Oppenheim's Defense of Noncognitivism

1971 ◽  
Vol 65 (4) ◽  
pp. 1105-1114
Author(s):  
Donald VanDeVeer
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Logical Status ◽  
Attractive Candidate ◽  
History Of ◽  
Positive Support

In his recent book, Moral Principles in Political Philosophy, Felix Oppenheim provides a useful examination of the assumptions of well known figures in the history of political philosophy concerning the logical status of moral principles. Classifying them as cognitivists (if they view fundamental moral principles as either true or false) or noncognitivists (if they view moral principles as neither true nor false), Oppenheim attempts to exhibit the inadequacy of the cognitivist point of view and, importantly, the adequacy of the noncognitivist position. My critique aims at demonstrating the inconclusiveness of Oppenheim’s arguments against cognitivism. Oppenheim presupposes the availability of a plausible and workable criterion for determining when a sentence counts as a statement (statements are for Oppenheim entities which are true or false and, thus, “cognitively meaningful”), but he fails to provide any attractive candidate for that position. Further critical discussion revolves around the following related questions: Is there adequate positive support for the noncognitivist view? Does it allow for the rationality of fundamental moral commitments? And can Oppenheim really justify his case that, far from being irrational or pernicious, noncognitivism is naturally associated with certain humanistic ideals, such as toleration of those of differing moral and political viewpoint?

Justice as a Personal Virtue and Justice as an Institutional Virtue: Mencius’s Confucian Virtue Politics

2020 ◽  
Vol 2019 (4) ◽  
pp. 277-294
Author(s):  
Yong Huang
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Social Institutions ◽  
Affirmative Answer ◽  
The State ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Character Traits ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
The Government

AbstractIt has been widely observed that virtue ethics, regarded as an ethics of the ancient, in contrast to deontology and consequentialism, seen as an ethics of the modern (Larmore 1996: 19–23), is experiencing an impressive revival and is becoming a strong rival to utilitarianism and deontology in the English-speaking world in the last a few decades. Despite this, it has been perceived as having an obvious weakness in comparison with its two major rivals. While both utilitarianism and deontology can at the same time serve as an ethical theory, providing guidance for individual persons and a political philosophy, offering ways to structure social institutions, virtue ethics, as it is concerned with character traits of individual persons, seems to be ill-equipped to be politically useful. In recent years, some attempts have been made to develop the so-called virtue politics, but most of them, including my own (see Huang 2014: Chapter 5), are limited to arguing for the perfectionist view that the state has the obligation to do things to help its members develop their virtues, and so the focus is still on the character traits of individual persons. However important those attempts are, such a notion of virtue politics is clearly too narrow, unless one thinks that the only job the state is supposed to do is to cultivate its people’s virtues. Yet obviously the government has many other jobs to do such as making laws and social policies, many if not most of which are not for the purpose of making people virtuous. The question is then in what sense such laws and social policies are moral in general and just in particular. Utilitarianism and deontology have their ready answers in the light of utility or moral principles respectively. Can virtue ethics provide its own answer? This paper attempts to argue for an affirmative answer to this question from the Confucian point of view, as represented by Mencius. It does so with a focus on the virtue of justice, as it is a central concept in both virtue ethics and political philosophy.

scholarly journals Garrett Barden and Tim Murphy. Law and Justice in Community (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)

2011 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Guðmundur Heiðar Frímannsson
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Deep Roots ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
History Of ◽  
Law And Justice ◽  
Field Of Inquiry ◽  
Oxford University Press

Jurisprudence is a lively field of inquiry and law and justice are among its most important subjects. They are not exclusive to jurisprudence but are also inquired into in ethics and political philosophy. The book under review is an extensive inquiry into law and justice from the point of view of jurisprudence but it is jurisprudence that has deep roots in the history of the discipline. The authors use ideas from Aristotle, Gaius, Justinian, Thomas Aquinas, Adam Smith, Hobbes and from various law books from the Code of Hammurabi onwards. One way of understanding the book is to see the authors as reworking an old tradition that has not been prominent in modern jurisprudence. This approach leads to surprising conclusions from a modern point of view that are both radical and conventional.

Restoring Catharine Macaulay’s Enlightenment Republicanism?

2021 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 39-57
Author(s):  
Karen Green ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Theory ◽  
Natural Law ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Tragedy Of The Commons ◽  
Political Authority ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
The Commons

Can Catharine Macaulay’s enlightenment democratic republicanism be justified from the point of view of contemporary naturalism? Naturalist accounts of political authority tend to be realist and pessimistic, foreclosing the possibility of enlightenment. Macaulay’s utopian political philosophy relies on belief in a good God, whose existence underpins the possibility of moral and political progress. This paper attempts a restoration of her optimistic utopianism in a reconciliation, grounded in a revision of natural law, of naturalist and utopian attitudes to political theory. It is proposed that the coevolution of language, moral law, and conscience (the disposition to judge one’s own actions in the light of moral principles) can be explained as solutions to the kinds of tragedy of the commons situations facing our ancestors. Moral dispositions evolved, but, in the light of its function, law is subject to rational critique. Liberal democracy plausibly offers the best prospect for developing rationally justifiable law.

The Rutherford Memorial Lecture, 1956 The discovery of atomic number

1956 ◽  
Vol 236 (1206) ◽  
pp. 285-296 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Atomic Number ◽  
Chemical Elements ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Memorial Lecture ◽  
Daily Press ◽  
History Of ◽  
Element Number ◽  
The Subject ◽  
The Many

In a Rutherford Memorial Lecture there are two alternative courses that might be taken. One is to describe one or other of the great developments that have later followed out from the many things which Rutherford started; the other is to describe some aspect of his own work from a historical point of view. If, as we hope and intend, the institution of these lectures should survive for many years, the first policy will probably be more useful in later times, but there still remain a number of people who lived through the wonderful experiences of those days, and while we survive it may be more interesting perhaps for us to leave some small records of what we saw. But there seems little purpose in merely giving again and again a biography recounting all the things that Rutherford did, and so I have chosen one item from among his discoveries, and I propose to give an account of this. It is the discovery of Atomic Number. I am going to try and give a picture of this whole subject; in it Rutherford of course played the leading part, but others made very important contributions, and it will be the whole history of it that I shall try to describe, and not merely his part in it. In the history of science there has been every now and then what I may call an ‘easy’ discovery, by which I do not in the least mean that it was easy to discover, but that when discovered it is so easy to understand, that it is difficult afterwards to see how people had got on without it. One example of such an ‘easy’ discovery was the discovery by Copernicus that the earth goes round the sun. After his time it was possible for anyone almost to forget what astronomy had been like before his day, and yet we have to recognize that the subject had been studied for three or four thousand years by many exceedingly intelligent men. Atomic number is another such ‘easy’ discovery. Any recent book on chemistry or physics describes the chemical elements in terms of it, and now with the development of atomic energy, even the daily press discusses quite readily the differences between uranium 238 and 235, and possibly even recalls that uranium is element number 92. In all the doubts that we may have about how future scientific discoveries will reshape our outlook on the world, we can feel sure that this one thing will never be changed; that the isotopes of the atoms of chemical elements will always have known atomic numbers and atomic weights. It now seems so simple that it is hard to believe how recently it was all discovered, and I want to show you that this ‘easy’ discovery was not at all easy to make.

Jeffersonian Democracy: a Dual Tradition

1934 ◽  
Vol 28 (5) ◽  
pp. 838-851
Author(s):  
Charles M. Wiltse
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
The Other ◽  
Abstract System ◽  
The World ◽  
Action Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
Great Mass

From the great mass of Jefferson's writings, letters, and public utterances, it is possible to select isolated fragments in justification of almost any course one chooses to pursue; and the history of his forty years in the service of his country offers almost as various a pattern. Taking his career and his writings as a whole, however, and piecing together from both the broad outlines of a political philosophy, one is struck by what appears to be a dual emphasis: two diverging streams of thought, which seem at first glance to be incompatible, and which have rendered the great democrat vulnerable to the charge of inconsistency so often repeated in his own day as in ours. One of these emphases, and that most apt to be quoted by campaign orators, is on individualism; but the direction and purpose of the other is socialistic.Both in the abstract system of the philosopher and in the concrete events of the world of action, time has a way of reconciling apparent contradictions. Historical perspective will do much to reveal unsuspected unities, and the point of view from which the inquiry is approached will do the rest.

scholarly journals Moral Origins — Reasonable Doubts

Russian judge ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 62-64
Author(s):  
Elena V. Selina ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Criminal Justice System ◽  
Justice System ◽  
Mission Statement ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Criminal Proceedings ◽  
Criminal Process ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Law

Once again, it is time to talk about moral principles. This concept is clearly established in the law. But its content-content remains in the circle of discrepancies. The countdown of its history is usually considered when referring to the essay by A.F. Kony ‘Moral principles in criminal proceedings (General features of judicial ethics)’. This article is based on the author’s previous research, which showed that the idea of moral principles as a corresponding category was suggested by A.F. Kony and F.M. Dostoevsky. The article is devoted to the further goal-to extract the missing (according to the essay by A.F. Kony) information about moral principles from the artistic and publicistic works of F.M. Dostoevsky. The works of F.M. Dostoevsky are considered from the point of view of searching for the mechanism of the criminal justice system taking into account the moral principles. A.F. Kony’s essay on moral principles is filled with the history of the criminal process, and only a small part of it has become considered as a mission statement and widely.

Perspectives of Reforming the System of Interbudget Relations in Russia (in the Light of the International Experience)

2006 ◽  
pp. 112-127 ◽  
Author(s):  
V. Nazarov
Keyword(s):  
Social Welfare ◽  
Intergovernmental Relations ◽  
International Experience ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Short History ◽  
History Of

The attempts to reconstruct the instruments of interbudget relations take place in all federations. In Russia such attempts are especially popular due to the short history of intergovernmental relations. Thus the review of the ¬international experience of managing interbudget relations to provide economic and social welfare can be useful for present-day Russia. The author develops models of intergovernmental relations from the point of view of making decisions about budget authorities’ distribution. The models that can be better applied in the Russian case are demonstrated.

Beérkezett könyvek

2008 ◽  
Vol 63 (4) ◽  
pp. 769-770
Author(s):  
Csaba Pléh
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
New Science ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Mind ◽  
Oxford University Press

Danziger, Kurt: Marking the mind. A history of memory . Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008Farkas, Katalin: The subject’s point of view. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008MosoninéFriedJudités TolnaiMárton(szerk.): Tudomány és politika. Typotex, Budapest, 2008Iacobini, Marco: Mirroring people. The new science of how we connect with others. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, New York, 2008Changeux, Jean-Pierre. Du vrai, du beau, du bien.Une nouvelle approche neuronale. Odile Jacob, PárizsGazzaniga_n

Utopophobia

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Estlund
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Social Justice ◽  
Political Thought ◽  
Political Action ◽  
Ideal Theory ◽  
Theory Of Justice ◽  
Sound Theory ◽  
Theory Versus ◽  
History Of ◽  
Practical Guidance

Throughout the history of political philosophy and politics, there has been continual debate about the roles of idealism versus realism. For contemporary political philosophy, this debate manifests in notions of ideal theory versus nonideal theory. Nonideal thinkers shift their focus from theorizing about full social justice, asking instead which feasible institutional and political changes would make a society more just. Ideal thinkers, on the other hand, question whether full justice is a standard that any society is likely ever to satisfy. And, if social justice is unrealistic, are attempts to understand it without value or importance, and merely utopian? This book argues against thinking that justice must be realistic, or that understanding justice is only valuable if it can be realized. The book does not offer a particular theory of justice, nor does it assert that justice is indeed unrealizable—only that it could be, and this possibility upsets common ways of proceeding in political thought. The book's author engages critically with important strands in traditional and contemporary political philosophy that assume a sound theory of justice has the overriding, defining task of contributing practical guidance toward greater social justice. Along the way, it counters several tempting perspectives, including the view that inquiry in political philosophy could have significant value only as a guide to practical political action, and that understanding true justice would necessarily have practical value, at least as an ideal arrangement to be approximated. Demonstrating that unrealistic standards of justice can be both sound and valuable to understand, the book stands as a trenchant defense of ideal theory in political philosophy.

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