Excerpts from "Reason and Human Ethics" by Alan E. Johnson (original) (raw)
Related papers
Reason and Human Ethics (Philosophia, 2022)
Reason and Human Ethics, 2022
This is an exact PDF replica of the print-on-demand paperback edition of my book "Reason and Human Ethics" (originally published 2022; errata corrected as of December 19, 2024). This book argues that a secular, biological, teleological basis of human ethics exists and that reasoning and critical thinking about both ends and means are essential to human ethics. It examines how these principles apply in the contexts of individual ethics, social ethics, citizen ethics, media ethics, and political ethics. This PDF does not support toggling between the text and endnotes, as does the Kindle ebook edition. The book is also available at a reasonable price in paperback and Kindle editions on Amazon.com (https://www.amazon.com/Reason-Human-Ethics-Alan-Johnson/dp/097010555X/ref=monarch\_sidesheet) and other Amazon sites throughout the world.
This paper is a discussion of Jonathan Dancy's book Ethics Without Principles (2004). Holism about reasons is distinguished into a weak version, which allows for invariant reasons, and a strong, which doesn't. Four problems with Dancy's arguments for strong holism are identified. (1) A plausible particularism based on it will be close to generalism. (2) Dancy rests his case on common-sense morality, without justifying it. (3) His examples are of non-ultimate reasons. (4) There are certain universal principles it is hard not to see as invariant, such as that the fact that some action causes of suffering to a non-rational being always counts against it. The main difficulty with weak holism is that justification can be seen as analogous to explanation, which will give us an atomistic and generalist conception of a normative reason.
The Objectivity of Ethics and the Unity of Practical Reason
Ethics, 2012
Evolutionary accounts of the origins of human morality may lead us to doubt the truth of our moral judgments. Sidgwick tried to vindicate ethics from this kind of external attack. However, he ended The Methods in despair over another problem-an apparent conflict between rational egoism and universal benevolence, which he called the "dualism of practical reason." Drawing on Sidgwick, we show that one way of defending objectivity in ethics against Sharon Street's recent evolutionary critique also puts us in a position to support a bold claim: the dualism of practical reason can be resolved in favor of impartiality. * For helpful comments, we would like to thank Derek Parfit, Folke Tersman, Gustaf Arrhenius, and Krister Bykvist, as well as participants in a discussion of the paper at a seminar at the University Center for Human Values, Princeton University, in Fall 2011. We are also most grateful to two reviewers for Ethics and four editors of Ethics, as well as to Connie Rosati, for the extraordinary amount of work they put into helping us to improve the paper we first submitted-we owe so much to them that it would be tedious to note individually every point at which we have benefited from their suggestions.
The Routledge Companion to Ethics, edited by John Skorupski, 2010
Descartes (1596-1650), Spinoza (1632-77), and Leibniz (1646-1716) are commonly , and rightly, considered to belong to a single school of thought in metaphysics and epistemology. Although they arrive at different conclusions, they share a set of concerns and methodological principles. Each is interested in proving the existence of God and describing God's relation to the world; in giving an account of the human being; and in describing the nature and limits of knowledge. Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz differ among themselves about what the most basic principles of reason are and how they are rightly applied. However , it is also generally true that each approaches these subjects as ones that can be understood better by means of human reason rather than by uncritical trust in the senses. For these purposes, then, the label "rationalist" can be a useful and tolerably accurate one. That label is probably not as useful in ethics. Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz do hold some ethical views in common. Moreover, some of their most interesting differences do arise from their positions in metaphysical and epistemological debates. These philosophers' aims and influences in ethics also vary in many respects, however, and it would be misleading to underemphasize this point here. Descartes's moral theory shows the influence of Stoicism, and recasts ancient views about the passions and their control in light of his own account of the human being, human physiology, and psychology. The views that Descartes expresses are tempered by a reverence for ecclesiastical and civil authority together with a well-justified concern that his enemies would be very likely to find in a complete ethical theory, and, in particular, in a detailed normative ethics, effective means of damaging his reputation and security. As a result, even his most complete moral work, The Passions of the Soul, leaves one with the sense that some important consequences of the theory are left unwritten. Spinoza addresses Descartes and the Stoics in his own account of the passions and their control in the Ethics. However, Spinoza also clearly addresses a number of authors, notably Hobbes, Maimonides, and Aristotle. The themes of Spinoza's moral theory include Cartesian themes, but only as an important part of the whole view. Spinoza, moreover, states his view in a bold, uncompromising, and thorough treatise: his moral theory is much better developed than the views of either Descartes or Leibniz. Leibniz, although his remarks on ethics show careful attention to Spinoza and Descartes, addresses other traditions as well, especially the tradition of natural law theory. Leibniz does give accounts of virtue, happiness, and perfection that, while quite short and unsystematic, clearly respond to concerns of the sort that also moved Descartes and Spinoza. His most distinctive and important ethical ideas, however, the notions of charity and of the moral community of minds, which he calls the City of God, address a moral concern – how we should act toward others – that is only a passing concern for Spinoza and that Descartes entrusts to higher authorities. There is, then, a common set of themes addressed in these theories. The authors’ various concerns and perspectives suggest, however, that these similarities amount to an interesting development of the tradition of virtue ethics rather than to a single, readily defined school of rationalist ethical thought.
Kierkegaard Studies Yearbook, 2008
Kierkegaard has often been interpreted as an irrationalist. In particular, Either/Or has frequently been (mis) understood as presenting the choice between the aesthetic and the ethical as an ultimately arbitrary – because “criterionless” – one. Much recent Kierkegaard scholarship has rejected this interpretation. In this paper I defend my own previous account of the rationality of the choice between the aesthetic and the ethical in Either/Or against recent criticisms by Alasdair MacIntyre and by John Lippitt. I will look at MacIntyre’s charge that the “criterionless choice” problem still holds; I will then consider problems that MacIntyre and Lippitt have raised about the nature of the teleology that John Davenport and I have ascribed to Judge William; and will conclude by looking at some of the problems Lippitt has raised with the crucial concept of narrative unity.
An unrealistic account of moral reasons
Principia, 2019
In this paper I will analyze John McDowell's broad account of practical rationality and moral reasons, which he displays mainly in his articles "Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?" (1978) and "Might There Be External Reasons?" (1995). My main aim is to argue that from a philosophical perspective, no less than from an empirical one, McDowell's account of practical rationality is not a realistic one. From a philosophical point of view, I will argue that his intellectualist account is not convincing; and if we consider his virtue-ethical ideal of practical rationality in light of the model of human cognition, we also realize that moral behavior is not immune to cognitive biases and does not always flow from robust traits of character like virtues. At the same time, this puts at stake his strong thesis of moral autonomy-the idea that with the 'onset of reason' moral beings are no longer determined by 'first nature' features.
Being apart from reasons: a study on the role of reasons in public and private moral decision-making
2001
order to decide what to do. As a result of this ill-advised assumption, the moral agent is alienated from a whole wealth of methods of decision-making that I claim are, under certain conditions, morally pennissible or even, more controversially, morally compulsory. Contrary to that, I believe that the substantive moral rules that apply to decision-making processes are rather more complex. The fact that so much of contemporary practical philosophy assumes that reasoning is always the best way to make decisions is at least partly due to the lack of a clear distinction between reasoning as a way that leads to the morally correct action and reasoning as a means to know what is the morally correct action. The failure to understand the distinction between those two modalities of reasoning processes blurs the perception of the peculiar moral rules that apply to the use of reasoning as a tool of moral decision-making. My claim that there is a complex relation between the morality of actions and the morality of decision-making methods is not to be confused with the much more familiar claim that the rationality (in the sense of means-end calculation1) of decision-making is independent of the morality of the action to be performed. What is at stake is the morality of decision-making processes and their relation to the morality of the actions performed as a result of the decision-making processes. This complex relation is a recurring theme in many of the arguments presented below, notably in the first and the fourth chapters. However, the fact that there is a distinction between the morality of decision-making and the morality of actions does not imply that there is no relation between them. Indeed, I shall try to explain this connection in chapter four, in doing so, I expect to clarify the moral relevance ofthe distinction. The alienation between the moral agent and her decision-making might take yet another form. Namely, it might take the form of an argument that tries to justify the thesis that some sorts of rational decision-making, notably public decision-making, should be regarded as 'non-comprehensive' or 'non-plenary'. I use those expressions to refer to processes of decision-making in which the agent should not use all the reasons that could 1 Pursuing this sort of 'rationality', means to engage into what Habennas 'pragmatic discourse' which, as he pointed out, is only one sort of practical discourse (see his Between Facts and Norms Translated by William Rehg, Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996, p. 151-168, see also his On the Pragmatic, the Ethical and the Moral Employments of Practical Reason in Habermas, Jurgen Justification and Application: Remarks on Discourse Ethics (Transl. by Ciaran P. Cronin) Cambrige/Mass: MIT Press, 1993, pp. 1-17.