English philosopher
Sophie Grace Chappell (born November 1964) is an English philosopher, academic, and poet. Since 2006, she has been a professor of philosophy at the Open University. [1] [2]
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Sophie Grace Chappell (born November 1964) is an English philosopher, academic, and poet. Since 2006, she has been a professor of philosophy at the Open University. [1] [2]
Chappell was born in November 1964. [3] She studied Literae humaniores at Magdalen College, Oxford, having been awarded the Anne Shaw Classical Scholarship. She achieved a first in Honour Moderations in March 1986 and an upper second in the Final Honour School in June 1988, thereby graduating with a Bachelor of Arts (BA) degree. [2] She then moved to the University of Edinburgh to undertake research for a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) degree under the supervision of James Mackey and Dory Scaltsas. [2] She completed her PhD in 1992 with a thesis titled "Aristotle and Augustine on voluntary action and freedom and weakness of the will". [4]
In 1991, Chappell returned to the University of Oxford and was a junior research fellow at Wolfson College, Oxford (1991–1994) and a lecturer in philosophy at Merton College, Oxford (1992–1994). [2] She was then a lecturer at the University of East Anglia from 1994 to 1996 and at the University of Manchester 1996 to 1998. [2] [5] In 1998, she moved to the University of Dundee: she was promoted to senior lecturer in 2002 and to reader in philosophy in 2005. [2] In May 2006, she joined the Open University as professor of philosophy and director of the Open University Ethics Centre. [2] [5]
Sophie Grace Chappell writes against the systematic ambitions of contemporary moral philosophy to be able to define "the whole and exclusive truth about the justification, explanation, evaluation, and prescription of moral beliefs, and to contain the materials for displacing or refuting most or all other systematic moral theories." Her work aligns with that of Bernard Williams, as well as Alasdair MacIntyre and Ludwig Wittgenstein. [6]
She offers a new definition of the human personhood, inspired by gender role theory. She criticizes the traditional definition of "man" and "woman" based on antenatal biological traits, arguing that the sexual forms of human individuals can be used to identify human animals, but not human personhood. [7] This point of view draws upon the Aristotelian definition of the human being as a political animal, as well as the Christian notion of natural moral law, [8] at least for those aspects which might be differentiated from a gendered perspective.
Chappell introduces a distinction between passive and immediate moral perceptions vs active and step-by-step moral inferences, stating human actions are mainly performed on the basis of ethical intuitions which do not have a logical justification or did not have such a justification at the time they were enacted. Like sense perceptions, moral perceptions can be very vivid, or subjectively perceived as being certain, whilst moral inferences can be independent of their respective phenomenology or vividness. [9] Some judgments might be considered to be moral perceptions because they appear to be "obviously true", self-evident and more certain than any rational argument with pros or cons. An example could be the following statement: "at least in nearly all conceivable cases, it is seriously wrong to torture, steal, rape and murder." [10] In such cases, rational arguments can appear to be unnecessary.
In a 2005 paper on the Theaetetus , Chappell discusses the definition of episteme in five Platonic dialogues, arguing that Plato's work has positively identified human knowledge with judgement (in Greek: doxa ) supported by a rational argument for justification ( logos ). [11] As suggested above, moral perceptions may not always need a rational argument to be justified.
Chappell is transgender, and transitioned from male to female in 2014. [5] She married in 1988, and has four children. [1]
In ethical philosophy, ethical egoism is the normative position that moral agents ought to act in their own self-interest. It differs from psychological egoism, which claims that people can only act in their self-interest. Ethical egoism also differs from rational egoism, which holds that it is rational to act in one's self-interest. Ethical egoism holds, therefore, that actions whose consequences will benefit the doer are ethical.
Ethics is the philosophical study of moral phenomena. Also called moral philosophy, it investigates normative questions about what people ought to do or which behavior is morally right. Its main branches include normative ethics, applied ethics, and metaethics.
Speciesism is a term used in philosophy regarding the treatment of individuals of different species. The term has several different definitions. Some specifically define speciesism as discrimination or unjustified treatment based on an individual's species membership, while others define it as differential treatment without regard to whether the treatment is justified or not. Richard D. Ryder, who coined the term, defined it as "a prejudice or attitude of bias in favour of the interests of members of one's own species and against those of members of other species". Speciesism results in the belief that humans have the right to use non-human animals in exploitative ways which is pervasive in the modern society. Studies from 2015 and 2019 suggest that people who support animal exploitation also tend to have intersectional bias that encapsulates and endorses racist, sexist, and other prejudicial views, which furthers the beliefs in human supremacy and group dominance to justify systems of inequality and oppression.
Reason is the capacity of consciously applying logic by drawing valid conclusions from new or existing information, with the aim of seeking the truth. It is associated with such characteristically human activities as philosophy, religion, science, language, mathematics, and art, and is normally considered to be a distinguishing ability possessed by humans. Reason is sometimes referred to as rationality.
The Theaetetus is a philosophical work written by Plato in the early-middle 4th century BCE that investigates the nature of knowledge, and is considered one of the founding works of epistemology. Like many of Plato's works, the Theaetetus is written in the form of a dialogue, in this case between Socrates and the young mathematician Theaetetus and his teacher Theodorus of Cyrene. In the dialogue, Socrates and Theaetetus attempt to come up with a definition of episteme, or knowledge, and discuss three definitions of knowledge: knowledge as nothing but perception, knowledge as true judgment, and, finally, knowledge as a true judgment with an account. Each of these definitions is shown to be unsatisfactory as the dialogue ends in aporia as Socrates leaves to face a hearing for his trial for impiety.
Ancient Greek philosophy arose in the 6th century BC. Philosophy was used to make sense of the world using reason. It dealt with a wide variety of subjects, including astronomy, epistemology, mathematics, political philosophy, ethics, metaphysics, ontology, logic, biology, rhetoric and aesthetics. Greek philosophy continued throughout the Hellenistic period and later evolved into Roman philosophy.
Eudaimonia, sometimes anglicized as Eudaemonia, Eudemonia or Eudimonia, is a Greek word literally translating to the state or condition of good spirit, and which is commonly translated as happiness or welfare.
John Henry McDowell is a South African philosopher, formerly a fellow of University College, Oxford, and now university professor at the University of Pittsburgh. Although he has written on metaphysics, epistemology, ancient philosophy, nature, and meta-ethics, McDowell's most influential work has been in the philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. McDowell was one of three recipients of the 2010 Andrew W. Mellon Foundation's Distinguished Achievement Award, and is a Fellow of both the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and the British Academy.
A person is a being who has certain capacities or attributes such as reason, morality, consciousness or self-consciousness, and being a part of a culturally established form of social relations such as kinship, ownership of property, or legal responsibility. The defining features of personhood and, consequently, what makes a person count as a person, differ widely among cultures and contexts.
Virtue ethics is a philosophical approach that treats virtue and character as the primary subjects of ethics, in contrast to other ethical systems that put consequences of voluntary acts, principles or rules of conduct, or obedience to divine authority in the primary role.
Aristotelianism is a philosophical tradition inspired by the work of Aristotle, usually characterized by deductive logic and an analytic inductive method in the study of natural philosophy and metaphysics. It covers the treatment of the social sciences under a system of natural law. It answers why-questions by a scheme of four causes, including purpose or teleology, and emphasizes virtue ethics. Aristotle and his school wrote tractates on physics, biology, metaphysics, logic, ethics, aesthetics, poetry, theatre, music, rhetoric, psychology, linguistics, economics, politics, and government. Any school of thought that takes one of Aristotle's distinctive positions as its starting point can be considered "Aristotelian" in the widest sense. This means that different Aristotelian theories may not have much in common as far as their actual content is concerned besides their shared reference to Aristotle.
Sir Bernard Arthur Owen Williams, FBA was an English moral philosopher. His publications include Problems of the Self (1973), Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (1985), Shame and Necessity (1993), and Truth and Truthfulness (2002). He was knighted in 1999.
Alasdair Chalmers MacIntyre is a Scottish-American philosopher who has contributed to moral and political philosophy as well as history of philosophy and theology. MacIntyre's After Virtue (1981) is one of the most important works of Anglophone moral and political philosophy in the 20th century. He is senior research fellow at the Centre for Contemporary Aristotelian Studies in Ethics and Politics (CASEP) at London Metropolitan University, emeritus Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and permanent senior distinguished research fellow at the Notre Dame Center for Ethics and Culture. During his lengthy academic career, he also taught at Brandeis University, Duke University, Vanderbilt University, and Boston University.
Sophrosyne is an ancient Greek concept of an ideal of excellence of character and soundness of mind, which when combined in one well-balanced individual leads to other qualities, such as temperance, moderation, prudence, purity, decorum, and self-control. An adjectival form is "sophron".
Virtue epistemology is a current philosophical approach to epistemology that stresses the importance of intellectual and specifically epistemic virtues. Virtue epistemology evaluates knowledge according to the properties of the persons who hold beliefs in addition to or instead of the properties of the propositions and beliefs. Some advocates of virtue epistemology also adhere to theories of virtue ethics, while others see only loose analogy between virtue in ethics and virtue in epistemology.
Aristotle first used the term ethics to name a field of study developed by his predecessors Socrates and Plato which is devoted to the attempt to provide a rational response to the question of how humans should best live. Aristotle regarded ethics and politics as two related but separate fields of study, since ethics examines the good of the individual, while politics examines the good of the city-state, which he considered to be the best type of community.
Robert N. Audi is an American philosopher whose major work has focused on epistemology, ethics, rationality and the theory of action. He is O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, and previously held a chair in the business school there. His 2005 book, The Good in the Right, updates and strengthens Rossian intuitionism and develops the epistemology of ethics. He has also written important works of political philosophy, particularly on the relationship between church and state. He is a past president of the American Philosophical Association and the Society of Christian Philosophers.
David Neil Sedley FBA is a British philosopher and historian of philosophy. He was the seventh Laurence Professor of Ancient Philosophy at Cambridge University.
Common sense is "knowledge, judgement, and taste which is more or less universal and which is held more or less without reflection or argument". As such, it is often considered to represent the basic level of sound practical judgement or knowledge of basic facts that any adult human being ought to possess. It is "common" in the sense of being shared by nearly all people. The everyday understanding of common sense is ultimately derived from historical philosophical discussions. Relevant terms from other languages used in such discussions include Latin sensus communis, Ancient Greek κοινὴ αἴσθησις, and French bon sens. However, these are not straightforward translations in all contexts, and in English different shades of meaning have developed. In philosophical and scientific contexts, since the Age of Enlightenment the term "common sense" has been used for rhetorical effect both approvingly and disapprovingly. On the one hand it has been a standard for good taste, good sense, and source of scientific and logical axioms. On the other hand it has been equated to conventional wisdom, vulgar prejudice, and superstition.
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