vol. 3 : Iss. 4 , Article 4. Available at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy/vol3/iss4/4 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers by an authorized editor of ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. ERITIS SICUT DEUS: MORAL THEORY AND THE SIN OF PRIDE Gilbert Meilaender The fundamental temptation, especially for those who are serious about the moral life, is always the same: failing in trust, to want to be like God, knowing good and evil. "What the serpent has in mind," Karl Barth has written, "is the establishment of ethics. "1 This is an overstatement, but it points us toward an important truth. The number of possible moral theories is not large, though their varieties are infinitely complex. C. S. Lewis has a simple illustration which directs attention to the features of life that any moral theory must consider. Think of us as a fleet of ships sailing in formation. -
Realism and Anti-Realism in Mathematics
REALISM AND ANTI-REALISM IN MATHEMATICS The purpose of this essay is (a) to survey and critically assess the various meta- physical views - Le., the various versions of realism and anti-realism - that people have held (or that one might hold) about mathematics; and (b) to argue for a particular view of the metaphysics of mathematics. Section 1 will provide a survey of the various versions of realism and anti-realism. In section 2, I will critically assess the various views, coming to the conclusion that there is exactly one version of realism that survives all objections (namely, a view that I have elsewhere called full-blooded platonism, or for short, FBP) and that there is ex- actly one version of anti-realism that survives all objections (namely, jictionalism). The arguments of section 2 will also motivate the thesis that we do not have any good reason for favoring either of these views (Le., fictionalism or FBP) over the other and, hence, that we do not have any good reason for believing or disbe- lieving in abstract (i.e., non-spatiotemporal) mathematical objects; I will call this the weak epistemic conclusion. Finally, in section 3, I will argue for two further claims, namely, (i) that we could never have any good reason for favoring either fictionalism or FBP over the other and, hence, could never have any good reason for believing or disbelieving in abstract mathematical objects; and (ii) that there is no fact of the matter as to whether fictionalism or FBP is correct and, more generally, no fact of the matter as to whether there exist any such things as ab- stract objects; I will call these two theses the strong epistemic conclusion and the metaphysical conclusion, respectively. -
Fictionalism for Cheap
FICTIONALISM IN METAPHYSICS. EDITED BY MARK ELI KALDERON. OXFORD: CLARENDON PRESS, 2005. PP I-X, 1-354. Zoltán Gendler Szabó Yale University Anti-realists about a particular region of discourse think the subject matter is either non- existent or non-objective. Typically they provide a semantic exposition of their view. Non-factualists argue that the declarative sentences within the discourse are not truth-apt. Deflationists concede that they are, but claim that their content is not representational. Indeterminists accept that the sentences have representational contents, but not contents that can determine truth-values. Reductionists propose contents yielding determinate truth-values, but insist that those contents are not what we would naively think they are. All such views face an uphill battle against the realist who thinks that “if the theory seems to say, for example, that every person has a guardian angel in heaven, then the theory is true only if the angels in heaven really exist.”1 Fictionalists are a new breed of anti-realists who don’t fight these semantic battles. They subscribe to a full-blown realist construal of the disputed discourse, but maintain that the point of accepting claims within the relevant discourse is not to commit ourselves to the truth of those claims. If we were clearheaded about what the discourse is for, we would accept those claims without believing them. Hermeneutic fictionalists think we are in fact clearheaded; revolutionary fictionalists think we should be.2 1 Gideon Rosen, ‘Problems in the History of Fictionalism.’ In Kalderon (2005): 14. 2 The hermeneutic/revolutionary distinction is from Burgess (1983). -
Essays on Ethical Universalizability
University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Faculty Publications - Department of Philosophy Philosophy, Department of 1985 Introduction from Morality and Universality: Essays on Ethical Universalizability Nelson T. Potter University of Nebraska - Lincoln, [email protected] Mark Timmons University of Illinois Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/philosfacpub Part of the Continental Philosophy Commons, and the Ethics and Political Philosophy Commons Potter, Nelson T. and Timmons, Mark, "Introduction from Morality and Universality: Essays on Ethical Universalizability" (1985). Faculty Publications - Department of Philosophy. 23. https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/philosfacpub/23 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Philosophy, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faculty Publications - Department of Philosophy by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Potter & Timmons in Nelson Potter and Mark Timmons (editors), Morality and Universality, ix-xxxii. Copyright 1985, D. Reidel Publishing. Used by permission. INTRODUCTION In the past 25 years or so, the issue of ethical universalizability has figured prominently in theoretical as well as practical ethics. The term, ‘universalizability’ used in connection with ethical considerations, was apparently first introduced in the mid-1950s by R. M. Hare to refer to what he characterized as a logical thesis -
"Moral Fictionalism"
- 1 - Moral fictionalism* Richard Joyce Penultimate draft of the paper appearing in M.E. Kalderon (ed.), Fictionalism in Metaphysics (OUP: 2005) 287-313 Were I not afraid of appearing too philosophical, I should remind my reader of that famous doctrine, supposed to be fully proved in modern times, “That tastes and colours, and all other sensible qualities, lie not in the bodies, but merely in the senses.” The case is the same with beauty and deformity, virtue and vice. This doctrine, however, takes off no more from the reality of the latter qualities, than from that of the former; nor need it give any umbrage either to critics or moralists. Though colours were allowed to lie only in the eye, would dyers or painters ever be less regarded or esteemed? There is a sufficient uniformity in the senses and feelings of mankind, to make all these qualities the objects of art and reasoning, and to have the greatest influence on life and manners. And as it is certain, that the discovery above-mentioned in natural philosophy, makes no alteration on action and conduct; why should a like discovery in moral philosophy make any alteration? David Hume, “The Sceptic” in Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary (1742) 1. IF THERE’S NOTHING THAT WE MORALLY OUGHT TO DO, THEN WHAT OUGHT WE TO DO? On the very last page of his book Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, John Mackie (1977) suggests that moral discourse—which he has argued is deeply error-laden—can continue with the status of a “useful fiction.” I presume that most people will agree, for a variety of reasons, that morality is in some manner useful. -
Nietzsche's and Pessoa's Psychological Fictionalism
Nietzsche’s and Pessoa’s Psychological Fictionalism Antonio Cardiello* & Pietro Gori** Keywords Nietzsche; Pessoa; Vaihinger; Mead; Fictionalism; Subjectivity; Neo-Kantianism. Abstract In a note to G.R.S. Mead’s Quests Old and New, where he Found a section devoted to Hans Vaihinger’s main ideas, Fernando Pessoa reFlects on the consequences oF the Fictionalist approach to both our perception oF the I and the value oF consciousness. These questions correspond to some statements that we Find in Nietzsche’s writings, which in particular Vaihinger reFers to in his Die Philosophie des Als-ob. Our aim is thus to compare Nietzsche’s and Pessoa’s view oF the I and consciousness, and to deal with their psychology by making reFerence to Vaihinger’s Fictionalism. Palavras-chave Nietzsche; Pessoa; Vaihinger; Mead; Ficcionalismo; Subjectividade; Neokantismo. Resumo Num apontamento relacionado com a leitura de Quests Old and New de G.R.S. Mead, que revisita as teses principais de Hans Vaihinger, Fernando Pessoa reFlecte sobre as consequências de uma abordagem Ficcionalista quanto à percepção do eu e ao valor da consciência. As questões que Pessoa coloca encontram correspondência com os escritos de Nietzsche a quem Vaihinger se reFere, em particular, no seu livro Philosophie des Als-ob. O nosso intuito é o de aproFundar a comparação entre a concepção do eu e da consciência em Nietzsche e Pessoa, reconstruindo as posições de ambos nos moldes do Ficcionalismo de Vaihinger. * IFILNOVA – Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas – Universidade Nova de Lisboa. ** IFILNOVA – Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas – Universidade Nova de Lisboa. Cardiello & Gori Psychological Fictionalism Sou nada..