Dewey and White on Value, Obligation, and Practical Judgment

SATS ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Sinclair
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Inquiry ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Value Judgments ◽  
Practical Judgment ◽  
The Status ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Human Inquiry

AbstractThis essay examines the largely forgotten debate from 1949 between Dewey and White over the status of value judgments. It argues that White does not criticize Dewey’s moral philosophy as a misguided attempt to derive an “ought” from “is”, rather he maintains that Dewey’s ethical naturalism cannot provide an empirical definition of moral judgments that preserves their status as moral obligations. Although White is mistaken in presenting Dewey’s view as a failed theory of moral obligation, Dewey’s reply suggests that White is correct in understanding the connections between scientific and moral inquiry in normative terms. This further reveals that value judgments concerning what we should do, what Dewey calls “practical judgments”, are not moral obligations as White suggests, but are fallible directives for addressing problems disruptive of human activity. By presenting Dewey’s view as a failed attempt to reduce moral terms to an acceptable empirical vocabulary, White assumes a logical separation between the descriptive and that normative that is untenable from the perspective of Dewey’s account of human inquiry.

MORAL OBLIGATION AFTER THE DEATH OF GOD: CRITICAL REFLECTIONS ON CONCERNS FROM IMMANUEL KANT, G. W. F. HEGEL, AND ELIZABETH ANSCOMBE

2010 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 317-340 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Tristram Engelhardt
Keyword(s):  
Immanuel Kant ◽  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Historical Context ◽  
Important Change ◽  
Moral Pluralism ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
European Continent ◽  
Presence Of God ◽  
Thing In Itself ◽  
The Status

AbstractOnce God is no longer recognized as the ground and the enforcer of morality, the character and force of morality undergoes a significant change, a point made by G.E.M. Anscombe in her observation that without God the significance of morality is changed, as the word criminal would be changed if there were no criminal law and criminal courts. There is no longer in principle a God's-eye perspective from which one can envisage setting moral pluralism aside. In addition, it becomes impossible to show that morality should always trump concerns of prudence, concerns for one's own non-moral interests and the interests of those to whom one is close. Immanuel Kant's attempt to maintain the unity of morality and the force of moral obligation by invoking the idea of God and the postulates of pure practical reason (i.e., God and immortality) are explored and assessed. Hegel's reconstruction of the status of moral obligation is also examined, given his attempt to eschew Kant's thing-in-itself, as well as Kant's at least possible transcendent God. Severed from any metaphysical anchor, morality gains a contingent content from socio-historical context and its enforcement from the state. Hegel's disengagement from a transcendent God marks a watershed in the place of God in philosophical reflections regarding the status of moral obligations on the European continent. Anscombe is vindicated. Absent the presence of God, there is an important change in the force of moral obligation.

scholarly journals The Right to Seek Asylum of ‘Climate Refugees’

Acta Humana ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 119-136
Author(s):  
Valéria Horváth
Keyword(s):  
International Law ◽  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Climate Change Mitigation ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Customary International Law ◽  
Mitigation And Adaptation ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
Change Mitigation ◽  
Climate Refugees

Although the issue of climate change mitigation and adaptation is fortunately evermore widely discussed, the problems facing ‘climate refugees’ only appears sporadically in the discussions adding to the current confusion. Taking recent and forecasted trends into account, the UN declares that states have serious moral obligations to provide humanitarian protection to all those displaced. The question which the international community and international lawyers face is whether states have more than just a moral obligation to provide protection. In this paper I will assess whether or not there are any roots in the various sources of international law – such as conventional law, customary international law, or the fundamental principles of international law – for the legal definition of ‘climate refugees’.

scholarly journals The moral obligations of conflict and resistance

2020 ◽  
Vol 43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Melanie Killen ◽  
Audun Dahl
Keyword(s):  
Young Children ◽  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Key Features

Abstract Morality has two key features: (1) moral judgments are not solely determined by what your group thinks, and (2) moral judgments are often applied to members of other groups as well as your own group. Cooperative motives do not explain how young children reject unfairness, and assert moral obligations, both inside and outside their groups. Resistance and experience with conflicts, alongside cooperation, is key to the emergence and development of moral obligation.

Moral Obligation and Moral Motivation

1995 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 187-219 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Copp
Keyword(s):  
Moral Obligation ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Arbitrary System ◽  
Moral Obligations ◽  
Internal Connection ◽  
The Right ◽  
Do The Right Thing

'Internalism’ in ethics is a cluster of views according to which there is an ‘internal’ connection between moral obligations and either motivations or reasons to act morally; ‘externalism’ says that such connections are contingent. So described, the dispute between internalism and externalism may seem a technical debate of minor interest. However, the issues that motivate it include deep problems about moral truth, realism, normativity, and objectivity. Indeed, I think that some philosophers view externalism as undermining the ‘dignity’ of morality. They might say that if morality needs an ‘external sanction’ - if the belief that one has an obligation is not sufficient motive or reason to do the right thing- then morality is debased in status. Even an arbitrary system of etiquette could attract an external sanction under appropriate conditions.Although I believe that the more interesting internalist theses are false, there are important truths that internalism is attempting to capture. The most important of these is the fact that moral judgments are intrinsically ‘normative’ or ‘choice-guiding,’ that they are, very roughly, relevant to action or choice because of their content.

Subjectivism and Toleration

1991 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 197-208 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bernard Williams
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Ethical Beliefs ◽  
Objective Truth ◽  
The Status

Bertrand Russell said more than once that he was uncomfortable about a conflict, as he saw it, between two things: the strength of the conviction with which he held his ethical beliefs, and the philosophical opinions that he had about the status of those ethical beliefs—opinions which were non-cognitivist, and in some sense subjectivist. Russell felt that, in some way, if he did not think that his ethical beliefs were objective, he had no right to hold them so passionately. This discomfort was not something that Ayer noted or discussed in his account of Russell's moral philosophy and ethical opinions, at least in the book that he wrote for the Modern Masters series (RS). Perhaps this was because it was not a kind of discomfort that Ayer felt himself. His own philosophical views about the status of ethics were at all periods at any rate non-cognitivist, and I think that he did not mind them being called ‘subjectivist’. He did indeed argue that the supposed difference between objectivism and subjectivism in ethics did no work, and that philosophers who took themselves to be objectivists could not achieve anything more than those who admitted they were subjectivists. Ayer based this mainly on the idea that the claims made by objectivists for the factuality, objective truth, and so forth of moral judgments added nothing to those judgments—so far as moral conclusions were concerned, the objectivist was saying the same as the subjectivist but in a louder voice.

Framing Morality: How Antecedent-Focused Strategies Can Shape Moral Judgments

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andreas Kappes ◽  
Jay Joseph Van Bavel
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Emotional Reactions ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Process Dissociation ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
First Response ◽  
High Conflict

From moral philosophy to programming driverless cars, scholars have long been interested in how to shape moral decision-making. We examine how framing can impact moral judgments either by shaping which emotional reactions are evoked in a situation (antecedent-focused) or by changing how people respond to their emotional reactions (response-focused). In three experiments, we manipulated the framing of a moral decision-making task before participants judged a series of moral dilemmas. Participants encouraged to go “with their first” response beforehand favored emotion-driven judgments on high-conflict moral dilemmas. In contrast, participants who were instructed to give a “thoughtful” response beforehand or who did not receive instructions on how to approach the dilemmas favored reason-driven judgments. There was no difference in response-focused control during moral judgements. Process-dissociation confirmed that people instructed to go with their first response had stronger emotion-driven intuitions than other conditions. Our results suggest that task framing can alter moral intuitions.

Islamic Science

1993 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 305-311
Author(s):  
Sirajul Husain
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Islamic Science ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Empirical Methodology ◽  
Human Inquiry

The term "Islamic science" can be defined as the scientific way of definingand comborating the uniquely monotheistic concept of tuwhfd(unity), a concept that can serve as an epistemological manifold for intellectualinquiry and development. In this context, science is taken as a systematicway of looking at things or, in other words, as both a philosophyof knowledge as well as an empirical methodology. When taken in its entirety,science includes the whole spectrum of human inquiry rangingfrom ontology to epistemology, from causality to cosmology, and fromthe natural and social sciences to technology. It may be noted that beyondan axiomatic application based on a metaphysical definition of tawhid,there has been no scientific attempt to analyze and substantiate thisconcept. This axiomatic application of tawhid, especially when dealing withan analysis of developments in knowledge, raises certain epistemologicalquestions. As it does not scientifically define or discuss the verypremise-tawhid-on which the analysis is being based, this is to be expected.Furthermore, for example, the axiomatic application of tuwhid topurge the corpus of knowledge of its secular elements and then reconstructit within the tawhidi framework cannot be fulfilled, as it is unableto furnish a tawhid-based scientific temperament without first providingscientific combomtion of the concept itself. It is from such an epistemologicalviewpoint that we find the contributions of Muslims to variousfields of leaming tend to be more sentimental than scientific.The need to develop Islamic science also arises from the fact thatmost modem scientists are known to be secular, as they have consciouslyevaded the issue of the existence of a Creator. This is the result of their ...

Self and Selves

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph C.S. Walker
Keyword(s):  
Personal Identity ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
A Priori ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Synthetic A Priori

Kant is committed to the reality of a subject self, outside time but active in forming experience. Timeless activity is problematic, but that can be dealt with. But he holds that the subject of experience is not an object of experience, so nothing can be known about it; this raises a problem about the status of his own theory. But he ought to allow that we can know of its existence and activity, as preconditions of experience: the Critique allows that synthetic a priori truths can be known in this way. However, its identity conditions remain unknowable. Kant’s unity of apperception shares much with Locke’s continuity of consciousness, but does not determine the identity of a thing. Personal identity is bodily identity. Only Kant’s moral philosophy justifies recognizing other selves; it could warrant ascribing a similar status to animals.

Slave Women and Their Descendants among the Upper Classes in Tetouan, Morocco (1859–1956): Between Recognition and Conflict

2020 ◽  
pp. 036319902096739
Author(s):  
Josep Lluís Mateo Dieste
Keyword(s):  
Skin Color ◽  
Arab World ◽  
Family Members ◽  
Negative Stereotypes ◽  
The Social ◽  
Form Part ◽  
Slave Women ◽  
The Status ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
Determinant Factor

In the Arab world, the recognized children of elite men and slave women could adopt the status of their father, ignoring the slave origin of the mother, owing to a system of patrilineal transmission. This regime co-existed with negative stereotypes toward slaves and blackness, despite the very fact that—as this study of notable families in Tetouan between 1859 and 1956 demonstrates—skin color was not the determinant factor to form part of this group. Rather, it was based on the social definition of filiation, leading to legal disputes between family members to delineate the boundaries of kinship.

scholarly journals Rethinking Southern Europe: Society, Networks and Politics

2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Alan Granadino ◽  
Eirini Karamouzi ◽  
Rinna Kullaa
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Southern Europe ◽  
Eurozone Crisis ◽  
Development Education ◽  
Family Structures ◽  
Conceptual Clarity ◽  
Welfare Systems ◽  
The Status ◽  
Nineteenth And Twentieth Centuries ◽  
Definition Of

Writing and researching Southern Europe as a symbiotic area has always presented a challenging task. Historians and political scientists such as Stanley Payne, Edward Malefakis, Giulio Sapelli, and Roberto Aliboni have studied the concept of Southern Europe and its difficult paths to modernity. They have been joined by sociologists and anthropologists who have debated the existence of a Southern European paradigm in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and the arduous transformation of the region's welfare systems, economic development, education and family structures. These scholarly attempts to understand the specificities of Southern Europe date back to the concerns of Western European Cold War strategists in the 1970s, many of whom were worried about the status quo of the region in the aftermath of the fall of the dictatorships. But this geographical and geopolitical definition of the area did not necessarily follow existing cultural, political and economic patterns. Once the Eurozone crisis hit in the 2000s these questions came back with renewed force but with even less conceptual clarity, as journalists and pundits frequently gestured towards vague notions of what they considered to be ‘Southern Europe’.

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