Morality is so steeped in the quotidian details of praise and blame, of do’s and don’t’s, and of ... more Morality is so steeped in the quotidian details of praise and blame, of do’s and don’t’s, and of questions about the justifiability of certain practices it is no wonder that philosophers and psychologists have devoted relatively little effort to investigating what makes moral life possible in the first place. In making this claim I neither ignore Kant or his intellectual descendants, nor the large literature in developmental moral psychology from Piaget on. My charge has to do with this fact: Morality is an ineliminable feature of human life and human beings are biological creatures. Hence, what wants explaining is how a biological creature — a creature with an evolved mind/brain — can be a normative creature of a particular kind, that is, a creature that cannot help but engage in moral appraisal and evaluation. It does no good to try to wring such an explanation from the ‘very concept’ of agency (whatever that might be) a la Korsgaard (1996). Such a strategy merely delays the inevi...
... And, other things equal, if I uncover the previously hidden and craven motives of my action, ... more ... And, other things equal, if I uncover the previously hidden and craven motives of my action, self-congratulation is unwarranted. ... The Past, Present, and Future of Early Moral Development," Moral Sensibilities and Education I: The Preschool Child, edited by Wouter van Haaften ...
THOMAS SZASZ With a New Preface by the Author MEANING of LANGUAGE, MORALITY, AND XEUROSCIENCE ...... more THOMAS SZASZ With a New Preface by the Author MEANING of LANGUAGE, MORALITY, AND XEUROSCIENCE ... Other books by Thomas Szasz available from Syracuse University Press Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry Cruel Compassion: ...
According to a simple form of consequentialism, we should base decisions on our judgments about t... more According to a simple form of consequentialism, we should base decisions on our judgments about their consequences for achieving our goals. Our goals give us reason to endorse consequentialism as a standard of decision making. Alternative standards invariably lead to consequences that are less good in this sense. Yet some people knowingly follow decision rules that violate consequentialism. For example, they prefer harmful omissions to less harmful acts, they favor the status quo over alternatives they would otherwise judge to be belter, they provide third-party compensation on the basis of the cause of an injury rather than the benefit from the compensation, they ignore deterrent effects in decisions about punishment, and they resist coercive reforms they judge to be beneficial. I suggest that nonconsequentialist principles arise from overgeneralizing rules that are consistent with consequentialism in a limited set of cases. Commitment to such rules is detached from their original purposes. The existence of such nonconsequentialist decision biases has implications for philosophical and experimental methodology, the relation between psychology and public policy, and education.
Morality is so steeped in the quotidian details of praise and blame, of do's and don't's, and of ... more Morality is so steeped in the quotidian details of praise and blame, of do's and don't's, and of questions about the justifiability of certain practices it is no wonder that philosophers and psychologists have devoted relatively little effort to investigating what makes moral life possible in the first place. In making this claim I neither ignore Kant or his intellectual descendants, nor the large literature in developmental moral psychology from Piaget on. My charge has to do with this fact: Morality is an ineliminable feature of human life and human beings are biological creatures. Hence, what wants explaining is how a biological creaturea creature with an evolved mind/brain-can be a normative creature of a particular kind, that is, a creature that cannot help but engage in moral appraisal and evaluation. It does no good to try to wring such an explanation from the 'very concept' of agency (whatever that might be) à la Korsgaard (1996). Such a strategy merely delays the inevitable: How is it that biological creatures are agents? And while we can understand the practical value of charting the trajectory of babbling infants to toddlers to adolescents to adults, absent an account of the foundations of the capacities whose emergence constitutes this trajectory, we will still not have addressed the central question. Sociobiology and evolutionary ethics fare no better. The apparent puzzle of cooperation amidst competition can and has been addressed via the notions of kin selection and reciprocal altruism. But these accounts are motivated by, and hence pitched at, the level of overt behavior. However, being a moral creature, in the sense that makes such entities apt subjects for deep intellectual investigation, has very little to do with whether they behave well (sometimes? often? on average? ever?) and everything to do with being capable of a certain kind of cognition. Moral creatures are distinguished by the possession of moral minds. Or, to use Chomsky's preferred term, which serves to keep us honest, moral creatures are distinguished by their possession of moral mind/brains. Animals with moral mind/brains are built to cognize the world in a particular way; namely, as populated by objects of moral concern, by subjects of moral expectations, and by targets of moral evaluation. We replace description with explanation only when, taking the fact of our biological nature seriously, we come to know what capacities comprise moral cognition and then to discover what makes their
Morality is so steeped in the quotidian details of praise and blame, of do's and don't... more Morality is so steeped in the quotidian details of praise and blame, of do's and don't's, and of questions about the justifiability of certain practices it is no wonder that philosophers and psychologists have devoted relatively little effort to investigating what makes moral life possible in the first place. In making this claim I neither ignore Kant or his intellectual descendants, nor the large literature in developmental moral psychology from Piaget on. My charge has to do with this fact: Morality is an ineliminable feature of human life and human beings are biological creatures. Hence, what wants explaining is how a biological creature-a creature with an evolved mind/brain-can be a normative creature of a particular kind, that is, a creature that cannot help but engage in moral appraisal and evaluation. It does no good to try to wring such an explanation from the 'very concept' of agency (whatever that might be) à la Korsgaard (1996). Such a strategy merely ...
Preface. Introduction: Constructing the "Problem" of Pornography. PART ONE: CHARACTERIZ... more Preface. Introduction: Constructing the "Problem" of Pornography. PART ONE: CHARACTERIZING PORNOGRAPHY. Erotica and Pornography: A Clear and Present Difference - Gloria Steinem. Pornography, Oppression, and Freedom: A Closer Look - Helen E. Longino. Power - Andrea Dworkin. Francis Biddle's Sister: Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech - Catharine A. MacKinnon. PART TWO: RIGHTS, EQUALITY, AND FREE SPEECH. Do We Have a Right to Pornography? - Ronald Dworkin. Whose Right? Ronald Dworkin, Women, and Pornographers - Rae Langton. Liberty and Pornography - Ronald Dworkin. Why There Is No Free Speech and It's a Good Thing, Too - Stanley Fish. PART THREE: PORNOGRAPHY, SEXUALITY, AND POLITICS. Men's Pornography: Gay vs. Straight - Thomas Waugh. Gays and the Pro-Pornography Movement: Having the Hots for Sex Discrimination - John Stoltenberg. Feminism, Moralism, and Pornography - Ellen Willis. Beyond Gender Dangers and Private Pleasures: Theory and Ethics in the Sex Debate...
Morality is so steeped in the quotidian details of praise and blame, of do’s and don’t’s, and of ... more Morality is so steeped in the quotidian details of praise and blame, of do’s and don’t’s, and of questions about the justifiability of certain practices it is no wonder that philosophers and psychologists have devoted relatively little effort to investigating what makes moral life possible in the first place. In making this claim I neither ignore Kant or his intellectual descendants, nor the large literature in developmental moral psychology from Piaget on. My charge has to do with this fact: Morality is an ineliminable feature of human life and human beings are biological creatures. Hence, what wants explaining is how a biological creature — a creature with an evolved mind/brain — can be a normative creature of a particular kind, that is, a creature that cannot help but engage in moral appraisal and evaluation. It does no good to try to wring such an explanation from the ‘very concept’ of agency (whatever that might be) a la Korsgaard (1996). Such a strategy merely delays the inevi...
... And, other things equal, if I uncover the previously hidden and craven motives of my action, ... more ... And, other things equal, if I uncover the previously hidden and craven motives of my action, self-congratulation is unwarranted. ... The Past, Present, and Future of Early Moral Development," Moral Sensibilities and Education I: The Preschool Child, edited by Wouter van Haaften ...
THOMAS SZASZ With a New Preface by the Author MEANING of LANGUAGE, MORALITY, AND XEUROSCIENCE ...... more THOMAS SZASZ With a New Preface by the Author MEANING of LANGUAGE, MORALITY, AND XEUROSCIENCE ... Other books by Thomas Szasz available from Syracuse University Press Anti-Freud: Karl Kraus's Criticism of Psychoanalysis and Psychiatry Cruel Compassion: ...
According to a simple form of consequentialism, we should base decisions on our judgments about t... more According to a simple form of consequentialism, we should base decisions on our judgments about their consequences for achieving our goals. Our goals give us reason to endorse consequentialism as a standard of decision making. Alternative standards invariably lead to consequences that are less good in this sense. Yet some people knowingly follow decision rules that violate consequentialism. For example, they prefer harmful omissions to less harmful acts, they favor the status quo over alternatives they would otherwise judge to be belter, they provide third-party compensation on the basis of the cause of an injury rather than the benefit from the compensation, they ignore deterrent effects in decisions about punishment, and they resist coercive reforms they judge to be beneficial. I suggest that nonconsequentialist principles arise from overgeneralizing rules that are consistent with consequentialism in a limited set of cases. Commitment to such rules is detached from their original purposes. The existence of such nonconsequentialist decision biases has implications for philosophical and experimental methodology, the relation between psychology and public policy, and education.
Morality is so steeped in the quotidian details of praise and blame, of do's and don't's, and of ... more Morality is so steeped in the quotidian details of praise and blame, of do's and don't's, and of questions about the justifiability of certain practices it is no wonder that philosophers and psychologists have devoted relatively little effort to investigating what makes moral life possible in the first place. In making this claim I neither ignore Kant or his intellectual descendants, nor the large literature in developmental moral psychology from Piaget on. My charge has to do with this fact: Morality is an ineliminable feature of human life and human beings are biological creatures. Hence, what wants explaining is how a biological creaturea creature with an evolved mind/brain-can be a normative creature of a particular kind, that is, a creature that cannot help but engage in moral appraisal and evaluation. It does no good to try to wring such an explanation from the 'very concept' of agency (whatever that might be) à la Korsgaard (1996). Such a strategy merely delays the inevitable: How is it that biological creatures are agents? And while we can understand the practical value of charting the trajectory of babbling infants to toddlers to adolescents to adults, absent an account of the foundations of the capacities whose emergence constitutes this trajectory, we will still not have addressed the central question. Sociobiology and evolutionary ethics fare no better. The apparent puzzle of cooperation amidst competition can and has been addressed via the notions of kin selection and reciprocal altruism. But these accounts are motivated by, and hence pitched at, the level of overt behavior. However, being a moral creature, in the sense that makes such entities apt subjects for deep intellectual investigation, has very little to do with whether they behave well (sometimes? often? on average? ever?) and everything to do with being capable of a certain kind of cognition. Moral creatures are distinguished by the possession of moral minds. Or, to use Chomsky's preferred term, which serves to keep us honest, moral creatures are distinguished by their possession of moral mind/brains. Animals with moral mind/brains are built to cognize the world in a particular way; namely, as populated by objects of moral concern, by subjects of moral expectations, and by targets of moral evaluation. We replace description with explanation only when, taking the fact of our biological nature seriously, we come to know what capacities comprise moral cognition and then to discover what makes their
Morality is so steeped in the quotidian details of praise and blame, of do's and don't... more Morality is so steeped in the quotidian details of praise and blame, of do's and don't's, and of questions about the justifiability of certain practices it is no wonder that philosophers and psychologists have devoted relatively little effort to investigating what makes moral life possible in the first place. In making this claim I neither ignore Kant or his intellectual descendants, nor the large literature in developmental moral psychology from Piaget on. My charge has to do with this fact: Morality is an ineliminable feature of human life and human beings are biological creatures. Hence, what wants explaining is how a biological creature-a creature with an evolved mind/brain-can be a normative creature of a particular kind, that is, a creature that cannot help but engage in moral appraisal and evaluation. It does no good to try to wring such an explanation from the 'very concept' of agency (whatever that might be) à la Korsgaard (1996). Such a strategy merely ...
Preface. Introduction: Constructing the "Problem" of Pornography. PART ONE: CHARACTERIZ... more Preface. Introduction: Constructing the "Problem" of Pornography. PART ONE: CHARACTERIZING PORNOGRAPHY. Erotica and Pornography: A Clear and Present Difference - Gloria Steinem. Pornography, Oppression, and Freedom: A Closer Look - Helen E. Longino. Power - Andrea Dworkin. Francis Biddle's Sister: Pornography, Civil Rights, and Speech - Catharine A. MacKinnon. PART TWO: RIGHTS, EQUALITY, AND FREE SPEECH. Do We Have a Right to Pornography? - Ronald Dworkin. Whose Right? Ronald Dworkin, Women, and Pornographers - Rae Langton. Liberty and Pornography - Ronald Dworkin. Why There Is No Free Speech and It's a Good Thing, Too - Stanley Fish. PART THREE: PORNOGRAPHY, SEXUALITY, AND POLITICS. Men's Pornography: Gay vs. Straight - Thomas Waugh. Gays and the Pro-Pornography Movement: Having the Hots for Sex Discrimination - John Stoltenberg. Feminism, Moralism, and Pornography - Ellen Willis. Beyond Gender Dangers and Private Pleasures: Theory and Ethics in the Sex Debate...
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