Moral Responsibility and the Boundaries of Community - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Moral Responsibility and the Boundaries of Community write by Marion Smiley. This book was released on 2009-09-15. Moral Responsibility and the Boundaries of Community available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. The question of responsibility plays a critical role not only in our attempts to resolve social and political problems, but in our very conceptions of what those problems are. Who, for example, is to blame for apartheid in South Africa? Is the South African government responsible? What about multinational corporations that do business there? Will uncovering the "true facts of the matter" lead us to the right answer? In an argument both compelling and provocative, Marion Smiley demonstrates how attributions of blame—far from being based on an objective process of factual discovery—are instead judgments that we ourselves make on the basis of our own political and social points of view. She argues that our conception of responsibility is a singularly modern one that locates the source of blameworthiness in an individual's free will. After exploring the flaws inherent in this conception, she shows how our judgments of blame evolve out of our configuration of social roles, our conception of communal boundaries, and the distribution of power upon which both are based. The great strength of Smiley's study lies in the way in which it brings together both rigorous philosophical analysis and an appreciation of the dynamics of social and political practice. By developing a pragmatic conception of moral responsibility, this work illustrates both how moral philosophy can enhance our understanding of social and political practices and why reflection on these practices is necessary to the reconstruction of our moral concepts.
Responsibility from the Margins
Responsibility from the Margins - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Responsibility from the Margins write by David Shoemaker. This book was released on 2015. Responsibility from the Margins available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. David Shoemaker develops a novel pluralistic theory of responsibility, motivated by our ambivalence to cases of marginal agency--such as those caused by clinical depression or autism, for instance. He identifies three distinct types of responsibility, each with its own set of required capacities: attributability, answerability, and accountability.
The Boundaries of the Moral (and Legal) Community
The Boundaries of the Moral (and Legal) Community - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook The Boundaries of the Moral (and Legal) Community write by Brian Leiter. This book was released on 2011. The Boundaries of the Moral (and Legal) Community available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Over the last 250 years both moral philosophy and ordinary moral opinion have witnessed a remarkable expansion of their conception of the 'moral' community, that is, the community of creatures that are thought entitled to basic moral (and ultimately legal) consideration - whatever the precise details of what such consideration requires. 'Being human' is what matters now in terms of membership in the moral community, not race, gender, religion, or, increasingly, sexual orientation. (Species membership - hence the 'being human' - remains a barrier to entry, however.) How to explain these developments? According to 'Whig Histories, ' this is really a story of expanding moral knowledge. Just as we discovered that the movement of mid-size physical objects is governed by the laws of Newtonian mechanics, and that those same laws do not describe the behavior of quantum particles, so too we have discovered that chattel slavery is a grave moral wrong and that women have as much moral claim on the electoral vote as men. I argue against the Whig Histories in favor of non-Whig Histories that explain the expanding moral community in terms of biological, psychological, and economic developments, not increased moral knowledge. If the non-Whig Histories are correct, should we expect the 'species barrier' to membership in the moral community to fall? I argue for a skeptical answer.
Moral Responsibility: Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide
Moral Responsibility: Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Moral Responsibility: Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide write by Garrath Williams. This book was released on 2010-06. Moral Responsibility: Oxford Bibliographies Online Research Guide available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. This ebook is a selective guide designed to help scholars and students of social work find reliable sources of information by directing them to the best available scholarly materials in whatever form or format they appear from books, chapters, and journal articles to online archives, electronic data sets, and blogs. Written by a leading international authority on the subject, the ebook provides bibliographic information supported by direct recommendations about which sources to consult and editorial commentary to make it clear how the cited sources are interrelated related. This ebook is a static version of an article from Oxford Bibliographies Online: Philosophy, a dynamic, continuously updated, online resource designed to provide authoritative guidance through scholarship and other materials relevant to the study Philosophy. Oxford Bibliographies Online covers most subject disciplines within the social science and humanities, for more information visit www.oxfordbibligraphies.com.
Against Moral Responsibility
Against Moral Responsibility - read free eBook in online reader or directly download on the web page. Select files or add your book in reader. Download and read online ebook Against Moral Responsibility write by Bruce N. Waller. This book was released on 2011-10-14. Against Moral Responsibility available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. A vigorous attack on moral responsibility in all its forms argues that the abolition of moral responsibility will be liberating and beneficial. In Against Moral Responsibility, Bruce Waller launches a spirited attack on a system that is profoundly entrenched in our society and its institutions, deeply rooted in our emotions, and vigorously defended by philosophers from ancient times to the present. Waller argues that, despite the creative defenses of it by contemporary thinkers, moral responsibility cannot survive in our naturalistic-scientific system. The scientific understanding of human behavior and the causes that shape human character, he contends, leaves no room for moral responsibility. Waller argues that moral responsibility in all its forms—including criminal justice, distributive justice, and all claims of just deserts—is fundamentally unfair and harmful and that its abolition will be liberating and beneficial. What we really want—natural human free will, moral judgments, meaningful human relationships, creative abilities—would survive and flourish without moral responsibility. In the course of his argument, Waller examines the origins of the basic belief in moral responsibility, proposes a naturalistic understanding of free will, offers a detailed argument against moral responsibility and critiques arguments in favor of it, gives a general account of what a world without moral responsibility would look like, and examines the social and psychological aspects of abolishing moral responsibility. Waller not only mounts a vigorous, and philosophically rigorous, attack on the moral responsibility system, but also celebrates the benefits that would result from its total abolition.
