Foundations for Moral Relativism

Foundations for Moral Relativism

J. David Velleman

Language: English

Pages: 120

ISBN: 1909254444

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


In 'Foundations for Moral Relativism' a distinguished moral philosopher tames a bugbear of current debate about cultural difference. J. David Velleman shows that different communities can indeed be subject to incompatible moralities, because their local mores are rationally binding. At the same time, he explains why the mores of different communities, even when incompatible, are still variations on the same moral themes. The book thus maps out a universe of many moral worlds without, as Velleman puts it, "moral black holes". The five self-standing chapters discuss such diverse topics as online avatars and virtual worlds, lying in Russian and truth-telling in Quechua, the pleasure of solitude and the fear of absurdity. Accessibly written, 'Foundations for Moral Relativism' presupposes no prior training in philosophy.

When Bad Things Happen to Other People

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gravitational force, which determines the direction in which rocks tend to fall. 52 Foundations for Moral Relativism What if reasons were like rocks? In that case, a consideration would have the weight of a reason only where there was a force that established a direction in which reasons militate. The force by which reasons militate in some direction is normativity. To the direction in which they militate, let us give the name ‘to be adopted’, since we can speak of both actions and attitudes.

The dissenter may say, “That’s the sort of person others admire, but I don’t admire people like that.” We can then ask what sort of people he does admire, what makes them desirable to him as role models or mentors, what he finds remarkable or estimable in them, and so on. If he points to things that we don’t ordinarily desire in role models and mentors, or note and esteem in others, we can ask what he hopes to learn from such people or regrets lacking in comparison to them. And unless those.

The boundaries of any particular community. The idea is rather that having a morality belongs to the human form of life. It is in our constitution to form ourselves into communities with shared values and norms expressive of particular aspects of our humanity. So much is peculiar to human nature yet easy to take seriously simply because we are human. Given that peculiarity of human nature, progress in morality is possible, and so is moral seriousness in the form of aspiring to progress. I.

38 Wierzbicka, Anna, 28, 37 Williams, Bernard, 61 Williams, Drid, 28 Winnicott, Donald, 81 Wooldridge, Michael J., 16 Yousef, Nancy, x This book does not end here… At Open Book Publishers, we are changing the nature of the traditional academic book. The title you have just read will not be left on a library shelf, but will be accessed online by hundreds of readers each month across the globe. We make all our books free to read online so that students, researchers and members of the public who.

Sufficiently sophisticated, it can generate behavior similar enough to that of a player-controlled character that other players may be unable to tell the difference. In Second Life, NPCs perform tasks of user support, for example, by answering routine questions from newcomers to the world. NPCs are examples of what might be called synthetic agency. 16 Foundations for Moral Relativism There is a literature on synthetic agents, divided into two segments. One segment discusses software programs.

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