Voluntarism, Naturalism, and Moral Realism

2020 ◽  
pp. 130-140
Author(s):  
Terence Irwin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Objective Reality ◽  
Moral Rightness ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Vicious Regress ◽  
Divine Commands

Pufendorf criticizes Hobbes from a voluntarist point of view. He argues that if there were no divine commands, Hobbes would be right to derive morality from self-interest. Divine commands introduce the element of morality that goes beyond self-interest. Suarez is wrong, therefore, to believe in objective morality without divine commands. Shaftesbury attacks both egoists and voluntarists as ‘nominal moralists’ who overlook the objective reality of moral rightness and wrongness. Cudworth defends this position, arguing that any attempt to derive genuine morality from commands leads to a vicious regress. Clarke argues, from a position similar to Cudworth’s, that Hobbes cannot consistently maintain his view that nothing is morally right or wrong without enforcement by an organized state.

The Adam Smith Problem: A Reinterpretation

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-197 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erik Lundestad
Keyword(s):  
Adam Smith ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Self Interest

As long as the market is said to be based on the motive of self-interest, any argument in favor of expanding the market will have to be seen as an argument in favor of self-interest. Such an argument, however, clearly conflicts with the notion that this motive, when viewed from a practical-political point of view, must be deemed a vice and thus, at best is something to be tolerated. As long as the market is seen as presupposing the motive of self-interest, as the currently dominating interpretation of Adam Smith implies, it therefore appears virtually impossible to see how Smith – or anyone else for that manner – can possibly justify extending the market in practical-political terms.

scholarly journals What’s in the Middle?

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 7-23
Author(s):  
Geoffrey Horrocks
Keyword(s):  
Language Learners ◽  
Great Difficulty ◽  
Sensu Stricto ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Large Set ◽  
Ancient Greek ◽  
Morphological Form ◽  
Middle Voice ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
Self Interest

It has long been taken for granted in reference works, grammars and elementary introductions that Ancient Greek had three grammatical voices, active, passive and middle. Yet scholars have always had great difficulty in characterising the middle voice in a straightforward and convincing way, and language learners are often perplexed to find that most of the middles they find in texts fail to exemplify the function, usually involving some notion of self interest, that is typically ascribed to this voice. This article therefore re-examines the Ancient Greek middle, both through the lens of a general survey of “middle voice” functions across languages, and through the analysis of all the medio-passive verb forms attested in Book 1 of Plato’s Republic.  The principal observations are that Ancient Greek middles do not represent a regular pattern of usage either from a typological point of view or as employed specifically in Republic 1 (the database is in fact partly extended to other works). Accordingly, the main conclusion is that the Ancient Greek middle is not a grammatical voice sensu stricto, i.e. a regular syntactic alternation applying to all verbs with a given set of properties and expressed by a regular morphological form with a predictable semantic function. Rather, it appears to be a convenient collective name for a large set of “autonomous” verb forms that are either clearly deponent (i.e., have no active counterparts) or that have been lexicalised in a specialised meaning vis-à-vis their supposed active counterparts (i.e., are also deponents in practice, despite appearances). In all probability, therefore, medio-passive morphology, whatever it once represented in terms of function, was recharacterised prehistorically as “passive” morphology, leaving a residue of verbs exhibiting forms with non-passive functions. Presumably, these survived as “middles” only because they had no active counterparts or had been assigned innovative meanings that distinguished them from any formally related actives.

scholarly journals Gift Game Metatheory: Social Interaction and Interpersonal Growth

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gonzalo Alonso-Bastarreche ◽  
Alberto I. Vargas
Keyword(s):  
Social Life ◽  
Moral Agent ◽  
Human Person ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Philosophical Methodology ◽  
The Social ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Systematic Character ◽  
Philosophical Framework

This paper analyzes Game Theory (GT) from the point of view of moral psychology and makes explicit some of its assumptions regarding the human person as a moral agent, as well as the ends of human action, and reciprocity. Using a largely philosophical methodology, we will argue that GT assumes an instrumental form of rationality underpinned by a logic of self-interest, hence placing individuals, communities, and their social practices in service of external goods and their maximization. Because of this, GT is not adequate to describe the entirety of human social existence and interaction. Nevertheless, by revealing these assumptions, GT can be amplified with another form of rationality based on realist ethics and a personalist anthropology reinforced by the logic of gift. This rationality values the singularity of each person as a holistic unity, as the center of the social realm and as an end in herself called to growth and flourishing with others, nurturing the human community through giving and receiving. We will thus provide a wider philosophical framework for GT with a series of non-mathematical axioms of what can be called a Game Metatheory (GMt). These axioms refer to society as a complex system, not to particular interactions. GMt axioms are not a model of social games, but rather an axiomatic description of social life as a game, revealing its systematic character, complexity, and possible deterioration.

scholarly journals Moral (or ethical) education in Slovakia and its theoretical basis

2016 ◽  
Vol 6 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 79-89
Author(s):  
Vasil Gluchman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Education ◽  
Psychosocial Development ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Moral Evil ◽  
Life Forms ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Reduced Form ◽  
Ethical Egoism ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Moral Problems

Abstract With regard to existing concept of the moral education (ethics) in Slovakia, the questions of ethics and morals are only one of the partial sections. The dominant role is played by psychology based on Roberto Olivar’s concept with emphasis on pro-socialization and on Erickson’s concept of the psychosocial development. From the philosophy basis point of view, only Aristotle, even in reduced form and Spranger’s concept of the life forms are mentioned. Philosophy and ethics are only complements to more psychologically based educational program which is resulting from the problematic division of a social and moral experience into egoistic and prosocial. Egoism is presented in a distorted form and is characterized as the cause of all moral evil. However, there are several different types of understanding of the term egoism in philosophy and ethics as for example psychological and ethical egoism, or self-interest. Ethical egoism or self-interest cannot be identified with selfishness. The main aim of moral education should not be only to form the desired children and youth moral orientation but on the other hand, to form morally self-confident individuals who are able to solve the moral problems, to help the others to solve them as well and to be able to bear moral responsibility for their own deeds.

Scotus and Ockham

2020 ◽  
pp. 101-108
Author(s):  
Terence Irwin
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Moral Rightness ◽  
Divine Will ◽  
The Will ◽  
Divine Commands ◽  
The Right

Scotus and Ockham reject the Aristotelian outlook, as Aquinas presents it, and develop a voluntarist account of the will and of morality. In their view, determination by practical reason does not ensure free will; a free will must be wholly undetermined by reason. Nor can it be determined by the desire for one’s ultimate good; the impulse towards the right is separate from the impulse towards happiness. If we apply these principles to the freedom of the divine will, we find that God could not be free if the nature of right and wrong were independent of the divine will. We must infer that moral rightness and wrongness are ultimately constituted by divine commands.

Taxonomy of Payment Structures and Economic Incentive Schemes in Internet

2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 150-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
Brij B. Gupta ◽  
Prachi Gulihar
Keyword(s):  
Economic Incentive ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Pricing Strategy ◽  
Economic Point ◽  
Collective Interest ◽  
Framework Design ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The One ◽  
Security Standards

Recently the study of economics of internet has emerged as an emerging field of study. The workstations being distributed across the network along with the users having varied interests has made this study very important from an information security and policy designing point of view. The main purpose of any framework design is to keep up with the security standards of confidentiality, integrity and availability without being an overburden on the deployer. The same goes for the users, the Quality of Service (QoS) should be in accordance with what they pay for. The concept of “tragedy of commons” plays an important role in distributing the limited resources of the internet. In this, the users because of their own self-interest destroy the collective interest of a community sharing the resource. A sustainable pricing strategy is the one which is able to cater to the competitive advantage of different network providers offering the same set of services but on varied prices. A pricing mechanism will help in differentiating the services offered to the users, but another important task is of fixing the incentives. The pricing strategy plays a very important role in facilitating varied kinds of QoS requirements. Security professionals have realized that while designing any security mechanism it is vital to keep in consideration the “theory of mind” which explains the way the attackers and benign users take decision to deceive of remain loyal to the system. So, studying the incentive and payment structure from economic point of view is important.

scholarly journals Natural self-interest, interactive representation, and the emergence of objects and Umwelt: An outline of basic semiotic concepts for biosemiotics

2003 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 547-587
Author(s):  
Tommi Vehkavaara
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Living Systems ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
Equilibrium System ◽  
Utility Concept ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Concept Of Function ◽  
Far From Equilibrium ◽  
The One ◽  
Representative System

In biosemiotics, life and living phenomena are described by means of originally anthropomorphic semiotic concepts. This can be justified if we can show that living systems as self-maintaining far from equilibrium systems create and update some kind of representation about the conditions of their self-maintenance. The point of view is the one of semiotic realism where signs and representations are considered as real and objective natural phenomena without any reference to the specifically human interpreter. It is argued that the most basic concept of representation must be forward looking and that both C. Peirce’s and J. v. Uexküll’s concepts of sign assume an unnecessarily complex semiotic agent. The simplest representative systems do not have phenomenal objects or Umwelten at all. Instead, the minimal concept of representation and the source of normativity that is needed in its interpretation can be based on M. Bickhard’s interactivism. The initial normativity or natural self-interest is based on the ‘utility-concept’ of function: anything that contributes to the maintenance of a far from equilibrium system is functional to that system — every self-maintaining far from equilibrium system has a minimal natural self-interest to serve that function, it is its existential precondition. Minimal interactive representation emerges when such systems become able to switch appropriately between two or more means of maintaining themselves. At the level of such representations, a potentiality to detect an error may develop although no objects of representation for the system are provided. Phenomenal objects emerge in systems that are more complex. If a system creates a set of ongoingly updated ’situation images’ and can detect temporal invariances in the updating process, these invariances constitute objects for the system itself. Within them, a representative system gets an Umwelt and becomes capable of experiencing triadic signs. The relation between representation and its object is either iconic or indexical at this level. Correspondingly as in Peirce’s semeiotic, symbolic signs appear as more developed — for the symbolic signs, a more complex system is needed.

Neither Sin nor Paradox

The Good Kill ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 82-119
Author(s):  
Marc LiVecche
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Just War ◽  
Moral Order ◽  
Moral Vision ◽  
Human Flourishing ◽  
Objective Reality ◽  
The World ◽  
Just War Tradition

Chapter 3 demonstrates how the just war tradition can help warfighters navigate the moral complexities of combat without compromising deeply held normative commitments. Drawing on the classical imagination of C. S. Lewis, it drafts a portrait of the just warrior as a marbling of the characteristics of Venus and Mars—the personifications of love and war. Such a union of dispositions demonstrates the possibility of attending to both the necessity of war and the requirements of love without contradiction. The just war tradition is shown to be committed to both moral realism—the view that what is good in the world is determined by a moral order grounded in objective reality—and to a moral vision that is essentially eudaemonist, or deeply concerned with the promotion of human flourishing, including enemy flourishing. This leads to a theological examination of enemy love and to a distinction between moral and nonmoral evil.

Editor’s Introduction: The View from Erewhon

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kinch Hoekstra
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Human Interaction ◽  
Language Play ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Properties

Kinch Hoekstra’s introduction to Philip Pettit’s The Birth of Ethics adumbrates the themes of the work with reference to earlier attempts to provide naturalistic accounts of or challenges to morality. For Pettit, moral properties are really in the world, and yet are the product of patterns of human interaction and conventions to promote interests; his theory is thus both a kind of moral realism and a kind of moral conventionalism. Self-interest and language play central roles in Pettit’s hypothetical account of the genealogy of ethics, and a sketch is accordingly provided of the disagreement between Pettit and Michael Tomasello, which focuses on those roles.

CULTURAL AND STRUCTURAL DETERMINANTS OF JUSTICE REACTIONS IN THE ECONOMIC DOMAIN

1994 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 319-328 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jason S. Lee ◽  
John F. Stolte
Keyword(s):  
Study Data ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Structural Determinants ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Detroit Area ◽  
Shared Norms ◽  
Economic Domain ◽  
Structural Perspective

We examine cultural and structural perspectives on the determination of distributive justice reactions to economic inequality. The cultural perspective emphasizes consensus and shared norms of justice acquired through uniform socialization processes. The structural perspective emphasizes variance rather than consensus; it highlights the instrumental use of justice norms to service position-based self-interest. We evaluate the two perspectives using 1980 Detroit Area Study data. Although we find strongest support for the structural perspective, we are unable to reject the cultural point of view entirely. We conclude that social position is a critical correlate of economic justice reactions, but we also argue that culture and structure, though analytically distinct, function intricately and jointly to determine justice reactions.

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