Which Moral Properties Are Eligible for Perceptual Awareness?

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
pp. 290-319
Author(s):  
Preston J. Werner
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Moral Perception ◽  
Perceptual Awareness ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Open Question ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Abstract: Moral perception has made something of a comeback in recent work on moral epistemology. Many traditional objections to the view have been argued to fail upon closer inspection. But it remains an open question just how far moral perception might extend. In this paper, I provide the beginnings of an answer to this question by assessing the relationship between the metaphysical structure of different normative properties and a plausible constraint on which properties are eligible for perceptual awareness which I call the Counterfactual Strengthening Test. Along the way I consider and reject a few other possible constraints on perceptual awareness. I defend the view that moral perception is restricted to the perception of evaluative and pro tanto deontic properties. I conclude with a few gestures toward what this limitation on moral perception may mean for broader moral epistemology.

scholarly journals George Potter, the Junta, and the Bee-Hive

1964 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 391-432 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stephen Coltham
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Recent Work ◽  
The Other ◽  
Real Analysis ◽  
Labour Movement ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Most histories of the nineteenth-century labour movement give some account of George Potter's conflict with the men the Webbs called the Junta; and it is generally recognised that one main bone of contention was control of the Bee-Hive newspaper. But there has been little real analysis of this quarrel, and even less of the eventual reconciliation. It is true that some of the old generalisations are no longer accepted. Nowadays, most labour historians agree that the Webbs, writing under Applegarth's influence, dismissed Potter too contemptuously. There is also some recognition of the fact that Raymond Postgate's Builders' History, although more accurate on Potter's early position in the labour movement, gives a completely false impression of his later career and the changes that took place in the Bee-Hive. But through it all, Potter has remained a rather shadowy figure, and in published works the Bee-Hive's own history has been surprisingly neglected. Even a recent work in which the author avowedly sets out to correct the record on Potter – B. C. Roberts's The Trades Union Congress, 1868–1921 – is in many ways unsatisfactory. Roberts does make an attempt to analyse the conflict, and on the whole he sums up Potter's aims and achievements more accurately than either the Webbs or Postgate did. But in trying to give Potter due credit for his part in founding the TUC, Roberts has over-estimated his contribution, and minimised his weaknesses. Above all, he has paid too little attention to the Bee-Hive itself. As a result, the consequences of the way in which the paper was founded and conducted, and the relationship between Potter's other activities and the Bee-Hive's successive changes of ownership, editorship and policy, are either disregarded or mistakenly interpreted. Potter's career in the labour movement, and the development of the Bee-Hive, were completely interwoven, and neither can be fully assessed without the other.

scholarly journals ON THE MEANING OF THE TERM “GOODNESS” AND THE NOTABLE FALLACY OF J. Е. MOORE

2020 ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Vadym Derkach
Keyword(s):  
Living Conditions ◽  
Evolutionary Ethics ◽  
Evaluation Criterion ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Actual Evaluation ◽  
Absolute Measure ◽  
Open Question ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

There are counterarguments both to the objections of J. E. Moore’s argument “open question”: and to the statement of the question itself with the argument that it is impossible to reduce the essence of good (goodness) to objective characteristics (physical or metaphysical). It is shown that the meaning of the term “good” is not a concept, but a sign in a linguistic act, which indicates the relationship to a particular object in view of the accepted evaluation criterion, ie “good” means the actual evaluation (value of evaluation judgment). So it is pointless to look for an absolute measure of goodness by referring to any objective characteristics (as Moore argues), but there is also no “goodness” of goodness. The content of the evaluation criterion, on which the speaker relies, expressing his attitude to something as good is completely arbitrary and always relative. However, the adoption of a certain criterion is not neutral in terms of its consequences for those who accept such a criterion, because if such a criterion motivates actions that reduce the viability of the community that cultivates it, then the death of this community leads to the elimination of such criteria. Thus, communities are selected for mental attitudes, tested for compatibility with living conditions and competition in them for vital resources with other communities, for resistance to factors that destroy the mechanism of reproduction of the organized whole. The presented considerations open the way for a reliable naturalistic substantiation of moral norms in the paradigm of evolutionary ethics.

scholarly journals Is Moral Perception Essentially Rule-Governed? A Critical Assessment of Generalism and a Limited Defense of Particularism

2020 ◽  
Vol 52 (156) ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Shiu-Hwa Tsu
Keyword(s):  
Essential Role ◽  
Critical Assessment ◽  
Moral Perception ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
The Way

Moral perception, for the purposes of this article, is taken to be the perception of moral properties, unless contexts dictate otherwise. While both particularists and generalists agree that we can perceive the moral properties of an action or a feature, they disagree, however, over whether rules play any essential role in moral perception. The particularists argue for a ‘no’ answer, whereas the generalists say ‘yes’. In this paper, I provide a limited defense of particularism by rebutting several powerful generalist arguments. It is hoped particularism can thus be made more attractive as a theory of moral perception. Positive arguments for particularism will also be provided along the way

The Normative and the Evaluative

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Rowland
Keyword(s):  
Normative Ethics ◽  
Epistemic Normativity ◽  
Extensive Discussion ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Buck Passing ◽  
Reason Problem ◽  
The Way

Many have been attracted to the idea that for something to be good is just for there to be reasons to favour it. This view has come to be known as the buck-passing account of value. According to the buck-passing account, for pleasure to be good is just for there to be reasons for us to desire and pursue it. And for liberty and equality to be values is just for there to be reasons for us to promote and preserve them. There has been extensive discussion of some of the problems that the buck-passing account faces such as the wrong kind of reason problem. But there has been little discussion of why we should accept the buck-passing account or what the theoretical pay-offs and other implications of accepting it are. This book provides the first comprehensive motivation and defence of the buck-passing account of value. It argues that the buck-passing account explains several important features of the relationship between reasons and value, as well as the relationship between the different varieties of value, in a way that its competitors do not. It argues that alternatives to the buck-passing account are inconsistent with important views in normative ethics, are uninformative, and are at odds with the way in which we should see practical and epistemic normativity as related. And it extends the buck-passing account to provide an account of moral properties as well as all other normative and deontic properties, such as fittingness and ought, in terms of reasons.

MANUSCRIPT EVIDENCE FOR ALPHABET-SWITCHING IN THE WORKS OF CICERO: COMMON NOUNS AND ADJECTIVES

2018 ◽  
Vol 68 (2) ◽  
pp. 498-516
Author(s):  
Neil O'Sullivan
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Code Switching ◽  
Consistent Pattern ◽  
Current Interest ◽  
Reliable Transmission ◽  
Accurate Record ◽  
The Way

Of the hundreds of Greek common nouns and adjectives preserved in our MSS of Cicero, about three dozen are found written in the Latin alphabet as well as in the Greek. So we find, alongside συμπάθεια, also sympathia, and ἱστορικός as well as historicus. This sort of variation has been termed alphabet-switching; it has received little attention in connection with Cicero, even though it is relevant to subjects of current interest such as his bilingualism and the role of code-switching and loanwords in his works. Rather than addressing these issues directly, this discussion sets out information about the way in which the words are written in our surviving MSS of Cicero and takes further some recent work on the presentation of Greek words in Latin texts. It argues that, for the most part, coherent patterns and explanations can be found in the alphabetic choices exhibited by them, or at least by the earliest of them when there is conflict in the paradosis, and that this coherence is evidence for a generally reliable transmission of Cicero's original choices. While a lack of coherence might indicate unreliable transmission, or even an indifference on Cicero's part, a consistent pattern can only really be explained as an accurate record of coherent alphabet choice made by Cicero when writing Greek words.

The Type of Temperament, Mood, and Strategies of Categorization

2012 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 227-236 ◽  
Author(s):  
Agata Wytykowska
Keyword(s):  
Information Processing ◽  
Negative Mood ◽  
Cognitive Activity ◽  
Processing Capacity ◽  
Affective Value ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

In Strelau’s theory of temperament (RTT), there are four types of temperament, differentiated according to low vs. high stimulation processing capacity and to the level of their internal harmonization. The type of temperament is considered harmonized when the constellation of all temperamental traits is internally matched to the need for stimulation, which is related to effectiveness of stimulation processing. In nonharmonized temperamental structure, an internal mismatch is observed which is linked to ineffectiveness of stimulation processing. The three studies presented here investigated the relationship between temperamental structures and the strategies of categorization. Results revealed that subjects with harmonized structures efficiently control the level of stimulation stemming from the cognitive activity, independent of the affective value of situation. The pattern of results attained for subjects with nonharmonized structures was more ambiguous: They were as good as subjects with harmonized structures at adjusting the way of information processing to their stimulation processing capacities, but they also proved to be more responsive to the affective character of stimulation (positive or negative mood).

Understanding prescription in language. A corpus-based approach

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 67-81
Author(s):  
Douglas A. Kibbee ◽  
Alan Craig
Keyword(s):  
Social Context ◽  
French Tradition ◽  
Linguistic Behavior ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

We define prescription as any intervention in the way another person speaks. Long excluded from linguistics as unscientific, prescription is in fact a natural part of linguistic behavior. We seek to understand the logic and method of prescriptivism through the study of usage manuals: their authors, sources and audience; their social context; the categories of “errors” targeted; the justification for correction; the phrasing of prescription; the relationship between demonstrated usage and the usage prescribed; the effect of the prescription. Our corpus is a collection of about 30 usage manuals in the French tradition. Eventually we hope to create a database permitting easy comparison of these features.

On (Not) Translating Lacan: Barbara Cassin's Sophistico-Analytical Performances

Paragraph ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 98-113
Author(s):  
Michael Syrotinski
Keyword(s):  
Machine Translation ◽  
Reading And Writing ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

Barbara Cassin's Jacques the Sophist: Lacan, Logos, and Psychoanalysis, recently translated into English, constitutes an important rereading of Lacan, and a sustained commentary not only on his interpretation of Greek philosophers, notably the Sophists, but more broadly the relationship between psychoanalysis and sophistry. In her study, Cassin draws out the sophistic elements of Lacan's own language, or the way that Lacan ‘philosophistizes’, as she puts it. This article focuses on the relation between Cassin's text and her better-known Dictionary of Untranslatables, and aims to show how and why both ‘untranslatability’ and ‘performativity’ become keys to understanding what this book is not only saying, but also doing. It ends with a series of reflections on machine translation, and how the intersubjective dynamic as theorized by Lacan might open up the possibility of what is here termed a ‘translatorly’ mode of reading and writing.

Klein with Lacan: A Study on the Reception of Lacanian Ideas in Uruguay and Its Effects on Clinical Practices (1955–82)

2020 ◽  
Vol 22 (3) ◽  
pp. 341-361
Author(s):  
Gonzalo Grau-Pérez ◽  
J. Guillermo Milán
Keyword(s):  
Clinical Practice ◽  
Clinical Material ◽  
Clinical Practices ◽  
Before And After ◽  
The Difference ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Discursive Approach ◽  
The Way ◽  
Clinical Cases

In Uruguay, Lacanian ideas arrived in the 1960s, into a context of Kleinian hegemony. Adopting a discursive approach, this study researched the initial reception of these ideas and its effects on clinical practices. We gathered a corpus of discursive data from clinical cases and theoretical-doctrinal articles (from the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s). In order to examine the effects of Lacanian ideas, we analysed the difference in the way of interpreting the clinical material before and after Lacan's reception. The results of this research illuminate some epistemological problems of psychoanalysis, especially the relationship between theory and clinical practice.

FBI and Religion

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Religious Orientation ◽  
Religious Communities ◽  
Academic Scholarship ◽  
History Of ◽  
Interdisciplinary Assessment ◽  
Civic Religion ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way

This volume is an interdisciplinary assessment of the relationship between religion and the FBI. We recount the history of the FBI’s engagement with multiple religious communities and with aspects of public or “civic” religion such as morality and respectability. The book presents new research to explain roughly the history of the FBI’s interaction with religion over approximately one century, from the pre-Hoover period to the post-9/11 era. Along the way, the book explores vexed issues that go beyond the particulars of the FBI’s history—the juxtaposition of “religion” and “cult,” the ways in which race can shape the public’s perceptions of religion (and vica versa), the challenges of mediating between a religious orientation and a secular one, and the role and limits of academic scholarship as a way of addressing the differing worldviews of the FBI and some of the religious communities it encounters.

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