-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Clotilde Torregrossa, Contributed by: Corbin CovingtonPublisher's Note: Leading scholars explore how different forms of ignorance are produced and sustained, and the role they play in knowledge practices.Comment: This is a stub entry. Please add your comments below to help us expand it
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Nick NovelliIntroduction: It is a common view of virtue ethics that it emphasizes the evaluation of agents and downplays or ignores the evaluation of acts, especially their evaluation as right or wrong. Despite this view, some contemporary proponents of virtue ethics have explicitly offered a virtue ethical criterion of the right, contrasting that criterion with Kantian and consequentialist criteria. I too believe that though the virtues themselves require excellence in affective and motivational states, they can also provide the basis of accounts of rightness of actions, where the criteria for rightness can deploy notions of success extending beyond such agent-centered excellences. They can do this, I shall claim, through the notion of the target or aim of a virtue. This notion can provide a distinctively virtue ethical notion of rightness of actions. In this article I make two basic assumptions: first, that a virtue ethical search for a virtue ethical criterion of rightness is an appropriate search, and second, since virtue ethics in modern guise is still in its infancy, relatively speaking, more work needs to be done in the exploration of virtue ethical criteria of the right.Comment: This paper attempts to develop virtue ethics by outlining a way that a clear concept of right action can form a part of it, as well as describing and addressing some of the gaps in modern virtue ethics. It would be useful as part of an in-depth examination of virtue ethics, either in a course on normative ethics or perhaps as a look at how the virtue ethics of the ancients could be adapted to be relevant for modern society. Though it requires some background knowledge of virtue ethics, in a context where that has been provided it would be suitable for undergraduate students.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Nick NovelliIntroduction: Part I of this article discusses the nature of virtue ethics as a type of normative ethical theory, alongside primarily consequentialism and Kantianism. However, since the virtue concepts are central to all types of virtue ethics, attention needs to be paid to the notion of virtue as an excellence of character, and related notions such as the virtue concepts as aplied to actions (e.g., kind act). Part II discusses the notion of virtue as an excellence of character, while part III further elucidates the nature of virtue ethics by considering a number of central but selected issues, such as the notion of virtuous action and virtue ethical conceptions of right action. Needless to say not all of interest can be treated here.Comment: A good, detailed overview of virtue ethics, including a good examination of the degree of diversity virtue ethical views can have. It would serve as a good first introduction to the topic, either in an undergraduate course on moral theory generally or virtue ethics specifically.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Nick NovelliPublisher's Note: This book offers a comprehensive virtue ethics that breaks from the tradition of eudaimonistic virtue ethics. In developing a pluralistic view, it shows how different 'modes of moral response' such as love, respect, appreciation, and creativity are all central to the virtuous response and thereby to ethics. It offers virtue ethical accounts of the good life, objectivity, rightness, demandingness, and moral epistemology.Comment: This book offers an interesting, distinctive form of virtue ethics. It would be valuable as a different perspective and an illustration of the different directions one can take virtue theory. Due to its complexity, it is best taught to graduate students or upper-level/honours undergraduates, who have already received a grounding in the fundamentals of virtue ethics.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Viviane FairbankAbstract:
Janina Hosiasson-Lindenbaum is a known figure in philosophy of probability of the 1930s. A previously unpublished manuscript fills in the blanks in the full picture of her work on inductive reasoning by analogy, until now only accessible through a single publication. In this paper, I present Hosiasson’s work on analogical reasoning, bringing together her early publications that were never translated from Polish, and the recently discovered unpublished work. I then show how her late work relates to Rudolf Carnap’s approach to “analogy by similarity” developed in the 1960s. Hosiasson turns out to be a predecessor of the line of research that models analogical influence as inductive relevance. A translation of Hosiasson’s manuscript concludes the paper.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Viviane FairbankAbstract:
According to a popular interpretation, Carnap’s interpretation of probability had evolved from a logical towards a subjective conception. However Carnap himself insisted that his basic philosophical view of probability was always the same. I address this apparent clash between Carnap's self-identification and the subsequent interpretations of his work. Following its original intentions, I reconstruct inductive logic as an explication. The emerging picture is of a versatile linguistic framework, whose main function is not the discovery of objective logical relations in the object language, but the stipulation of conceptual possibilities. Within this representation, I map out the changes that the project went through. Seen from such an explication-based perspective, inductive logic becomes quite hard to categorize using the standard labels.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Sonja Dobroski and Quentin PharrAbstract:
Lecture as part of the Social Justice Institute Noted Scholars Lecture Series, co-presented by the Ecologies of Social Difference Research Network at the University of British Columbia.Comment: available in this Blueprint
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Simon Fokt, Contributed by: Wilson LeeAbstract:
Abstract: This article challenges the conventional view that Confucianism has no place for the value of equality by shifting the focus from direct justification of equality (Why equality?) to concerns about actual social and political problems (Which inequalities are objectionable?). From this perspective, early Confucian texts endorse some inequalities, in particular those based on virtue, while objecting to others, especially socioeconomic inequalities. Confucians do not consider equality or inequality as inherently valuable, but evaluate them in relation to issues of good government.
Comment: Coming from a Confucian perspective, the paper examines the relation between equality and democracy with implications for both reconstructing Confucian political philosophy for today and democratic theory as such. This is an important point of dialogue for Anglophone political philosophers to have a more objective picture of Confucian political philosophy instead of the usual imperialist caricatures. The point of dialogue is also being explored by a Singaporean scholar in Singapore (despite having been once a crown colony its scholarship is unfortunately very much ignored in the Anglophone world), whose work and life lies at the intersection of Chinese and Anglo-European intellectual traditions.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Rie IzukaAbstract: In this paper I offer an original account of intellectual modesty and some of its surrounding vices: intellectual haughtiness, arrogance, servility and self-abasement. I argue that these vices are attitudes as social psychologists understand the notion. I also draw some of the educational implications of the account. In particular, I urge caution about the efficacy of direct instruction about virtue and of stimulating emulation through exposure to positive exemplars.Comment: This article examines the intellectual vice of arrogance, and also touches upon the issue of how to teach virtues. The author is urging caution about the efficacy of exemplarism: a popular view on the education for virtues, and instead offers an alternative method of teaching virtues: self-affirmation.
-
Expand entry
-
Added by: Rie IzukaAbstract: In this paper I provide an account of two forms of intellectual arrogance which cause the epistemic practices of conversational turn-taking and assertion to malfunction. I detail some of the ethical and epistemic harms generated by intellectual arrogance, and explain its role in fostering the intellectual vices of timidity and servility in other agents. Finally, I show that arrogance produces ignorance by silencing others (both preventing them from speaking and causing their assertions to misfire) and by fostering self-delusion in the arrogant themselves.Comment: This article examines intellectual vices of arrogance, and its counterpart: servility. The author explains how the former vice develops the latter: culpably breaking of the norms of turn-taking of conversation locutionarily silences other conversants, and such disrespectful behavior would lead conversants to fall into a vice of intellectual servility.