Selected Essays

by Slote, Michael

• ISBN13: 9780195391435
• ISBN10: 0195391438
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2009-12-31
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

In Selected Essays Michael Slote collects some of the most important papers of his career, articles that were both influential as well as those that remain relevant to philosophical debates today. The papers range over a number of important topics--not all of them within or having to do with ethics. Three of the papers have to do with ways in which one might fill out or expand upon traditional utilitarian views--while remaining within the utilitarian tradition. Two of the papers focus on free will, and another pair discuss rational choice and argue that traditional views about individual rationality unduly limit our possibilities. The papers outside ethics deal with such topics as counterfactuals; Wittgensteinian accounts of "cluster terms;" some familiar concepts we use that cannot apply to reality; and a paradox about the possibility of circumstances where it is linguistically inappropriate to assert what one believes. In addition to the previously published essays, Slote includes more recent and unpublished papers that deal with the uses of empathy in the context of global issues of justice; the limitations of the "moral reasoning" model of normal moral thinking; and the relevance of empathy to the epistemic ideal of objectivity. The final paper of the volume speaks about recent developments in ethical theory and what they may tell us about the possibilities of future progress or lack of progress in that field.

Author Biography

Michael Slote is Professor of Ethics at the University of Miami.

Table of Contents

Introduction

The Theory of Important Criteria

Value Judgments and the Theory of Important Criteria

The Rationality of Aesthetic Value Judgments

Inapplicable Concepts

Morality and Ignorance

Time in Counterfactuals

Assertion and Belief

Understanding Free Will

Selective Necessity and the Free-Will Problem

Is Virtue Possible?

Morality Not a System of Imperatives

Review of Alvin Plantinga's God and Other Minds

Utilitarianism, Moral Dilemmas, and Moral Cost

Object Utilitarianism

Utilitarian Virtue

Moderation, Rationality and Virtue

Rational Dilemmas and Rational Supererogation

Ethics Naturalized

Nietzsche and Virtue Ethics

Caring Versus the Philosophers

Global Caring

Empathy and Objectivity

In Place of Moral Reasoning

Some Thoughts for the Future

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