Switch to: References

Citations of:

Moral Reality and the End of Desire

In Mark de Bretton Platts (ed.), Reference, Truth, and Reality: Essays on the Philosophy of Language. Boston: Routledge (1980)

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. Moral Realism and the Existence of God: Improving Parfit’s Metaethics.Martin Jakobsen - 2020 - Leuven, Belgia: Peeters.
    Can there be an objective morality without God? Derek Parfit argues that it can and offers a theory of morality that is neither theistic nor naturalistic. This book provides a critical assessment of Parfit's metaethical theory. Jakobsen identifies some problems in Parfit’s theory – problems concerning moral normativity, the ontological status of morality, and evolutionary influence on our moral beliefs – and argues that theological resources can help solve them. By showing how Parfit’s theory may be improved by the help (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Error Theory in Metaethics.Jonas Olson - 2016 - In Tristram Colin McPherson & David Plunkett (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics. New York: Routledge. pp. 58-71.
    Error theories have been proposed and defended in several different areas of philosophy. In addition to ethics, there are error theories about numbers, color, free will, and personal identity. Moral error theories differ in scope. Theories at one end of the spectrum take normative judgments in general—of which moral judgments are a subclass—to be uniformly false, whereas theories at the other end of the spectrum take only a subclass of moral judgments—example those concerning duty and obligation, but not those concerning (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Parsimony and the Argument from Queerness.Justin Morton & Eric Sampson - 2014 - Res Philosophica 91 (4):609-627.
    In his recent book Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence, Jonas Olson attempts to revive the argument from queerness originally made famous by J.L. Mackie. In this paper, we do three things. First, we eliminate four untenable formulations of the argument. Second, we argue that the most plausible formulation is one that depends crucially upon considerations of parsimony. Finally, we evaluate this formulation of the argument. We conclude that it is unproblematic for proponents of moral non-naturalism—the target of the argument from (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence.Jonas Olson - 2014 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
    Jonas Olson presents a critical survey of moral error theory, the view that there are no moral facts and so all moral claims are false. Part I explores the historical context of the debate; Part II assesses J. L. Mackie's famous arguments; Part III defends error theory against challenges and considers its implications for our moral thinking.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   152 citations  
  • Eliminativism, Dialetheism and Moore's Paradox.John N. Williams - 2013 - Theoria 81 (1):27-47.
    John Turri gives an example that he thinks refutes what he takes to be “G. E. Moore's view” that omissive assertions such as “It is raining but I do not believe that it is raining” are “inherently ‘absurd'”. This is that of Ellie, an eliminativist who makes such assertions. Turri thinks that these are perfectly reasonable and not even absurd. Nor does she seem irrational if the sincerity of her assertion requires her to believe its content. A commissive counterpart of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Moore’s paradox in belief and desire.John N. Williams - 2014 - Acta Analytica 29 (1):1-23.
    Is there a Moore ’s paradox in desire? I give a normative explanation of the epistemic irrationality, and hence absurdity, of Moorean belief that builds on Green and Williams’ normative account of absurdity. This explains why Moorean beliefs are normally irrational and thus absurd, while some Moorean beliefs are absurd without being irrational. Then I defend constructing a Moorean desire as the syntactic counterpart of a Moorean belief and distinguish it from a ‘Frankfurt’ conjunction of desires. Next I discuss putative (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Rationality and the Structure of the Self Volume II: A Kantian Conception.Adrian M. S. Piper - 2013 - APRA Foundation.
    Adrian Piper argues that the Humean conception can be made to work only if it is placed in the context of a wider and genuinely universal conception of the self, whose origins are to be found in Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. This conception comprises the basic canons of classical logic, which provide both a model of motivation and a model of rationality. These supply necessary conditions both for the coherence and integrity of the self and also for unified agency. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception.Adrian M. S. Piper - 2013 - APRA Foundation Berlin.
    The Humean conception of the self consists in the belief-desire model of motivation and the utility-maximizing model of rationality. This conception has dominated Western thought in philosophy and the social sciences ever since Hobbes’ initial formulation in Leviathan and Hume’s elaboration in the Treatise of Human Nature. Bentham, Freud, Ramsey, Skinner, Allais, von Neumann and Morgenstern and others have added further refinements that have brought it to a high degree of formal sophistication. Late twentieth century moral philosophers such as Rawls, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • A Century Later.Stephen Neale - 2005 - Mind 114 (456):809-871.
    This is the introductory essay to a collection commemorating the 100th anniversary of the publication in Mind of Bertrand Russell’s paper ‘On Denoting’.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   29 citations  
  • Motivation in agents.Christian Miller - 2008 - Noûs 42 (2):222–266.
    The Humean theory of motivation remains the default position in much of the contemporary literature in meta-ethics, moral psychology, and action theory. Yet despite its widespread support, the theory is implausible as a view about what motivates agents to act. More specifically, my reasons for dissatisfaction with the Humean theory stem from its incompatibility with what I take to be a compelling model of the role of motivating reasons in first-person practical deliberation and third-person action explanations. So after first introducing (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   24 citations  
  • What's wrong with moral internalism.Robert Lockie - 1998 - Ratio 11 (1):14–36.
    Moral Internalism is the claim that it is a priori that moral beliefs are reasons for action. At least three conceptions of 'reason' may be disambiguated: psychological, epistemological, and purely ethical. The first two conceptions of Internalism are false on conceptual, and indeed empirical, grounds. On a purely ethical conception of 'reasons', the claim is true but is an Externalist claim. Positive arguments for Internalism — from phenomenology, connection and oddness — are found wanting. Three possible responses to the stock (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Moral motivation.Connie S. Rosati - 2006 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
    In our everyday lives, we confront a host of moral issues. Once we have deliberated and formed judgments about what is right or wrong, good or bad, these judgments tend to have a marked hold on us. Although in the end, we do not always behave as we think we ought, our moral judgments typically motivate us, at least to some degree, to act in accordance with them. When philosophers talk about moral motivation, this is the basic phenomenon they seek (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   46 citations  
  • The semantics and pragmatics of complex demonstratives.Ernest Lepore & Kirk Ludwig - 2000 - Mind 109 (434):199-240.
    Complex demonstratives, expressions of the form 'That F', 'These Fs', etc., have traditionally been taken to be referring terms. Yet they exhibit many of the features of quantified noun phrases. This has led some philosophers to suggest that demonstrative determiners are a special kind of quantifier, which can be paraphrased using a context sensitive definite description. Both these views contain elements of the truth, though each is mistaken. We advance a novel account of the semantic form of complex demonstratives that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   47 citations  
  • From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis.Frank Jackson - 1998 - New York: Oxford University Press.
    Frank Jackson champions the cause of conceptual analysis as central to philosophical inquiry. In recent years conceptual analysis has been undervalued and widely misunderstood, suggests Jackson. He argues that such analysis is mistakenly clouded in mystery, preventing a whole range of important questions from being productively addressed. He anchors his argument in discussions of specific philosophical issues, starting with the metaphysical doctrine of physicalism and moving on, via free will, meaning, personal identity, motion, and change, to ethics and the philosophy (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1066 citations  
  • By Which We May Be Judged: Moral Epistemology, Mind-Independent Truth Conditions And Sources Of Normativity.Maarten Van Doorn - 2022 - Dissertation, Central European University
    Many hope that our values, purged of messy human contingency, could aspire to correspond with mind-independent, rationally obligatory, and eternal ethical facts. But if the arguments of this thesis are on the right track, we should reject the search for non-natural and mind-independent moral truths.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Actual Control - Demodalising Free Will.David Heering - 2020 - Dissertation, University of Leeds
    Plausibly, agents act freely iff their actions are responses to reasons. But what sort of relationship between reason and action is required for the action to count as a response? The overwhelmingly dominant answer to this question is modalist. It holds that responses are actions that share a modally robust or secure relationship with the relevant reasons. This thesis offers a new alternative answer. It argues that responses are actions that can be explained by reasons in the right way. This (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Meaning, desire, and God: an expansive naturalist approach.Fiona Ellis - 2021 - International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 82 (4-5):310-322.
    ABSTRACT I offer an approach to the problem of life’s meaning which poses a radical challenge to some of the familiar terms of this debate. First, I defend an expansive form of naturalism which involves a rejection of the common assumption that naturalism and theism are logically incompatible and offers a framework from which to rethink some of the central concepts operative in discussions of life’s meaning. Second, I defend a ‘desire solution’ to the problem of life’s meaning. My initial (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • The logical respectability of moral Judgements.Neil Cooper - 1989 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 32 (2):195-212.
    This paper aims to show that moral judgments do not need to be objective in order to be logically respectable. Absence of 'objectivity' does not preclude us from putting moral judgments through standard logical hoops, And, Although derived moral judgments have a descriptive direction of fit, It does not follow that fundamental moral judgments are 'objectively true'. Without invoking objectivity the impersonal form of moral judgments can be justified on the analogy of kant's account of aesthetic judgments. Their impersonal form (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Pure Cognitivism and Beyond.Attila Tanyi - 2014 - Acta Analytica 29 (3):331-348.
    The article begins with Jonathan Dancy’s attempt to refute the Humean Theory of Motivation. It first spells out Dancy’s argument for his alternative position, the view he labels ‘Pure Cognitivism’, according to which what motivate are always beliefs, never desires. The article next argues that Dancy’s argument for his position is flawed. On the one hand, it is not true that desire always comes with motivation in the agent; on the other, even if this was the case, it would still (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • The Conditions of Moral Realism.Christian Miller - 2009 - Journal of Philosophical Research 34:123-155.
    In this paper, I hope to provide an account of the conditions of moral realism whereby there are still significant metaphysical commitments made by the realist which set the view apart as a distinct position in the contemporary meta-ethical landscape. In order to do so, I will be appealing to a general account of what it is for realism to be true in any domain of experience, whether it be realism about universals, realism about unobservable scientific entities, realism about artifacts, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   12 citations  
  • The structure of instrumental practical reasoning.Christian Miller - 2007 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 75 (1):1–40.
    The view to be defended in this paper is intended to be a novel and compelling model of instrumental practical reasoning, reasoning aimed at determining how to act in order to achieve a given end in a certain set of circumstances. On standard views of instrumental reasoning, the end in question is the object of a particular desire that the agent has, a desire which, when combined with the agent’s beliefs about what means are available to him or her in (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Why Expressivists about Value Should Love Minimalism about Truth.Michael Smith - 1994 - Analysis 54 (1):1 - 11.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   36 citations  
  • (1 other version)Two Theories of Names.Gabriel M. A. Segal - 2002 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 51:75-93.
    The aim of this paper is to assess the relative merits of two accounts of the semantics of proper names. The enterprise is of particular interest because the theories are very similar in fundamental respects. In particular, they can agree on three major features of names: names are rigid designators; different co-extensive names can have different cognitive significance; empty proper names can be meaningful. Neither theory by itself offers complete explanations of all three features. But each theory is consistent with (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 citations  
  • Intuitionism and Nihilism.David Kaspar - 2018 - Philosophia 46 (2):319-336.
    Intuitionism and nihilism, according to nihilists, have key features in common: the same semantics and the same phenomenology. Intuitionism is the object of nihilism’s attack. The central charge nihilism lodges against intuitionism is that its nonnatural moral properties are queer. Here I’ll examine what ‘queer’ might mean in relation to the doctrines nihilism uses to support this charge. My investigation reveals that nihilism’s queerness charge lacks substance and resembles a tautology served with a frown. There’s really nothing to it. After (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Quest for God: Rethinking Desire.Fiona Ellis - 2019 - Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplement 85:157-173.
    How are we to view the nature of desire and its relation to value, humanity, and God? Sartre, Nietzsche, and Levinas have interesting things to say in this context, and they can be understood to be responding in their different ways to two seemingly opposed ways of conceiving of desire, namely, as lack or deficiency or as plenitude or creativity. I clarify, link, and distinguish the relevant conceptions of desire, and give a sense of what it could mean to comprehend (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • True naturalism, goodness, and God.Fiona Ellis - 2020 - Think 19 (56):109-120.
    I defend a form of naturalism which has much in common with Iris Murdoch's ‘true naturalism’, but I argue that it can accommodate God. I consider what it could mean for naturalism to be theistic in this sense, and respond to the charge that it leaves no room for the transcendent.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Commentary on Gentzler 1.Predrag Cicovacki - 1994 - Proceedings of the Boston Area Colloquium of Ancient Philosophy 10 (1):296-311.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Duality of Moral Language : On Hybrid Theories in Metaethics.Stina Björkholm - 2022 - Dissertation, Stockholm University
    Moral language displays a characteristic duality. On the one hand, moral claims seem to be similar to descriptive claims: To say that an act is right seems to be a matter of making an assertion, thus indicating that the speaker has a moral belief about which she can be correct or mistaken. On the other hand, moral claims seem to be different from descriptive claims: There is a sense in which, by claiming that an act is right, a speaker indicates (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Why care? On motivation in care ethics. Gardiner, Katherine Elizabeth - unknown
    Just how care moves us is the subject of Katherine Gardiner’s thesis. Gardiner wants to know how care moves us – or in philosophical terms, how it motivates us. She describes caring as a morally ‘necessary’ activity, which means that we cannot escape responding to the care appeal. However, Gardiner uses the example of ‘Pim’, who cannot care and feels really bad about it - not because he is incapable of caring, but who just can’t. She reviews several versions of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark