Facts, Values, and Norms: Essays toward a Morality of Consequence

by Peter Railton

• ISBN13: 9780521426930
• ISBN10: 0521426936
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2003-03-17
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

In our everyday lives we struggle with the notions of why we do what we do and the need to assign values to our actions. Somehow, it seems possible through experience and life to gain knowledge and understanding of such matters. Yet once we start delving deeper into the concepts that underwrite these domains of thought and actions, we face a philosophical disappointment. In contrast to the world of facts, values and morality seem insecure, uncomfortably situated, easily influenced by illusion or ideology. How can we apply this same objectivity and accuracy to the spheres of value and morality? In the essays included in this collection, Peter Railton shows how a fairly sober, naturalistically informed view of the world might nonetheless incorporate objective values and moral knowledge. This book will be of interest to professionals and students working in philosophy and ethics.

Table of Contents

Foreword	xi
Part I: Realism about Value and Morality
Moral Realism (1986)	3	(40)
Facts and Values (1986)	43	(26)
Noncognitivism about Rationality: Benefits, Costs, and an Alternative (1993)	69	(16)
Aesthetic Value, Moral Value, and the Ambitions of Naturalism (1997)	85	(46)
Red, Bitter, Good (1998)	131	(20)
Part II: Normative Moral Theory
Alienation, Consequentialism, and the Demand of Morality (1984)	151	(36)
Locke, Stock, and Peril: Natural Property Rights, Pollution, and Risk (1985)	187	(39)
How Thinking about Character and Utilitarianism Might Lead to Rethinking the Character of Utilitarianism (1988)	226	(23)
Pluralism, Dilemma, and the Expression of Moral Conflict (1992, 2001)	249	(44)
Part III: The Authority of Ethics and Value - The Problem of Normativity
On the Hypothetical and Non-Hypothetical in Reasoning about Belief and Action (1997)	293	(29)
Normative Force and Normative Freedom: Hume and Kant, but Not Hume Versus Kant (1999)	322	(31)
Morality, Ideology, and Reflection; or, the Duck Sits Yet (2000)	353	(32)
Index	385