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Articles 1 - 22 of 22
Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Integrity And Struggle, Matthew Pianalto
Integrity And Struggle, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
Integrity is sometimes conceived in terms of the wholeness of the individual, such that persons who experience temptations or other sorts of inner conflicts, afflictions, or divisions of self would seem to lack integrity to a greater or lesser degree. I contrast this understanding of integrity—which I label psychological integrity—with a different conception which I call practical integrity. On the latter conception, persons can manifest integrity in spite of the various factors mentioned above, so long as they remain true to their commitments in action and deliberation. Although psychological harmony is one feature reasonably associated with integrity, I suggest that …
Review Of On Courage By Geoffrey Scarre, Matthew Pianalto
Review Of On Courage By Geoffrey Scarre, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
The people and actions we praise as courageous vary. In part, this is because the fears and dangers which people can face and overcome are themselves diverse. However, the multiplicity within courage is also due to the fact that we no longer limit courage to the ‘manliness’ of the warrior or soldier. We recognize that it can be courageous to refuse to fight and that ‘fighting’ can take forms other than physical confrontation and violence. Some of our highest exemplars of courage, such as Martin Luther King, Jr., are warriors of a quite different sort than the Spartans of yore. …
Moral Courage And Facing Others, Matthew Pianalto
Moral Courage And Facing Others, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
Moral courage involves acting in the service of one’s convictions, in spite of the risk of retaliation or punishment. I suggest that moral courage also involves a capacity to face others as moral agents, and thus in a manner that does not objectify them. A moral stand can only be taken toward another moral agent. Often, we find ourselves unable to face others in this way, because to do so is frightening, or because we are consumed by blinding anger. But without facing others as moral subjects, we risk moral cowardice on the one hand and moral fanaticism on the …
Moral Conviction, Matthew Pianalto
Moral Conviction, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
We often praise people who stand by their convictions in the face of adversity and practice what they preach. However, strong moral convictions can also motivate atrocious acts. Two significant questions here are (1) whether conviction itself — taken as a mode of belief — has any distinctive value, or whether all the value of conviction derives from its substantive content, and (2) how conviction can be made responsible in a way that mitigates the risks of falling into dogmatism, fanaticism, and other vices. In response to the first question, I suggest that conviction has instrumental value that derives from …
Speaking For Oneself: Wittgenstein On Ethics, Matthew Pianalto
Speaking For Oneself: Wittgenstein On Ethics, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
In the “Lecture on ethics”, Wittgenstein declares that ethical statements are essentially nonsense. He later told Friedrich Waismann that it is essential to “speak for oneself” on ethical matters. These comments might be taken to suggest that Wittgenstein shared an emotivist view of ethics—that one can only speak for oneself because there is no truth in ethics, only expressions of opinion (or emotions). I argue that this assimilation of Wittgenstein to emotivist thought is deeply misguided, and rests upon a serious misunderstanding of what is implied by the nonsensicality of ethical claims on Wittgenstein's view. I develop a reading of …
Moral Conviction And Disagreement: Getting Beyone Negative Toleration, Matthew Pianalto
Moral Conviction And Disagreement: Getting Beyone Negative Toleration, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
The sort of toleration we need is tolerant engagement, not just putting up with others.
Comparing Lives: Rush Rhees On Human Animals, Matthew Pianalto
Comparing Lives: Rush Rhees On Human Animals, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
In several posthumously published writings about the differences between humans and animals, Rush Rhees criticises the view that human lives are more important than (or superior to) animal lives. Rhees' views may seem to be in sympathy with more recent critiques of “speciesism.” However, the most commonly discussed anti-speciesist moral frameworks – which take the capacity of sentience as the criterion of moral considerability – are inadequate. Rhees' remark that both humans and animals can be loved points towards a different way of accounting for the moral considerability of humans and animals that avoid the problems of the capacity-based approaches. …
In Defense Of Intolerance, Matthew Pianalto
In Defense Of Intolerance, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
Thanks to extremists like Scott Roeder, the anti-abortionist who murdered Dr George Tiller, and James von Brunn, the white supremacist who opened fire in the U.S. Holocaust Museum, as well as the various groups around the world who resort to terror bombings, we are likely to see renewed and continuing discussions about the importance of tolerance. “Can’t we all just get along?” Indeed, intolerance gets a bad rap because the most salient examples of intolerance are these same hate-mongering fanatics. This is unfortunate, for while tolerance is often necessary for us to all get along and better understand each other, …
Moral Realism And Ways Of Life, Matthew Pianalto
Moral Realism And Ways Of Life, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong claims that a person's commitment to a way of life is a relevant factor in deciding what the agent ought to do in a moral dilemma. If that is correct, then extreme universal moral realism, which claims that facts about the agent make no contribution to the truth of what an agent ought to do, is false. In this paper, I attempt to characterize a kind of moral realism that can account for the relevance of ways of life to the resolution of personal moral dilemmas.
Against The Intrinsic Value Of Pleasure, Matthew Pianalto
Against The Intrinsic Value Of Pleasure, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
Hedonism claims that only pleasure has intrinsic value. Many philosophers contest hedonism by arging that other things, in additon to pleasure, have intrinsic value. In this paper, I suggest that one could contest the more basic thesis that pleasure has intrinsic value. DOI 10.1007/s10790-009-9145-0
Happiness, Virtue, And Tyranny, Matthew Pianalto
Happiness, Virtue, And Tyranny, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
Several accessible books detailing the history and the psychology of happiness have landed on bookshelves in the past few years. With limited exceptions, contemporary philosophers have only a small voice in this renewed and well-received discussion of happiness. ‘Positive psychologists’ such as Jonathan Haidt are friendly to ancient Greek philosophical conceptions of happiness, but critical of the later abandonment of happiness by philosophers in the modern period. Other happiness researchers, including Daniel Gilbert and Daniel Nettle, warn that the philosophical tendency to moralize happiness beginning with the Greeks may lead to undue confusion, ambiguity and intellectual bigotry. So how do …
Review Of Ethical Theory By Russ Shafer-Landau, Matthew Pianalto
Review Of Ethical Theory By Russ Shafer-Landau, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
Any anthology on a topic as broad as moral philosophy risks committing sins of omission. In lieu of what Shafer-Landau calls the "point-counterpoint" approach usually taken in ethics readers, in which the audience is presented with positive accounts of particular views and critical responses, Shafer-Landau has chosen, particularly the sections on distinctive moral theories (such as consequentialism and deontological ethics), to focus on various defenses and articulations of the moral theories under consideration. Thus, "Readers will not have criticisms of the theories presented and ready to hand. As a compensation, however, they will have a more nuanced target to aim …
Review Of In Search Of Happiness Understanding An Endangered State Of Mind By John F. Schumaker, Matthew Pianalto
Review Of In Search Of Happiness Understanding An Endangered State Of Mind By John F. Schumaker, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
As Aristotle noted in the Nicomachean Ethics, we all want to live happy lives, but there is vast disagreement about what happiness consists in. Some say that the happy life is a life of pleasure, others that it consists in living virtuously (or morally). Yet others believe it involves the renunciation of earthly things in favor of intellectual and spiritual contemplation, and some declare that happiness is secured through money and honor. Subjectivists will claim that there is no answer to the question, "Which of these conceptions of happiness is the true conception?" because happiness is a purely subjective phenomenon. …
Moral Blindness And Moral Progress, Matthew Pianalto
Moral Blindness And Moral Progress, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
We often speak of a person's being blind to the truth (or the obvious) and being blinded by love (and similarly by hate). The aim of this paper is to make sense of this seemingly metaphorical notion of blindness as it relates to moral judgment, and to show that there is an intelligible sense in which we can be "morally blind." The sexual harassment case depicted in the film 'North Country' provides a vivid illustration of moral blindness. Corrections of this blindness amount to true moral progress, rather than mere shifts in our moral standards.
Moral Conflict And The Indeterminacy Of Morality, Matthew Pianalto
Moral Conflict And The Indeterminacy Of Morality, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
Cases of moral conflict often occupy a central role in arguments against claims that moral judgments admit truth. In this paper, I argue that the employment of moral conflicts against the truth-susceptibility of moral judgments rests upon a false conception of the determinacy of morality.
Review Of Metaethical Subjectivism By Richard Double, Matthew Pianalto
Review Of Metaethical Subjectivism By Richard Double, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
"There are no objective values." Thus begins J.L Mackie's classic Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong (1977), in which metaethical error-theory was originally expounded. Error-theory holds that although moral judgments appear to be about objective matters (e.g. what is really valuable, what we really ought to do), there is no good reason to believe that there are objective values, and so all moral judgments are false because they fail to refer. In Metaethical Subjectivism, Richard Double again makes the case for error-theory by focusing upon the fragmentary character of our moral intuitions and the apparent impossibility of corralling all of these …
Review Of Unprincipled Virtue An Inquiry Into Moral Agency By Nomy Arpaly, Matthew Pianalto
Review Of Unprincipled Virtue An Inquiry Into Moral Agency By Nomy Arpaly, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
No abstract provided.
Review Of Assisted Suicide And The Right To Die The Interface Of Social Science, Public Policy, And Medical Ethics By Barry Rosenfeld, Matthew Pianalto
Review Of Assisted Suicide And The Right To Die The Interface Of Social Science, Public Policy, And Medical Ethics By Barry Rosenfeld, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
Barry Rosenfeld nicely captures the central virtue of his book Assisted Suicide and the Right to Die in the final paragraph: "Although this book began as a summary of what we know and do not know, it has resulted in a litany of opportunities for contributing to this important and still-evolving social and legal policy issue" (175). Rosenfeld's work canvasses the territory of assisted suicide, euthanasia, and other means of "hastened death" by providing both an historical account of these practices as well as a critical overview of some of the most recent studies on end-of-life issues. Through careful examination …
Review Of Understanding People Normativity And Rationalizing Explanation By Alan Millar, Matthew Pianalto
Review Of Understanding People Normativity And Rationalizing Explanation By Alan Millar, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
Suppose I make a promise to meet a friend for lunch on Friday. By promising, I incur an obligation to meet my friend for lunch. One explanation of why I incur this obligation is that the concept of promising (as well as the action of promising) possesses an essentially normative element. If I make a promise to do such and such, then I have a normative reason to do such and such. If I do not intend to perform a particular action, then I ought not promise to do it -- that is, given that I understand what is involved …
Review Of Fatal Freedom The Ethics And Politics Of Suicide By Thomas Szasz, Matthew Pianalto
Review Of Fatal Freedom The Ethics And Politics Of Suicide By Thomas Szasz, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
Dying voluntarily is an option that all cognizant human beings possess. To intentionally bring about one's own death is to enact suicide. In Fatal Freedom, Thomas Szasz calls attention to the fact that although suicide is not a crime, thinking about it, attempting it, or failing to perform suicide successfully all prompt psychiatric interventions and often involuntary institutionalization, which Szasz refers to as "coercive psychiatric suicide prevention" (CPSP). Szasz explores the historical connections between suicide and depression--a diagnosis which is purported both to explain (psychologically) and to excuse (morally) suicide--and reveals that the psychiatric perspective has gradually diluted the concept …
Review Of Therapeutic Action An Earnest Plea For Irony By Jonathan Lear, Matthew Pianalto
Review Of Therapeutic Action An Earnest Plea For Irony By Jonathan Lear, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
Jonathan Lear begins Therapeutic Action with a question: "How might a conversation fundamentally change the structure of the human psyche?" That is, how could an exchange of words between analyst and analysand effect a cure to neurosis? To answer such questions would be to uncover the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis. While arguing that a deeper understanding of irony and its possibilities is central to the therapeutic action of psychoanalysis, Lear's book is much more than its "earnest plea for irony." It is an invitation to psychoanalysts (and all those involved in psychological counseling) to return to this fundamental question of …
Review Of Autopsy Of A Suicidal Mind By Edwin S. Shneidman, Matthew Pianalto
Review Of Autopsy Of A Suicidal Mind By Edwin S. Shneidman, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
In any other discipline, a gathering of minds with only half the intellectual prowess and experience of the consultants brought together in Edwin Shneidman's Autopsy of a Suicidal Mind would give reason for a celebration. The very nature of suicidology must make even such a momentous reunion as occurs in this book a somber event. In Autopsy, Shneidman rejoins forces with seven suicide specialists, longtime colleague Norman L. Farberow, with whom Shneidman founded the Los Angeles Suicide Prevention Center (the first center of its kind), and Robert E. Litman, chief psychiatrist at the LASPC, Avery Weisman, John T. Maltsberger, David …