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Author | David B. Wong |
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Language | English |
Subject | moral relativism |
Published | 2006 |
Publisher | Oxford University Press |
Media type | |
Pages | 312 |
ISBN | 9780195305395 |
Natural Moralities: A Defense of Pluralistic Relativism is a 2006 book by David B. Wong that defends a version of moral relativism. [1]
The book was reviewed by Christopher W. Gowans (Fordham University) and Diego E. Machuca (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas). [2] [3] [4]
In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is a position which encompasses many varieties such as metaphysical, mathematical, semantic, scientific, moral and epistemic. The term was first articulated by British philosopher Michael Dummett in an argument against a form of realism Dummett saw as 'colorless reductionism'.
Ethics or moral philosophy is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. It investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. It is usually divided into three major fields: normative ethics, applied ethics, and metaethics.
Morality is the differentiation of intentions, decisions and actions between those that are distinguished as proper (right) and those that are improper (wrong). 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. Morality may also be specifically synonymous with "goodness", "appropriateness" or "rightness".
Moral relativism or ethical relativism is used to describe several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different peoples and cultures. An advocate of such ideas is often referred to as a relativist.
Moral absolutism is an ethical view that some actions are intrinsically right or wrong, regardless of context or consequence.
Cultural relativism is the position that there is no universal standard to measure cultures by, and that all cultural values and beliefs must be understood relative to their cultural context, and not judged based on outside norms and values. Proponents of cultural relativism also tend to argue that the norms and values of one culture should not be evaluated using the norms and values of another.
Moral realism is the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world, some of which may be true to the extent that they report those features accurately. This makes moral realism a non-nihilist form of ethical cognitivism with an ontological orientation, standing in opposition to all forms of moral anti-realism and moral skepticism, including ethical subjectivism, error theory, and non-cognitivism. Moral realism's two main subdivisions are ethical naturalism and ethical non-naturalism.
Moral universalism is the meta-ethical position that some system of ethics, or a universal ethic, applies universally, that is, for "all similarly situated individuals", regardless of culture, race, sex, religion, nationality, sexual orientation, gender identity, or any other distinguishing feature. Moral universalism is opposed to moral nihilism and moral relativism. However, not all forms of moral universalism are absolutist, nor are they necessarily value monist; many forms of universalism, such as utilitarianism, are non-absolutist, and some forms, such as that of Isaiah Berlin, may be value pluralist.
Owen Flanagan is the James B. Duke University Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Professor of Neurobiology Emeritus at Duke University. Flanagan has done work in philosophy of mind, philosophy of psychology, philosophy of social science, ethics, contemporary ethical theory, moral psychology, as well as on cross-cultural philosophy.
Moral nihilism is the meta-ethical view that nothing is morally right or morally wrong and that morality doesn't exist.
Gilbert Harman was an American philosopher, who taught at Princeton University from 1963 until his retirement in 2017. He published widely in philosophy of language, cognitive science, philosophy of mind, ethics, moral psychology, epistemology, statistical learning theory, and metaphysics. He and George Miller co-directed the Princeton University Cognitive Science Laboratory. Harman taught or co-taught courses in Electrical Engineering, Computer Science, Psychology, Philosophy, and Linguistics.
The Elements of Moral Philosophy is a 1986 ethics textbook by the philosophers James Rachels and Stuart Rachels. It explains a number of moral theories and topics, including cultural relativism, subjectivism, divine command theory, ethical egoism, social contract theory, utilitarianism, Kantian ethics, and deontology. The book uses real-life examples in explaining the theories.
Natural morality refers to morality that is based on human nature, rather than acquired from societal norms or religious teachings. Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is central to many modern conceptions of natural morality, but the concept goes back at least to naturalism.
David Wong is an American philosopher. He is the Susan Fox Beischer and George D. Beischer Professor of Philosophy at Duke University. Wong has done work in ethics, moral psychology, comparative ethics, and Chinese philosophy. He is known for his defense of a version of moral relativism.
Professor David Simon Oderberg is an Australian philosopher of metaphysics and ethics based in Britain since 1987. He is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading. He describes himself as a non-consequentialist or a traditionalist in his works. Broadly speaking, Oderberg places himself in opposition to Peter Singer and other utilitarian or consequentialist thinkers. He has published over thirty academic papers and has authored six books: The Metaphysics of Good and Evil, Opting Out: Conscience and Cooperation in a Pluralistic Society, Real Essentialism, Applied Ethics, Moral Theory, and The Metaphysics of Identity over Time. Professor Oderberg is an alumnus of the Universities of Melbourne, where he completed his first degrees, and Oxford where he gained his D.Phil.
Brian Leiter is an American philosopher and legal scholar who is Karl N. Llewellyn Professor of Jurisprudence at the University of Chicago Law School and founder and Director of Chicago's Center for Law, Philosophy & Human Values. A review in Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews described Leiter as "one of the most influential legal philosophers of our time", while a review in The Journal of Nietzsche Studies described Leiter's book Nietzsche on Morality (2002) as "arguably the most important book on Nietzsche's philosophy in the past twenty years."
Targeted Killings: Law and Morality in an Asymmetrical World is a non-fiction compilation book about targeted killing edited by Claire Finkelstein, Jens David Ohlin, and Andrew Altman. It was published by Oxford University Press in 2012. The book grew out of contributions by the authors to a conference in April 2011 at the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Targeted Killings features eighteen essays in five sections arranged by topic. The work argues that after the 11 September attacks by Al-Qaeda in 2001, the United States and other countries began to see the tactic of targeted killing differently. The practice of targeted killing had previously been accepted in situations of self-defence in military settings; after 11 September 2001 it was used to kill non-combatants and those not directly involved in a particular armed force.
David Enoch is an ethicist and philosopher of law with research interests in moral, political and legal philosophy within the analytic tradition. He is the co-director of the Center for Moral and Political Philosophy and has been the Rodney Blackman Chair in the Philosophy of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem since 2005. He received his Bachelor of Arts in philosophy and Bachelor of Laws degrees from Tel Aviv University in 1993. He then completed his PhD in philosophy at New York University in 2003.
Hugh LaFollette is an American philosopher who holds the Marie E. and Leslie Cole Emeritus Chair in Ethics at the University of South Florida. He primarily works on moral philosophy.
Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity is a 1996 book by Gilbert Harman and Judith Jarvis Thomson, in which Harman tries to provide a defense of moral relativism and Thomson tries to refute it.