Language, Meaning, and Ethics
Philosophy in the Contemporary World 4 (1/2):48-55 (1997)
| Abstract | This paper takes up an underdeveloped argument of Charles Taylor that linguisticality is constitutive of moral agency. Taylor’s position is part of a set of contemporary arguments that language, especially as dialogue or discourse, is the normative framework which grounds or validates fundamental norms or values. Taylor’s contribution to this “dialogical turn” is substantial and innovative, but it is not without weakness. Rather than deal with all the issues involved in this dialogical turn, I argue just that language does ground morality as a distinctively human way of creating meaning, that is, as Taylor argues, constitutive of the self and self-understanding. Self-understanding, or the appropriation of moral self-consciousness, is what is meant by the authenticity and autonomy which constitute moral authority. I argue in essence that language provides a necessary and constitutive link between private and public spheres of meaning in a way that renders moral discourse meaningful and constitutively human | |||||||||
| Keywords | No keywords specified (fix it) | |||||||||
| Categories | ||||||||||
| Options |
|
|||||||||
Download options| PhilPapers Archive |
Upload a copy of this paper Check publisher's policy on self-archival Papers currently archived: 5,672 |
| External links |
 |
| Through your library | Configure |
Similar books and articlesR. A. Carson (2011). On Metaphorical Concentration: Language and Meaning in Patient-Physician Relations. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 36 (4):385-393.
Chris Klassen (2011). Nature Religion and the Ethics of Authenticity. Environmental Ethics 33 (3):295-305.
Charles Taylor (1985). Human Agency and Language. Cambridge University Press.
Ora Gruengard (2008). Dialectics in Everyday Life. Proceedings of the Xxii World Congress of Philosophy 4:59-66.
Hannah Ginsborg (2011). Inside and Outside Language: Stroud's Nonreductionism About Meaning. In Jason Bridges, Niko Kolodny & Wai-Hung Wong (eds.), The Possibility of Philosophical Understanding: Essays for Barry Stroud. Oxford University Press.
Mark Norris Lance (1997). The Grammar of Meaning: Normativity and Semantic Discourse. Cambridge University Press.
Margaret Weldhen (1986). Ethics, Identity and Culture: Some Implications of the Moral Philosophy of Iris Murdoch. Journal of Moral Education 15 (2):119-126.
Ray Lepley (1957/1973). The Language of Value. Westport, Conn.,Greenwood Press.
Ruth G. Millikan (2005). Language: A Biological Model. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
F. A. Carnevale & D. M. Weinstock (2011). Questions in Contemporary Medicine and the Philosophy of Charles Taylor: An Introduction. Journal of Medicine and Philosophy 36 (4):329-334.
Charles Taylor (1985). Philosophy and the Human Sciences. Cambridge University Press.
Dean Pettit (2002). Why Knowledge is Unnecessary for Understanding Language. Mind 111 (443):519-550.
Craig Taylor (2002). Sympathy: A Philosophical Analysis. Palgrave Macmillan.
Analytics
Monthly downloads
Sorry, there are not enough data points to plot this chart.
|
Added to index2011-01-09Total downloads1 ( #274,602 of 549,037 )Recent downloads (6 months)1 ( #63,261 of 549,037 )How can I increase my downloads? |
My notes
Discussion
