Ethical Naturalism:

2020 ◽  
pp. 139-182
Author(s):  
Chad Hansen
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Naturalism

Does Humanity Share a Common Moral Faculty?

2010 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 37-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Keyword(s):  
Normative Theory ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Moral Sentiment ◽  
Philosophical Argument ◽  
Ethical Naturalism ◽  
History Of Ethics ◽  
Moral Conception ◽  
History Of ◽  
Moral Faculty

AbstractThe history of ethics contains many moral faculty theories, which usually are sorted by their metaphysics. The usual suspects include moral rationalism (Richard Price, Kant), moral sentiment theory (Hutcheson, Hume, Smith) and the varieties of ethical naturalism. Moral faculty theories differ importantly upon yet another dimension, on how widely it is distributed. Some, the Platonic elitists (Plato, J.S. Mill, R.M. Hare), suppose that moral truth can be discerned only by philosophical argument. Hence, they ascribe a revisionary task to normative theory, that of correcting nonphilosophers' moral errors. Others, the communalists (Aquinas, Hume, W.D. Ross), hold that the moral faculty is universally distributed. Hence, they hold that normative theory's task is not to revise, but rather to discern and explain the shared moral conception that we all apply in our ordinary moral lives. I here offer arguments to support commonalism.

Hare's Arguments Against Ethical Naturalism

1967 ◽  
Vol 64 (23) ◽  
pp. 779 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. W. Sumner
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Naturalism

Realist Critique Without Ethical Naturalism and Moral Realism

2010 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-58 ◽  
Author(s):  
Dave Elder-Vass
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Ethical Naturalism

Aristóteles Contra o Bem dos Economistas

2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 217-234
Author(s):  
Mário Maximo
Keyword(s):  
Economic Theory ◽  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Real Function ◽  
Capability Approach ◽  
Capabilities Approach ◽  
Ethical Naturalism ◽  
Human Form ◽  
The Real ◽  
Weak Points ◽  
The Capability Approach

Despite its origins within moral philosophy, economists think their science has nothing to do with the good. They appeal to some kind of Hume’s guillotine that divides the descriptive and the normative. With that in hand, they affirm the solely descriptive aspect of their discipline. I argue this is not the case. Economists have, as they need to, an all encompassing notion of the good. I suggest going back to Aristotelian arguments to show the shortcomings of this good of economists. Aristotle is helpful because of his analysis of chrematistics and the real function of money. Hence, the loosely utilitarian good of the economists is confronted with a robust sense of the good and the human form. The capability approach is the first to identify these weak points on economic theory and to propose a sort of Aristotelian comeback. However, I claim the capabilities approach itself doesn’t follow the Aristotelian arguments used to attack economists to its necessary conclusion. Therefore, I suggest that the recent advances in neo-Aristotelian ethical naturalism can be used to reformulate economics by dispossessing economists of their sumo bonnun.

Holiness and Ethics

2018 ◽  
pp. 89-153
Author(s):  
Alan L. Mittleman
Keyword(s):  
Natural History ◽  
Moral Realism ◽  
Human Condition ◽  
Ethical Naturalism ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Human Condition

This chapter explores the connection between holiness and ethics or between holiness and goodness. Drawing on a theory of holiness in Judaism, it considers how holiness relates to other values, including moral ones, and whether holiness is more primordial or primitive than ethics. The discussion is anchored on two texts: the first from the Book of Leviticus, and the second from the modern Jewish thinker, Abraham Joshua Heschel. The chapter argues that holiness and morality are equally primordial, equally original to the human condition, and goes on to propose a natural history of holiness in which the human experiences of love and awe, of goodness and holiness arise together against man's evolutionary background as a social primate. It also examines the concepts of primordial morality, natural morality, ethical naturalism, and moral realism before concluding with an analysis of intuition in relation to the good, the right, and the holy.

Sellars’s Ethical Naturalism

2018 ◽  
pp. 324-344
Author(s):  
Jeremy Randel Koons
Keyword(s):  
Ethical Naturalism

Open question argument

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tristram McPherson
Keyword(s):  
Natural Sciences ◽  
Ethical Naturalism ◽  
Natural Properties ◽  
The Core ◽  
Open Questions ◽  
Open Question Argument ◽  
Naturalistic Account ◽  
Open Question

The open question argument is the heart of G.E. Moore’s case against ethical naturalism. Ethical naturalism is the view that goodness, rightness, etc. are natural properties; roughly, the sorts of properties that can be investigated by the natural sciences. Moore claims that, for any candidate naturalistic account of an ethical term according to which ‘good’ had the same meaning as some naturalistic term A, we might without confusion ask: ‘I see that this act is A, but is it good?’ Moore claimed that the existence of such open questions shows that ethical naturalism is mistaken. In the century since its introduction, the open question argument has faced a battery of objections. Despite these challenges, some contemporary philosophers claim that the core of Moore’s argument can be salvaged. The most influential defences link Moore’s argument to the difficulty that naturalistic ethical realists face in explaining the practical role of ethical concepts in deliberation.

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