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 Pluralistic Relativism *

David B. Wong

in Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism

It is argued that moral ambivalence is best explained through a naturalistic approach that construes morality as a social invention for promoting and regulating social cooperation. Morality ... More

It is argued that moral ambivalence is best explained through a naturalistic approach that construes morality as a social invention for promoting and regulating social cooperation. Morality accomplishes this function through the shaping not only of behavior but also of motivational structures in human beings. Biological and cultural evolutionary theories identify plausible bases for the emergence of such an invention (e.g., the strength of self-concern combined with capacities to develop other concern, reliance on cultural norms to regulate and direct behavior and motivation). Such bases, together with the common conditions of social cooperation constrain the variety of ways that the function of morality could be fulfilled (e.g., norms of reciprocity are required, and justifications for the subordination of the interests of some to that of others). Within these constraints a plurality of moralities can be true. It is explained how the conditions for what counts as a true morality can vary with the meaning of moral concepts.Less

Would It Matter All That Much if There Were No Selves?

Raymond Martin

in Pointing at the Moon: Buddhism, Logic, Analytic Philosophy

This chapter attempts to put the worry about future-oriented self-concern to rest. It argues that whatever difficulties there may be in justifying future-oriented self-concern, they are no greater ... More

This chapter attempts to put the worry about future-oriented self-concern to rest. It argues that whatever difficulties there may be in justifying future-oriented self-concern, they are no greater for skeptics about the self than they are for believers. It also shows that some recent Buddhist commentators have exaggerated the extent to which those who deny the existence of a substantial and enduring self need, for practical purposes, to pretend that one actually exists. It argues that not much pretense is required.Less

The Scope of Ethics: Dialogue with Slote and Murdoch

Stephen C. Angle

in Sagehood: The Contemporary Significance of Neo-Confucian Philosophy

Despite the differences between Michael Slote and Iris Murdoch—and between them and the book's Neo-Confucian sources—Slote and Murdoch make excellent conversation partners on the subject of harmony, ... More

Despite the differences between Michael Slote and Iris Murdoch—and between them and the book's Neo-Confucian sources—Slote and Murdoch make excellent conversation partners on the subject of harmony, offering important insights and clarifications, while at the same time they are rewarded with ideas from the Confucian tradition that complement or improve their own views. The key points of dialogue include the following: (1) Drawing on Slote, Confucians can distinguish between particularist and aggregative caring, which solves a long-standing problem about caring for strangers. (2) Drawing on the Confucians, Slote can better-ground his idea of “balanced caring” by recognizing the reverence we should have for what the Neo-Confucians call universal coherence. (3) After a few qualifications, Murdoch can help us (and Slote) to see how reverence for universal coherence can indeed play needed justificatory and motivational roles, but (4) Murdoch's appeal to a transcendent notion of Good needs either serious modification or rejection. Finally, (5) both Slote and Murdoch can learn from the Neo-Confucians about the proper ways in which we should value ourselves.Less

INTRODUCTION: THE BIAS TOWARDS ONESELF

Ingmar Persson

in The Retreat of Reason: A dilemma in the philosophy of life

This chapter introduces another bias whose (ir)rationality is the leitmotif of part IV of the book: the bias towards oneself or the tendency to be more concerned that things go well for someone if ... More

This chapter introduces another bias whose (ir)rationality is the leitmotif of part IV of the book: the bias towards oneself or the tendency to be more concerned that things go well for someone if that person is identical to oneself. This bias can be rational in the relevant sense only if the relation of personal identity is such that it can justify special concern. Consequently, part IV starts by analysing this relation, before it turns to the question whether it is rationally justifiable to base self-concern upon it.Less

THE RATIONAL INSIGNIFICANCE OF IDENTITY AND CONTINUITY

Ingmar Persson

in The Retreat of Reason: A dilemma in the philosophy of life

If we should endorse a factual nihilism to the effect that there is no defensible account of our identity, it follows that we should also endorse an evaluative nihilism to the effect that the bias ... More

If we should endorse a factual nihilism to the effect that there is no defensible account of our identity, it follows that we should also endorse an evaluative nihilism to the effect that the bias towards oneself, i.e., the special concern and liking for a being for the reason that it is identical to oneself, is not rationally justifiable. This chapter argues that the bias towards oneself could not be based on the notion of personal identity, even if animalism or psychologism were correct by appealing to thought-experiments in which your body is radically disintegrated but an exactly similar copy of you is created a moment later out of different constituents. The replica would not be you on any plausible theory of personal identity, but it would seem to be rational to be as much concerned about it as about your future self. It has been objected that this could not be rational, since you could not anticipate having the experiences of this replica in the same intimate way as you could anticipate having your own future experiences. This objection is however shown to be unfounded by an analysis of anticipation of experiences as an act of imaginging having the experiences of a subject which could be distinct from yourself.Less

SELF-CONCERN AND SELF-APPROVAL

Ingmar Persson

in The Retreat of Reason: A dilemma in the philosophy of life

Chapter 23 concluded that the bias towards oneself is not rationally justifiable. This chapter tries to provide a causal explanation of the elements of this bias. It explains how self-concern arises ... More

Chapter 23 concluded that the bias towards oneself is not rationally justifiable. This chapter tries to provide a causal explanation of the elements of this bias. It explains how self-concern arises out of the anticipation of future experiences. And it explains self-approval, or liking for oneself, as being based on properties one is aware of oneself as having rather than on the recognition of identity.Less

Locke on personal identity: consciousness, memory, and self-concern

Udo Thiel

in The Early Modern Subject: Self-Consciousness and Personal Identity from Descartes to Hume

This chapter turns to Locke's account of personal identity itself, taking up the discussion of the fundamental notions that are relevant in this account from the previous chapter. Contrary to what ... More

This chapter turns to Locke's account of personal identity itself, taking up the discussion of the fundamental notions that are relevant in this account from the previous chapter. Contrary to what some commentators hold, Locke distinguishes between consciousness and memory, and he ascribes to both an essential role in the constitution of personal identity. Linked to the notion of consciousness is that of self-concern: its main function for personal identity is that through it the subject relates to its own future; it also connects cognitive features (consciousness and memory) with the moral and legal features of personal identity. In this context the question of the ontological status of Lockean persons re-emerges (chapter 3). Readings that take Lockean persons to be substances are mistaken: Rather, Locke, following Pufendorf, allows that we talk of persons in analogy to substances, as if they were substances, but they are essentially, as in Pufendorf, modal entities. The chapter next examines the theological aspects of Locke's account of personal identity and its connection with Locke's view of the doctrine of original sin and the resurrection, including the controversy with Stillingfleet. A question is raised of whether Locke's account is compatible with genuine repentance. The theological aspects are connected to the thinking matter issue. Locke's materialist followers, Collins, Voltaire, Cuenz see a constructive role for a Lockean account of personal identity within a materialist metaphysics. Although Locke does not endorse materialism, his own theory would in principle fit as well into a materialist as into an immaterialist theory of the mindLess

Self‐Concern and the Sources and Limits of Other‐Concern

Julia Annas

in The Morality of Happiness

There is a developed debate from Aristotle through the Stoics to Aristotelian hybrid theories found in Antiochus and Arius Didymus: should other‐concern be seen as a developed form of self‐concern ... More

There is a developed debate from Aristotle through the Stoics to Aristotelian hybrid theories found in Antiochus and Arius Didymus: should other‐concern be seen as a developed form of self‐concern (Aristotle), thus giving us a single source for both, or should self‐concern and other‐concern be seen as having distinct sources and development (the Stoics)? The Stoic tradition also gives other‐concern wider scope, extending it to all rational humans rather than privileging groups like the city‐state.Less

Why We Need not Accept the Psychological Approach

Eric T. Olson

in The Human Animal: Personal Identity Without Psychology

Most arguments for the Psychological Approach are based on the conviction that anyone who got your psychological features would be you. The possibility of fission proves this conviction false. Those ... More

Most arguments for the Psychological Approach are based on the conviction that anyone who got your psychological features would be you. The possibility of fission proves this conviction false. Those who think that identity has no practical importance will find it even more difficult to argue for the Psychological Approach.Less

Seeing Oneself as Friend

in Philosophy and Friendship

This chapter addresses the question and the concepts of self-constitution and self-understanding as they are relevant to relations between friends. It considers questions of judgement and balance in ... More

This chapter addresses the question and the concepts of self-constitution and self-understanding as they are relevant to relations between friends. It considers questions of judgement and balance in relation to the presence of tension between friends and explores the process of self-constitution, the role of emotion in that process, and its relation to notions of self-worth and rational self-concern. The chapter explains the role of friends in the process of self-constitution, and reviews the relevant works of David Hume and Baruch Spinoza.Less

Without Fellow Feeling

Heidi L. Maibom

in Being Amoral: Psychopathy and Moral Incapacity

The chapter challenges the influential idea that psychopaths lack empathy. The approach combines conceptual analysis with perspectives on empirical data. Different aspects of empathy are ... More

The chapter challenges the influential idea that psychopaths lack empathy. The approach combines conceptual analysis with perspectives on empirical data. Different aspects of empathy are distinguished. The author stresses differences in constructing the notion of empathy in relation to different research focuses, which shows the need to reconceptualize empathy for the purposes of debating, and empirically researching, psychopathy. A more inclusive approach to explaining empathy, which allows a wider scope of psychological structures to be relevant, is suggested. Psychopaths’ problems in feeling for others might be due to a related lack of ability to feel for themselves in imagined scenarios. This would call for a perspective on psychopathy that focuses less on intersubjective, and more on self-concerned, psychological faculties.Less

The Centrality of One’s Own Life

Stephen White

in Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Vol 7

We are all, to some degree or other, self-centered; we tend to concentrate on our own needs and interests to the relative exclusion of most other people’s. This chapter explores the prospects for ... More

We are all, to some degree or other, self-centered; we tend to concentrate on our own needs and interests to the relative exclusion of most other people’s. This chapter explores the prospects for justifying such partiality on grounds of individual autonomy. Two versions of this approach are considered. The first develops the idea that, to be autonomous, an agent must have available a significant range of morally permissible options. This approach is rejected in favor of a second, according to which a strong duty of impartial beneficence would objectionably render an agent subject to the wills of other agents. That is, insofar as a person is entitled to a special authoritative status in relation to what she does, that person will bear the primary responsibility for how well her life goes. The chapter concludes by considering the implications for our understanding of morally required beneficence.Less

The Virtue of Authenticity

Ernesto V. Garcia

in Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics, Volume 5

This chapter examines the nature of authenticity, both what it is and why it is valuable. The argument proceeds in three stages. First, it critically discusses three traditional notions of ... More

This chapter examines the nature of authenticity, both what it is and why it is valuable. The argument proceeds in three stages. First, it critically discusses three traditional notions of authenticity. Second, it proposes an account of authenticity. It is argued that authenticity (1) is best understood as a personal virtue; (2) is constituted by three main elements, viz., (a) self-understanding, (b) self-expression, and (c) self-concern—in particular, concern about what kind of person one is and what type of life one leads; and (3) resembles most traditional Aristotelian virtues insofar as it involves steering a middle course between two extremes, viz., a ‘deficiency’ (i.e., various forms of inauthenticity) and an ‘excess’ (i.e., a type of obsessive or narcissistic self-centeredness which many critics of authenticity rightly disparage). Third, the chapter explains why authenticity is valuable, both in instrumental and non-instrumental ways.Less