Off-campus access
Using PhilPapers from home?
Click here to configure this browser for off-campus access.
- Michael R. DePaul (1993). Balance and Refinement: Beyond Coherence Methods of Moral Inquiry. Routledge.We all have moral beliefs. What if we are unsure about what to believe about a serious moral issue, or if one belief conflicts with another that we hold with equal conviction? When such conflicts and doubts occur, we try to make our beliefs cohere, and are forced to engage in a moral inquiry. Michael R. DePaul argues that we have to make our beliefs cohere, but that the current coherence methods are seriously flawed. Methods such as that which John Rawls has proposed are intellectualist and mechanical. DePaul argues that it is not just arguments that need to be considered in moral inquiry. The ability to make sensitive moral judgements is vital to any philosophical inquiry into morality. The inquirer must consider how life experiences and experiences with literature, film, theater, music and art have influenced the capacity to make moral judgments, and attempt to insure that this capacity is neither naive nor corrupted. Balance and Refinement is the only book to focus primarily on epistemological and methodological questions in moral realism. The author raises issues of moral conversions, the possibility of naivete and corruption, and the significant role of life experience and experiences with the arts in moral inquiry. He also discusses the role of literature in moral inquiry. This title will make a valuable contribution to epistemology, ethics, and moral theory.
Similar books and articles
It is commonly agreed that the well-known Lucas-Penrose arguments and even Penrose's 'new argument' in [Penrose, R. (1994): Shadows of the Mind, Oxford University Press] are inconclusive. It is, perhaps, less clear exactly why at least the latter is inconclusive. This note continues the discussion in [Lindström, P. (2001): Penrose's new
No categories
Fifteen essays are contained in this collection, all relating to Heinz Post’s article ‘Correspondence, Invariance and Heuristics’ (Post, 1971), also reprinted. In this article, written in the heyday of the post-positivist movement, Post aims to convince his fellowphilosophers of science to bring the issue of heuristics back to the philosophical stage. Examining a
No categories
I defend the permissibility of paid surrogacy arrangements against the arguments Sara Ketchum advances in "Selling Babies and Selling Bodies." I argue that the arrangements cannot be prohibited out of hand on the grounds that they treat persons as objects of sale, because it is possible to view the payments made in these arrangements as
No categories
In this second of two essays responding to critical discussion of my "Divine Hiddenness and Human Reason," I show how an 'accommodationist' strategy can be used to defuse objections that were not exposed as irrelevant by the first essay. This strategy involves showing that the dominant concern of reasons for divine withdrawal can be met
In several recent issues of this journal, I argued for an account of property possession as strict, numerical identity. While this account has stuck some as being highly idiosyncratic in nature, it is not entirely something new under the sun, since as I will argue in this paper, it turns out to have a historic precedentPlato in Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy
As we enter the new millennium, it has become more important to review and discover ancient wisdom. The project to build a harmonious society requires us to know our own "culture." The biggest conflicts we human beings face are the conflicts between man and nature, man and man (man and society), and body and mind. The
No categories
I characterize and then complicate Solomon, Thagard and Goldman's framing of the issue of integrating cognitive and social factors in explaining science. I sketch a radically different framing which distributes the mind beyond the brain, embodies it, and has that mind-body-person become, as s/he always is, an agent acting in a society
No categories
I argue that to be compelled to do routine work is to be gravely harmed. Indeed, that pink-collar work is a more serious harm to women than rape. My purpose is to urge politically active feminists and feminist organizations to arrange their priorities accordingly and devote most of their resources to working for the elimination
No categories
covenant. "Behold I establish my covenant with you and your descendants after you, and with every living creature that is with you, the birds, the cattle, and every beast of the earth with you" (Gen. 9.9-10). In modern terms, the covenant was both ecumenical and ecological. However, the ecological dimension is usually forgotten; recal
No categories
What is to be “protected†is US power and the interests it represents, not the world, which vigorously opposed the conception. Within a few months, studies revealed that fear of the United States had reached remarkable heights, along with distrust of the political leadership. An international Gallup poll in December, barely noted in the <
No categories
Discussion of Michael R. DePaul, Balance and Refinement: Beyond Coherence Methods of Moral Inquiry
|
|
There are no threads in this forum |
Nothing in this forum yet.

