Pragmatism and Moral Knowledge

1998 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 227-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bakhurst
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Moral Imagination ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Deliberation ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Facts

In the last twenty years there has been a dramatic revival of interest in the idea that there can be genuine moral knowledge. The noncognitivist assumptions that dominated so much twentieth-century ethical theory no longer seem the obvious truths they once did to so many thinkers. It is now common to hear the claim that moral values are genuine constituents of the furniture of the world - or at least of its upholstery- and that moral deliberation and judgment legitimately aspire to truth. Morality, it is frequently argued, is a realm of discovery rather than invention, and moral reasoning, and the play of moral imagination, must be constrained by how the moral facts stand.Such “realist” or “cognitivist” views in ethics take many forms. This essay considers whether a pragmatist account of moral knowledge might fruitfully be developed. My project will recommend itself only to those who believe that pragmatist insights serve to support relatively robust conceptions of truth and justification.

“Nonetheless They Will Have Need of Wood”: Aesthetic and Utilitarian Approaches to Trees in The Silmarillion and Unfinished Tales

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 395-409
Author(s):  
Martin Simonson
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Real World ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Literary Studies ◽  
Combined Approach ◽  
Common Assumption ◽  
The Real ◽  
The World ◽  
Literary Output

Abstract A common assumption about J.R.R. Tolkien’s works is that they are escapist, only dealing obliquely with issues related to the real world. This has been addressed in the field of literary studies by linking Tolkien’s literary output with twentieth-century concerns such as modernist practices and, in recent times, by reading his tales against the backdrop of ecocriticism. However, scholars in the latter field, such as Dickerson, Evans, and Campbell, frequently over-emphasize wonder and the spiritual connection with the natural world as the intended response of readers, which undermines the potential implications and relevance of Tolkien’s works for the real world. In this article I wish to show that Tolkien’s cosmological vision is not only premised on the idea of appreciating the wonder-inciting qualities of the world but that it also entails a certain amount of utilitarianism, and the need to combine both is related to the ethical theory of ideal utilitarianism as outlined by G.E. Moore. Moreover, in several early episodes of The Silmarillion, the combined approach to the natural world is represented by trees, setting a mythical precedent for later works. Of the latter, I will be looking mainly at “Aldarion and Erendis” in Unfinished Tales and “The Downfall of Númenor” in The Silmarillion.

Creating Facts and Values

Philosophy ◽  
1985 ◽  
Vol 60 (232) ◽  
pp. 187-204 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Anna Putnam
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Truth Value ◽  
Physical Objects ◽  
Moral Facts

Moral sceptics maintain that there are no objective moral values, or that there is no moral knowledge, or no moral facts, or that what looks like a statement which makes a moral judgment is not really a statement and does not have a truth-value. All of this is rather, unclear because all of it is negative. It will be necessary to remove some of this unclarity because my aim in this paper is to establish a proposition which may be summarized by saying: even if there are no objective moral values in one sense, there are objective moralvalues in another sense, and the latter values are good enough to do some of the jobs that objective values in the first sense would have done. A useful analogy might be that of a person who has lost her hand and has been given a prosthesis. In one sense the prosthesis is not as real (because man-made) as the hand, in another sense it is just as real (both are physical objects); most importantly, the person can do with the prosthesis enough of what she could do with the hand to make do.

Attacking Morality: A Metaethical Project

1995 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 221-249
Author(s):  
Allen W. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Applied Ethics ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Philosophical Study ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
Moral Facts

Metaethics is the philosophical study of what morality is. It differs from ethical theory, which attempts to systematize (and possibly ground) moral judgments, and also from practical or applied ethics, which reflects on particular moral issues or problems. As it has been done in this century, metaethics has usually involved three interrelated projects: ametaphysicalinvestigation into the nature of moral facts and properties, asemanticinquiry into the meaning of moral assertions, and anepistemologicalaccount of the nature of moral knowledge. In all three areas, the questions raised by twentieth-century metaethics have apparently been radical, and the dominant position was even openly nihilistic. In metaphysics it was antirealist, maintaining that there are no moral facts, in epistemology noncognitivist, denying that there is moral knowledge, and in semantics emotivist or prescriptivist, holding that moral assertions aren't assertions at all, but are speech acts utterly devoid of truth conditions.

scholarly journals PERAN PENALARAN MORAL DALAM PENDIDIKAN AKHLAQ MULIA

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 156
Author(s):  
Safrilsyah Safrilsyah ◽  
Mohd Zailani Bin Mohd. Yusoff ◽  
Mohamad Khairi Bin Othman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Psychological Approach ◽  
Alternative Process ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The World ◽  
The Face ◽  
Good Deeds

Islam is a religion that is very concerned with noble morality. So the main focus of sending the Messenger of Allah to the face of the earth is to perfect human morality. In the view of Islam, a Muslim who has a noble morality will gain happiness in himself and benefit the surrounding community. Among the benefits of noble morality is to strengthen and perfect the religion, facilitate the calculation of charity in the afterlife, eliminating the difficulties of life and survival in the world and the hereafter. One effort to form akhlaqul karimah on learners needed akhlaq education with moral psychology approach. Akhlaq education with psychological approach is an alternative process of guidance and teaching akhlaq to learners with emphasis on moral reasoning, it will manifest students who are able to distinguish the noble akhlaq and akhlaq disgraceful. With moral reasoning is expected learners have the motivation and able to consider the actions taken to be implemented in accordance with the moral values prevailing in society and also has noble morals in accordance with Islamic teachings. Students are able to act intelligently with good deeds and piety.

Development of the Jewish religious movement "Khabad" in Ukraine in the 20's of the twentieth century

2001 ◽  
pp. 85-90
Author(s):  
O. V. Kozerod
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Religious Movement ◽  
Important Research ◽  
The World ◽  
Research Problems

The development of the Jewish religious movement "Khabad" and its organizations in the first quarter of the twentieth century - one of the important research problems, which is still practically not considered in the domestic Judaica. At the same time, this problem is relevant in connection with the fact that the religious movement "Khabad" during the twentieth century became the most widespread and influential area of Judaism in Ukraine and throughout the world.

Coda: The Rosetta Stone

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jesse Schotter
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
New Media ◽  
Digital Media ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Digital Code ◽  
Media Technologies ◽  
Rosetta Stone ◽  
The World ◽  
Western Imagination ◽  
Origin Point

Hieroglyphs have persisted for so long in the Western imagination because of the malleability of their metaphorical meanings. Emblems of readability and unreadability, universality and difference, writing and film, writing and digital media, hieroglyphs serve to encompass many of the central tensions in understandings of race, nation, language and media in the twentieth century. For Pound and Lindsay, they served as inspirations for a more direct and universal form of writing; for Woolf, as a way of treating the new medium of film and our perceptions of the world as a kind of language. For Conrad and Welles, they embodied the hybridity of writing or the images of film; for al-Hakim and Mahfouz, the persistence of links between ancient Pharaonic civilisation and a newly independent Egypt. For Joyce, hieroglyphs symbolised the origin point for the world’s cultures and nations; for Pynchon, the connection between digital code and the novel. In their modernist interpretations and applications, hieroglyphs bring together writing and new media technologies, language and the material world, and all the nations and languages of the globe....

Modernism, Empiricism, and Rationalism

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-47
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Squires
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
The Other ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Philosophical Perspective ◽  
Irish Poetry ◽  
Dimensional Spectrum ◽  
Culture History ◽  
The World ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Rule Out

Modernism is usually defined historically as the composite movement at the beginning of the twentieth century which led to a radical break with what had gone before in literature and the other arts. Given the problems of the continuing use of the concept to cover subsequent writing, this essay proposes an alternative, philosophical perspective which explores the impact of rationalism (what we bring to the world) on the prevailing empiricism (what we take from the world) of modern poetry, which leads to a concern with consciousness rather than experience. This in turn involves a re-conceptualisation of the lyric or narrative I, of language itself as a phenomenon, and of other poetic themes such as nature, culture, history, and art. Against the background of the dominant empiricism of modern Irish poetry as presented in Crotty's anthology, the essay explores these ideas in terms of a small number of poets who may be considered modernist in various ways. This does not rule out modernist elements in some other poets and the initial distinction between a poetics of experience and one of consciousness is better seen as a multi-dimensional spectrum that requires further, more detailed analysis than is possible here.

Hard Objects in George Oppen's Discrete Series

2018 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 496-517
Author(s):  
Ned Hercock
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Ludwig Wittgenstein ◽  
Discrete Series ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
John Ruskin ◽  
Gerard Manley Hopkins ◽  
Marcel Duchamp ◽  
The World ◽  
Production History ◽  
History Of

This essay examines the objects in George Oppen's Discrete Series (1934). It considers their primary property to be their hardness – many of them have distinctively uniform and impenetrable surfaces. This hardness and uniformity is contrasted with 19th century organicism (Gerard Manley Hopkins and John Ruskin). Taking my cue from Kirsten Blythe Painter I show how in their work with hard objects these poems participate within a wider cultural and philosophical turn towards hardness in the early twentieth century (Marcel Duchamp, Adolf Loos, Ludwig Wittgenstein and others). I describe the thinking these poems do with regard to industrialization and to human experience of a resolutely object world – I argue that the presentation of these objects bears witness to the production history of the type of objects which in this era are becoming preponderant in parts of the world. Finally, I suggest that the objects’ impenetrability offers a kind of anti-aesthetic relief: perception without conception. If ‘philosophy recognizes the Concept in everything’ it is still possible, these poems show, to experience resistance to this imperious process of conceptualization. Within thinking objects (poems) these are objects which do not think.

On Metaphysics and the Political: A Polemics of Reading Baudelaire in the 1930s

2019 ◽  
Vol 58 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-259
Author(s):  
Joseph Acquisto
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Crisis ◽  
The Political ◽  
Modern Poetry ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
The World ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Insight Into

This essay examines a polemic between two Baudelaire critics of the 1930s, Jean Cassou and Benjamin Fondane, which centered on the relationship of poetry to progressive politics and metaphysics. I argue that a return to Baudelaire's poetry can yield insight into what seems like an impasse in Cassou and Fondane. Baudelaire provides the possibility of realigning metaphysics and politics so that poetry has the potential to become the space in which we can begin to think the two of them together, as opposed to seeing them in unresolvable tension. Or rather, the tension that Baudelaire animates between the two allows us a new way of thinking about the role of esthetics in moments of political crisis. We can in some ways see Baudelaire as responding, avant la lettre, to two of his early twentieth-century readers who correctly perceived his work as the space that breathes a new urgency into the questions of how modern poetry relates to the world from which it springs and in which it intervenes.

Features of the development of an unmanned rocket-culture technology in the first half of the twentieth century

2018 ◽  
pp. 135-144
Author(s):  
O. O. Gubka
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Subsequent Formation ◽  
Technical Schools ◽  
Space Industry ◽  
The World ◽  
Culture Technology

The features of unmanned rocket and space engineering´s development in the USSR and in the world in the first half of the XX century were considered in the article. They defined subsequent formation of scientific and technical schools in the rocket and space industry.

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