With over 60,000 copies in print since its original publication in 1984, Ethics has served numerous generations of students as a classic introduction to philosophical ethics from a Christian perspective. Over the years the philosophical landscape has changed somewhat, and in this new edition Arthur Holmes adjusts the argument and information throughout, completely rewriting the earlier chapter on virtue ethics and adding a new chapter on the moral agent. The book addresses the questions: What is good? What is right? (...) How can we know? In doing so it also surveys a variety of approaches to ethics, including cultural relativism, emotivism, ethical egoism and utilitarianism--all with an acknowledgment of the new postmodern environment. (shrink)

Whitehead’s rejection of a coercive divine lawgiver is well known, but the underlying ethic which led him in that direction needs to be examined. Arguing that he is an ethical naturalist with an aesthetic theory of value, and an act utilitarian, I find that this gives priority to eros over agape, limits moral responsibility, and obscures the depth of moral evil.

Philosophical discussions of akrasia over the last fifteen years have focused on certain skeptical arguments which purport to question the possibility of a kind of akratic action which, following Pears, I call 'last ditch akrasia' (Pears [38]). An agent, succumbing to last ditch akrasia, freely, knowingly, and intentionally performs an action A against his better judgment that an incompatible action B is the better thing to do. (See Audi [1] for a detailed analysis.) Last ditch akrasia is not the only (...) kind that has been discussed. Some philosophers (Mele [32], Scaltas [48]) have been concerned with a more extreme form of akratic action, viz. one in which the agent not only judges that action B is best, but in addition intends (chooses, decides) to B. Some have even questioned whether freely acting against one's better judgment is sufficient for akratic action (Schiffer [49]: 201-3).1 Weaker types of akratic action have been discussed, though to a much lesser extent, since they are thought less problematic. Pears distinguishes last ditch akrasia from what he calls, "motivated irrational action" ([38]: 160). In cases of the latter, the akrates' rebellious desire infects his prior reasoning and thinking in such a way that his contemplated action seems to him warranted, and he acts accordingly. (For a taxonomy of cases of akratic action, see Rorty ([44])). Nor has the discussion of akrasia been restricted to akratic action. Philosophers have discussed whether akrasia can be exhibited in the formation of intentions, wants (See Audi [1]: 181-185), and beliefs (Mele [32]: ch. 8; Heil [19]). The primary focus in this paper is on last ditch akratic action. (shrink)

Human skin is the one authentic criterion of the universe which philosophers recognize when they appraise knowledge under their professional rubric, epistemology. By and large—except for a few of the great Critics and Sceptics—they view knowledge as a capacity, attribute, possession, or other mysterious inner quality of a “knower”; they view this knower as residing in or at a “body”; they view the body as cut off from the rest of the universe by a “skin”; all of which holds for (...) philosophizing physicists and physiologists even as for the professionals of the arcanum itself. If this assertion seems crude, one may recall that there are times when a bit of crudity is a fair physic for an inflamed subtlety. In the case before us the factual crudity lies in the use of “skin” for a criterion, not in our calling attention to the fact. The “skin” that is so used is, indeed, that of ancient anatomical schematism, unaffected by the transformation of understanding which modern physiological research has brought about. Yet if philosophers cease thus crudely to employ it, all their issues of epistemology will vanish, and the very type of attack they make on cognition will be discredited; whereupon the task of determining the status of knowledge itself will pass from their hands to those of the scientists who have taken over so many regions of philosophical arrogation in the past. This is what I propose here to show. (shrink)

Certain examples involving negatively relevant evidence are trouble for reliabilists, since they show that reliability is not sufficient for justification. Two approaches for dealing with these examples within the reliabilist framework have been taken. Neither approach, however, can account for all cases involving nre. This I will argue. I will explain the two approaches briefly, then describe a counter example which calls for a difference approach. To handle the case I describe, one needs torequire that the agent's belief be ‘internally (...) acceptable’ as well as reliable.Many examples show that reliability is insufficient. Consider a modification of an example by Goldman, which he used to make a different point. Driving through the country, Andy looks to the right, sees a barn, and comes to believe that the object he sees is a barn. His belief, however, is not justified because he possesses nre, viz., his false, but justified, belief that the majority of bam-like objects in the area are barn facsimiles which, under the present visual circumstances, are almost indistinguishable from real barns. (shrink)

One is tempted to look upon the positive and the logical somewhat as one looks upon the quick and the dead. Yet the issue is hardly that sharp. Viability has strange possibilities and varied forms, and must often be appraised with an eye directed as much towards the environment as towards the claimant organism. Stretching the application of the word ‘viable’ to complexes of behavior such as the philosophies and theories of knowledge, we may ask: Is the combination of the (...) positive and the logical in logical positivism viable? And is this logical positivism itself as it stands either positive or logical? (shrink)

Most discussions of Dewey's Logic evade what I take to be its main characteristic. This is its crass display of our intellectual activity as a going process—as living inquiry—literally, biologically, as life. It is the blunt, forthright treatment of even our most formal logical procedures as events occurring within that new world of knowledge that Darwin opened up and that Peirce sketched in his fallibilism, his pragmaticism, and his late-life efforts to attain a functional logic. Lacking are the trailing clouds (...) of logical and philosophical glory; present is only the bare body of inquiry. (shrink)

Among the subject matters which logicians like at times to investigate are the forms of postulation that other branches of inquiry employ. Rarely, however, do they examine the postulates under which they themselves proceed. It long contented them to offer something they called a “definition” for logic, and let it go at that. They might announce that logic dealt with the “laws of thought,” or with “judgment,” or that it was “the general science of order“; More recently they are apt (...) to connect it in one or another obscure way with linguistic ordering. (shrink)

When the layman reads a book or two of popularized physics and then moves solemnly forth, as occasionally happens, to expound some comprehensive doctrine purporting to be built directly out of the materials he has picked up, the type of comment which the physicist will make is plain enough in advance. But why does it so rarely occur to the physicist that others may think of his epistemologizing much what he is sure to think of their quantizing?