Moral Naturalism and Nonnaturalism

Philosophy ◽  
2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Crisp

Understood broadly, the debate between naturalists and nonnaturalists in ethics concerns the question of how morality, and in particular moral value, is related to the natural world. In contemporary philosophy, this is usually seen as primarily a metaphysical issue, though in the past the term “nonnaturalism” was sometimes applied to intuitionist positions in epistemology. Moral naturalists can be divided into two categories, realist and nonrealist. Realist naturalists believe that moral properties are a subset of natural properties, or are in some sense identical with or constituted by such properties. Nonrealist naturalists believe that although we can speak of moral properties, those properties are not themselves real in the way that natural properties are: their attribution may be the result of, say, our expressing certain attitudes we have, rather than our detecting certain properties “out there” in the world. This nonrealist view can still be described as a form of moral naturalism, since it seeks a naturalistic account of morality. However the metaphysical debate is understood, some account of what it is for a property to be natural will be required. This debate continues, but one position, influenced by G. E. Moore, identifies the natural properties in some way with those properties that feature in scientific explanations, or that are in some sense reducible to or constructible from such properties. That of course raises the question of what counts as a science. The term “naturalism” is also often used to refer to theories, usually neo-Aristotelian, according to which value is bound up with human nature.

2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 85
Author(s):  
Dilla Dwi Nanda ◽  
Betty Simbolon ◽  
Friska Afriana Damanik ◽  
Yenita Br Sembiring

Folklore is a story that originated in society and developed in society in the past which played an important role in the development of children's character learning in the form of moral values. The purpose of this study was to explain the moral values contained in folklore to improve character education. This study used a qualitative descriptive research design. Where all the data collected is based on books and other supporting document data. From the discussion of the Timun Mas folklore, there are eight prominent moral values, namely religious values, independent values, curiosity values, hard work values, responsibility values, honesty values, creativity, the value of the spirit of hard work. And from the research results, it can be concluded that the folklore of Timun Mas has many moral values that can be applied in the world of Education to shape character.


Author(s):  
Robert Audi

This concluding chapter explains how the theory of moral perception takes full account of the causal element in perception but does not require naturalizing moral properties. However, the theory does require that moral properties have a base in the natural world. They are anchored in the natural world in a way that makes possible moral knowledge and the ethical objectivity that goes with it. The bridge from their naturalistic base to moral judgment often has the intelligibility of the self-evident, and under some conditions it has the reliability of necessary truth. Seeing that an act or a person has a moral property may itself be a manifestation of an intuitive perceptual capacity that has considerable discriminative subtlety regarding descriptive natural properties.


2011 ◽  
Vol 45 ◽  
pp. 164-185
Author(s):  
Vincent Blok ◽  

In the twentieth century, the concept of the will appears in bad daylight. Martin Heideg-ger for instance criticizes the will as a movement of reducing otherness to sameness, dif-ference to identity. Since his diagnosis of the will, the releasement from a wilful manner of thinking and the exploration of the possibility of non-willing has become a prevalent issue in contemporary philosophy. This article questions whether this quietism is still possible in our times, were we are confronted with climate change and the future of mankind is fundamentally threatened. On the one hand, the human will to 'master‘ and 'exploit‘ the natural world can be seen as the root of the ecological crisis, as Heidegger observed. On the other hand, its current urgency forces us to evaluate the releasement of the will in contemporary philosophy. Because also Heidegger himself attempted to develop a proper concept of the will in the onset of the thirties, we start our inquiry with Heidegger‘s phenomenology of the will in the thirties. Although Heidegger was very critical about the concept of the will later on, we are not inclined to reject the concept of the will as he did eventually. In this article we show that Heidegger's criticism of the will is not phenomenologically motivated, and we will develop a proper post-Heideggerian concept of willing. Finally the question will be answerd whether this proper concept of willing can help us to find a solution for the ecological crisis.


2014 ◽  
Vol 40 (127) ◽  
pp. 173
Author(s):  
Lorenz B. Puntel

A palavra ‘metafísica’ na filosofia contemporânea tem um uso equívoco, mais exatamente: caótico. Em consequência disso, usos derivados como ‘não-metafísico’, ‘antimetafísco’ e ‘pós-metafísico’ não têm um sentido claro. O presente artigo não intenciona criar clareza sobre esta situação complicada. Com vista à sua finalidade, ele só focaliza o sentido que Habermas confere à palavra ‘metafísica’ e ao seu pensamento, ao qualificá-lo como ‘pós-metafísico’. O artigo mostra que Habermas essencialmente identifica metafísica com a filosofia moderna da subjetividade e da consciência, tanto na perspectiva transcendental como na perspectiva do idealismo alemão absoluto. Assim, a palavra ‘pós-metafísico’, aplicada a Habermas, significa o que está além da metafísica, como esta é entendida por ele; não pode significar o que, na longa história da filosofia, foi chamado de “metafísica”. O artigo primeiramente investiga e critica detalhadamente os dois caminhos seguidos por Habermas para chegar à sua postura pós-metafísica. O primeiro é um enfoque histórico-filosófico que faz certa violência aos autores interpretados e que conduz Habermas à conclusão que o pensamento metafísico é claramente obsoleto. Este enfoque, repetidamente por ele exposto, parte sempre de Kant e tem como seu ponto de chegada a postura filosófica de Habermas mesmo. O outro enfoque tem um caráter temático baseado em duas assunções fundamentais e de grande alcance. Segundo a primeira assunção, de caráter metodológico, a razão e a racionalidade são entendidas e aplicadas com um sentido puramente e estritamente procedural (razão/ racionalidade comunicativa). A segunda assunção, relativa ao conteúdo, estatui que o único objeto temático apropriado da filosofia é a dimensão da interacão entre sujeitos humanos ou seja da práctica social ou comunicativa própria do mundo-da-vida. A mais importante secção do artigo, a secção 3, apresenta uma crítica mais pormenorizada do pensamento pós-metafísico de Habermas. Nela se investigam três temas centrais da filosofia habermasiana e se evidenciam três falhas fundamentais da sua postura pós-metafísica. O artigo mostra que se trata de posicionamentos ou temas filosóficos, para os quais Habermas, devido à sua posição pós-metafísica, não está capacitado a elaborar uma solução esclarecedora. O primeiro posicionamento ou tema é a não-elaboração de um conceito de Mundo (com “M” maiúsculo) como a dimensão que unifica e possibilita a relação entre a dimensão da verdade e a dimensão do mundo-como-a-totalidade-dosobjetos. O segundo posicionamento ou tema é o naturalismo fraco” defendido por Habermas em base de uma distinção não-esclarecida entre o “mundo natural” e o “mundo-da-vida”. O terceiro tema ou posicionamento, ao qual Habermas se tem dedicado especialmente nos últimos anos, é a conjunção ou conexão ambígua e obscura entre a rejeição incondicional da metafísica e a (re)avaliação da religião. Estes três temas ou posicionamentos constituem três dicotomias que permanecem sem esclarecimento no pensamento do filósofo alemão. Uma tentativa de esclarecê-las consistiria em elaborar um conceito irrestrito de razão ou racionalidade e de teoria e de tematizar um conceito de Mundo como a dimensão que abarca os dois polos de cada uma das dicotomias. A execução desta tarefa teria como resultado uma teoria, à qual, em termos tradicionais, se deveria atribuir um estatuto metafísico.Abstract: The term ‘metaphysics’ is used in contemporary philosophy equivocally or, more precisely, chaotically. As a consequence, uses of such derivative terms as Anonmetaphysical”, “antimetaphysical” and “postmetaphysical” are also chaotic. This paper makes no attempt to bring order to this chaos. Its focus is only on Habermas’s understanding of metaphysics and of his own thinking as postmetaphysical, in his sense. It shows that he often comes close to identifying metaphysics with the modern philosophy of subjectivity or consciousness. This makes clear that the term “postmetaphysical,” as Habermas uses it, means only, “beyond what Habermas calls ‘metaphysics’”— hence, most importantly, “beyond Kantian and post-Kantian philosophies of subjectivity.” It cannot mean, “beyond everything that, in the history of philosophy, has been called ‘metaphysics.’” The paper first examines and criticizes in detail Habermas’s two ways of arriving at and characterizing and explaining his postmetaphysical position. The historico-philosophical path takes the form of severely truncated considerations of the history of philosophy that lead him to conclude that metaphysical thinking is utterly obsolete; these considerations almost always begin with Kant and end with Habermas himself. The thematic path consists of two fundamental and far-reaching assumptions. According to his methodological assumption, reason and/ or rationality has a purely procedural character. His contentual assumption is that the dimension of social interaction and communicative practices, the human lifeworld, is the only real subject matter for philosophy. Section 3, the most important section of the paper, presents more narrowly focused critiques of Habermas’s postmetaphysical thinking. It addresses three central problems in his philosophy, and reveals highly significant shortcomings of his postmetaphysical philosophical position. It shows extensively that his treatments of these problems put him on paths that he cannot follow to their ends because of the narrow limits of his postmetaphysical approach. The first problem is the lack of a concept of World (with a capital “W”) as the unity of the dimension of truth and the dimension of world-as-the-totality-of-objects43.3.2.3 The missing concept of World (capital-W)) as the unity of truth dimension and world-as-the-totalityof-objects; the second problem is his weak naturalism and his unclarified distinction between the natural world and the lifeworld; the third problem is his ambiguous and incoherent conjunction of the rejection of metaphysics and the (re)evaluation of religion. These three problems involve dichotomies Habermas leaves unexplained. Explaining them would require him to elaborate non-restricted concepts of reason/rationality and theory, and to thematize the World, i.e., the dimension encompassing both poles of the dichotomies. Such elaboration and thematization would yield a theory that would be, in traditional terms, metaphysical.


2011 ◽  
Vol 41 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Sinclair

In this paper I argue that the explanationist argument in favour of moral realism fails. According to this argument, the ability of putative moral properties to feature in good explanations provides strong evidence for, or entails, the metaphysical claims of moral realism. Some have rejected this argument by denying that moral explanations are ever good explanations. My criticism is different. I will argue that even if we accept that moral explanations are (sometimes) good explanations the metaphysical claims of realism do not follow.According to moral realists, moral properties such as justice and goodness take their own unique place in nature's ontological roll-call. Although realists disagree about the nature of these moral properties — for example, whether they are reducible or otherwise constituted by non-moral or natural properties — they all agree that such properties are genuine constituents of the world that are sometimes instantiated by objects, events or states of affairs.


2000 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 139-173
Author(s):  
Susan E. Babbitt

Moral naturalism, as I use the term here, is the view that there are moral facts in the natural world – facts that are both natural and normative – and that moral claims are true or false in virtue of their corresponding or not to these natural facts. Moral naturalists argue that, since moral claims are about natural facts, we can establish the truth about moral claims through empirical investigation. Moral knowledge, on this view, is a form of empirical knowledge.One objection to this metaethical view is that even if moral naturalists are correct in their claims about truth, they cannot answer the question of normativity. Jean Hampton, for instance, argues that it is not enough to explain the conduct's wrongness by showing it to be a property that necessarily supervenes on natural properties. For nothing in this analysis explains the relationship between these properties and us. The question is why should people care about these properties. Christine Korsgaard claims that moral realists take the normative question to be one about truth and knowledge.


Author(s):  
C. Parker Krieg

      This essay examines the role of myth in and as cultural memory through a reading of the novel, Archipelago (2013), by the Trinidadian-British author Monique Roffey. Against conceptions of the Anthropocene as a break from the past—a break that repeats the myth of modernity—I argue that Roffey’s use of cultural memory offers a carnivalesque relation to the world in response to the narrative’s account of climate change trauma. Drawing on Bakhtin’s classic study of the carnival as an occasion for contestation and renewal, as well as Cheryl Lousely’s call for a “carnivalesque ecocriticism,” this essay expands on the recent ecocritical turn to the field of Memory Studies (Buell; Goodbody; Kennedy) to illustrate the way literature mediates between mythic and historical relations to the natural world. As literary expressions, the carnivalesque and the grotesque evoke myth and play in order to expose and transform the social myths which govern relations and administrate difference. Since literature acts as both a producer and reflector of cultural memory, this essay seeks to highlight the literary potential of myth for connecting past traumas to affirmational modes of political engagement. Resumen     Este ensayo examina el papel del mito en y como memoria cultural analizando la novela Archipelago (2013), escrita por la autora trinitense-británica Monique Roffey. Frente a la idea del Antropoceno como una ruptura con el pasado—una ruptura que repite el mito de la modernidad—este trabajo argumenta que el uso de la memoria cultural de Roffey ofrece una relación carnavalesca con el mundo en respuesta al trauma del cambio climático detallado en la novela. Basando mi argumento en la teoría clásica de Bakhtin sobre el carnaval como una ocasión para la contestación y la renovación, así como la llamada de Cheryl Lousely por una “ecocrítica carnavalesca,” este ensayo amplía el reciente giro de la ecocrítica hacia el campo de los estudios de memoria (Buell; Goodbody; Kennedy) para ilustrar cómo la literatura media entre las relaciones míticas e históricas con el mundo natural. Como expresiones literarias, lo carnavalesco y lo grotesco evocan el mito y el juego para revelar y transformar los mitos sociales que gobiernan las relaciones y gestionan la diferencia. Ya que la literatura actúa tanto como productora y como espejo de la memoria cultural, este ensayo busca destacar el potencial literario del mito para conectar traumas del pasado con modos de compromiso político más afirmativos.


Author(s):  
Yulia V. Shevchuk

The development of garden space at Annensky contributes to an understanding of the individual symbolism of the poet and the principles of organizing semantic unity of the “Trilistniks” (trefoils). In the first trilistniks, the subject occupies an ambivalent position of attraction and repulsion in relation to the garden space (flowers, birds, earth). The intensity of color and smell, as well as the principle of contrast, oxymoron, are important in the description. The garden refers to biblical mythology (“Trefoil of temptation”). Nature is renewed, and man cannot get rid of the burden of the “evil” past and the idea of inevitability of death (“Sentimental trefoil”). Observing the phenomenon of light and shade in the garden, the lyrical “I” thinks about the existence of the world simultaneously outside and inside a man (“Lunar trefoil”). The garden in the “Trefoil of doomness” dedicated to the perception of time is a closed space, “the door is clogged there.” Gardens are gradually growing dim, become flatter, empty and move inside the consciousness of a lyrical subject (sleep, nonsense, fiction). The flowers on the window, the dead garden and the sky are perceived as solid, frozen surfaces (“Ghostlike trefoil”). The image of the garden takes on fantastic features: the old manor is placed in the space of a fairy tale (“Trefoil from the old notebook”), shadows in the garden turn into ghosts of the past and are condensed (“Spring trefoil”). “Trefoil of the loneliness,” the last in the series, is dedicated to the issue of alienation of a modern man from natural world and people, the bright image of the garden (lilacs, sun, bees) is located outside the personal space of the “I.”


Author(s):  
Farish A Noor

This keynote speech was delivered at the International Conference on Interdisciplinary and Strategic Studies (ICRIS) on August 12, 2021. It explains the concept of colonial-capitalism and highlights the importance of understanding the underlying logic of capitalism behind the praxis of colonialism. From the middle to late stages of colonialism over the past 500 years, the underlying logic of colonial conquest continued to evolve. Initially, it was the Crusades that prompted the Europeans to start their exploration but then it was the conflicts and competition among the European powers themselves that galvanised their desire to conquer the world. This speech also illustrates how colonial-capitalism has changed our view of nature and our human relationship with the natural world, which in turn has influenced how we manage our natural resources. It concludes by reflecting on how we are still living in the long shadow of the 19th century and why the struggle for mental liberation continues until today.


2014 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 262-279 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ted Toadvine

In a 1951 debate that marked the beginnings of the analytic-continental divide, Maurice Merleau-Ponty sided with Georges Bataille in rejecting A. J. Ayer’s claim that “the sun existed before human beings.” This rejection is already anticipated in a controversial passage from Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology of Perception, where he claims that “there is no world without an Existence that bears its structure.” I defend Merleau-Ponty’s counterintuitive position against naturalistic and anti-subjectivist critics by arguing that the world emerges in the exchange between perceiver and perceived. A deeper challenge is posed, however, by Quentin Meillassoux, who argues that the “correlationism” of contemporary philosophy rules out any account of the “ancestral” time that antedates all subjectivity. Against Meillassoux, and taking an encounter with fossils as my guide, I hold that the past prior to subjectivity can only be approached phenomenologically. The paradoxical character of this immemorial past, as a memory of the world rather than of the subject, opens the way toward a phenomenology of the “elemental” past. Drawing on Merleau-Ponty’s descriptions of the absolute past of nature and the anonymity of the body, as well as Levinas’ account of the elements at the end of the world, I argue that our own materiality and organic lives participate in the differential rhythms of the elements, opening us to a memory of the world that binds the cosmic past and the apocalyptic future.


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