LET’S FAKE MORALITY AND ETHICS The pretence of Ethics and Morality ULRICH DE BALBIAN Meta-Philosophy Research Center PREFACE Institutionalized and internalized, competence intersubjectivity contain many user-illusions and an imaginary or manifest image of reality, including of themselves (Dennett and Sellars),. This can be contrasted we a comprehension or comprehensive, understanding intersubjectivity. It is possible and perhaps even necessary to transform or replace the competence intersubjectivity to a comprehension or understanding (scientific, Dennett and Sellars) image of reality and themselves.Ethics and morality and studies of ethics and morality deal with the reality of competence intersubjectivity (by means of socio-cultural practices that are derived from, based on an created by means of this restrictive, misleading, unreal, illusory, unrealistic intersubjectivity and the life-worlds associated with it) and human life-worlds constituted on the basis of and in terms of this intersubjectivity. This is why I am a nihilist, a libertarian, at least a minarchist or rather an anarchist and epistemologically a sceptic. Kant’s things in themselves are similar to Dennett and Searle’s notions of manifest and scientific image. With my addition that we are socialized and internalize the competent, know how to do it, institutionalized manifest, everyday intersubjectivity, instead of the comprehension, insights and understanding knowing that, scientific intersubjectivity of all scientific disciplines. This piece can be read as independent as comments on meta-ethics, or it can be read as a chapter in my Book ‘Intersubjectivity (continued)’, or it can be read as an introduction to my thoughts on philosophy and more specifically Intersubjectivity as – Determining the nature of philosophy Determining the nature of the subject-matter of philosophy, sociology, social psychology, aspects of cognitive sciences, ethics, epistemology, etc, Determining the nature of philosophical methodology and approaches. PHILOSOPHY and ETHICS Reasons why I have refrained from reflecting and writing on ethics and morality - a) The intersubjectivity that are institutionalized, socialized and internalize and therefore being employed to constitute reality, life-worlds, selves, discourses and socio-cultural practices, including specialized disciplines, eg philosophy, is that of Kantian things-for-us or Searle’ and Dennett’s notion of manifest, imaginary, competent or know-how, knowing-how-to images. This kind of intersubjectivity underlies human morality and ethics, as well as approaches of philosophers to these and other branches of philosophy. b) How philosophers exist and how they live, their attitudes and beliefs, are very different from the theories of human existence, consciousness, selves, ethics, morality, epistemology, ontology, metaphysics, etc they advocate or express in and as their theories. Philosophers have their own private ways or personal styles of im/morality and being a-ethical while they advocate theories of ethics (and other branches of philosophy) that are completely different from their real attitudes and beliefs. c) As far as institutionalized and lived ethics and morality go I am a nihilist, an anarchist, or at least a minarchist, a Pyrrhonist, or at least a Humean or Kantian sceptic if not a fallibilist. A suggestion before I paste the usual, contemporary encyclopaedic notions of ethics as a branch of philosophy and present notions of the ‘division’ of the subject and approaches to ethics and meta-ethics. When a compatibilist says free will and determinism are compatible, and critics say they are mistaken – see below – they talk about specific situations, while those who points out that there do exists some kinds of determinisms after al, the latter take a more general, big picture view and make a statement on a greater or higher level of generality or generalization. Criticisms Compatibilism has much in common with so-called 'Hard Determinism', including moral systems and a belief in Determinism itself Critics of compatibilism often focus on the definition(s) of free will: incompatibilists may agree that the compatibilists are showing something to be compatible with determinism, but they think that something ought not to be called "free will". Incompatibilists might accept the "freedom to act" as a necessary criterion for free will, but doubt that it is sufficient. Basically, they demand more of "free will". The incompatibilists believe free will refers to genuine (e.g., absolute, ultimate) alternate possibilities for beliefs, desires, or actions, rather than merely counterfactual ones. Compatibilists are sometimes called "soft determinists" pejoratively (William James' term). James accused them of creating a "quagmire of evasion" by stealing the name of freedom to mask their underlying determinism.[10] Immanuel Kant called it a "wretched subterfuge" and "word jugglery".[11] Kant's argument turns on the view that, while all empirical phenomena must result from determining causes, human thought introduces something seemingly not found elsewhere in nature—the ability to conceive of the world in terms of how it ought to be, or how it might otherwise be. For Kant, subjective reasoning is necessarily distinct from how the world is empirically. Because of its capacity to distinguish is from ought, reasoning can 'spontaneously' originate new events without being itself determined by what already exists.[12] It is on this basis that Kant argues against a version of compatibilism in which, for instance, the actions of the criminal are comprehended as a blend of determining forces and free choice, which Kant regards as misusing the word "free". Kant proposes that taking the compatibilist view involves denying the distinctly subjective capacity to re-think an intended course of action in terms of what ought to happen.[11] Ted Honderich explains his view that the mistake of compatibilism is to assert that nothing changes as a consequence of determinism, when clearly we have lost the life-hope of origination.[13] Semicompatibilism is the view that causal determinism is compatible with moral responsibility, while making no assertions about the truth of determinism or free will. The term was coined by John Martin Fischer.[1][2] Prominent semicompatibilists include Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Harry Frankfurt. Criticisms of this view include the principle of alternative possibilities. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frankfurt_cases#Principle_of_alternate_possibilities Principle of alternate possibilities The principle of alternate possibilities (acronym PAP) forms part of an influential argument for the incompatibility of responsibility and causal determinism, often called the core argument for incompatibilism.[1][2][3] This argument is detailed below: (1) PAP: An agent is responsible for an action only if said agent could have done otherwise.[4] (2) An agent could have done otherwise only if causal determinism is false. (3) Therefore, an agent is responsible for an action only if causal determinism is false. Traditionally, compatibilists (defenders of the compatibility of free will and determinism, like A. J. Ayer, Walter Terence Stace, and Daniel Dennett) reject premise two, arguing that, properly understood, free will is not incompatible with determinism. According to the traditional compatibilist analysis of free will, an agent is free to do otherwise when he would have done otherwise had he wanted to do otherwise.[5] Agents may possess free will, according to the conditional analysis, even if determinism is true. Frankfurt's objection From the PAP definition "a person is morally responsible for what he has done only if he could have done otherwise", Frankfurt infers that a person is not morally responsible for what he has done if he could not have done otherwise – a point with which he takes issue: our theoretical ability to do otherwise, he says, does not necessarily make it possible for us to do otherwise. Frankfurt's examples are significant because they suggest an alternative way to defend the compatibility of moral responsibility and determinism, in particular by rejecting the first premise of the argument. According to this view, responsibility is compatible with determinism because responsibility does not require the freedom to do otherwise. Frankfurt's examples involve agents who are intuitively responsible for their behavior even though they lack the freedom to act otherwise. Here is a typical case: Donald is a Democrat and is likely to vote for the Democrats; in fact, only in one particular circumstance will he not: that is, if he thinks about the prospects of immediate American defeat in Iraq just prior to voting. Ms White, a representative of the Democratic Party, wants to ensure that Donald votes Democratic, so she secretly plants a device in Donald's head that, if activated, will force him to vote Democratic. Not wishing to reveal her presence unnecessarily, Ms White plans to activate the device only if Donald thinks about the Iraq War prior to voting. As things happen, Donald does not think about Iraq prior to voting, so Ms White thus sees no reason to activate the device, and Donald votes Democratic of his own accord. Apparently, Donald is responsible for voting Democratic although, owing to Ms. White's device, he lacks freedom to do otherwise. If Frankfurt is correct in suggesting both that Donald is morally responsible for voting Democratic and that he is not free to do otherwise, moral responsibility, in general, does not require that an agent have the freedom to do otherwise (that is, the principle of alternate possibilities is false). Thus, even if causal determinism is true, and even if determinism removes the freedom to do otherwise, there is no reason to doubt that people can still be morally responsible for their behavior. Having rebutted the principle of alternate possibilities, Frankfurt suggests that it be revised to take into account the fallacy of the notion that coercion precludes an agent from moral responsibility. It must be only because of coercion that the agent acts as he does. The best definition, by his reckoning, is this: "[A] person is not morally responsible for what he has done if he did it only because he could not have done otherwise."[4] Legacy Michael Otsuka provides a more specific answer to proposed problems with Frankfurt's counterexamples. In his article, Otsuka says,[6] "my strategy is to propose that the Principle of Alternate Possibilities be rejected in favor of a different incompatibilist principle," that is, different from Frankfurt's, "that I call the 'Principle of Avoidable Blame'." --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -------------------- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Determinism Determinism is the philosophical position that for every event there exist conditions that could cause no other event. "There are many determinisms, depending on what pre-conditions are considered to be determinative of an event or action."[1] Deterministic theories throughout the history of philosophy have sprung from diverse and sometimes overlapping motives and considerations. Some forms of determinism can be empirically tested with ideas from physics and the philosophy of physics. The opposite of determinism is some kind of indeterminism (otherwise called nondeterminism). Determinism is often contrasted with free will.[2] Determinism often is taken to mean causal determinism, which in physics is known as cause-and-effect. It is the concept that events within a given paradigm are bound by causality in such a way that any state (of an object or event) is completely determined by prior states. This meaning can be distinguished from other varieties of determinism mentioned below. Other debates often concern the scope of determined systems, with some maintaining that the entire universe is a single determinate system and others identifying other more limited determinate systems (or multiverse). Numerous historical debates involve many philosophical positions and varieties of determinism. They include debates concerning determinism and free will, technically denoted as compatibilistic (allowing the two to coexist) and incompatibilistic (denying their coexistence is a possibility). Determinism should not be confused with self-determination of human actions by reasons, motives, and desires. Determinism rarely requires that perfect prediction be practically possible. Compatibilism is the thesis that free will is compatible with determinism. Because free will is typically taken to be a necessary condition of moral responsibility, compatibilism is sometimes expressed as a thesis about the compatibility between moral responsibility and determinism. 1.Apr 26, 2004 Compatibilism (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/compatibilism/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compatibilism Compatibilism is the belief that free will and determinism are compatible ideas, and that it is possible to believe in both without being logically inconsistent.[1] Compatibilists believe freedom can be present or absent in situations for reasons that have nothing to do with metaphysics.[2] They define free will as freedom to act according to one's motives without arbitrary hindrance from other individuals or institutions.[citation needed] For example, courts of law make judgments, without bringing in metaphysics, about whether an individual was acting of their own free will in specific circumstances. It is assumed in a court of law that someone could have done otherwise than they did—otherwise no crime would have been committed. Similarly, political liberty is a non-metaphysical concept.[3] Statements of political liberty, such as the United States Bill of Rights, assume moral liberty, i.e. the ability to choose to do otherwise than one does. http://www.importanceofphilosophy.com/FiveBranchesMain.html Introduction to the Five Branches of Philosophy Philosophy can be divided into five branches which address the following questions: Metaphysics Study of Existence What's out there? Epistemology Study of Knowledge How do I know about it? Ethics Study of Action What should I do? Politics Study of Force What actions are permissible? Esthetics Study of Art What can life be like? There is a hierarchical relationship between these branches as can be seen in the Concept Chart. At the root is Metaphysics, the study of existence and the nature of existence. Closely related is Epistemology, the study of knowledge and how we know about reality and existence. Dependent on Epistemology is Ethics, the study of how man should act. Ethics is dependent on Epistemology because it is impossible to make choices without knowledge. A subset of Ethics is Politics: the study of how men should interact in a proper society and what constitutes proper. Esthetics, the study of art and sense of life is slightly separate, but depends on Metaphysics, Epistemology, and Ethics. Copyright © 2001 by Jeff Landauer and Joseph Rowlands Consciousness is Conscious Existence Exists A is A: Identity Reality is Absolute Objectivity Logic Reason is Absolute Reason is Man's Means of Survival Man's Life is His Moral Standard Harmony of Interests Morality as a Guide to Living Initiation of Force is Immoral Trader Principle Virtue Rights Are Absolute Productiveness Rationality Pride Benevolence Justice Independence Government Must Protect Rights Laissez Faire Capitalism Taxation is Immoral Honesty Integrity Ethics What is Ethics? Ethics is the branch of study dealing with what is the proper course of action for man. It answers the question, "What do I do?" It is the study of right and wrong in human endeavors. At a more fundamental level, it is the method by which we categorize our values and pursue them. Do we pursue our own happiness, or do we sacrifice ourselves to a greater cause? Is that foundation of ethics based on the Bible, or on the very nature of man himself, or neither? Why is Ethics important? Ethics is a requirement for human life. It is our means of deciding a course of action. Without it, our actions would be random and aimless. There would be no way to work towards a goal because there would be no way to pick between a limitless number of goals. Even with an ethical standard, we may be unable to pursue our goals with the possibility of success. To the degree which a rational ethical standard is taken, we are able to correctly organize our goals and actions to accomplish our most important values. Any flaw in our ethics will reduce our ability to be successful in our endeavors. What are the key elements of a proper Ethics? A proper foundation of ethics requires a standard of value to which all goals and actions can be compared to. This standard is our own lives, and the happiness which makes them livable. This is our ultimate standard of value, the goal in which an ethical man must always aim. It is arrived at by an examination of man's nature, and recognizing his peculiar needs. A system of ethics must further consist of not only emergency situations, but the day to day choices we make constantly. It must include our relations to others, and recognize their importance not only to our physical survival, but to our well-being and happiness. It must recognize that our lives are an end in themselves, and that sacrifice is not only not necessary, but destructive. Basics Life as the Moral Standard Morality is a Guide to Living Reason is Man's Means of Survival Values Virtue Self-Interest Harmony of Interests Specifics Self Reliance / Independence Productiveness Integrity Honesty Pride Justice Benevolence Rationality Technicalities Metaphysical Justice Free Will Courage Trader Principle http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch.html A philosophical branch is a broad division of the overall subject. A philosophical doctrine is a particular theory, principle, position, system, code of beliefs or body of teachings. These are the famous “-isms” of Philosophy. Within each branch, there are any number of related, similar or opposing doctrines covering different aspects of the whole, although many doctrines overlap with, and may have repercussions in, more than one branch of Philosophy. The distinction between philosophical doctines or theories, and the various movements or schools of philosophy is sometimes blurred. Philosophy as a whole is traditionally split into four or more main branches. The main four are: Metaphysics (the study of existence and the nature of reality) Epistemology (the study of knowledge, and how and what we know) Ethics (the study of how people should act, and what is good and valuable) Aesthetics (the study of basic philosophical questions about art and beauty) In addition to these, two more branches are often added: Logic (the study of good reasoning, by valid inference and demonstration) Political Philosophy (the study of how people should interact in a proper society)   In addition to these, there are other branches concerned with philosophical questions arising from other disciplines, including: Philosophy of Mind (the study of the nature of mind, consciousness, etc) Philosophy of Religion (the study of the nature of religion, God, evil, prayer, etc) Philosophy of Language (the study of the nature, origins, and usage of language) Philosophy of Education (the study of the purpose, process, nature and ideals of education) Philosophy of History (the study of the eventual significance, if any, of human history) Philosophy of Science (the study of the assumptions, foundations, and implications of science) Many others could be added to this list such as Philosophy of Law, Philosophy of Sociology, Philosophy of Mathematics, Philosophy of Ethnology (also known as Ethnophilosophy), Philosophy of Psychology, even Philosophy of Philosophy (also known as Meta-Philosophy). http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_ethics.html Introduction Back to Top Ethics (or Moral Philosophy) is concerned with questions of how people ought to act, and the search for a definition of right conduct (identified as the one causing the greatest good) and the good life (in the sense of a life worth living or a life that is satisfying or happy). The word "ethics" is derived from the Greek "ethos" (meaning "custom" or "habit"). Ethics differs from morals and morality in that ethics denotes the theory of right action and the greater good, while morals indicate their practice. Ethics is not limited to specific acts and defined moral codes, but encompasses the whole of moral ideals and behaviours, a person's philosophy of life (or Weltanschauung). It asks questions like "How should people act?" (Normative or Prescriptive Ethics), "What do people think is right?" (Descriptive Ethics), "How do we take moral knowledge and put it into practice?" (Applied Ethics), and "What does 'right' even mean?" (Meta-Ethics). See below for more discussion of these categories. Ancient Greek Ethics Back to Top Socrates, as recorded in Plato's dialogues, is customarily regarded as the father of Western ethics. He asserted that people will naturally do what is good provided that they know what is right, and that evil or bad actions are purely the result of ignorance: "There is only one good, knowledge, and one evil, ignorance". He equated knowledge and wisdom with self-awareness (meaning to be aware of every fact relevant to a person's existence) and virtue and happiness. So, in essence, he considered self-knowledge and self-awareness to be the essential good, because the truly wise (i.e. self-aware) person will know what is right, do what is good, and therefore be happy. According to Aristotle, "Nature does nothing in vain", so it is only when a person acts in accordance with their nature and thereby realizes their full potential, that they will do good and therefore be content in life. He held that self-realization (the awareness of one's nature and the development of one's talents) is the surest path to happiness, which is the ultimate goal, all other things (such as civic life or wealth) being merely means to an end. He encouraged moderation in all things, the extremes being degraded and immoral, (e.g. courage is the moderate virtue between the extremes of cowardice and recklessness), and held that Man should not simply live, but live well with conduct governed by moderate virtue. Virtue, for Aristotle, denotes doing the right thing to the right person at the right time to the proper extent in the correct fashion and for the right reason - something of a tall order. Cynicism is an ancient doctrine best exemplified by the Greek philosopher Diogenes of Sinope, who lived in a tub on the streets of Athens. He taught that a life lived according to Nature was better than one that conformed to convention, and that a simple life is essential to virtue and happiness. As a moral teacher, Diogenes emphasized detachment from many of those things conventionally considered "good". Hedonism posits that the principal ethic is maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. This may range from those advocating self-gratification regardless of the pain and expense to others and with no thought for the future (Cyrenaic Hedonism), to those who believe that the most ethical pursuit maximizes pleasure and happiness for the most people. Somewhere in the middle of this continuum, Epicureanism observed that indiscriminate indulgence sometimes results in negative consequences, such as pain and fear, which are to be avoided. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus posited that the greatest good was contentment, serenity and peace of mind, which can be achieved by self-mastery over one's desires and emotions, and freedom from material attachments. In particular, sex and sexual desire are to be avoided as the greatest threat to the integrity and equilibrium of a man's mind. According to Epictetus, difficult problems in life should not be avoided, but rather embraced as spiritual exercises needed for the health of the spirit. Pyrrho, the founding figure of Pyrrhonian Skepticism, taught that one cannot rationally decide between what is good and what is bad although, generally speaking, self-interest is the primary motive of human behaviour, and he was disinclined to rely upon sincerity, virtue or Altruism as motivations. Humanism, with its emphasis on the dignity and worth of all people and their ability to determine right and wrong purely by appeal to universal human qualities (especially rationality), can be traced back to Thales, Xenophanes of Colophon (570 - 480 B.C.), Anaxagoras, Pericles (c. 495 - 429 B.C.), Protagoras, Democritus and the historian Thucydides (c. 460 - 375 B.C.). These early Greek thinkers were all instrumental in the move away from a spiritual morality based on the supernatural, and the development of a more humanistic freethought (the view that beliefs should be formed on the basis of science and logic, and not be influenced by emotion, authority, tradition or dogma). Normative Ethics Back to Top Normative Ethics (or Prescriptive Ethics) is the branch of ethics concerned with establishing how things should or ought to be, how to value them, which things are good or bad, and which actions are right or wrong. It attempts to develop a set of rules governing human conduct, or a set of norms for action. Normative ethical theories are usually split into three main categories: Consequentialism, Deontology and Virtue Ethics: Consequentialism (or Teleological Ethics) argues that the morality of an action is contingent on the action's outcome or result. Thus, a morally right action is one that produces a good outcome or consequence. Consequentialist theories must consider questions like "What sort of consequences count as good consequences?", "Who is the primary beneficiary of moral action?", "How are the consequences judged and who judges them?" Some consequentialist theories include: Utilitarianism, which holds that an action is right if it leads to the most happiness for the greatest number of people ("happiness" here is defined as the maximization of pleasure and the minimization of pain). The origins of Utilitarianism can be traced back as far as the Greek philosopher Epicurus, but its full formulation is usually credited to Jeremy Betham, with John Stuart Mill as its foremost proponent. Hedonism, which is the philosophy that pleasure is the most important pursuit of mankind, and that individuals should strive to maximise their own total pleasure (net of any pain or suffering). Epicureanism is a more moderate approach (which still seeks to maximize happiness, but which defines happiness more as a state of tranquillity than pleasure). Egoism, which holds that an action is right if it maximizes good for the self. Thus, Egoism may license actions which are good for the individual, but detrimental to the general welfare. Individual Egoism holds that all people should do whatever benefits him or her self. Personal Egoism holds that each person should act in his own self-interest, but makes no claims about what anyone else ought to do. Universal Egoism holds that everyone should act in ways that are in their own interest. Asceticism, which is, in some ways, the opposite of Egoism in that it describes a life characterized by abstinence from egoistic pleasures especially to achieve a spiritual goal. Altruism, which prescribes that an individual take actions that have the best consequences for everyone except for himself, according to Auguste Comte's dictum, "Live for others". Thus, individuals have a moral obligation to help, serve or benefit others, if necessary at the sacrifice of self-interest. Rule Consequentialism, which is a theory (sometimes seen as an attempt to reconcile Consequentialism and Deontology), that moral behaviour involves following certain rules, but that those rules should be chosen based on the consequences that the selection of those rules have. Negative Consequentialism, which focuses on minimizing bad consequences rather than promoting good consequences. This may actually require active intervention (to prevent harm from being done), or may only require passive avoidance of bad outcomes. Deontology is an approach to ethics that focuses on the rightness or wrongness of actions themselves, as opposed to the rightness or wrongness of the consequences of those actions. It argues that decisions should be made considering the factors of one's duties and other's rights (the Greek 'deon' means 'obligation' or 'duty'). Some deontological theories include: Divine Command Theory: a form of deontological theory which states that an action is right if God has decreed that it is right, and that an act is obligatory if and only if (and because) it is commanded by God. Thus, moral obligations arise from God's commands, and the rightness of any action depends upon that action being performed because it is a duty, not because of any good consequences arising from that action. William of Ockham, René Descartes and the 18th Century Calvinists all accepted versions of this moral theory. Natural Rights Theory (such as that espoused by Thomas Hobbes and John Locke), which holds that humans have absolute, natural rights (in the sense of universal rights that are inherent in the nature of ethics, and not contingent on human actions or beliefs). This eventually developed into what we today call human rights. Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative, which roots morality in humanity's rational capacity and asserts certain inviolable moral laws. Kant's formulation is deontological in that he argues that to act in the morally right way, people must act according to duty, and that it is the motives of the person who carries out the action that make them right or wrong, not the consequences of the actions. Simply stated, the Categorical Imperative states that one should only act in such a way that one could want the maxim (or motivating principle) of one's action to become a universal law, and that one should always treat people as an end as well as a means to an end. Pluralistic Deontology is a description of the deontological ethics propounded by W.D. Ross (1877 - 1971). He argues that there are seven prima facie duties which need to be taken into consideration when deciding which duty should be acted upon: beneficence (to help other people to increase their pleasure, improve their character, etc); non-maleficence (to avoid harming other people); justice (to ensure people get what they deserve); self-improvement (to improve ourselves); reparation (to recompense someone if you have acted wrongly towards them); gratitude (to benefit people who have benefited us); promise-keeping (to act according to explicit and implicit promises, including the implicit promise to tell the truth). In some circumstances, there may be clashes or conflicts between these duties and a decision must be made whereby one duty may "trump" another, although there are no hard and fast rules and no fixed order of significance. Contractarian Ethics (or the Moral Theory of Contractarianism) claims that moral norms derive their normative force from the idea of contract or mutual agreement. It holds that moral acts are those that we would all agree to if we were unbiased, and that moral rules themselves are a sort of a contract, and therefore only people who understand and agree to the terms of the contract are bound by it. The theory stems initially from political Contractarianism and the principle of social contract developed by Thomas Hobbes, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and John Locke, which essentially holds that people give up some rights to a government and/or other authority in order to receive, or jointly preserve, social order. Contractualism is a variation on Contractarianism, although based more on the Kantian ideas that ethics is an essentially interpersonal matter, and that right and wrong are a matter of whether we can justify the action to other people. Virtue Ethics, focuses on the inherent character of a person rather than on the nature or consequences of specific actions performed. The system identifies virtues (those habits and behaviours that will allow a person to achieve "eudaimonia", or well being or a good life), counsels practical wisdom to resolve any conflicts between virtues, and claims that a lifetime of practising these virtues leads to, or in effect constitutes, happiness and the good life. Eudaimonism is a philosophy originated by Aristotle that defines right action as that which leads to "well being", and which can be achieved by a lifetime of practising the virtues in one's everyday activities, subject to the exercise of practical wisdom. It was first advocated by Plato and is particularly associated with Aristotle, and became the prevailing approach to ethical thinking in the Ancient and Medieval periods. It fell out of favour in the Early Modern period, but has recently undergone a modern resurgence. Agent-Based Theories give an account of virtue based on our common-sense intuitions about which character traits are admirable (e.g. benevolence, kindness, compassion, etc), which we can identify by looking at the people we admire, our moral exemplars. Ethics of Care was developed mainly by Feminist writers, and calls for a change in how we view morality and the virtues, shifting towards the more marginalized virtues exemplified by women, such as taking care of others, patience, the ability to nurture, self-sacrifice, etc. Meta-Ethics Back to Top Meta-Ethics is concerned primarily with the meaning of ethical judgements, and seeks to understand the nature of ethical properties, statements, attitudes, and judgements and how they may be supported or defended. A meta-ethical theory, unlike a normative ethical theory (see below), does not attempt to evaluate specific choices as being better, worse, good, bad or evil; rather it tries to define the essential meaning and nature of the problem being discussed. It concerns itself with second order questions, specifically the semantics, epistemology and ontology of ethics. The major meta-ethical views are commonly divided into two camps: Moral Realism and Moral Anti-Realism: Moral Realism: Moral Realism (or Moral Objectivism) holds that there are objective moral values, so that evaluative statements are essentially factual claims, which are either true or false, and that their truth or falsity are independent of our beliefs, feelings or other attitudes towards the things being evaluated. It is a cognitivist view in that it holds that ethical sentences express valid propositions and are therefore truth-apt. There are two main variants: Ethical Naturalism This doctrine holds that there are objective moral properties of which we have empirical knowledge, but that these properties are reducible to entirely non-ethical properties. It assumes cognitivism (the view that ethical sentences express propositions and can therefore be true or false), and that the meanings of these ethical sentences can be expressed as natural properties without the use of ethical terms. Ethical Non-Naturalism This doctrine (whose major apologist is G. E. Moore) holds that ethical statements express propositions (in that sense it is also cognitivist) that cannot be reduced to non-ethical statements (e.g. "goodness" is indefinable in that it cannot be defined in any other terms). Moore claimed that a naturalistic fallacy is committed by any attempt to prove a claim about ethics by appealing to a definition in terms of one or more natural properties (e.g. "good" cannot be defined interms of "pleasant", "more evolved", "desired", etc). Ethical Intuitionism is a variant of Ethical Non-Naturalism which claims that we sometimes have intuitive awareness of moral properties or of moral truths. Moral Anti-Realism: Moral Anti-Realism holds that there are no objective moral values, and comes in one of three forms, depending on whether ethical statements are believed to be subjective claims (Ethical Subjectivism), not genuine claims at all (Non-Cognitivism) or mistaken objective claims (Moral Nihilism or Moral Skepticism): Ethical Subjectivism, which holds that there are no objective moral properties and that moral statements are made true or false by the attitudes and/or conventions of the observers, or that any ethical sentence merely implies an attitude, opinion, personal preference or feeling held by someone. There are several different variants: Simple Subjectivism: the view that ethical statements reflect sentiments, personal preferences and feelings rather than objective facts. Individualist subjectivism: the view (originally put forward by Protagoras) that there are as many distinct scales of good and evil as there are individuals in the world (effectively a form of Egoism). Moral Relativism (or Ethical Relativism): the view that for a thing to be morally right is for it to be approved of by society, leading to the conclusion that different things are right for people in different societies and different periods in history. Ideal Observer Theory: the view that what is right is determined by the attitudes that a hypothetical ideal observer (a being who is perfectly rational, imaginative and informed) would have. Non-Cognitivism, which holds that ethical sentences are neither true nor false because they do not express genuine propositions, thus implying that moral knowledge is impossible. Again there are different versions: Emotivism: the view, defended by A.J. Ayer and C. L. Stevenson (1908 - 1979) among others, that ethical sentences serve merely to express emotions, and ethical judgements are primarily expressions of one's own attitude, although to some extent they are also imperatives meant to change the attitudes and actions of other listeners. Prescriptivism (or Universal Prescriptivism): the view, propounded by R.M. Hare (1919 - 2002), that moral statements function as imperatives which are universalizable (i.e. applicable to everyone in similar circumstances) e.g. "Killing is wrong" really means "Do not kill!" Expressivism: the view that the primary function of moral sentences is not to assert any matter of fact, but rather to express an evaluative attitude toward an object of evaluation. Therefore, because the function of moral language is non-descriptive,moral sentences do not have any truth conditions. Quasi-Realism: the view, developed from Expressivism and defended by Simon Blackburn (1944 - ), that ethical statements behave linguistically like factual claims, and can be appropriately called "true" or "false" even though there are no ethical facts for them to correspond to. Blackburn argues that ethics cannot be entirely realist, for this would not allow for phenomena such as the gradual development of ethical positions over time or in differing cultural traditions. Projectivism: the view that qualities can be attributed to (or "projected" on) an object as if those qualities actually belong to it. Projectivism in Ethics (originally proposed by David Hume and more recently championed by Simon Blackburn) is associated by many with Moral Relativism, and is considered controversial, even though it was philosophical orthodoxy throughout much of the 20th Century. Moral Fictionalism: the view that moral statements should not be taken to be literally true, but merely a useful fiction. This has led to charges of individuals claiming to hold attitudes that they do not really have, and therefore are in some way insincere. Moral Nihilism, which holds that ethical claims are generally false. It holds that there are no objective values (that nothing is morally good, bad, wrong, right, etc.) because there are no moral truths (e.g. a moral nihilist would say that murder is not wrong, but neither is it right). Error Theory is a form of Moral Nihilism which combines Cognitivism (the belief that moral language consists of truth-apt statements) with Moral Nihilism (the belief that there are no moral facts). Moral Skepticism, which holds that no one has any moral knowledge (or the stronger claim that no one can have any moral knowledge). It is particularly opposed to Moral Realism (see above) and perhaps its most famous proponent is Friedrich Nietzsche. An alternative division of meta-ethical views is between: Moral Absolutism: The ethical belief that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong, regardless of the context of the act. Moral Universalism: The meta-ethical position that there is a universal ethic which applies to all people, regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality, sexuality or other distinguishing feature, and all the time. Moral Relativism: The position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect objective and/or universal moral truths, but instead make claims relative to social, cultural, historical or personal circumstances. Descriptive Ethics Back to Top Descriptive Ethics is a value-free approach to ethics which examines ethics from the perspective of observations of actual choices made by moral agents in practice. It is the study of people's beliefs about morality, and implies the existence of, rather than explicitly prescribing, theories of value or of conduct. It is not designed to provide guidance to people in making moral decisions, nor is it designed to evaluate the reasonableness of moral norms. It is more likely to be investigated by those working in the fields of evolutionary biology, psychology, sociology, history or anthropology, although information that comes from descriptive ethics is also used in philosophical arguments. Descriptive Ethics is sometimes referred to as Comparative Ethics because so much activity can involve comparing ethical systems: comparing the ethics of the past to the present; comparing the ethics of one society to another; and comparing the ethics which people claim to follow with the actual rules of conduct which do describe their actions. Applied Ethics Back to Top Applied Ethics is a discipline of philosophy that attempts to apply ethical theory to real-life situations. Strict, principle-based ethical approaches often result in solutions to specific problems that are not universally acceptable or impossible to implement. Applied Ethics is much more ready to include the insights of psychology, sociology and other relevant areas of knowledge in its deliberations. It is used in determining public policy. The following would be questions of Applied Ethics: "Is getting an abortion immoral?", "Is euthanasia immoral?", "Is affirmative action right or wrong?", "What are human rights, and how do we determine them?" and "Do animals have rights as well?" Some topics falling within the discipline include: Medical Ethics: the study of moral values and judgements as they apply to medicine. Historically, Western medical ethics may be traced to guidelines on the duty of physicians in antiquity, such as the Hippocratic Oath (at its simplest, "to practice and prescribe to the best of my ability for the good of my patients, and to try to avoid harming them"), and early rabbinic, Muslim and Christian teachings. Six of the values that commonly apply to medical ethics discussions are: Beneficence (a practitioner should act in the best interest of the patient), Non-maleficence ("first, do no harm"), Autonomy (the patient has the right to refuse or choose their treatment), Justice (concerning the distribution of scarce health resources, and the decision of who gets what treatment), Dignity (both the patient and the practitioner have the right to dignity), Honesty (truthfulness and respect for the concept of informed consent). Bioethics: concerns the ethical controversies brought about by advances in biology and medicine. Public attention was drawn to these questions by abuses of human subjects in biomedical experiments, especially during the Second World War, but with recent advances in bio-technology, bioethics has become a fast-growing academic and professional area of inquiry. Issues include consideration of cloning, stem cell research, transplant trade, genetically modified food, human genetic engineering, genomics, infertility treatment, etc, etc Legal Ethics: an ethical code governing the conduct of people engaged in the practice of law. Model rules usually address the client-lawyer relationship, duties of a lawyer as advocate in adversary proceedings, dealings with persons other than clients, law firms and associations, public service, advertising and maintaining the integrity of the profession. Respect of client confidences, candour toward the tribunal, truthfulness in statements to others, and professional independence are some of the defining features of legal ethics. Business Ethics: examines ethical principles and moral or ethical problems that can arise in a business environment. This includes Corporate Social Responsibility, a concept whereby organizations consider the interests of society by taking responsibility for the impact of their activities on customers, employees, shareholders, communities and the environment in all aspects of their operations, over and above the statutory obligation to comply with legislation. Environmental Ethics: considers the ethical relationship between human beings and the natural environment. It addresses questions like "Should we continue to clear cut forests for the sake of human consumption?", "Should we continue to make gasoline powered vehicles, depleting fossil fuel resources while the technology exists to create zero-emission vehicles?", "What environmental obligations do we need to keep for future generations?", "Is it right for humans to knowingly cause the extinction of a species for the (perceived or real) convenience of humanity?" Information Ethics: investigates the ethical issues arising from the development and application of computers and information technologies. It is concerned with issues like the privacy of information, whether artificial agents may be moral, how one should behave in the infosphere, and ownership and copyright problems arising from the creation, collection, recording, distribution, processing, etc, of information. Media Ethics: deals with the specific ethical principles and standards of media in general, including the ethical issues relating to journalism, advertising and marketing, and entertainment media. Major Doctrines Back to Top Under the heading of Ethics, the major doctrines or theories include: Altruism Asceticism Cognitivism Consequentialism Cynicism Deontology Egoism Epicureanism Ethical Naturalism Ethical Non-Naturalism Ethical Subjectivism Eudaimonism Hedonism Humanism Individualism Moral Absolutism Moral Anti-Realism Moral Nihilism Moral Realism Moral Relativism Moral Skepticism Moral Universalism Non-Cognitivism Utilitarianism Virtue Ethics 1. moral principles that govern a person's behavior or the conducting of an activity. "medical ethics also enter into the question" synonyms: moral code, morals, morality, values, rights and wrongs, principles, ideals, standards (of behavior), value system, virtues, dictates of conscience "your so-called newspaper is clearly not burdened by a sense of ethics" the moral correctness of specified conduct. "many scientists question the ethics of cruel experiments" 2. the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethics Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct.[1] The term ethics derives from the Ancient Greek word ἠθικός ethikos, which is derived from the word ἦθος ethos (habit, "custom"). The branch of philosophy axiology comprises the sub-branches of ethics and aesthetics, each concerned with values.[2] As a branch of philosophy, ethics investigates the questions "What is the best way for people to live?" and "What actions are right or wrong in particular circumstances?" In practice, ethics seeks to resolve questions of human morality by defining concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, virtue and vice, justice and crime. As a field of intellectual enquiry, moral philosophy also is related to the fields of moral psychology, descriptive ethics, and value theory. Three major areas of study within ethics recognised today are:[1] Meta-ethics, concerning the theoretical meaning and reference of moral propositions, and how their truth values (if any) can be determined Normative ethics, concerning the practical means of determining a moral course of action Applied ethics, concerning what a person is obligated (or permitted) to do in a specific situation or a particular domain of action[1] Contents 1 Defining ethics 2 Meta-ethics 3 Normative ethics 3.1 Virtue ethics 3.1.1 Stoicism 3.1.2 Contemporary virtue ethics 3.2 Hedonism 3.2.1 Cyrenaic hedonism 3.2.2 Epicureanism 3.3 State consequentialism 3.4 Consequentialism/Teleology 3.4.1 Utilitarianism 3.5 Deontology 3.6 Pragmatic ethics 3.7 Ethics of care 3.8 Role ethics 3.9 Anarchist ethics Anarchist ethics is an ethical theory based on the studies of anarchist thinkers. The biggest contributor to the anarchist ethics is the Russian zoologist, geographer, economist and political activist Peter Kropotkin. The anarchist ethics is a big and vague field which can depend upon different historical situations and different anarchist thinkers, but as Peter Kropotkin explains, "any “bourgeois” or “proletarian” ethics rests, after all, on the common basis, on the common ethnological foundation, which at times exerts a very strong influence on the principles of the class or group morality." Still, most of the anarchist ethics schools are based on three fundamental ideas, which are: "solidarity, equality and justice". Kropotkin argues that Ethics is evolutionary and is inherited as a sort of a social instinct through History, and by so, he rejects any religious and transcendental explanation of ethics.[48] Kropotkin suggests that the principle of equality which lies at the basis of anarchism is the same as the Golden rule: This principle of treating others as one wishes to be treated oneself, what is it but the very same principle as equality, the fundamental principle of anarchism? And how can any one manage to believe himself an anarchist unless he practices it? We do not wish to be ruled. And by this very fact, do we not declare that we ourselves wish to rule nobody? We do not wish to be deceived, we wish always to be told nothing but the truth. And by this very fact, do we not de- clare that we ourselves do not wish to deceive anybody, that we promise to always tell the truth, nothing but the truth, the whole truth? We do not wish to have the fruits of our labor stolen from us. And by that very fact, do we not declare that we respect the fruits of others' labor? By what right indeed can we demand that we should be treated in one fashion, reserving it to ourselves to treat others in a fashion entirely different? Our sense of equality revolts at such an idea.[49] 3.10 Postmodern ethics The 20th century saw a remarkable expansion and evolution of critical theory, following on earlier Marxist Theory efforts to locate individuals within larger structural frameworks of ideology and action. Antihumanists such as Louis Althusser and Michel Foucault and structuralists such as Roland Barthes challenged the possibilities of individual agency and the coherence of the notion of the 'individual' itself.[clarification needed] As critical theory developed in the later 20th century, post-structuralism sought to problematize human relationships to knowledge and 'objective' reality. Jacques Derrida argued that access to meaning and the 'real' was always deferred, and sought to demonstrate via recourse to the linguistic realm that "there is nothing outside context" ("il n'y a pas de hors-texte" is often mistranslated as "there is nothing outside the text"); at the same time, Jean Baudrillard theorised that signs and symbols or simulacra mask reality (and eventually the absence of reality itself), particularly in the consumer world. Post-structuralism and postmodernism argue that ethics must study the complex and relational conditions of actions. A simple alignment of ideas of right and particular acts is not possible. There will always be an ethical remainder that cannot be taken into account or often even recognized. Such theorists find narrative (or, following Nietzsche and Foucault, genealogy) to be a helpful tool for understanding ethics because narrative is always about particular lived experiences in all their complexity rather than the assignment of an idea or norm to separate and individuated actions. Zygmunt Bauman says Postmodernity is best described as Modernity without illusion, the illusion being the belief that humanity can be repaired by some ethic principle. Postmodernity can be seen in this light as accepting the messy nature of humanity as unchangeable. David Couzens Hoy states that Emmanuel Levinas's writings on the face of the Other and Derrida's meditations on the relevance of death to ethics are signs of the "ethical turn" in Continental philosophy that occurred in the 1980s and 1990s. Hoy describes post-critique ethics as the "obligations that present themselves as necessarily to be fulfilled but are neither forced on one or are enforceable" (2004, p. 103). Hoy's post-critique model uses the term ethical resistance. Examples of this would be an individual's resistance to consumerism in a retreat to a simpler but perhaps harder lifestyle, or an individual's resistance to a terminal illness. Hoy describes Levinas's account as "not the attempt to use power against itself, or to mobilize sectors of the population to exert their political power; the ethical resistance is instead the resistance of the powerless"(2004, p. 8). Hoy concludes that The ethical resistance of the powerless others to our capacity to exert power over them is therefore what imposes unenforceable obligations on us. The obligations are unenforceable precisely because of the other's lack of power. That actions are at once obligatory and at the same time unenforceable is what put them in the category of the ethical. Obligations that were enforced would, by the virtue of the force behind them, not be freely undertaken and would not be in the realm of the ethical. (2004, p.184) In present-day terms the powerless may include the unborn, the terminally sick, the aged, the insane, and non-human animals. It is in these areas that ethical action in Hoy's sense will apply. Until legislation or the state apparatus enforces a moral order that addresses the causes of resistance these issues will remain in the ethical realm. For example, should animal experimentation become illegal in a society, it will no longer be an ethical issue on Hoy's definition. Likewise one hundred and fifty years ago, not having a black slave in America would have been an ethical choice. This later issue has been absorbed into the fabric of an enforceable social order and is therefore no longer an ethical issue in Hoy's sense. 4 Applied ethics 4.1 Specific questions 4.2 Particular fields of application 4.2.1 Bioethics 4.2.2 Business ethics 4.2.3 Machine ethics 4.2.4 Military ethics 4.2.5 Political ethics 4.2.6 Public sector ethics 4.2.7 Publication ethics 4.2.8 Relational ethics 4.2.9 Animal ethics 5 Moral psychology 5.1 Evolutionary ethics 6 Descriptive ethics 7 See also 8 Notes 9 References 10 Further reading 11 External links ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_ethics Ethics is, in general terms, the study of right and wrong. It can look descriptively at moral behaviour and judgements; it can give practical advice (normative ethics), or it can analyse and theorise about the nature of morality and ethics.[1] Contemporary study of ethics has many links with other disciplines in philosophy itself and other sciences.[2] Normative ethics has declined, while meta-ethics is increasingly followed. Abstract theorizing has in many areas been replaced by experience-based research.[3] Contents 1 Practical and theoretical areas 2 Reason vs intuition 3 Changed focus 4 Challenges remaining 5 References Practical and theoretical areas Psychology, sociology, politics, medicine and neurobiology are areas which have helped and been helped in progress in ethics.[4] Within philosophy, epistemology (or the study of how we know) has drawn closer to ethics.[5] This is in part due to the recognition that knowledge, like value and goodness, can be seen as a normative concept. The traditional analyses and definitions of knowledge have been shown to be unsound by the Gettier problem. New interest has flourished in meta-ethics.[6] This has in recent years developed as a recognised category proceeding from the work of Hume, G. E. Moore and the error theories of J. L. Mackie[7] who seeks a real basis, if any, for talk of values and right and wrong. Mackie is sceptical about solving the dilemma posed by the distinction between values and facts. Reason vs intuition The dominance of reason has come under increasing challenge from various quarters.[8] Heidegger's work has become increasingly translated and interpreted in the Anglo-American sphere and the wisdom of always following reason is widely questioned.[9][10] The ethics of care, and environmental ethics are other flourishing areas of research. These point to a general increasing cultural awareness of the hitherto dominance of reason and male based values[11] in society rather than a relational, contextual and communitarian view of the social world. Reason and emotion are seen as more equal partners in human actions [12] There remain major divergences of perspective, for example between continental and analytic approaches, and process/ pragmatism vs logical, a priori approaches. Edmund Gettier wrote a short but influential article [13] showing that knowledge is not captured by a traditionally accepted reason based definitions. Pragmatism, and process philosophy in general, is increasingly adopted as a response to a constantly changing understanding of a dynamic world, both physically and in the realms of experiment and investigation. Changed focus Mackie (1977) states that increasing secularisation has meant that religion is not seen by many as the ground for deciding how we should act. Quine's critique [14] of the analytic–synthetic distinction has implications for morality (for example in the work of Kant). Logic (Logic (from the Ancient Greek: λογική, logikḗ[1]), originally meaning "the word" or "what is spoken" (but coming to mean "thought" or "reason"), is generally held to consist of the systematic study of the form of arguments. A valid argument is one where there is a specific relation of logical support between the assumptions of the argument and its conclusion. (In ordinary discourse, the conclusion of such an argument may be signified by words like therefore, hence, ergo and so on.) There is no universal agreement as to the exact scope and subject matter of logic (see § Rival conceptions, below), but it has traditionally included the classification of arguments, the systematic exposition of the 'logical form' common to all valid arguments, the study of inference, including fallacies, and the study of semantics, including paradoxes. Historically, logic has been studied in philosophy (since ancient times) and mathematics (since the mid-1800s), and recently logic has been studied in computer science, linguistics, psychology, and other fields.) is a diverse and apparently flexible branch of thought, rather than being thought to underlie mathematics and reasoning, as previously. Postmodernism and its aftermath has left behind the aspiration for an overarching theory of ethics, single ideas which were reputed to explain or justify whole aspects of human experience and knowledge, such as Marxism, religion, Freudianism or nationalism. Writers as diverse as Jean-François Lyotard [15] and J L Mackie (1977) point to the decline in grand narratives. Mackie (1977), in particular, saw this decline as undermining the legitimacy of traditional morality. This has stimulated the development of both error theory and meta-ethics as moves to either review or to strengthen the basis of our inherited value systems. As a result, there is growing acceptance of the plausibility of making decisions based on the context,[16] and the particular situation being considered, rather than by reference to principles. This move away from grand theory confirms earlier views of Adam Smith,[17] who held that moral theories derived from moral actions rather than conversely. Challenges remaining Major challenges for ethics include the fact/value distinction,[18] the error theory which seems to undermine the reality [19] of moral claims[20][21] and apparent relativism[22][23] across cultures and eras. Some feel that the persistence of problems in ethics theory has led to an overall decline in the interest in working in the field of pure ethics as more opportunities arise in applied ethics and meta-ethics. Stephen Darwall et al[24] referred to "a genuinely new period in twentieth Century ethics, the vigorous revival of metaethics coincidental with the emergence .. of a criticism of the enterprise of moral theory itself". -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- ni·hil·ism ˈnīəˌlizəm,ˈnēəˌlizəm/ noun noun: nihilism the rejection of all religious and moral principles, often in the belief that life is meaningless. synonyms: skepticism, negativity, cynicism, pessimism; More disbelief, unbelief, agnosticism, atheism "she could not accept Bacon's nihilism, his insistence that man is a futile being" Philosophy extreme skepticism maintaining that nothing in the world has a real existence. historical the doctrine of an extreme Russian revolutionary party c. 1900, which found nothing to approve of in the established social order. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nihilism Nihilism (/ˈnaɪ.ᵻlɪzəm/ or /ˈniː.ᵻlɪzəm/; from the Latin nihil, nothing) is a philosophical doctrine that suggests the lack of belief in one or more reputedly meaningful aspects of life. Most commonly, nihilism is presented in the form of existential nihilism, which argues that life is without objective meaning, purpose, or intrinsic value.[1] Moral nihilists assert that there is no inherent morality, and that accepted moral values are abstractly contrived. (Thus there is little meaning or pint in studying ethics or morality – this is a meta-ethics statement) Nihilism may also take epistemological, ontological, or metaphysical forms, meaning respectively that, in some aspect, knowledge is not possible, or reality does not actually exist. The term is sometimes used in association with anomie to explain the general mood of despair at a perceived pointlessness of existence that one may develop upon realising there are no (ABSOLUTE rules or norms, only contingent , situational ones, perhaps, sometimes) necessary norms, rules, or laws.[2] Movements such as Futurism and deconstruction,[3] among others, have been identified by commentators[4] as "nihilistic". Nihilism is also a characteristic that has been ascribed to time periods: for example, Jean Baudrillard and others have called postmodernity a nihilistic epoch,[5] and some religious theologians and figures of religious authority have asserted that postmodernity[6] and many aspects of modernity[3] represent a rejection of theism, and that such rejection of their theistic doctrine entails nihilism. Contents 1 Forms 1.1 Metaphysical 1.2 Epistemological 1.3 Mereological Mereological nihilism (also called compositional nihilism) is the position that objects with proper parts do not exist (not only objects in space, but also objects existing in time do not have any temporal parts), and only basic building blocks without parts exist, and thus the world we see and experience full of objects with parts is a product of human misperception (i.e., if we could see clearly, we would not perceive compositive objects). This interpretation of existence must be based on resolution. The resolution with which humans see and perceive the "improper parts" of the world is not an objective fact of reality, but is rather an implicit trait that can only be qualitatively explored and expressed. Therefore, there is no arguable way to surmise or measure the validity of mereological nihilism. Example: An ant can get lost on a large cylindrical object because the circumference of the object is so large with respect to the ant that the ant effectively feels as though the object has no curvature. Thus, the resolution with which the ant views the world it exists "within" is a very important determining factor in how the ant experiences this "within the world" feeling. s Consciousness an Illusion? Thomas Nagel March 9, 2017 Issue From Bacteria to Bach and Back: The Evolution of Minds by Daniel C. Dennett Norton, 476 pp., $28.95 The task Dennett sets himself is framed by a famous distinction drawn by the philosopher Wilfrid Sellars between the “manifest image” and the “scientific image”—two ways of seeing the world we live in. According to the manifest image, Dennett writes, the world is full of other people, plants, and animals, furniture and houses and cars…and colors and rainbows and sunsets, and voices and haircuts, and home runs and dollars, and problems and opportunities and mistakes, among many other such things. These are the myriad “things” that are easy for us to recognize, point to, love or hate, and, in many cases, manipulate or even create…. It’s the world according to us. According to the scientific image, on the other hand, the world is populated with molecules, atoms, electrons, gravity, quarks, and who knows what else (dark energy, strings? branes?). (MOVE UP A FEW LEVELS OF generalization and see the bigger picture of science, another or alternative perspective to the institutionalized, manifest image of everyday, common sense , folk psychology that humans internalize because of the types of intersubjectvity they subscribe to. They could modify or transform this image and intersubjectivity by subscribing to the scientific image and its intersubjectivity.) This, according to Dennett, is the world as it is in itself, not just for us, and the task is to explain scientifically how the world of molecules has come to include creatures like us, complex physical objects to whom everything, including they themselves, appears so different. He greatly extends Sellars’s point by observing that the concept of the manifest image can be generalized to apply not only to humans but to all other living beings, all the way down to bacteria. All organisms have biological sensors and physical reactions that allow them to detect and respond appropriately only to certain features of their environment—“affordances,” Dennett calls them—that are nourishing, noxious, safe, dangerous, sources of energy or reproductive possibility, potential predators or prey. For each type of organism, whether plant or animal, these are the things that define their world, that are salient and important for them; they can ignore the rest. Whatever the underlying physiological mechanisms, the content of the manifest image reveals itself in what the organisms do and how they react to their environment; it need not imply that the organisms are consciously aware of their surroundings. But in its earliest forms, it is the first step on the route to awareness. The lengthy process of evolution that generates these results is first biological and then, in our case, cultural, and only at the very end is it guided partly by intelligent design, made possible by the unique capacities of the human mind and human civilization. But as Dennett says, the biosphere is saturated with design from the beginning—everything from the genetic code embodied in DNA to the metabolism of unicellular organisms to the operation of the human visual system—design that is not the product of intention and that does not depend on understanding. One of Dennett’s most important claims is that most of what we and our fellow organisms do to stay alive, cope with the world and one another, and reproduce is not understood by us or them. It is competence ( humans function by and exist in terms of a competence intersubjectivity, and not in terms of both a competence and a comprehension intersubjectivity) without comprehension. This is obviously true of organisms like bacteria and trees that have no comprehension at all, but it is equally true of creatures like us who comprehend a good deal. Most of what we do, and what our bodies do—digest a meal, move certain muscles to grasp a doorknob, or convert the impact of sound waves on our eardrums into meaningful sentences—is done for reasons that are not our reasons. Rather, they are what Dennett calls free-floating reasons, grounded in the pressures of natural selection that caused these behaviors and processes to become part of our repertoire. There are reasons why these patterns have emerged and survived, but we don’t know those reasons, and we don’t have to know them to display the competencies that allow us to function. 1.4 Existential 1.5 Moral 1.6 Political 1.6.1 Russian movement 2 History 2.1 19th century 2.2 Kierkegaard 2.3 Nietzsche 2.4 Heidegger's interpretation of Nietzsche 2.5 Postmodernism 2.6 Transcendental nihilism / methodological naturalism 2.7 Nihilism and Buddhism 3 In culture 3.1 Dada 3.2 Literature 3.3 Film 4 See also 5 Notes 6 References The Definition of Morality (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/ Apr 17, 2002 - The topic of this entry is not—at least directly—moral theory; rather, it is the definition of morality. Moral theories are large and complex things; The topic of this entry is not—at least directly—moral theory; rather, it is the definition of morality. Moral theories are large and complex things; definitions are not. The question of the definition of morality is the question of identifying the target of moral theorizing. Identifying this target enables us to see different moral theories as attempting to capture the very same thing. In this way, the distinction between a definition of morality and a moral theory parallels the distinction John Rawls (1971: 9) drew between the general concept of justice and various detailed conceptions of it. Rawls’ terminology, however, suggests a psychological distinction, and also suggests that many people have conceptions of justice. But the definition/theory distinction is not psychological, and only moral theorists typically have moral theories. There does not seem to be much reason to think that a single definition of morality will be applicable to all moral discussions. One reason for this is that “morality” seems to be used in two distinct broad senses: a descriptive sense and a normative sense. More particularly, the term “morality” can be used either descriptively to refer to certain codes of conduct put forward by a society or a group (such as a religion), or accepted by an individual for her own behavior, or normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons. Which of these two senses of “morality” a theorist is using plays a crucial, although sometimes unacknowledged, role in the development of an ethical theory. If one uses “morality” in its descriptive sense, and therefore uses it to refer to codes of conduct actually put forward by distinct groups or societies, one will almost certainly deny that there is a universal morality that applies to all human beings. The descriptive use of “morality” is the one used by anthropologists when they report on the morality of the societies that they study. Recently, some comparative and evolutionary psychologists (Haidt 2006; Hauser 2006; De Waal 1996) have taken morality, or a close anticipation of it, to be present among groups of non-human animals: primarily, but not exclusively, other primates. Any definition of “morality” in the descriptive sense will need to specify which of the codes put forward by a society or group count as moral. Even in small homogeneous societies that have no written language, distinctions are sometimes made between morality, etiquette, law, and religion. And in larger and more complex societies these distinctions are often sharply marked. So “morality” cannot be taken to refer to every code of conduct put forward by a society. In the normative sense, “morality” refers to a code of conduct that would be accepted by anyone who meets certain intellectual and volitional conditions, almost always including the condition of being rational. That a person meets these conditions is typically expressed by saying that the person counts as a moral agent. However, merely showing that a certain code would be accepted by any moral agent is not enough to show that the code is the moral code. It might well be that all moral agents would also accept a code of prudence or rationality, but this would not by itself show that prudence was part of morality. As we’ve just seen, not all codes that are put forward by societies or groups are moral codes in the descriptive sense of morality, and not all codes that would be accepted by all moral agents are moral codes in the normative sense of morality. So any definition of morality—in either sense—will require further criteria. Still, each of these two very brief descriptions of codes might be regarded as offering some features of morality that would be included in any adequate definition. In that way they might be taken to be offering some definitional features of morality, in each of its two senses. When one has specified enough definitional features to allow one to classify all the relevant moral theories as theories of a common subject, one might then be taken to have given a definition of morality. This is the sense of “definition” at work in this entry. Explicit attempts to define morality are hard to find, at least since the beginning of the 20th century. One possible explanation for this is the combined effect of early positivistic worries about the metaphysical status of normative properties, followed (or augmented) by Wittgensteinian worries about definitions of any significant terms whatsoever. Whatever the explanation, when definitions have been offered, they have tended to be directed at the notion of moral judgment (Hare 1952, 1981) rather than at morality itself. To the degree that these definitions are adequate, they might, without much effort, be converted into definitions of morality in the descriptive sense. For example, a particular person’s morality might be regarded as the content of the basic moral judgments that person is prepared to accept. However, as G. Wallace and A.D.M. Walker (1970) note, virtually all “definitions” of moral judgments are only the specification of one definitional feature or another. What counts as definitional of morality, in either sense of “morality”, is controversial. Moreover, the line between what is part of a definition, in the sense at issue, and what is part of a moral theory, is not entirely sharp. For example, some might regard it as definitional of morality, in the normative sense, that it governs only interpersonal interactions. Others, however, might take this to be a substantive theoretical claim. Some might take it as definitional of “morality” in its descriptive sense that it be a code of conduct that a person or group takes to be most important. But others might say that attention to religion casts doubt on this idea. “Morality”, when used in a descriptive sense, has an important feature that “morality” in the normative sense does not have: a feature that stems from its relational nature. This feature is the following: that if one is not a member of the relevant society or group, or is not the relevant individual, then accepting a certain account of the content of morality, in the descriptive sense, has no implications for how one should behave. On the other hand, if one accepts a moral theory’s account of moral agents, and the specifications of the conditions under which all moral agents would endorse a code of conduct as a moral code, then one accepts that moral theory’s normative definition of “morality”. Accepting an account of “morality” in the normative sense commits one to regarding some behavior as immoral, perhaps even behavior that one is tempted to perform. Because accepting an account of “morality” in the normative sense involves this commitment, it is not surprising that philosophers seriously disagree about which account to accept. 1. Descriptive definitions of “morality” 2. Normative definitions of “morality” 3. Variations 3.1 Morality as linked to norms for responses to behavior 3.2 Morality as linked to advocacy of a code 3.3 Morality as linked to acceptance of a code 3.4 Morality as linked to justification to others Bibliography Academic Tools Other Internet Resources Related Entries https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality Morality (from the Latin moralis "manner, character, proper behavior") is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are distinguished as proper and those that are improper.[1] Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of conduct from a particular philosophy, religion, or culture, or it can derive from a standard that a person believes should be universal.[2] Morality may also be specifically synonymous with "goodness" or "rightness". Moral philosophy includes moral ontology, or the origin of morals, as well as moral epistemology, or knowledge of morals. Different systems of expressing morality have been proposed, including deontological ethical systems which adhere to a set of established rules, and normative ethical systems which consider the merits of actions themselves. An example of normative ethical philosophy is the Golden Rule, which states that: "One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself."[3] Immorality is the active opposition to morality (i.e. opposition to that which is good or right), while amorality is variously defined as an unawareness of, indifference toward, or disbelief in any set of moral standards or principles.[4][5][6] Contents 1 Philosophy Ethics Immanuel Kant introduced the categorical imperative: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law". Main article: Ethics See also: Sittlichkeit Ethics (also known as moral philosophy) is the branch of philosophy which addresses questions of morality. The word "ethics" is "commonly used interchangeably with 'morality,' and sometimes it is used more narrowly to mean the moral principles of a particular tradition, group, or individual."[7] Likewise, certain types of ethical theories, especially deontological ethics, sometimes distinguish between ethics and morals: "Although the morality of people and their ethics amounts to the same thing, there is a usage that restricts morality to systems such as that of Immanuel Kant, based on notions such as duty, obligation, and principles of conduct, reserving ethics for the more Aristotelian approach to practical reasoning, based on the notion of a virtue, and generally avoiding the separation of 'moral' considerations from other practical considerations."[8] Descriptive and normative In its descriptive sense, "morality" refers to personal or cultural values, codes of conduct or social mores from a society that provides these codes of conduct in which it applies and is accepted by an individual. It does not connote objective claims of right or wrong, but only refers to that which is considered right or wrong. Descriptive ethics is the branch of philosophy which studies morality in this sense.[9] In its normative sense, "morality" refers to whatever (if anything) is actually right or wrong, which may be independent of the values or mores held by any particular peoples or cultures. Normative ethics is the branch of philosophy which studies morality in this sense.[9] Realism and anti-realism Philosophical theories on the nature and origins of morality (that is, theories of meta-ethics) are broadly divided into two classes: Moral realism is the class of theories which hold that there are true moral statements that report objective moral facts. For example, while they might concede that forces of social conformity significantly shape individuals' "moral" decisions, they deny that those cultural norms and customs define morally right behavior. This may be the philosophical view propounded by ethical naturalists, however not all moral realists accept that position (e.g. ethical non-naturalists).[10] Moral anti-realism, on the other hand, holds that moral statements either fail or do not even attempt to report objective moral facts. Instead, they hold that moral sentences are either categorically false claims of objective moral facts (error theory); claims about subjective attitudes rather than objective facts (ethical subjectivism); or else not attempts to describe the world at all but rather something else, like an expression of an emotion or the issuance of a command (non-cognitivism). Some forms of non-cognitivism and ethical subjectivism, while considered anti-realist in the robust sense used here, are considered realist in the sense synonymous with moral universalism. For example, universal prescriptivism is a universalist form of non-cognitivism which claims that morality is derived from reasoning about implied imperatives, and divine command theory and ideal observer theory are universalist forms of ethical subjectivism which claim that morality is derived from the edicts of a god or the hypothetical decrees of a perfectly rational being, respectively. 1.1 Ethics 1.2 Descriptive and normative 1.3 Realism and anti-realism 2 Anthropology 2.1 Tribal and territorial 2.2 In-group and out-group 2.3 Comparing cultures 3 Evolution 4 Neuroscience 4.1 Brain areas 4.2 Mirror neurons 5 Psychology 6 Morality and politics 7 Morality and religion 7.1 Positions 7.2 Empirical analyses 8 See also 9 Notes 10 References 11 Further reading 12 External links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism Anarchism is a political philosophy that advocates self-governed societies based on voluntary institutions. These are often described as stateless societies,[1][2][3][4] although several authors have defined them more specifically as institutions based on non-hierarchical free associations.[5][6][7][8] Anarchism holds the state to be undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful.[9][10] While anti-statism is central,[11] anarchism generally entails opposing authority or hierarchical organisation in the conduct of all human relations, including, but not limited to, the state system. Other forms of authority it opposes include patriarchal authority, economic domination through private property, and racist supremacy. [19] Anarchism is usually considered a radical left-wing ideology,[20][21] and much of anarchist economics and anarchist legal philosophy reflects anti-authoritarian interpretations of communism, collectivism, syndicalism, mutualism, or participatory economics.[22] Anarchism does not offer a fixed body of doctrine from a single particular world view, instead fluxing and flowing as a philosophy.[23] Many types and traditions of anarchism exist, not all of which are mutually exclusive.[24] Anarchist schools of thought can differ fundamentally, supporting anything from extreme individualism to complete collectivism.[10] Strains of anarchism have often been divided into the categories of social and individualist anarchism or similar dual classifications.[25][26] Contents 1 Etymology and terminology 2 History 2.1 Origins 2.2 First International and the Paris Commune 2.3 Organised labour 2.4 Propaganda of the deed and illegalism 2.5 Russian Revolution and other uprisings of the 1910s 2.6 Conflicts with European fascist regimes 2.7 Spanish Revolution 2.8 Post-war years 2.9 Contemporary anarchism 3 Anarchist schools of thought 3.1 Classical anarchist schools of thought 3.1.1 Mutualism 3.1.2 Individualist anarchism 3.1.3 Social anarchism 3.1.3.1 Collectivist anarchism 3.1.3.2 Anarcho-communism 3.1.3.3 Anarcho-syndicalism 3.1.4 Syncretic anarchism 3.2 Post-classical schools of thought 4 Internal issues and debates 5 Topics of interest 5.1 Free love 5.2 Libertarian education and freethought 6 Criticisms 7 See also 8 References 9 Further reading 10 External links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minarchism Minarchism is a libertarian political philosophy which advocates for the State to exist solely to protect citizens from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud. Minarchists generally propose that the only legitimate governmental institutions are the military, police, and courts. However, some advocates propose fire departments, prisons, the executive, and legislatures as legitimate government functions. Such states are regarded as night-watchman states.[citation needed] Contents 1 Philosophy 2 Criticism 3 See also 4 References Philosophy Minarchists argue that it is malum in se for a government to interfere in transactions between people by taxing for services not directly related to the protection of citizens. Some minarchists argue that a state is inevitable,[1] thus believing anarchy to be futile. Minarchists justify the necessity of the state on the grounds that private defence agencies and courts could be biased by unevenly representing the interests of higher paying clients.[2] Robert Nozick, who publicized the idea of a minimal state in Anarchy, State, and Utopia, argued that a night watchman state provides a framework that allows for any political system that respects fundamental individual rights, and is therefore morally justifiable.[3][4] Minarchists believe a laissez-faire economy is not only the best system ethically, but also pragmatically.They contend that exceedingly low tax rates as a result of minimal government institutions allows for economic benefits. http://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_moral_nihilism.html Introduction Back to Top Moral Nihilism is the meta-ethical view (see the section on Ethics) that ethical claims are generally false. It holds that there are no objective moral facts or true propositions - that nothing is morally good, bad, wrong, right, etc - because there are no moral truths (e.g. a moral nihilist would say that murder is not wrong, but neither is it right). It differs from Ethical Subjectivism, and Moral Relativism, which do allow for moral statements to be true or false in a non-objective sense, but do not assign any static truth-values to moral statements. Criticisms of Moral Nihilism come primarily from Moral Realist doctrines like Ethical Naturalism and Ethical Non-Naturalism, which argue that there are positive moral truths. It is related in some ways to the metaphysical doctrine of Nihilism. The philosophy of Niccolò Machiavelli is sometimes presented as a model of Moral Nihilism, but that is highly questionable as he was largely silent on moral matters and, if anything, he presented an alternative to the ethical theories of his day, rather than an all-out rejection of all morality. Error Theory Back to Top Error Theory is a form of Moral Nihilism which combines Cognitivism (the belief that moral language consists of truth-apt statements) with Moral Nihilism (the belief that there are no moral facts). It is the view that ordinary moral thought and discourse is committed to deep and pervasive error, and that all moral statements make false ontological claims. Error Theory holds that we do not know that any moral claim is true because (i) all moral claims are false, (ii) we have reason to believe that all moral claims are false, and (iii) because we are not justified in believing any claim we have reason to deny, we are therefore not justified in believing any moral claims at all. The Global Falsity form of Error Theory claims that moral beliefs and assertions are false in that they claim that certain moral facts exist that do not in fact exist. The Presupposition Failure form claims that moral beliefs and assertions are not true because they are neither true nor false (i.e. moral beliefs and assertions presuppose the existence of moral facts that do not exist). The most famous moral Error Theorist is J. L. Mackie (1917 - 1981), who defended the metaethical view in his 1977 "Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong". Mackie argues that moral claims imply motivation internalism (the idea that an individual has a motivation to perform an action which they see as morally obligatory), which is false, and therefore so too are all moral claims. He also argues that moral claims necessarily entail a correspondent "reasons claim" (e.g. if "killing babies is wrong" is true, then everybody has a reason to not kill babies), but this is refuted by a psychopath who sees every reason to kill babies, and no reason not to do so, therefore all moral claims are thus false. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Libertarianism Libertarianism (Latin: liber, "free") is a collection of political philosophies and movements that uphold liberty as a core principle.[1] Libertarians seek to maximize political freedom and autonomy, emphasizing freedom of choice, voluntary association, individual judgment, and self-ownership.[2][3][4][5][6] Libertarians share a skepticism of authority and state power. However, they diverge on the scope of their opposition to existing political and economic systems. Various schools of libertarian thought offer a range of views regarding the legitimate functions of state and private power, often calling to restrict or to dissolve coercive social institutions. Some libertarians advocate laissez-faire capitalism and strong private property rights,[7] such as in land, infrastructure, and natural resources. Others, notably libertarian socialists,[8] seek to abolish capitalism and private ownership of the means of production in favor of their common or cooperative ownership and management, viewing private property as a barrier to freedom and liberty.[9][10][11][12] An additional line of division is between minarchists and anarchists. While minarchists think that a minimal centralized government is necessary, anarchists and anarcho-capitalists propose to completely eliminate the state.[13][14] Contents 1 Etymology 2 Philosophy There is contention about whether right, left, and socialist libertarianism "represent distinct ideologies as opposed to variations on a theme."[32] All libertarians begin with a conception of personal autonomy from which they argue in favor of civil liberties and a reduction or elimination of the state. Right-libertarianism[33] developed in the United States in the mid-20th century and is the most popular conception of libertarianism in that region.[34] It is commonly referred to as a continuation or radicalization of classical liberalism.[35][36] Right-libertarians value the social institutions that enforce conditions of capitalism, while rejecting institutions that function in opposition to these institutions. Anarcho-capitalists[37][38] seek complete elimination of the state in favor of privately funded security services, while minarchists defend "night-watchman states", which maintain only those functions of government necessary to maintain conditions of capitalism. Critics such as Corey Robin describe right-libertarianism as fundamentally a reactionary conservative ideology, united with more traditional conservative thought and goals by a desire to enforce hierarchical power and social relations:[39] Conservatism, then, is not a commitment to limited government and liberty—or a wariness of change, a belief in evolutionary reform, or a politics of virtue. These may be the byproducts of conservatism, one or more of its historically specific and ever-changing modes of expression. But they are not its animating purpose. Neither is conservatism a makeshift fusion of capitalists, Christians, and warriors, for that fusion is impelled by a more elemental force—the opposition to the liberation of men and women from the fetters of their superiors, particularly in the private sphere. Such a view might seem miles away from the libertarian defense of the free market, with its celebration of the atomistic and autonomous individual. But it is not. When the libertarian looks out upon society, he does not see isolated individuals; he sees private, often hierarchical, groups, where a father governs his family and an owner his employees. Left-libertarianism encompasses those libertarian beliefs that claim the Earth's natural resources belong to everyone in an egalitarian manner, either unowned or owned collectively. Contemporary left-libertarians such as Hillel Steiner, Peter Vallentyne, Philippe Van Parijs, Michael Otsuka, and David Ellerman believe the appropriation of land must leave "enough and as good" for others or be taxed by society to compensate for the exclusionary effects of private property. Libertarian socialists (social and individualist anarchists, libertarian Marxists, council Communists, Luxemburgists, and DeLeonists) promote usufruct and socialist economic theories, including Communism, collectivism, syndicalism, and mutualism. They criticize the state for being the defender of private property and believe capitalism entails wage slavery. Personal autonomy Anarchism envisages freedom as a form of autonomy,[40] which Paul Goodman describes as "the ability to initiate a task and do it one's own way, without orders from authorities who do not know the actual problem and the available means."[41] All anarchists oppose political and legal authority, but collectivist strains also oppose the economic authority of private property.[42] These social anarchists emphasize mutual aid, whereas individualist anarchists extoll individual sovereignty.[43] Some right-libertarians consider the non-aggression principle (NAP) to be a core part of their beliefs.[44][45] Civil liberties American anarchist Emma Goldman, prominent anarcha-feminist, free love and freethought activist Libertarians have been advocates and activists of civil liberties, including free love and free thought.[46][47] Advocates of free love viewed sexual freedom as a clear, direct expression of individual sovereignty. They particularly stressed women's rights, as most sexual laws discriminated against women: for example, marriage laws and anti-birth control measures.[48] Free love appeared alongside anarcha-feminism and advocacy of LGBT rights. Anarcha-feminism developed as a synthesis of radical feminism and anarchism, and views patriarchy as a fundamental manifestation of compulsory government. It was inspired by the late-19th-century writings of early feminist anarchists such as Lucy Parsons, Emma Goldman, Voltairine de Cleyre and Virginia Bolten. Anarcha-feminists, like other radical feminists, criticise and advocate the abolition of traditional conceptions of family, education and gender roles. Free Society (1895–1897 as The Firebrand, 1897–1904 as Free Society) was an anarchist newspaper in the United States that staunchly advocated free love and women's rights, while criticizing "comstockery", the censorship of sexual information.[49] In recent times, anarchism has also voiced opinions and taken action around certain sex-related subjects such as pornography,[50] BDSM,[51] and the sex industry.[51] Free thought is a philosophical viewpoint that holds opinions should be formed on the basis of science, logic, and reason, in contrast with authority, tradition, or other dogmas.[52][53] In the United States, "free thought was an anti-Christian, anti-clerical movement, whose purpose was to make the individual politically and spiritually free to decide on religious matters. A number of contributors to Liberty were prominent figures in both free thought and anarchism. In 1901, Catalan anarchist and free-thinker Francesc Ferrer i Guàrdia established "modern" or progressive schools in Barcelona in defiance of an educational system controlled by the Catholic Church.[54] Fiercely anti-clerical, Ferrer believed in "freedom in education," i.e., education free from the authority of the church and state.[55] The schools' stated goal was to "educate the working class in a rational, secular and non-coercive setting". Later in the 20th century Austrian freudo-marxist Wilhelm Reich became a consistent propagandist for sexual freedom going as far as opening free sex-counselling clinics in Vienna for working-class patients[56] as well as coining the phrase "sexual revolution" in one of his books from the 1940s.[57] During the early 1970s, the English anarchist and pacifist Alex Comfort achieved international celebrity for writing the sex manuals The Joy of Sex and More Joy of Sex. State Most left-libertarians are anarchists and believe the state inherently violates personal autonomy: "As Robert Paul Wolff has argued, since 'the state is authority, the right to rule', anarchism which rejects the State is the only political doctrine consistent with autonomy in which the individual alone is the judge of his moral constraints."[42] Social anarchists believe the state defends private property, which they view as intrinsically harmful, while market-oriented left-libertarians argue that so-called free markets actually consist of economic privileges granted by the state. These latter libertarians advocate instead for freed markets, which are freed from these privileges.[58] There is a debate amongst right-libertarians as to whether or not the state is legitimate: while anarcho-capitalists advocate its abolition, minarchists support minimal states, often referred to as night-watchman states. Libertarians take a skeptical view of government authority.[59][unreliable source?] Minarchists maintain that the state is necessary for the protection of individuals from aggression, theft, breach of contract, and fraud. They believe the only legitimate governmental institutions are the military, police, and courts, though some expand this list to include fire departments, prisons, and the executive and legislative branches.[60] They justify the state on the grounds that it is the logical consequence of adhering to the non-aggression principle and argue that anarchism is immoral because it implies that the non-aggression principle is optional, that the enforcement of laws under anarchism is open to competition.[citation needed] Another common justification is that private defense agencies and court firms would tend to represent the interests of those who pay them enough.[61] Anarcho-capitalists argue that the state violates the non-aggression principle by its nature because governments use force against those who have not stolen or vandalized private property, assaulted anyone, or committed fraud.[62][63] Linda & Morris Tannehill argue that no coercive monopoly of force can arise on a truly free market and that a government's citizenry can't desert them in favor of a competent protection and defense agency.[64] Property rights Right-libertarians maintain that unowned natural resources "may be appropriated by the first person who discovers them, mixes his labor with them, or merely claims them—without the consent of others, and with little or no payment to them." They believe that natural resources are originally unowned, and therefore, private parties may appropriate them at will without the consent of, or owing to, others.[65] Left-libertarians believe that neither claiming nor mixing one's labor with natural resources is enough to generate full private property rights,[66][67] and maintain that natural resources ought to be held in some egalitarian manner, either unowned or owned collectively.[68] Economics Right-libertarians are economic liberals of either the Austrian School or Chicago school and support laissez-faire capitalism,[69] Left-libertarians (social and individualist anarchists, libertarian Marxists, and left-wing market anarchists) argue in favor of socialist theories such as communism, syndicalism, and mutualism (see Anarchist economics). Daniel Guérin writes that "anarchism is really a synonym for socialism. The anarchist is primarily a socialist whose aim is to abolish the exploitation of man by man. Anarchism is only one of the streams of socialist thought, that stream whose main components are concern for liberty and haste to abolish the State."[70] Wage labour Wage labour has long been compared by socialists and anarcho-syndicalists to slavery.[71][72][73][74] As a result, the term wage slavery is often utilised as a pejorative for wage labor.[75] Advocates of slavery looked upon the "comparative evils of Slave Society and of Free Society, of slavery to human Masters and slavery to Capital,"[76] and proceeded to argue that wage slavery was actually worse than chattel slavery.[77] Slavery apologists like George Fitzhugh contended that workers only accepted wage labour with the passage of time, as they became "familiarized and inattentive to the infected social atmosphere they continually inhale[d]."[76] According to Noam Chomsky, analysis of the psychological implications of wage slavery goes back to the Enlightenment era. In his 1791 book On the Limits of State Action, classical liberal thinker Wilhelm von Humboldt explained how "whatever does not spring from a man's free choice, or is only the result of instruction and guidance, does not enter into his very nature; he does not perform it with truly human energies, but merely with mechanical exactness" and so when the labourer works under external control, "we may admire what he does, but we despise what he is."[78] For Marxists, labour-as-commodity, which is how they regard wage labour,[79] provides an absolutely fundamental point of attack against capitalism.[80] "It can be persuasively argued," noted philosopher John Nelson, "that the conception of the worker's labour as a commodity confirms Marx's stigmatization of the wage system of private capitalism as 'wage-slavery;' that is, as an instrument of the capitalist's for reducing the worker's condition to that of a slave, if not below it."[81] That this objection is fundamental follows immediately from Marx's conclusion that wage labour is the very foundation of capitalism: "Without a class dependent on wages, the moment individuals confront each other as free persons, there can be no production of surplus value; without the production of surplus-value there can be no capitalist production, and hence no capital and no capitalist!"[82] 2.1 Personal autonomy 2.2 Civil liberties 2.3 State 2.4 Property rights 2.5 Economics 2.6 Wage labour 3 Prominent currents 3.1 Right-libertarianism 3.1.1 Neo-classical liberalism 3.1.2 Anarcho-capitalism 3.2 Left-libertarianism 3.2.1 The Steiner–Vallentyne school 3.2.2 Geolibertarianism 3.2.3 Libertarian socialism 4 History 4.1 Age of Enlightenment 4.2 Rise of anarchism 4.3 Libertarian socialism 4.4 Individualism in the United States 4.5 Modern American libertarianism 5 Contemporary libertarianism 5.1 Contemporary libertarian socialism 5.2 U.S. libertarianism 6 Contemporary libertarian organizations 7 Criticism 7.1 Government decentralization 7.2 Lack of real-world examples of libertarianism 8 See also 9 Notes 10 References 11 Bibliography 12 External links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philosophical_skepticism#Epistemology_and_skepticism Philosophical skepticism (UK spelling scepticism; from Greek σκέψις skepsis, "inquiry") is both a philosophical school of thought and a method that questions the possibility of certainty in knowledge. It is generally agreed that knowledge requires justification. It is not enough to have a true belief: one must also have good reasons for that belief. Skeptics claim that it is not possible to have an adequate justification. Skepticism is not a single position but covers a range of different positions. In the ancient world there were two main skeptical traditions. Academic skepticism took the dogmatic position that knowledge was not possible; Pyrrhonian skeptics refused to take a dogmatic position on any issue—including skepticism. Radical skepticism ends in the paradoxical claim that one cannot know anything—including that one cannot know about knowing anything. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyrrhonism Pyrrhonism, or Pyrrhonian skepticism, was a school of skepticism founded by Pyrrho in the fourth century BC. Believing that "knowledge of things is impossible and that we must assume an attitude of reserve",[1] his school's existence was brief. It was revived by Aenesidemus in the first century BC and recorded by Sextus Empiricus in the late second century or early third century AD. A revival of the use of "Pyrrhonism" as a synonym for "skepticism" occurred during the seventeenth century.[2] Contents 1 History 1.1 Ancient Pyrrhonism Whereas academic skepticism, with Carneades as its most famous adherent, claims that "nothing can be known, not even this", Pyrrhonian skeptics withhold any assent with regard to non-evident propositions and remain in a state of perpetual inquiry. They disputed the possibility of attaining truth by sensory apprehension, reason, or the two combined, and thence, inferred the need for total suspension of judgment (epoché) on non-evident matters.[5] For any non-evident matter, a Pyrrhonist tries to make the arguments for and against such that the matter cannot be concluded, thus suspending belief. According to Pyrrhonism, even the statement that nothing can be known is dogmatic. They thus attempted to make their skepticism universal, and to escape the reproach of basing it upon a fresh dogmatism.[1] Mental imperturbability (ataraxia) was the result to be attained by cultivating such a frame of mind.[1] As in Stoicism and Epicureanism, the happiness or satisfaction of the individual was the goal of life, and all three philosophies placed it in tranquility or indifference.[1] According to the Pyrrhonists, it is our opinions or unwarranted judgments about things that turn them into desires, painful effort, and disappointment.[1] From all this a person is delivered who abstains from judging one state to be preferable to another,[1] but, as complete inactivity would have been synonymous with death, the skeptic, while retaining his consciousness of the complete uncertainty enveloping every step, might follow custom (or nature) in the ordinary affairs of life.[1] 1.2 The second debate of Pyrrhonism in the early modern period: problems with historical knowledge The traditions of ancient skepticism found a new reception in the early modern era climaxing in the eighteenth century, especially under the influence of the Empiricists (especially under the influence of David Hume (1711-1776) – see An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding) in the discussion of historical doubt: Pyrrhonismus historicus and Fides historica: the "faith" in recorded history. The fundamental question of the debate could not, and cannot, be solved: how can we prove historical data? History is a realm that does not allow experimental proofs. Questions such as with how many stabs was Julius Caesar killed, can only be discussed on the basis of documents. If they contradict each other historians can try to balance them against each other. Do certain documents have precedence over others as eye witness reports, can they be validated through experience, or do they include unlikely, marvelous incidents one should disqualify as legend? The result of the debate was not a final solution of the inherent problem, but the implementation of a new science of critical analysis of documents 1.3 The "philosophical" skepticism of Kant and its influence on classical German philosophy So, for Kant, empirical science was legitimate, but metaphysics and philosophy were mostly illegitimate. The most important exception to this demarcation of the legitimate from the illegitimate was ethics, the principles of which Kant argued can be known by pure reason without appeal to the principles required for empirical knowledge. Thus, with respect to metaphysics and philosophy general (ethics being the exception), Kant was a skeptic. This skepticism as well as the explicit skepticism of G. E. Schulze[9] gave rise to a robust discussion of skepticism in classical German philosophy, especially by Hegel.[10] Kant's idea was that the real world (the noumenon or thing-in-itself) was inaccessible to human reason (although the empirical world of nature can be known to human understanding) and therefore, we can never know anything about the ultimate reality of the world. Hegel argued against Kant, that although Kant was correct that using what Hegel called "finite" concepts of "the understanding" precluded knowledge of reality, we were not constrained to use only "finite" concepts and could acquire knowledge of reality using "infinite concepts" that arise from self-consciousness.[11](Kant’s things in themselves are similar to Dennett and Searles motions of manifest and scientific image. With my addition that we are socialized and internalize the competent, know how to do it, institutionalized manifest, everyday intersubjectivity, instead of the comprehension, insights and understanding knowing that, scientific intersubjecticity of all scientific disciplines. ) 1.4 Fallibilism Fallibilism is a modern, fundamental perspective of the scientific method, as put forth by Karl Popper and Charles Sanders Peirce, that all knowledge is, at best, an approximation, and that any scientist always must stipulate this in her or his research and findings. It is, in effect, a modernized extension of Pyrrhonism.[12] Indeed, historic Pyrrhonists sometimes are described by modern authors as fallibilists and modern fallibilists sometimes are described as pyrrhonists.[13] The Devil's Dictionary defines Pyrrhonism as "An ancient philosophy, named for its inventor. It consisted of an absolute disbelief in everything but Pyrrhonism. Its modern professors have added that."[14] 2 See also 3 References 4 External links Skepticism can be classified according to its scope. Local skepticism involves being skeptical about particular areas of knowledge, e.g. moral skepticism, skepticism about the external world, or skepticism about other minds, whereas global skepticism is skeptical about the possibility of any knowledge at all. Skepticism can also be classified according to its method. In the Western tradition there are two basic approaches to skepticism.[1] Cartesian skepticism —named somewhat misleadingly after René Descartes, who was not a skeptic but used some traditional skeptical arguments in his Meditations to help establish his rationalist approach to knowledge— attempts to show that any proposed knowledge claim can be doubted. Agrippan skepticism focuses on the process of justification rather than the possibility of doubt. According to this view there are three ways in which one might attempt to justify a claim but none of them are adequate: one can keep on providing further justification but this leads to an infinite regress; one can stop at a dogmatic assertion; or one can argue in circular reasoning, never reaching a viable conclusion. Philosophical skepticism is distinguished from methodological skepticism in that philosophical skepticism is an approach that questions the possibility of certainty in knowledge, whereas methodological skepticism is an approach that subjects all knowledge claims to scrutiny with the goal of sorting out true from false claims. Contents 1 History 1.1 Ancient Indian skepticism 1.1.1 Ajñana 1.1.2 Buddhism 1.1.3 Cārvāka philosophy 1.1.4 Jain philosophy of Anekantavada and Syadavada 1.2 Ancient chinese philosophy 1.3 Ancient Greek skepticism 1.3.1 Sextus Empiricus 1.4 Medieval arabic philosophy 2 Schools 3 Epistemology and skepticism 3.1 Kant's skepticism and its influence on German philosophy 3.2 Criticism of skepticism Most philosophies have weaknesses and can be criticized and this is a general principle of progression in philosophy.[24] The philosophy of skepticism asserts that no truth is knowable[25] or only probable.[26] Some say the scientific method also asserts probable findings, because the number of cases tested is always limited and they constitute perceptual observations.[27] Another criticism is the proposition that “no truth is knowable” is knowably true is contradictory.[28] The here is one hand argument is also another relatively simple criticism that reverses the skeptic's proposals and supports common sense. Pierre Le Morvan (2011) has distinguished between three broad philosophical approaches to skepticism.[29] The first he calls the "Foil Approach." According to the latter, skepticism is treated as a problem to be solved, or challenge to be met, or threat to be parried; skepticism‘s value on this view, insofar as it is deemed to have one, accrues from its role as a foil contrastively illuminating what is required for knowledge and justified belief. The second he calls the "Bypass Approach" according to which skepticism is bypassed as a central concern of epistemology. Le Morvan advocates a third approach—he dubs it the "Health Approach"—that explores when skepticism is healthy and when it is not, or when it is virtuous and when it is vicious. 4 Skeptical hypotheses 5 See also Ajñana Anti-realism Benson Mates Brain in a vat Celia Green Fallibilism David Hume Dream argument Five minute hypothesis Münchhausen trilemma Nihilism Problem of the criterion Problem of induction Pseudoskepticism Pyrrho Pyrrhonism Sextus Empiricus Simulated reality Solipsism Trivialism (opposite of skepticism) 6 References 7 Further reading 8 External links https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radical_skepticism Radical skepticism or radical scepticism is the philosophical position that knowledge is most likely impossible.[1] Radical skeptics hold that doubt exists as to the veracity of every belief and that certainty is therefore never justified. To determine the extent to which it is possible to respond to radical skeptical challenges is the task of epistemology or "the theory of knowledge".[2] The Ancient Greek philosophers Plato, Cratylus and Pyrrho as well as Roman philosopher Sextus Empiricus are among those who expounded theories of radical skepticism. In modern philosophy, two representatives of radical skepticism are Michel de Montaigne (most famously known for his skeptical remark, Que sçay-je ?, 'What do I know?' in Middle French; modern French Que sais-je ?) and David Hume (particularly as set out in A Treatise of Human Nature, Book 1: "Of the Understanding"). As radical skepticism can be used as an objection for most or all beliefs, many philosophers have attempted to refute it. For example, Bertrand Russell wrote “Skepticism, while logically impeccable, is psychologically impossible, and there is an element of frivolous insincerity in any philosophy which pretends to accept it.”[3] See also Cratylism Nihilism Skepticism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mereological_nihilism Mereological nihilism (also called compositional nihilism, or rarely simply nihilism) is the mereological position that objects with proper parts do not exist. Only mereological simples, those basic building blocks without proper parts, exist. Or, more succinctly, "nothing is a proper part of anything."[1] Mereological simples can be both spatial and temporal. Mereological nihilism also asserts that objects existing in time do not have any temporal parts. Contents 1 Explanation The concepts of parts and wholes are used to describe common objects. For example, a ball is made up of two halves, so the ball is a whole that is made up of two parts. Every single object we experience in the world outside of us and around us is a whole that has parts, and we never experience an object that does not have parts. For example, a tail is a part of a lion, a cloud is a part of a greater weather system or, in visual terms, the sky, and a nucleobase is a part of a DNA strand. The only things we know of that do not have parts are the smallest items known to exist, such as leptons and quarks. These fundamental particles cannot be 'seen' and are not directly experienced. They may, however, be experienced indirectly through emergent properties. Thus all objects we directly experience have parts. A number of philosophers have argued that objects that have parts do not exist. The basis of their argument consists in claiming that our senses give us only foggy information about reality and thus they cannot be trusted. For example, we fail to see the smallest building blocks that make up anything. These smallest building blocks are individual and separate items that do not ever unify or come together into being non-individual. Thus, they never compose anything. According to the concept of mereological nihilism, if the building blocks of reality never compose any wholes, then no composite objects exist. This seems to devolve into an error theory. If there are no composite objects, how can we make sense of our ordinary understanding of reality (THIS understanding is based on OUR IMAGE, IMAGINARY or MANIFEST IMAGE – Searle and Dennett – intersubjectivity or competence, know-how Intersubjectivity, instead of a SCIENTIFIC IMAGE of reality of KNOWING that, plus insights and understanding or COMPREHENSION Intersubjectivity) which accepts the existence of composite objects? Are we all deceived? (YES because of our institutionalized intersubjectivity) Ted Sider (2013) has argued that we should think of composition as arrangement.[2] According to Sider, when we say "there is a table", we mean there are mereological simples arranged table-wise. 2 Discussion Mereological nihilism entails the denial of what is called classical mereology, which is succinctly defined by philosopher Achille Varzi:[3] Mereology (from the Greek μερος, ‘part’) is the theory of parthood relations: of the relations of part to whole and the relations of part to part within a whole. Its roots can be traced back to the early days of philosophy, beginning with the Presocratic atomists and continuing throughout the writings of Plato (especially the Parmenides and the Theaetetus), Aristotle (especially the Metaphysics, but also the Physics, the Topics, and De partibus animalium), and Boethius (especially In Ciceronis Topica). As can be seen from Varzi’s passage, classical mereology depends on the idea that there are metaphysical relations that connect part(s) to whole. Mereological nihilists maintain that such relations between part and whole do not exist, since "wholes" themselves only exist at the subatomic level. Nihilists typically claim that our senses give us the (false) impression that there are composite material objects, and then attempt to explain why nonetheless our thought and talk about such objects is 'close enough' to the truth to be innocuous and reasonable in most conversational contexts. Sider's linguistic revision that reformulates the existence of composite objects as merely the existence of arrangements of mereological simples is an example of this.[4] Tallant (2013) has argued against this maneuver. Tallant has argued that mereological nihilism is committed to answering the following question: when is it that a group of mereological simples is arranged in a particular way?[5] What relations must maintain among a group of mereological simples such that they are arranged table-wise? It seems the nihilist can determine when a group of objects compose another object: for them, never. But the nihilist, if he is committed to Sider's view, is committed to answering how mereological simples can be arranged in particular ways. No compelling answer has been provided in the literature. Mereological nihilism seems to pose the same amount of questions as it purports to answer. In fact, they are the very same questions re-formed in terms of arrangement. Objections The obvious objection that can be raised against nihilism is that it seems to posit far fewer objects than we typically think exist. The nihilist's ontology has been criticized for being too sparse as it only includes mereological simples and denies the existence of composite objects that we intuitively take to exist, like tables, planets, and animals. Another challenge that nihilists face arises when composition is examined in the context of contemporary physics. According to findings in quantum physics, there are multiple kinds of decomposition in different physical contexts. For example, there is no single decomposition of light; light can be said to be either composed of particles or waves depending on the context.[6] This empirical perspective poses a problem for nihilism because it does not look like material objects neatly decompose in the way nihilists imagine they do. In addition, some philosophers have speculated that there may not be a "bottom level" of reality. Atoms used to be understood as the most fundamental material objects, but were later discovered to be composed of subatomic particles and quarks. Perhaps what we take to be the most fundamental entities of current physics can actually be decomposed, and their parts can be further decomposed, on down the line. If matter is infinitely decomposable in this respect, then there are no mereological simples. This is a problem for nihilism because it then follows from their view that nothing exists, since they assert that only mereological simples exist.[7] Partial vs. pure nihilism Philosophers in favor of something close to pure mereological nihilism are Peter Unger, Cian Dorr, and Ross Cameron. There are a few philosophers who argue for what could be considered a partial nihilism, or what has been called quasi-nihilism, which is the position that only objects of a certain kind have parts. One such position is organicism: the view that living beings exist, but there are no other objects with parts, and all other objects that we believe to be composite—chairs, planets, etc.—therefore do not exist. Rather, other than living beings, which are composites (objects that have parts), there are only true atoms, or basic building blocks (which they call simples). The organicists include Trenton Merricks and Peter van Inwagen. Van Inwagen's View Peter Van Inwagen maintains that all material objects are mereological simples with the exception of biological life such that the only composite objects are living things. Van Inwagen’s view can be formulated like this: “Necessarily, for any non-overlapping xs, there is an object composed of the xs iff either (i) the activities of the xs contstitute a life or (ii) there is only one of the xs.” In other words, Van Inwagen contends that mereological atoms form a composite object when they engage in a sort special, complex activity which amounts to a life. [8] One reason why Van Inwagen’s solution to the Special Composition Question is so attractive is that it allows us to account a conscious subject as a composite object. Nihilists have to maintain that the subject of a single consciousness is somehow the product of many discrete mereological atoms. Van Inwagen’s argument against nihilism can be characterized as such: 1. I exist 2. I am not a mereological simple 3. At least one object exists that is not a mereological simple 4. So, nihilism is false [9] In addition to allowing for the existence of trees, cats, and human beings, Van Inwagen’s view is attractive because it inherits nihilism’s elegant solutions to traditional problems in mereology like the Ship of Theseus and the problem of the many. One objection that can be offered against Van Inwagen’s view is the vagueness of the category of life and the ambiguity of when something gets “caught up” in a life. For example, if a cat takes a breath and inhales a carbon atom, it is unclear at what point that atom becomes officially incorporated into the cat’s body.[10] Even though there are no tables or chairs, van Inwagen thinks that it is still permissible to assert sentences such as 'there are tables'. This is because such a sentence can be paraphrased as 'there are simples arranged tablewise'; it is appropriate to assert it when there are simples arranged a certain way. It is a common mistake to hold that van Inwagen's view is that tables are identical to simples arranged tablewise. This is not his view: van Inwagen would reject the claim that tables are identical to simples arranged tablewise because he rejects the claim that composition is identity. Nonetheless, he maintains that an ordinary speaker who asserts, for instance, "There are four chairs in that room" will speak truly if there are, indeed, simples in the room arranged in the appropriate way (so as to make up, in the ordinary view, four chairs). He claims that the statement and its paraphrase "describe the same fact". Van Inwagen suggests an analogy with the motion of the sun: an ordinary speaker who asserts that "the sun has moved behind the elms" will still speak truly, even though we accept the Copernican claim that this is not, strictly speaking, literally true. (For details, see his book "Material Beings".) See also Acosmism Buddhist atomism Elementary particles Madhyamika Mereological essentialism Metaphysical nihilism Nihilism Peter van Inwagen Presentism Reductionism Simples Trenton Merricks 2.1 Objections 2.2 Partial vs. pure nihilism 2.2.1 Van Inwagen's View 3 See also 4 Notes 5 External links 43