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How should a prize be awarded after a horse race? Should it go to the best rider, the best person, or the one who finishes first? To what extent are bystanders blameworthy when they do nothing to prevent harm? Are there any objective standards of moral responsibility with which to address such perennial questions? In this fluidly written and lively book, Daniel Robinson takes on the prodigious task of setting forth the contours of praise and blame. He does so by mounting an important and provocative new defense of a radical theory of moral realism and offering a critical appraisal of prevailing alternatives such as determinism and behaviorism and of their conceptual shortcomings. The version of moral realism that arises from Robinson's penetrating inquiry--an inquiry steeped in Aristotelian ethics but deeply informed by modern scientific knowledge of human cognition--is independent of cognition and emotion. At the same time, Robinson carefully explores how such human attributes succeed or fail in comprehending real moral properties. Through brilliant analyses of constitutional and moral luck, of biosocial and genetic versions of psychological determinism, and of relativistic-anthropological accounts of variations in moral precepts, he concludes that none of these conceptions accounts either for the nature of moral properties or the basis upon which they could be known. Ultimately, the theory that Robinson develops preserves moral properties even while acknowledging the conditions that undermine the powers of human will.
"Humor enriches our lives, but it can also raise moral trouble. Is humor that relies on deception, maliciousness, or stereotyping always immoral? Does motive matter in determining the moral value of a joke? Why are certain topics out of bounds for humor? In Wisecracks, philosopher David Shoemaker delves into the fascinating relationship between humor and morality in our everyday lives. In this book, Shoemaker sets aside the crafted forms of humor we find in comedy specials, TV skits, and more and focuses on the informal, improvised wit that occurs in interpersonal relationships-such as teasing, mockery, and pranks-known as wisecracks. The key difference between wisecracks and jokes? Jokes are told, whereas wisecracks are made. Sometimes wisecracks involve lying, sometimes they are mean, and sometimes they play on racial or sexual stereotypes. Shoemaker untangles the intricate threads of when and why these immoral qualities are or aren't acceptable in humor. In showing how a well-developed sense of morality is central to a good sense of humor (and how to develop each), Wisecracks makes the case for how humor can heal, even when it takes a hurtful form"--
In this collection of essays, outstanding scholars and pastors reflect on the many "languages" of the Catholic liturgy--the aural, spatial, temporal, kinetic, and iconic--which blend together into a single voice, a single act of praise.
Building Better Beings presents a new theory of moral responsibility. Beginning with a discussion of ordinary convictions about responsibility and free will and their implications for a philosophical theory, Manuel Vargas argues that no theory can do justice to all the things we want from a theory of free will and moral responsibility. He goes on to show how we can nevertheless justify our responsibility practices and provide a normatively and naturalistically adequate account of of responsible agency, blame, and desert. Three ideas are central to Vargas' account: the agency cultivation model, circumstantialism about powers, and revisionism about responsibility and free will. On Vargas' account, responsibility norms and practices are justified by their effects. In particular, the agency cultivation model holds that responsibility practices help mold us into creatures that respond to moral considerations. Moreover, the abilities that matter for responsibility and free will are not metaphysically prior features of agents in isolation from social contexts. Instead, they are functions of both agents and their normatively structured contexts. This is the idea of circumstantialism about the powers required for responsibility. Third, Vargas argues that an adequate theory of responsibility will be revisionist, or at odds with important strands of ordinary convictions about free will and moral responsibility. Building Better Beings provides a compelling and state-of-the-art defense of moral responsibility in the face of growing philosophical and scientific skepticism about free will and moral responsibility.