Prichard vs. Plato: Intuition vs. Reflection

2007 ◽  
Vol 33 ◽  
pp. 1-32
Author(s):  
Mark Lebar
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Thinking ◽  
Direct Apprehension ◽  
As If

When H.A. Prichard launched his attack on the “mistake” in moral philosophy of “supposing the possibility of proving what can only be apprehended directly by an act of moral thinking,” he had Plato squarely in his sights. I Plato, in fact, is the poster boy for the strategy of trying to “supply by a process of reflection a proof of the truth of what … they have prior to reflection believed immediately or without proof.” As if this were not mistake enough, Prichard charges Plato with being the “most significant instance” of the error of trying to “justify morality by its profitableness,” because Plato's general acuity brings into sharp relief just how pernicious is the temptation to offer such justifications. Prichard has in view Plato's attempt in Republic to demonstrate that justice is oikeion agathon - one's own good - and Prichard complains that at best such an account can make us want to be just, rather than show us that we are obligated to be just, as direct apprehension purports to do.

scholarly journals Contemporary moral philosophy in the context of the social transformation

2002 ◽  
pp. 193-202
Author(s):  
Aleksandar Dobrijevic
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Social Transformation ◽  
Practical Relevance ◽  
Moral Thinking ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social ◽  
Selective Bibliography

The article contains an explanation of the topic to be dealt with by the author within the work on the project 'Applying Modern Philosophical-Political Paradigms on Processes of Social Transformation in Serbia/FRJ'' of the Institute of Philosophy and Social Theory. In the first part of the paper the basic conception of the work as well as theoretical and practical relevance of the proposed topic are presented. In the second part, author emphasis the weight of the 'two-level theory' of moral thinking, which was elaborated by Richard Mervyn Hare, utilitarian philosopher. In the third part, the plan and the content of the forthcoming work are outlined. Basic and selective bibliography which author will be rely on in the elaboration of the proposed topic is given at the end of this article.

Linguistic Philosophy and Perception

Philosophy ◽  
1953 ◽  
Vol 28 (107) ◽  
pp. 311-324
Author(s):  
Margaret MacDonald
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
External World ◽  
Physical World ◽  
Sense Experience ◽  
The Common ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Perceptual Variation ◽  
Linguistic Philosophy ◽  
As If

Philosophical theories of perception are generally admitted to be responses to certain problems or puzzles allied to the ancient dichotomy between Appearance and Reality. For they have been mainly provoked by the incompatibility of the common–sense assumption that an external, physical world exists and is revealed to the senses with the well–known facts of perceptual variation and error. If only what is real were perceived just as if only what is right were done it is possible that many of those questions would never have been asked which lead to moral philosophy and a metaphysics of the external world. But sense perceptions of the same object vary so that it appears to have contradictory qualities and are sometimes completely deceptive. Nor do illusory differ internally from veridical perceptions. Moreover, perceptual variation and error can be unmasked only by such procedures as looking more carefully, listening harder, trying to touch, asking others, in short by more sense experience. So the senses are, as it were, both accused and judge in these disputes and why should a venal judge be trusted more than the criminal he tries? Such “correction” of one experience by another of the same kind seems no more reliable than the original “error.” Philosophers have found all this very puzzling.

scholarly journals George Clooney, Brad Pitt und ich, Oder: Die schöne Illusion des Vertrauens

2009 ◽  
Vol 54 (2) ◽  
pp. 113-122
Author(s):  
Josef Früchtl
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Aesthetic Experiences ◽  
Social Sphere ◽  
The Social ◽  
Subject Specific ◽  
The World ◽  
Recent Philosophy ◽  
Relationship Of ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
As If

Vertrauen hat zunächst einmal eine fundamentale Funktion in der sozialen Sphäre. Dementsprechend fungiert es als philosophischer Terminus vor allem in der Politischen, der Sozial- und der Moralphilosophie. Aber auch in der neueren Soziologie und Psychologie ist es zentral. Im Verweis darauf kann man das Vertrauensverhältnis zwischen Zuschauer und Leinwandheld als parasozial bezeichnen, als eine Als-ob- Interaktion. Für die neuere Filmphilosophie spezifisch interessant ist demgegenüber das ontologische Vertrauen. Statt es mit Deleuze im Sinne einer Kino-Metaphysik zu erklären, scheint es angemessener, die verschiedenen fachspezifischen Antworten noch einmal unter Kants Spielkonzept zusammenzubinden. Ästhetische Erfahrungen bestärken uns in der Einstellung, so zu tun, als ob wir in die Welt Vertrauen haben könnten. At first trust plays a fundamental role within the social sphere. Accordingly, trust serves as philosophical term above all in Political, Social, and Moral Philosophy. But it is also central in recent Sociology and Psychology. Referring to these disciplines, the relationship of trust be- tween viewer and hero on the screen can be called ›parasocial‹, as-if-interaction. In contrast, ontological trust is of particular interest for recent philosophy of film. Instead of explaining it, following Deleuze, in terms of a metaphysics of cinema it seems to be more adequate to com- bine the different subject-specific answers in Kant’s concept of play. Aesthetic experiences then are encouraging us in the attitude to act as if there could be trust in the world.

Rethinking ‘One Thought Too Many’

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marcia Baron
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Bernard Williams ◽  
As If

“But that would be one thought too many.” This assertion, common in moral philosophy ever since Bernard Williams coined the phrase, is often used as if we all know what it means. It is used as if we all know that it is a bad thing if there is one thought too many and also why it is a bad thing. This paper addresses what ‘That would be one thought too many’ means. What is the thought that would be one too many and why would it be too many?

Integrity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ann Davis
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Public Life ◽  
Personal Relationships ◽  
Central Position ◽  
Focused Attention ◽  
Moral Thinking ◽  
The Core ◽  
Leading Role

The possession (or lack) of integrity is something that all morally serious people care about and think important. In both personal relationships and public life, to describe someone as exhibiting a lack of integrity is to offer a damning diagnosis. It carries the implication that this individual is not to be relied upon, that in some fundamental way they are not someone who we can, or should, view as being wholly or unequivocally there. The foundations of self and character are not sound; the ordering of values is not coherent. Important as the notion of integrity is, it is nevertheless difficult to characterize with precision. Attempts to analyse it seldom do justice to its complexity, or adequately reflect the diverse concerns that generate and sustain either philosophers’ or non-philosophers’ interest in it. Contemporary interest in the notion of integrity has a number of different, often overlapping, sources. It has been accorded a leading role in the debate between consequentialists and non-consequentialists; revived interest in virtue-ethics has naturally focused attention on it; and its connection with unity or coherence of personality make it central for moral psychology. As well as occupying a central position in three major topics within academic moral philosophy, integrity has also come to wider prominence in at least two ways: as a virtue increasingly missed in public life; and as a transcultural virtue that reflects a world that has become increasingly morally pluralistic. The notion of integrity, though complex, elusive, and analytically intractable, is one that goes to the core of our moral thinking, both in theoretical and practical terms.

Moral justification

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
T.M. Scanlon
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Justification ◽  
Moral Argument ◽  
Moral Thinking ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
Moral Philosophers ◽  
The Way

Questions of justification arise in moral philosophy in at least three ways. The first concerns the way in which particular moral claims, such as claims about right and wrong, can be shown to be correct. Virtually every moral theory offers its own account of moral justification in this sense, and these accounts naturally differ from each other. A second question is about the justification of morality as a whole – about how to answer the question, ‘Why be moral?’ Philosophers have disagreed about this, and about whether an answer is even possible. Finally, some philosophers have claimed that justification of our actions to others is a central aim of moral thinking. They maintain that this aim provides answers to the other two questions of justification by explaining the reasons we have to be moral and the particular form that justification takes within moral argument.

On Experimental Philosophy, Morality and Meaning

Philosophy ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 91 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-254
Author(s):  
Hektor K. T. Yan
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Research ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Experimental Philosophy ◽  
Moral Thinking ◽  
Moral Intuitions ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
The Common ◽  
Experimental Subjects

AbstractThe emerging field known as experimental philosophy has expanded into moral philosophy: by presenting experimental subjects with vignettes describing scenarios with moral implications, data about people's moral intuitions are gathered and analyzed. This paper examines the adequacy of applying the common methodology of experimental philosophy to the study of moral thought. By employing Raimond Gaita's notion of moral seriousness and his distinction between form and content, it argues that the kind of empirical research on moral intuitions conducted by experimental philosophers fails to take into consideration some fundamental characteristics of moral thinking.

Dancing, Declamation, and Deipnosophistry in the Deiotariana

Palamedes ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
pp. 61-92
Author(s):  
Brian Krostenko
Keyword(s):  
Literary Criticism ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Political Decisions ◽  
As If ◽  
Formal Features

This article argues that some formal features of Cicero’s speech pro rege Deiotaro reflect Cicero’s understanding of the ideological strains of those days. Some of the charges brought against Deiotarus seem likely to be true. Cicero’s rebuttals of those charges seem weak by the normal conventions of courtroom argument. But the rebuttals draw on modes of speech appropriate for sophisticated dinner parties—literary criticism, poetry, and moral philosophy. The arguments are not necessarily more successful for that, but they do make an ideological point: if political decisions now depend on one man, that brings political decisions very close to questions of taste and sensibility, which in their turn become a valuable and even necessary source of arguments. This aspect of Cicero’s rhetorical approach in the speech exploits the setting, Caesar’s house: Cicero speaks as if he were in a place where, not forensic convention, but intellectual intimacy was the chief value. But Cicero’s artful voice also lapses into patent sophism, making pointedly clever and painfully false argument. That, too, makes an ideological point: if the monarch must depend on intellectual intimates, he is also susceptible to flattery.

The Poetry of Ethics: Horace, Epistles

1979 ◽  
Vol 69 ◽  
pp. 16-27 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. W. Macleod
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Thinking ◽  
Ancient Ethics ◽  
Ethical Systems

In 23 B.C. the first three books of Horace's Odes appeared. In the years which followed, up to the completion of Epistles 1, his work took a new direction, and the ethical themes which had had a marked place in his lyric verse became his entire concern: in his own words (Ep. 1.1.10–11),nunc itaque et versus et cetera ludicra pono;quid verum atque decens euro et rogo, et omnis in hoc sum.What Horace describes in this context, at the very beginning of the book, is a kind of conversion to philosophy; and so the reader is at once drawn to ask what philosophy means to the poet. Before considering this question by scrutiny of the poems, two more general ones should be raised: first, what are the dominant features of ancient ethics as a whole and how far does it differ from modern ethical systems or moral thinking? Second, what part did moral philosophy play in the life of Romans in Horace's time? The answers I shall give to these very large questions are pragmatic and limited: they are meant simply as preparation for considering Horace's Epistles.

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