This article analyzes several characteristic features of moral systems viewed as cultural realities. Moralities are viewed as historically transmitted languages of persuasion, by means of which persons communicate expectations and demands. For purpose of comparative studies, the article proposes that moral systems be analyzed in relation to their typical patterns of moral reasoning, moral meanings, social functions, and moral authority. The article examines several analytical typologies for comparing these constituitive dimensions of moral systems.

What would something unlike us--a chimpanzee, say, or a computer--have to be able to do to qualify as a possible knower, like us? To answer this question at the very heart of our sense of ourselves, philosophers have long focused on intentionality and have looked to language as a key to this condition. Making It Explicit is an investigation into the nature of language--the social practices that distinguish us as rational, logical creatures--that revises the very terms of this inquiry. Where (...) accounts of the relation between language and mind have traditionally rested on the concept of representation, this book sets out an alternate approach based on inference, and on a conception of certain kinds of implicit assessment that become explicit in language. Making It Explicit is the first attempt to work out in detail a theory that renders linguistic meaning in terms of use--in short, to explain how semantic content can be conferred on expressions and attitudes that are suitably caught up in social practices. -/- At the center of this enterprise is a notion of discursive commitment. Being able to talk--and so in the fullest sense being able to think--is a matter of mastering the practices that govern such commitments, being able to keep track of one’s own commitments and those of others. Assessing the pragmatic significance of speech acts is a matter of explaining the explicit in terms of the implicit. As he traces the inferential structure of the social practices within which things can be made conceptually explicit, the author defines the distinctively expressive role of logical vocabulary. This expressive account of language, mind, and logic is, finally, an account of who we are. (shrink)

Though responses to Stout's book, "Democracy and Tradition," have touched on his discussion of rights, none has comprehensively examined his position on the subject. Having endorsed several objections Stout raises against some influential views on democracy and rights, this article proceeds to criticize Stout's description and theoretical account of the natural and human rights traditions. The central argument is that Stout cannot successfully both affirm the traditions and adhere to his account.

The discipline of religious ethics consists in critical reflection on religious varieties of ethical discourse, but to study a variety of ethical discourse, we must look at particular examples of it. Which examples should we be look- ing at? What varieties or traditions shall we take them to represent? In answering these questions, scholars reveal much about their normative commitments. When "religious ethics" replaced "theological ethics" as a cur- ricular rubric in some schools, many ethicists attempted to present their work (...) as value neutral, but it is better to admit that commitments matter and are unavoidable. The new traditionalists make no secret of their nor- mative commitments, which imply an indictment of modern ethical dis- course as a whole. Their candor is commendable, but their indictment can be challenged. Debunkers of modernity have trouble accounting for their own position. Their samples of modern ethical discourse are not repre- sentative. Many democratic voices evidently remain unacknowledged and unexplained. (shrink)

Now available in paperback, this is a rich resource for understanding the moral teachings and practices of the world’s religions Includes detailed discussions ...

The purpose of this book is to call the separation of reason and religion into question.

This article defends methodological and theoretical pluralism in the social sciences. While pluralistic, such a philosophy of social science is both pragmatic and normative. Only by facing the problems of such pluralism, including how to resolve the potential conflicts between various methods and theories, is it possible to discover appropriate criteria of adequacy for social scientific explanations and interpretations. So conceived, the social sciences do not give us fixed and universal features of the social world, but rather contribute to the (...) task of improving upon our practical knowledge of on-going social life. After arguing for such a thorough-going pluralism based on the indeterminacy of social action, I defend it from the post-modern and hermeneutic objections by suggesting the possibility of an epistemology of interpretive social science as a form of practical knowledge. (shrink)

In this assessment of the field of compartive religion, this text surmounts the seemingly intractable division between postmodern scholars who reject the comparative endeavour and those who affirm it. It brings together leading historians of religion from a range of backgrounds and vantage points.