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Sir Karl Popper (1902-1994) is one of the most controversial and widely read philosophers of the 20th century. Volume III examines Popper's contribution to our understanding of logic, mathematics, physics, biology and the social sciences, from economics to education
Stephen Ingram defends a robustly realistic metaethical theory, based on the concept of normative arbitrariness, of which he provides the first in-depth analysis. He argues that, in order to capture the normative non-arbitrariness of moral choice, we must commit to the existence of robustly stance-independent, categorical, irreducibly normative, non-natural moral facts. Specifically, he identifies five ways in which a metaethical theory might fail to capture the non-arbitrariness of moral choice. The first involves claims about the bruteness of moral attitudes or facts. The second involves claims about the privileging of some attitudes over others. The third involves the claim that some meta...
What is moral progress? Are we striving for moral progress when we seek to ‘make the world a better place’? What connects the different ways in which moral agents, their actions, and the world can become morally better? This book proposes an explication of the abstract concept of moral progress and explores its relation to our moral lives. Integrating the perspectives of rival normative theories, it draws a clear distinction between ethical and moral progress and makes the case that moral progress can neither happen merely in theory, nor come about by a fluke. Still, the ideal of moral progress as a deliberate improvement in practices with a positive impact on the world is but one of several types of moral progress, relating in different ways to the theoretical and practical capacities of moral agents. No elevated level of sophistication in these capacities is required for moral progress to be possible, and the abstract idea of moral progress need not be on moral agents’ minds in the pursuit of the morally better. However, a desire for impactful moral progress, far from being a moral fetish, marks a particularly valuable moral outlook.
Oxford Studies in Metaethics is the only publication devoted exclusively to original philosophical work in the foundations of ethics. It provides an annual selection of much of the best new scholarship being done in the field. Its broad purview includes work being done at the intersections of ethical theory with metaphysics, epistemology, philosophy of language, and philosophy of mind. The essays included in the series provide an excellent basis for understanding recent developments in the field; those who would like to acquaint themselves with the current state of play in metaethics would do well to start here.
In this new edition of Foundations for Moral Relativism a distinguished moral philosopher tames a bugbear of current debate about cultural difference. J. David Velleman shows that different communities can indeed be subject to incompatible moralities, because their local mores are rationally binding. At the same time, he explains why the mores of different communities, even when incompatible, are still variations on the same moral themes. The book thus maps out a universe of many moral worlds without, as Velleman puts it, "moral black holes”. The six self-standing chapters discuss such diverse topics as online avatars and virtual worlds, lying in Russian and truth-telling in Quechua, the pleasure of solitude and the fear of absurdity. Accessibly written, this book presupposes no prior training in philosophy.
Ethics: Essential Readings in Moral Theory is an outstanding anthology of the most important topics, theories and debates in ethics, compiled by one of the leading experts in the field. It includes sixty-six extracts covering the central domains of ethics: why be moral? the meaning of moral language morality and objectivity consequentialism deontology virtue and character value and well-being moral psychology applications: including abortion, famine relief and consent. Included are both classical extracts from Plato, Aristotle, Hume, Kant and Mill, as well as contemporary classics from philosophers such as Thomas Nagel, Thomas Scanlon, Martha Nussbaum, Derek Parfit, and Peter Singer. A key feature of the anthology is that it covers the perennial topics in ethics as well as very recent ones, such as moral psychology, responsibility and experimental philosophy. Each section is introduced and placed in context by the editor, making this an ideal anthology for anyone studying ethics or ethical theory.
In this book, Ilhan Inan questions the classical definition of curiosity as a desire to know. Working in an area where epistemology and philosophy of language overlap, Inan forges a link between our ability to become aware of our ignorance and our linguistic aptitude to construct terms referring to things unknown. The book introduces the notion of inostensible reference (or reference to the unknown). Ilhan connects this notion to related concepts in philosophy of language: knowledge by acquaintance and knowledge by description; the referential and the attributive uses of definite descriptions; the de re/de dicto distinction; and Kripke’s distinction between rigid and accidental designators...
This book develops a new approach to naturalizing phenomenology. The author proposes to integrate phenomenology with the mechanistic framework that offers new methodological perspectives for studying complex mental phenomena such as consciousness. While mechanistic explanatory models are widely applied in cognitive science, their approach to describing subjective phenomena is limited. The author argues that phenomenology can fill this gap. He proposes two novel ways of integrating phenomenology and mechanism. First, he presents a new reading of phenomenological analyses as functional analyses. Such functional phenomenology delivers a functional sketch of a target system and provides constraints on the space of possible mechanisms. Second, he develops the neurophenomenological approach in the direction of dynamic modeling of experience. He shows that neurophenomenology can deliver dynamical constraints on mechanistic models and thus inform the search for an underlying mechanism. Mechanisms and Consciousness will be of interest to scholars and advanced students working in phenomenology, philosophy of mind, and the cognitive sciences.
Philosopher David Velleman compares our social interactions to the interactions among improvisational actors on stage.
The fox knows many things, the Greeks said, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. In his most comprehensive work, Ronald Dworkin argues that value in all its forms is one big thing: that what truth is, life means, morality requires, and justice demands are different aspects of the same large question. He develops original theories on a great variety of issues very rarely considered in the same book: moral skepticism, literary, artistic, and historical interpretation, free will, ancient moral theory, being good and living well, liberty, equality, and law among many other topics. What we think about any one of these must stand up, eventually, to any argument we find compelling about the rest. ...