Challenging Good-For Monism

2021 ◽  
pp. 50-71
Author(s):  
Toni Rønnow-Rasmussen
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Final Value ◽  
Common Response ◽  
Good For ◽  
Core Issues ◽  
Evaluative Terms

‘Challenging Good-For Monism’ takes on the good-for monist, who maintains that both value dualism and Mooreanism get things wrong. For the good-for monist there is one fundamental final value, and it is final goodness-for. The first challenge to this kind of monism concerns value aggregation. It is showed why value dualism has an advantage over good-for monism when dualism explains why we should favour what common sense dictates in certain cases involving aggregation. A second challenge concerns good-for monism’s understanding of certain thick value concepts. The argument here is simple, but it nonetheless requires some unravelling. The point is that to be appropriately analysed, certain thick value concepts require impersonal goodness or at least impersonal normativity. Finally, the chapter considers whether good-for monism is able to avoid some of its problems by endorsing a popular subjectivist strategy for analysing good-for. This strategy fails, however. To conclude, good-for monism fails to provide us the tools with which to understand a common response to core issues in normative ethics. It also bars us from making some evaluations involving thick evaluative terms, which, in principle, we should be able to endorse or reject on substantive grounds.

Human Flourishing Versus Desire Satisfaction

1999 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 113-142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Arneson
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Good Life ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Surprising Result ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Prudential Value ◽  
Desire Satisfaction ◽  
Individual Good ◽  
Helping Others ◽  
Good For

What is the good for human persons? If I am trying to lead the best possible life I could lead, not the morally best life, but the life that is best for me, what exactly am I seeking?This phrasing of the question I will be pursuing may sound tendentious, so some explanation is needed. What is good for one person, we ordinarily suppose, can conflict with what is good for other persons and with what is required by morality. A prudent person seeks her own good efficiently; she selects the best available means to her good. If we call the value that a person seeks when she is being prudent “prudential value,” then an alternative rendering of the question to be addressed in this essay is “What is prudential value?” We can also say that an individual flourishes or has a life high in well-being when her life is high in prudential value. Of course, these common-sense appearances that the good for an individual, the good for other persons, and the requirements of morality often are in conflict might be deceiving. For all that I have said here, the correct theory of individual good might yield the result that sacrificing oneself for the sake of other people or for the sake of a morally worthy cause can never occur, because helping others and being moral always maximize one's own good. But this would be the surprising result of a theory, not something we should presuppose at the start of inquiry. When a friend has a baby and I express a conventional wish that the child have a good life, I mean a life that is good for the child, not a life that merely helps others or merely respects the constraints of morality. After all, a life that is altruistic and perfectly moral, we suppose, could be a life that is pure hell for the person who lives it—a succession of horrible headaches marked by no achievements or attainments of anything worthwhile and ending in agonizing death at a young age. So the question remains, what constitutes a life that is good for the person who is living it?

Agent-Relative and Agent-Neutral Reasons

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Krister Bykvist
Keyword(s):  
Explicit Form ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Main Question ◽  
Recent Contribution ◽  
Level Of Significance ◽  
High Level ◽  
Common Sense Morality

The distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons, at least in its explicit form, is a fairly recent contribution to normative ethics. That the distinction is both well-defined and significant is often taken for granted in contemporary normative ethics. For example, it is supposed to help us characterize many aspects of common-sense morality, such as personal duties, and deontological restrictions or constraints. The main question of this chapter is whether there is a well-defined distinction between agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons that has this high level of significance. Is the distinction really “an extremely important one,” as Nagel said, or perhaps even one of “the greatest contributions of recent ethics,” as Tom Hurka suggests? A variety of accounts of this distinction is discussed and it is argued that none live up to this hype, at least if the distinction is supposed not to beg other important questions in normative ethics.

Naturalism and Prescriptivity

1989 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 151-174 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Railton
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
The World ◽  
Good For

Statements about a person's good slip into and out of our ordinary discourse about the world with nary a ripple. Such statements are objects of belief and assertion, they obey the rules of logic, and they are often defended by evidence and argument. They even participate in common-sense explanations, as when we say of some person that he has been less subject to wild swings of enthusiasm and disappointment now that, with experience, he has gained a clearer idea of what is good for him. Statements about a person's good present themselves as being about something with respect to which our beliefs can be true or false, warranted or unwarranted. Let us speak of these features as the descriptive side of discourse about a person's good.

scholarly journals Penyelesaian Sengketa Para Pihak di Bidang Bisnis melalui Arbitrase

to-ra ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 305
Author(s):  
Nurdin Siregar ◽  
Radisman Saragih
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
The Other ◽  
Legal Certainty ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Core ◽  
Arbitration Clause ◽  
Good For ◽  
The Law ◽  
Core Issues ◽  
Made In

Arbitration is a way of solving civil disputes outside the public courts based the arbitration agreement made in writing by the parties to the dispute. The arbitration agreement is an agreement in the form of the arbitration clause contained in a written agreement made by the parties before a dispute arises or a separate arbitration agreement made by the parties after a dispute arises. In everyday life with various activities of members of today’s society, immense possibility of friction-friction in running business and trade that ended with disputes between members of the public and businesses. In efforts to completion, it would seem that this form of dispute diversity define the core issues then this diversity will be easy settlement with the provisions and rules of law that are sure to be able to look for the solution either arbitration or by mediation, consulting, negotiations, konsialiasi. The arbitration decision will be implemented after the verdict copy officially registered, but the arbitration ruling in accordance with the provisions of the law Arbitration can still be filed annulment if the decision is thought to contain elements, letters or documents are filed in the examination after the verdict recognized dinyataakan counterfeit or fake, after adjudication documents found prescriptive, which is hidden by the other party or the decision taken on the results of a ruse conducted by one of the parties in the dispute. That for legal certainty associated with the judiciary also good for the winning side and the decision is legally binding.   Kata Kunci: Penyelesaian sengketa bisnis melalui arbitrase  

Does Fairness Require a Multidimensional Approach?

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard J. Arneson
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Multidimensional Approach ◽  
Significant Component ◽  
Multidimensional Assessment ◽  
The Common ◽  
Good For ◽  
Objective List

What is in itself good for you, according to the argument of this chapter, is getting or achieving things that are objectively worthwhile, these being items on an objective list. Although it would be desirable to have a unified explanation of what belongs on the list, for now we rely on intuition. The chapter surveys and finds inadequate a number of alternative accounts of well-being, mainly on the ground that they conflict with the common-sense claims that enjoyment (feeling good) is a significant component of well-being—an entry on the objective list—and that there are additional intrinsic goods besides enjoyment. Since there are plural goods, we are stuck with multidimensional assessment, and with the difficulties of aggregation that involves.

REVISIONARY INTUITIONISM

2007 ◽  
Vol 25 (1) ◽  
pp. 368-392 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Huemer
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Ethical Reasoning ◽  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Ethical Knowledge ◽  
The Common ◽  
Common Sense Morality ◽  
Personal Interests

I discuss four kinds of challenges to the reliability of ethical intuitions. Ethical intuitions have been impugned for being incoherent with each other, for being unduly influenced by culture, for being unduly influenced by biological instincts, and for being unduly influenced by personal interests and emotions. I argue that, rather than giving up on the possibility of ethical knowledge through intuition, intuitionists should use the skeptical challenges to help identify which intuitions are most likely to be reliable, and which are instead likely to be biased or otherwise distorted. In many cases, abstract, formal intuitions about value and obligation prove to be least susceptible to skeptical attack and for that reason should be given preference in our ethical reasoning over most intuitions about concrete situations. In place of the common sense morality with which intuitionism has traditionally been allied, my approach is likely to generate a highly revisionary normative ethics.

scholarly journals “Ethical Minefields” and the Voice of Common Sense: A Discussion with Julian Savulescu

Conatus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 125
Author(s):  
Evangelos D. Protopapadakis
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Reflective Equilibrium ◽  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Ethical Theories ◽  
Ethical Problems ◽  
Practical Ethics ◽  
The Voice

Theoretical ethics includes both metaethics (the meaning of moral terms) and normative ethics (ethical theories and principles). Practical ethics involves making decisions about every day real ethical problems, like decisions about euthanasia, what we should eat, climate change, treatment of animals, and how we should live. It utilizes ethical theories, like utilitarianism and Kantianism, and principles, but more broadly a process of reflective equilibrium and consistency to decide how to act and be.

scholarly journals Professional, Spectator, and Olympic Sports in the Context of the Terms Spiritualism and Spirituality, and in the Context of Normative Ethics

2015 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-62 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerzy Kosiewicz
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Mass Culture ◽  
Olympic Games ◽  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Spectator Sport ◽  
Deep Sense ◽  
The Olympic Games

AbstractThe author has used - in his paper - two different expressions related to spirituality in its entirety: that is, spirituality (the spiritual sphere in superficial sense and meaning) and spiritualism (the spiritual sphere in deep sense and meaning). The author presented selected different definitions and manifestations of spirituality and spiritualism.The considerations on so-called “spirituality” - related to different phenomena of culture - without notions of spirituality and spiritualism - are a testimony to ordinary, typical common sense thinking only.Author would like to underline, that contemporary professional, spectator sport and the Olympic Games are only a mass culture phenomenon. A phenomenon of mass culture can be only a mirror of superficial spirituality, but not a testimony to spiritualism (that is, deep spirituality).The ancient Olympic Games - in contrast to the concept of Coubertin’s idea of Olympism - were a manifestation of deep spirituality, that is spiritualism. The Greek Games were based on an internal unity between religiosity, art and sport.

Sacrifice Regained

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger Crisp
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
Well Being ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Psychological Egoism ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Common ◽  
Good For

Does being virtuous make you happy? This book examines the answers to this ancient question provided by the so-called ‘British Moralists’, from about 1650 for the next two hundred years. This involves elucidating their views on happiness (self-interest, or well-being) and on virtue (or morality), in order to bring out the relation of each to the other. Themes ran through many of these writers: psychological egoism, evaluative hedonism, and—after Thomas Hobbes—the acceptance of self-standing moral reasons. But there are exceptions, and even those taking the standard views adopt them for very different reasons and express them in various ways. As the ancients tended to believe that virtue and happiness largely, perhaps entirely, coincide, so these modern authors are inclined to accept posthumous reward and punishment. Both positions sit uneasily with the common-sense idea that a person can truly sacrifice their own good for the sake of morality or for others, and the book shows that David Hume—a hedonist whose ethics made no appeal to the afterlife—was the first major British moralist to allow for, indeed to recommend, such self-sacrifice. Morality and well-being of course remain central to modern ethics, and this book demonstrates how much there is to learn from this remarkable group of philosophers.

Seti Figure of Merit

1997 ◽  
Vol 161 ◽  
pp. 711-717 ◽  
Author(s):  
John W. Dreher ◽  
D. Kent Cullers
Keyword(s):  
Figure Of Merit ◽  
Qualitative Difference ◽  
Current Generation ◽  
Detection Range ◽  
Sky Surveys ◽  
Independent Observations ◽  
Good For

AbstractWe develop a figure of merit for SETI observations which is anexplicitfunction of the EIRP of the transmitters, which allows us to treat sky surveys and targeted searches on the same footing. For each EIRP, we calculate the product of terms measuring the number of stars within detection range, the range of frequencies searched, and the number of independent observations for each star. For a given set of SETI observations, the result is a graph of merit versus transmitter EIRP. We apply this technique to several completed and ongoing SETI programs. The results provide a quantitative confirmation of the expected qualitative difference between sky surveys and targeted searches: the Project Phoenix targeted search is good for finding transmitters in the 109to 1014W range, while the sky surveys do their best at higher powers. Current generation optical SETI is not yet competitive with microwave SETI.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document