A Dialectic of Morals—III

1941 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 350-394
Author(s):  
Mortimer J. Adler
Keyword(s):  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
First Principle ◽  
Exercise Preference ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Cultural Location ◽  
Ultimate Principle

In the preceding sections of this essay, I have outlined a dialectical procedure whereby a doubting mind might be led to the recognition of moral truth. What has been given is the bare plot of a conversation between teacher and student. The student was, at the beginning, a skeptic about moral matters, denying the objectivity of moral knowledge, supposing that all moral judgments were a matter of opinion, entirely relative to the individual or to his cultural location at a given time and place. The teacher, by asking him to explain the undeniable fact that men exercise preference, gradually made him realize that his own criteria for preference — pleasure and quantity of pleasure — had a certain universal validity; and then, as a result of seeing the inadequacy of these criteria, the student began to understand that happiness, rather than pleasure, was the ultimate principle of moral judgments. The crucial steps in the argument were: (1) the distinction between pleasure as one among many objects of desire and pleasure as the satisfaction of any desire; (2) the enumeration of the variety of goods which are objects of human desire; (3) the point that only the totality of goods could completely satisfy desire; (4) the realization that this totality of goods, leaving nothing to be desired, is the end of all our seeking, and that everything else is sought for the sake of its attainment; (5) the conception of happiness as “all good things,” a whole constituted by every type of good, the complete good being the end, the incomplete good its parts or constitutive means; (6) the conclusion that the end, as the first principle in the practical order, is the ultimate criterion of preference, for preferor choice is exercised only with respect to means, and hence we should, in every case, prefer whatever is more conducive to the attainment of happiness.

Cautiously optimistic rationalism may not be cautious enough

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin F. Landy
Keyword(s):  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Judgments

Abstract May expresses optimism about the source, content, and consequences of moral judgments. However, even if we are optimistic about their source (i.e., reasoning), some pessimism is warranted about their content, and therefore their consequences. Good reasoners can attain moral knowledge, but evidence suggests that most people are not good reasoners, which implies that most people do not attain moral knowledge.

Moral Truth

Dialogue ◽  
1987 ◽  
Vol 26 (3) ◽  
pp. 437-452
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Truth Claims

Is worrying about whether moral judgments are true or false a philosophical waste of time? It can seem to be if moral truth claims are redundant on thejudgments they claim to be true. If to claim that the judgment “x is wrong” is true is simply to judge x wrong, anyone who is prepared to make judgments can consistently make truth claims. A concern for moral truth is then merely a concern for whether anything is right or wrong, not a separable concern for whether moral judgments are true or false.

GENRE OF IN MODERN TATAR LITERATURE: FEATURES OF FUNCTIONING (BASED ON THE MATERIAL OF R. GABDULKHAKOVA'S "SMALL" PROSE)

2021 ◽  
pp. 83-90
Author(s):  
В.Р. Аминева
Keyword(s):  
Space Time ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
First Person ◽  
The Third ◽  
Third Person ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Lyrical Subject ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Third Person

На материале произведений современной татарской писательницы Р. Габдулхаковой выявляются конститутивные черты жанра парча в современной татарской литературе. Охарактеризованы жанровые разновидности парчи в творчестве Р. Габдулхаковой, которые соответствуют двум направлениям сюжетного движения: от внешнего к внутреннему или от единичного к универсальному и двум типам повествования - от 1-го или от 3-го лица. Художественное завершение в парчах первого типа определяется постижением некой нравственной истины, вытекающей из лично пережитой лирическим субъектом ситуации, в парчах второго типа оно создается переходом от отдельных явлений к их суммирующему итогу. Сделан вывод о том, что внутреннюю меру жанра определяет характер соотношения повествовательной фабулы и обобщающей ее «концовки». Описаны свойственные этому жанру пространственно-временные отношения и принципы организации субъектной сферы. Структурообразующая роль в парчах Р. Габдулхаковой отводится субъективно-лирическому началу в повествовании. В произведениях писательницы проявились как особенности ее творческой индивидуальности, так и типологические черты женской прозы в целом с ее повышенной эмоциональностью, автобиографичностью и проникновенностью. Большинство миниатюр Р. Габдулхаковой написаны от первого лица и представляют сознание женщины, сосредоточенной на переживании своего одиночества и «холода жизни», безответной любви и позднего раскаяния, боли утраты, преследующей каждого человека после ухода матери. Парчи, написанные от третьего лица, раскрывают сознание человека, знающего о существовании объективных закономерностей и пытающегося найти личный выход из безнадежных ситуаций. В творчестве Р. Габдулхаковой парча функционирует как синтетический жанр, вбирающий в себя элементы других жанровых форм. On the material of works of the modern Tatar writer R. Gabdulhakova the constitutive features of the genre of the parcha are revealed. Genre varieties of parcha in the work of R. Gabdulkhakova are characterized, which correspond to two directions of plot movement: from the external to the internal or from the individual to the universal, and two types of narrative-from 1 or 3 persons. Artistic completion in the parcha of the first type is determined by the realization of a certain moral truth arising from the situation personally experienced by the lyrical subject, in the parcha of the second type it is created by the transition from individual phenomena to their summing result. It is concluded that the internal measure of the genre determines the nature of the relationship between the narrative plot and its generalizing "ending". Space-time relations and principles of organization of the subject sphere peculiar to this genre are described. The structure-forming role in the parcha of R. Gabdulkhakova is assigned to the subjective-lyrical beginning in the narrative. The works of the writer manifested both the features of her creative individuality and the typological features of female prose in general with its increased emotionality, autobiography and penetration. Most of R. Gabdulhakova’s miniatures are written in the first person and represent the consciousness of a woman focused on experiencing her loneliness and “cold life”, unrequited love and late repentance, the pain of loss that haunts every person after leaving her mother. Рarcha written in the third person reveal the consciousness of a person who knows about the existence of objective laws and tries to find a personal way out of hopeless situations. Allegorical or symbolic imagery at the same time turns a personal scenario - into a typical, universal human one. In the work of R. Gabdulhakova parcha functions as a synthetic genre, incorporating elements of other genre forms.

Speaking (of) Faces

2020 ◽  
pp. 197-223
Author(s):  
Elizabeth D. Harvey
Keyword(s):  
Facial Expression ◽  
Speech Acts ◽  
Human Subjects ◽  
Social Geography ◽  
Individual Subject ◽  
Modern Psychology ◽  
Measure For Measure ◽  
The Face ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
The Individual

Measure for Measure is a play that reveals how bodily and affective language is entangled with anatomical understandings of muscles, gesture, and early modern psychology. The face was the primary map for the passions and the mobility of shifting affects, as well as the body’s primary social façade; its complex ability to register or to contain emotion is embedded in the languages of intersubjective interaction, a social geography of communication. This chapter explores how passionate expression is registered as somatic speech acts through readings of facial expression and in moments of disguise (veiling, muffling, substitution). The play stages how human desire flows between and among people, how it solicits and resists legal and political regulation, and how it operates invisibly both as a felt force for the individual subject and as an uncontainable force moving between human subjects.

Self, Indian theories of

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.S. Rukmani
Keyword(s):  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
The Other ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Inner Self ◽  
Spiritual Energy ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Universe ◽  
Ultimate Principle ◽  
Ultimate Nature

Hindu thought traces its different conceptions of the self to the earliest extant Vedic sources composed in the Sanskrit language. The words commonly used in Hindu thought and religion for the self are jīva (life), ātman (breath), jīvātman (life-breath), puruṣa (the essence that lies in the body), and kṣetrajña (one who knows the body). Each of these words was the culmination of a process of inquiry with the purpose of discovering the ultimate nature of the self. By the end of the ancient period, the personal self was regarded as something eternal which becomes connected to a body in order to exhaust the good and bad karma it has accumulated in its many lives. This self was supposed to be able to regain its purity by following different spiritual paths by means of which it can escape from the circle of births and deaths forever. There is one more important development in the ancient and classical period. The conception of Brahman as both immanent and transcendent led to Brahman being identified with the personal self. The habit of thought that tried to relate every aspect of the individual with its counterpart in the universe (Ṛg Veda X. 16) had already prepared the background for this identification process. When the ultimate principle in the subjective and objective spheres had arrived at their respective ends in the discovery of the ātman and Brahman, it was easy to equate the two as being the same spiritual ‘energy’ that informs both the outer world and the inner self. This equation had important implications for later philosophical growth. The above conceptions of the self-identity question find expression in the six systems of Hindu thought. These are known as āstikadarśanas or ways of seeing the self without rejecting the authority of the Vedas. Often, one system or the other may not explicitly state their allegiance to the Vedas, but unlike Buddhism or Jainism, they did not openly repudiate Vedic authority. Thus they were āstikadarśanas as opposed to the others who were nāstikadarśanas. The word darśana for philosophy is also significant if one realizes that philosophy does not end with only an intellectual knowing of one’s self-identity but also culminates in realizing it and truly becoming it.

scholarly journals Defusing the Regress Challenge to Debunking Arguments

2020 ◽  
Vol 50 (6) ◽  
pp. 785-800
Author(s):  
Shang Long Yeo
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Debunking Arguments

AbstractsA debunking argument contends that some target moral judgments were produced by unreliable processes and concludes that such judgments are unjustified. Debunking arguments face a regress challenge: to show that a process is unreliable at tracking the moral truth, we need to rely on other moral judgments. But we must show that these relied-upon judgments are also reliable, which requires yet a further set of judgments, whose reliability needs to be confirmed too, and so on. Some argue that the debunker faces an insurmountable regress, which disables the debunking conclusion. In this paper, I explore and defuse this regress challenge.

The Evolutionary Challenge to Knowing Moral Reasons

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence Cuneo
Keyword(s):  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Evolutionary Forces ◽  
Moral Faculty ◽  
Strong Claim

The “debunker’s puzzle” asks how it could be that (i) moral non-naturalism is true, (ii) we have moral knowledge, and (iii) evolutionary forces have heavily shaped the workings of our moral faculty. This chapter begins by exploring a prominent attempt to dissolve the puzzle, so-called third-factor views, arguing that they are subject to a variety of objections. This discussion highlights a pivotal claim in the dialectic between debunkers and non-naturalists: the debunker’s puzzle has force against moral non-naturalism only if it incorporates an ambitious claim about how far evolutionary forces have operated on the workings of the moral faculty. Non-naturalists can plausibly reject such a strong claim. Still, debunkers can rightly reply that non-naturalists nonetheless lack an explanation regarding how our moral judgments are linked to normative reality. The chapter argues that, by appealing to constitutive explanations, non-naturalists have helpful things to say about what the link might be.

scholarly journals Otwartość na dar stworzenia

2019 ◽  
pp. 83-95
Author(s):  
Jarosław Moskałyk
Keyword(s):  
Opposite Direction ◽  
Human Community ◽  
The Future ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
The Individual ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Relationship

An important duty of man is proper communication and relativity to creation. This is due to the unique situation of our being “in the middle” and our vocation to go out “in the opposite direction”. However, personal faith in God becomes a particularly ennobling factor, as it somehow deepens the human desire for closeness and solidarity with the whole created reality. Through true openness to the visible world, we learn more about the relationship between the individual and the community, as well between the human community and the whole creation. Ultimately, we are trying to take up the challenge of dealing responsibly with nature as a unique value today and with the right to continue in the future.

scholarly journals ANALISA RUH PENDIDIKAN KARAKTER DALAM PENDIDIKAN NASIONAL (UNDANG-UNDANG 2003)

2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 90
Author(s):  
Syahrul Akmal Latif ◽  
Yusri Herman
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Character Education ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
First Principle ◽  
National Unity ◽  
National Education ◽  
Education Act ◽  
The Government ◽  
The Individual

The issue of education is never over to talk about because education is one measurement of a person's individual accomplishments and achievements systematically nation. The high education of human resources will give a lot of useful works for the individual and social. Unfortunately, the education that was developed based on this character only strengthen individual and social, it’s beyond the divine value . It is due to the historical roots of the character education by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and Charles Renouvier (1815-1857); Religious morality in the low education and August Comter (1798- 1857); secular morality. Renouvier said the weakness of youth responsibility, loss of justice equality, respect and others. The process of character education is faced with the application of secularization. Such as, in France Francois Camille Jules Ferry (1832-1893) , a French Education minister said; Moral education is important but explicitely teaching morality does not needed. The development of character education in America is very dynamic. It’s started from 19th century (1900-1950) until 1997.It’s established nationally. Finally, Thomas lichona explained the entire role of religion in the education of character with seven steps and the role of teachers in character education. Thus, the author conducted religious analysis which widely spread among society is that the teaching of Protestant religious. But, It successfully gives individual and social value as character education. On the contrary, the goal of our national educational in 1945 (Version amendment) Article 31, paragraph 3 states: The Government shall manage and organize a national education system. Which increases the Faith and piety as well as noble character in order to educate the nation that adopted by law. Article 31, paragraph 5, states that the government advances science and technology to uphold the values of religious and national unity for the progress of civilization and prosperity of mankind. Likewise, the purpose of philosophy Nasionsl Education Act No. 20 of 2003. The 1945 Constitution and the Law N0 20 of 2003. Strongly reflects the value of belief in one God as the first principle of Pancasila as the first principle says it is an acknowledgment that in developing the nation's education should not be separated from human relations and slave relationship with God the creator.  

scholarly journals Moral Reasoning Performance Determines Epistemic Peerdom

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H.B. McAuliffe ◽  
Michael E. McCullough
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Review Literature ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Cognitive Reflection ◽  
Friendly Criticism

We offer a friendly criticism of May's fantastic book on moral reasoning: It is overly charitable to the argument that moral disagreement undermines moral knowledge. To highlight the role that reasoning quality plays in moral judgments, we review literature that he did not mention showing that individual differences in intelligence and cognitive reflection explain much of moral disagreement. The burden is on skeptics of moral knowledge to show that moral disagreement arises from non-rational origins.

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