Department of Philosophy
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Browsing Department of Philosophy by Author "Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy."
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Item Appreciation : its nature and role in virtue ethical moral psychology and dialectical moral agency.(2013-09-16) Carson, Nathan Paul.; Roberts, Robert Campbell, 1942-; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.This dissertation is focused on appreciation and its role in virtue ethical psychology and moral agency. While appreciation is a central concept in aesthetics, I argue that it still needs to play a deeper and more precise role in virtue ethical discussions of moral understanding, experience, and agency. Overall, I contend that close examination of appreciation opens up a compelling dialectical picture of moral agency that is phenomenologically realistic, narratively unified, progressively unfolding and, ideally, marked by wholehearted engagement with morally significant features of reality. In chapter one I clarify the nature of appreciation, arguing (among other things) that appreciation does not always involve pleasure, sometimes displays minimal understanding, and is often an unfolding activity. Overall, I suggest that there are three broad, sometimes incompatible but often overlapping types of appreciation: (1) phenomenal-affective experience, (2) engaged evaluative understanding, and (3) the activity of evaluative attention. I argue that evaluative attention holds particular promise as a unitive principle for a dialectically unfolding conception of appreciative moral agency. In chapter two I import these distinctions into virtue ethics, and argue that through greater clarity and liberality about appreciation, we can identify one type that is fundamental to the moral life, clarify the types that express virtue, and better articulate the relationship between appreciation(s) and ethical wisdom. In chapter three I challenge Talbot Brewer’s Neo-Aristotelian view that virtuous activity appreciation involves full motivational harmony with the activity and supervening pleasure taken in it. A thorough critique of Brewer’s view, partly through cases of appreciative motivational conflict and emotional pain, opens us toward a more realistic and broadly applicable notion of unfolding appreciation as responsively plural, and closely allied with thoughtful evaluative attention. This conception of virtuous appreciating also suggests a new, concerned engagement understanding of wholehearted agency. Finally, in chapter four I examine Iris Murdoch’s notion of moral attention, and develop it as the appreciative activity of evaluative attention that unites developmental appreciative agency. Moving beyond Murdoch, I then articulate the basic elements of such dialectical appreciation as genuinely interactive, perennially unfinished, responsively plural, and a source of formal and personal unity.Item Augustine against the academic doctrine, way of life, and use of philosophical writing.(2013-09-16) Spano, John; Hibbs, Thomas S.; Foley, Michael P., 1970-; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.The recent literature on Augustine’s Contra Academicos stresses the philosophical, ethical, and literary elements of the text. However, these works neglect the polemical role of the dialogue as a response to Cicero’s Academic Skepticism. I offer a reading of the first of Augustine’s Cassiciacum dialogues, the Contra Academicos, that shows how his work can be read as a comprehensive rejection of the Academic philosophical life and doctrine as presented in Cicero’s dialogue, the Academica. To accomplish the goal, the work begins with an analysis of the doctrine in, way of life recommended by, and pedagogical function of Cicero’s Academica. The remaining chapters examine Augustine’s response to each of these elements of Cicero’s work. In Chapter Three I accentuate the philosophical importance of Augustine’s accusation that the Academics practiced a form of esotericism. This accusation, largely neglected, helps underscore Augustine’s rhetorical strategies to cultivate in his students an awareness of philosophical ironic discourse. Chapter Four focuses upon Augustine’s critique of the Academic way of life and the problems that arise from their insistence that all must seek wisdom yet be content with the inevitable impossibility of finding wisdom. Chapters Five and Six examine Augustine’s positive contributions to philosophical writing. Augustine rejects the Academic emphasis that wisdom must be sought by reason alone, suggesting that reason and authority are the twin means for that pursuit. The dual emphasis disallows Augustine from pedagogical uses of deception in the dialogue form, a subtle but important shift from other philosophical uses of this form of writing. By allowing reason and authority to guide one in the pursuit of wisdom, Augustine’s work also steers the reader away from the despair that Academic skepticism can so easily cultivate.Item Augustine's solution to the problem of theological fatalism.(2011-01-05T19:39:33Z) Hemati, Russell Danesh.; Beaty, Michael D.; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.In Augustine's dialogue De Libero Arbitrio, his interlocutor Evodius presents an argument for the incompatibility of divine foreknowledge and human freedom, a position we now call "theological fatalism." Since this position is irreconcilable with Augustine's theological commitments, he endeavors to reveal some flaw in Evodius' reasoning. The tradition of modern analytic philosophy has misinterpreted Augustine's arguments against theological fatalism, and as a result, his arguments are underappreciated and often ignored. Augustine is often characterized as accepting a deterministic understanding of free will (called compatibilism), even though the text of De Libero Arbitrio, De Civitate Dei, and several late anti-Pelagian do not support such a view. A more promising interpretation of Augustine's argument is that he endorses a version of free will whereby free actions have alternative possibilities only in reference to causation, but not in reference to foreknowledge. He argues that to exercise free will is to be the cause of what is willed. Thus, no loss of freedom is implied by advance knowledge of a volition, even if that volition has no alternatives relative to foreknowledge. This interpretation embodies a unique way to solve the problem of theological fatalism which has various benefits: it is more harmonious with Augustine's other works, it avoids various paradoxes of God's involvement in human affairs, and it can be combined fruitfully with other methods of solving the fatalism problem to make a comprehensive theory of foreknowledge, providence and free will. A particularly strong objection to Augustine's solution is that an agent cannot be truly free without the ability to do otherwise, regardless of the contents of God's foreknowledge. I argue that the important, intuition-bearing quality of alternative possibilities is the leeway within causality. Since Augustine's solution accepts alternative possibilities relative to causality (in fact giving more reasons to affirm this type of alternative possibilities), he does not compromise robust freedom of the will by rejecting leeway within foreknowledge.Item The conversion and therapy of desire in Augustine's Cassiciacum dialogues.(2010-06-23T12:17:30Z) Boone, Mark J.; Hibbs, Thomas S.; Foley, Michael P., 1970-; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.The philosophical schools of late antiquity commonly diagnosed human unhappiness as rooted in some fundamental disorder in our desires, and offered various therapies or prescriptions for the healing of desire. Among these only the neo-Platonic treatment for desire requires redirecting desire towards an immaterial world. Although Augustine agrees with the neo-Platonists on the need to redirect our desires to an immaterial world, he does not adopt their therapy for desire. Instead he adopts a thoroughly Christian approach to the healing of desire. The conversion of desire results from the Trinitarian God's gracious actions taken to heal our desires. Augustine does not recommend fleeing from the influence of the body, as neo-Platonism encourages, but fleeing to Christ, immersing ourselves in the life of the Church, and practicing the theological virtues. In this dissertation I examine Augustine's Cassiciacum dialogues. In Contra Academicos (Against the Academics), Augustine argues that we must vigorously desire wisdom in order to attain it; that we must have hope in the possibility of attaining wisdom; and that our desire for wisdom must be bound in faith to Christ. In De beata vita (On the Happy Life), Augustine argues that the Trinitarian God is the only perennially satisfying object of desire and shows that the pursuit of God is the activity of a prayerful community of believers who are practicing faith, hope, and charity. In De ordine (On Order), Augustine recommends that the reordering of our desires be pursued through a liberal arts education and through Christian morals. In Soliloquia (Soliloquies), Augustine says that we ought to love God and the soul. He also reminds us to submit to Christ's authority and practice faith, hope, and love. After discussing these things, I discuss in a concluding chapter the harmony of love for God and love for human beings, pointing to passages in the dialogues that suggest this harmony.Item Divine choice and natural law : the eudokian ethics of Francis Turretin.(2008-10-14T15:19:28Z) Bruce, James Elliot, 1974-; Hibbs, Thomas S.; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.Francis Turretin (1623–1687) places a threefold scheme of right (ius) within the framework of Thomistic natural law to explain the relationship between the divine will and the moral order. He centers his inquiry on a single question: can God ever dispense with a precept of the moral law? That is, can God temporarily suspend the obligation that a person has to a moral law so that an individual action is not immoral, even though it would be otherwise, if it were not for God’s command? For Turretin, the answer is unequivocally in the negative: God cannot dispense with any of the precepts of the moral law at any time, for any reason. Nevertheless, some laws do change, and Turretin uses divine, natural, and positive rights to explain why this change is possible. Divine right describes the authority and privilege, as well as the duties and obligations, that God has on account of his own nature. Natural right describes those privileges and obligations that God has due to the nature of the things he has chosen to create, and positive right deals with those additional privileges and obligations that arise from divine choice alone. Those laws, or parts of laws, that arise from divine and natural right cannot change. Those laws, or parts of laws, that arise from positive right can change, however. That God cannot change the moral law, or even dispense with it, does not undermine his freedom, because God is internally, and not externally, constrained. In his free choosing, from his eudokia (good pleasure), God is constrained by divine right, from his own nature; by natural right, from the nature of the things he has made; and, by positive right, from whatever additional laws he has chosen to establish. God’s free choice cannot contravene the natural law, yet the natural law is determined by God’s free choice, in so far as the natural law is constituted by the nature of the things God has chosen to create.Item Emotion, evaluative perception, and epistemic goods.(2011-09-14) Pelser, Adam C.; Roberts, Robert Campbell, 1942-; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.In contrast to the widely held view that emotions are obstacles to ideal epistemic functioning, emotions, as evaluative perceptual states, can contribute in significant ways to our achievement of valuable epistemic goods including justified beliefs, understanding, and wisdom. That emotions are evaluative perceptual states – call this the perceptual thesis of emotion – is evidenced by the extent of the structural and functional parallels between emotions and sense perceptions. Emotions, like sense perceptions, can be both original and acquired and are distinct from the sensory inputs that give rise to them; they also resemble sense perceptions in being passive, intentional mental states with propositional content and they are sources of belief, while yet not themselves beliefs. Emotion also functions in parallel ways to sense perception with respect to the achievement of epistemic justification. Emotions, like their sense perceptual analogues, can and do function as justifying reasons or evidence for beliefs – call this the justificatory thesis of emotion. The justificatory thesis of emotion best explains plausible cases of justified beliefs formed on the basis of emotional experience, as well as the fact that we enjoy justification for evaluative beliefs bearing conceptual content indicative of emotional experience. Moreover, the justificatory thesis is not undermined by any of the strongest objections raised against it; namely, that emotions seem too unreliable to justify beliefs, that emotions themselves can be justified, and that we rarely cite emotions as our reasons for believing as we do. In another significant epistemic parallel between emotion and sense perception, emotional experience is necessary for the best and deepest human understanding of value just as sense perceptual experience is necessary for the best and deepest human understanding of the physical world. Emotion as evaluative perception is also essential to our achievement and actualization of wisdom. Wisdom is deep, appreciative ontological understanding of that which is good (i.e., the proper objects of wonder) and it essentially involves virtuous concerns and emotion-dispositions. Indeed, not only is our initial pursuit of wisdom often prompted by an emotional experience (e.g., wonder), wisdom is also partially constituted by and initially exemplified in virtuous emotional perceptions of value.Item The evidential support relation.(2012-08-08) Byerly, T. Ryan.; Kvanvig, Jonathan L.; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.Evidentialist views in epistemology, like that of Earl Conee and Richard Feldman, define epistemic justification at least partially in terms of evidential support. According to these views, a person is justified in believing a proposition p just when her evidence supports p. The subject of this dissertation is the evidential support relation at the heart of these views—viz., the relation which obtains between a person’s evidence e and a proposition p just when e supports p in the sense required by these views. I engage three initially tempting accounts of this relation in terms of meta-attitudes, explanatory relations, and probabilistic relations, finding all three accounts wanting. I then propose a fourth, causal account. My thesis is that evidentialists like Conee and Feldman should find this causal account of the evidential support relation more attractive than the other three kinds of account.Item Explanation in metaphysics.(2011-09-14) Johnson, Daniel M., 1984-; Pruss, Alexander R.; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.One of the primary tasks of the philosopher is to explain what it is for something to be the case – what it is for one event (substance, fact) to cause another, what it is for an action to be obligatory, what it is for an object to bear a property, what it is for a proposition to be true necessarily, what it is for a person to know something. This activity of explaining what something is or what it is for something to be the case, of identifying what I call ontological explanations, is of special importance to metaphysics, since the task of metaphysics generally is to get to the bottom of reality. The concept of ontological explanation is usually buried a layer deep in most discussions, however, and theses about it are either presupposed or clothed as claims about other things. In some cases, this leads to confusion and frustration, and in many other cases the discussion could benefit from a long look at ontological explanation even if that look isn't strictly necessary to remedy confusion. My goal is to give ontological explanation that long look, and then use the clarity gained to reinterpret, reorganize, and even make progress on some long-standing disputes in metaphysics. In the first two chapters I examine ontological explanation itself and connect it to a host of important metaphysical issues, including ontological commitment and truthmaker theory. In the third and fourth chapters, I apply the work done in the first two chapters to a pair of important metaphysical arguments that crucially employ infinite regresses of ontological explanations – Bradley's Regress and McTaggart's Paradox.Item Iris Murdoch's genealogy of the modern self : retrieving consciousness beyond the linguistic turn.(2008-10-15T14:00:23Z) Jordan, Jessy E.G.; Moore, Scott Hunter.; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.In this dissertation I argue that Murdoch’s philosophical-ethical project is best understood as an anti-Enlightenment genealogical narrative. I maintain that her work consistently displays four fundamental features that typify genealogical accounts: 1) liberation (i.e., subversion) from a dominant philosophical picture; 2) restoration of a previous philosophical picture wrongly dismissed; 3) restoration of practices no longer intelligible on the dominant view; and 4) recovery of an alternative grammar at odds with the dominant philosophical discourse. The dominant philosophical picture Murdoch subverts is the eclipse of consciousness wrought by both the Anglo-analytic and Continental-existentialist traditions. Whether effaced by totalizing linguistic structures or identified with an empty choosing will, Murdoch argues that the forces present within her philosophical context are fundamentally hostile to an adequate conception of consciousness. Her genealogical project attempts to reassert the primacy of consciousness within this antagonistic climate by restoring a Platonic, erotic conception of consciousness. Additionally, Murdoch insists that consciousness is the fundamental form of moral being and that moral transformation, including the practices for that transformation, cannot be understood without a thick conception of consciousness. Murdoch’s account, therefore, refocuses our attention on important practices or techniques of moral purification rendered unintelligible on the dominant view. Finally, Murdoch recovers the Platonic metaphor of the Good, including the conceptual array in which the Good receives its meaning, in an attempt to develop an alternative grammar fit for the task of picturing the complexities and nuances of our ethical situation. I conclude by commenting on both the promising and problematic aspects of Murdoch’s legacy.Item Kierkegaard and modern moral philosophy : conceptual unintelligibility, moral obligations and divine commands.(2009-04-03T15:24:16Z) Cantrell, Michael A.; Evans, C. Stephen.; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.We moderns have lost a grasp on some of our most commonly used moral concepts. Or rather, the moral concepts that we use everyday have, in our grasp, lost the intelligibility they once enjoyed. Contemporary moral judgments are linguistic survivals from practices that have been largely abolished in many spheres of modern society. And although we continue to use the same expressions, many of our moral utterances are now lacking in content, due to our having relinquished the conditions for their intelligibility. Elizabeth Anscombe argued for this thesis in her 1958 article, “Modern Moral Philosophy.” I demonstrate that there are good reasons to believe that Anscombe’s diagnosis of our modern moral predicament is correct before turning to point out that Anscombe was not the first to propose such a radical picture of our moral situation. Over a century before Anscombe, Søren Kierkegaard diagnosed the disorder of our modern moral language and thought and worked to identify, expose and correct modernity’s conceptual confusions. Kierkegaard’s diagnosis of the disorder of our modern moral language and thought has remarkable commonalities with Anscombe’s. Nevertheless, whereas Anscombe famously suggested that we would do well to abandon our use of the moral “ought” and of the notions of moral “right”, “wrong” and “obligation,” Kierkegaard prescribes a different solution. Instead of jettisoning our unintelligible moral concepts, Kierkegaard suggests, we should recover a divine law conception of ethics that would render our moral language and thought intelligible once again. I argue that such a recovery of a divine law conception of ethics is a viable option; specifically, I argue that a divine command theory of moral obligation—conceived as a special case of a social theory of obligation and developed with an eye toward the essential roles played by both institutional rules and the virtues—is theoretically defensible and deserves to be taken as a serious metaethical option by contemporary ethical theorists.Item Kierkegaard’s practice of edification: indirect communication, the virtues, and Christianity.(2006-12-05T21:49:59Z) Tietjen, Mark A.; Roberts, Robert Campbell, 1942-; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.The ultimate aim of Kierkegaard's authorship is to build up his reader's character. Kierkegaard's signed, religious works suggest this reading, but some interpreters say that the more indirect, pseudonymous character of many of Kierkegaard’s works undermines such an interpretation. I argue against recent deconstructive interpretations of Kierkegaard’s indirect communication that would refute the character-building reading. These interpretations are based upon undialectical conceptions of indirect communication and uncharitable views of Kierkegaard's stated intentions. To demonstrate Kierkegaard's character-building interests, I consider his clarification of the virtue of faith in several of his most important pseudonymous writings. Finally, I consider some possible implications of Kierkegaard's methods for contemporary moral philosophy.Item Knowledge revealed to the heart : an articulation and defense of Pascal's epistemology.(2011-09-14) Klapauszak, Janelle Liesl.; Hibbs, Thomas S.; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.It is the focus of this dissertation to articulate Pascal’s position, which may be viewed as a middle ground between skepticism and dogmatism; a position that induces the reader to seek. The second and third chapters will be devoted to Pascal’s rejections of dogmatism and skepticism. By identifying his reasons for rejecting these two views, the middle position that Pascal attempts to hold will become clear. The fourth chapter will investigate the concept of divine illumination, first in Augustine, and then as it is passed down to Descartes and Pascal. The fifth chapter will be focused on articulating Pascal’s account of the heart, which allows for what I have termed dependent certainty. Chapter six will be devoted to placing this position within the landscape of contemporary epistemology, and specifically in arguing to what extent it ought to be interpreted as a kind of fideism and suggesting commonalities between Pascal’s eudaimonaic account and contemporary virtue epistemology.Item Kongzi, Rawls, and the sense of justice in the Analects.(2006-07-31T01:16:48Z) Cline, Erin May.; Baird, Robert M., 1937-; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.This dissertation is a comparative study of the philosophy of John Rawls and the Confucian Analects regarding the idea of a sense of justice. The first aim of this work is to correct a view that has been advanced by several scholars of Chinese and comparative philosophy, namely, that the absence of terms such as "justice" in classical Chinese indicates that classical Chinese texts are not concerned with questions of justice, and that classical Confucian philosophers were not interested in the ideas that are the focus of modern Western political philosophy. Against these claims, I argue that there are deep and important areas of agreement between the understanding of a sense of justice in the Analects and John Rawls's account of a sense of justice. I show that on both views, a sense of justice is cultivated first within the context of parent-child relationships and then within communities, finally emerging as a fully developed moral sense that informs the capacity to feel and act in certain ways toward other members of society. The second aim of this study is to show how comparative work can help us to understand more fully and accurately the features of two or more views. I argue that studying the idea of a sense of justice in the Analects alongside a Rawlsian sense of justice highlights some important dimensions of Rawls's work that have been neglected, including the role he assigns to the family and the community in his account of how citizens cultivate a sense of justice. I also argue that Rawls's discussions of moral psychology and the development of a sense of justice provide readers with a model for understanding the role that moral capacities can play in political philosophy. Rawls's account helps readers to see how an appreciation for justice can be expressed in a text like the Analects, even though there is not a fully developed theory of justice or a single term that consistently designates "justice."Item The meaning of illness : a phenomenological approach to the physician/patient relationship.(2011-12-19) Toombs, Sheila Kay, 1943-; Baird, Robert M., 1937-; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.It is my purpose in this thesis to explore the "reality" of illness, using philosophical phenomenology as a guide. In particular, I am concerned to show that the experience of illness, rather than representing a shared "reality" between physician and patient, represents in effect two quite distinct "realities" (the meaning of one "reality" being significantly different from the meaning of the other). Philosophical phenomenology focuses on the nature of experience, and particularly upon the manner in which all experience is structured by the activity of consciousness. In so doing phenomenology emphasizes the unique nature of experiencing and particularly the correlation between the perceiver and that which is perceived. Meaning is seen to be a function of the activity of individual consciousness. In the first chapter consideration is given to some basic concepts which are fundamental for phenomenology and a distinction is made between "own world" and "common world." In the second chapter these concepts are shown to provide insights into the nature of the discrepancy between the physician's and the patient's understanding of illness. Consideration is given to the manner in which the separate worlds of the physician and patient are constituted. It is argued that it is through attentional focusing that the sense of illness is made explicit for the individual. An analysis is provided of the manner in which such attentional focusing is determined. In the third chapter consideration is given to the question of how it is possible to construct a shared world of meaning between patient and physician, given the unique nature of experiencing. An eidetic interpretation of illness is proposed and attention is directed towards some ways in which we do, in fact, come to some understanding of the Other. In the final chapter it is suggested that the notion of healing presupposes a shared world between physician and patient. A distinction is made between healing and curing disease. It is noted that the manner in which the "reality" of illness is defined directly influences the way in which the end of the patient/physician relationship is defined. It is argued that the end of the patient/ physician relationship is healing and that healing is a mutual act which is accomplished within the context of a shared world between physician and patient.Item Modeling divine deliberation.(2011-09-14) Tong, Jing, 1985-; Kvanvig, Jonathan L.; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.Under the assumption that God deliberates when he decides which world he will create, I set out to build a model for God’s deliberation. The first chapter will lay the ground and outline each chapter. From Chapter Two through Six, I will explore various models. These models differ from each other mainly because they represent the relations between God’s creative acts and the actualization of the worlds in different manners. Based on these chapters, I will conclude that the only models that are simple, consistent, and adequate at once are ones that rely on the causal connection between God’s creative acts and the worlds. Yet these causal models may well be implausible, if we hold onto the conventional notion that creatures have causal power. Our only option left, then, seems to be retreating into modal realism and abolishing the need for God’s deliberation. Before the concluding chapter, however, I will spend one chapter arguing that there is no best possible world and the world chosen by God does not have to be better than all other worlds.Item Neo-Kantian wickedness : constructivist and realist responses to moral skepticism.(2013-09-16) Giannini, Heidi Chamberlin.; Roberts, Robert Campbell, 1942-; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.Neo-Kantian constructivism aspires to respond to moral skepticism by compelling agents to act morally on pain of irrationality. According to Christine Korsgaard, a leading proponent of constructivism, we construct all reasons for action by following correct deliberative procedures. But if we follow these procedures we will find that we only have reasons to act in morally permissible ways. Thus, we can show the skeptic that he is rationally constrained to act morally. Unfortunately, as I argue in my first chapter, this strong response to moral skepticism renders deliberate immoral action unintelligible. This result is problematic since we often do interpret ourselves and others as deliberately choosing to do wrong. I further suggest that this problem follows from central commitments of Korsgaard’s constructivism, so that any adequate account of immoral action must abandon constructivist metaethics in favor of moral realism, a suggestion reinforced by the argument of my second chapter. There, I call attention to Kant’s solution to a similar problem in his own account of morality. I argue that Korsgaard’s constructivist commitments prevent her from embracing Kant’s solution. I proceed in my third chapter to argue that there is a further tension between Korsgaard’s response to moral skepticism and her work in non-ideal theory. In particular, Korsgaard maintains that, when confronted with injustice, the virtuous person may have reason to do what is wrong in the name of morality. She thus relies on the assumption that one can deliberately do wrong. I argue that this assumption undermines the response to skepticism that motivated Korsgaard’s constructivism in the first place. But despite the problems with constructivism, we may worry that moral realism fails to offer an adequate response to moral skepticism. Indeed, Korsgaard rejects realism in part because she believes that realists simply refuse to respond to moral skepticism. I thus conclude by arguing that moral realists can offer adequate responses to moral skepticism. In fact, I believe Korsgaard’s response is no more effective than those suggested by some moral realists.Item Saints and moral philosophy.(2011-12-19) Riley, Sean A.; Beaty, Michael D.; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.Starting with William James’s lectures on saintliness in The Varieties of Religious Experience, twentieth and twenty-first century moral philosophers have attempted to understand the relationship between moral philosophy and Christian saints. James sees the saints as exemplars of creative love, who draw their loving capacity from their relationship to the divine and whose pragmatic value derives from their melioration of the world. James believes that the saints are imitable and that the world would be better if everyone strived to be like them. I argue that though James’s attempt to see the saints as exemplars of demand-satisfaction consequentialism fails, his rich account of saintliness is pregnant with insights that later philosophers develop in service of their own non- consequentialist moral theories. With the exception of J. O. Urmson’s utilization of the saints to argue for supererogation in moral theory, philosophical discussion of saintliness dwindle until Susan Wolf astonishingly argues in her “Moral Saints” that saints (as construed by Utilitarian and Kantian moral theory) are ugly, boring, and unattractive. Robert Adams’s response to Wolf in “Saints” exposes the problem with reducing saintliness to moral exemplarity and neglecting the religious dimension. Adams argues that the saints are good insofar as they faithfully resemble God, display the virtues of the allies of God, and obey God’s callings and commands. Like James, Adams rightly connects the moral goodness of the saints to their relationship with the divine. I endorse Adams’s key insights but also indicate deficiencies in his account. Linda Zagzebski argues that the saints are morally good because they share God’s motives. Though her account of the virtues of the saints improves upon a lacuna in Adams’s account, I argue that it remains deficient in important ways. I then develop my own creative account of saintliness that draws on insights from the role-centered moral theory of J. L. A. Garcia and Sarah Harper and the moral philosophies of Thomas Aquinas and Alasdair MacIntyre. I argue that the saints can best be characterized as the friends of God and that doing so illuminates both the religious and moral aspects of saintliness.Item Taking responsibility for ourselves : a Kiekergaardian account of the freedom of the freedom-relevant conditions necessary for the cultivation of character.(2011-05-12T15:21:41Z) Carron, Paul E.; Roberts, Robert Campbell, 1942-; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.What are the freedom-relevant conditions necessary for someone to be a morally responsible person? I examine several key authors beginning with Harry Frankfurt that have contributed to this debate in recent years, and then look back to the writings or Søren Kierkegaard to provide a solution to the debate. In this project I investigate the claims of semi-compatibilism and argue that while its proponents have identified a fundamental question concerning free will and moral responsibility—namely, that the agential properties necessary for moral responsibility ascriptions are found in scenarios where the agent acts on her own as opposed to her action resulting from freedom-undermining external causes such as manipulation, phobias, etc.—they have failed to show that the freedom-relevant agential properties identified in those actual-sequence scenarios are compatible with causal determinism. My argument is that only a voluntarist-libertarian theory can adequately account for the kinds of cases that the semi-compatibilist identify. I argue that there are three freedom-relevant conditions necessary for someone to be a morally responsible person: a hierarchical understanding of human desires [specifically and mental states generally], an incompatibilist (non-deterministic) understanding of human action, and a historical understanding of character development. The ability to reflect critically about one's own desires and emotions, and thus to have a kind of self-knowledge and understanding with regard to the springs of one's own actions, is required to make it possible for the agent to be the "source" of her own actions and character. The non-deterministic understanding of human action is needed for a similar reason: if determinism is true, then every action a person performs can be ultimately traced to and exhaustively explained in terms of factors outside the agent's control, thus making the agent's responsibility for his actions an illusion. And finally, human nature must be such that, over time, one's choices leave a dispositional residue of self-understanding and motivation in the person's self, out of which, in mature understanding and motivation, the person acts as a fully responsible agent.Item Teleological moral realism : an explication and defense.(2008-10-14T14:49:54Z) Alexander, David Eric, 1978-; Beaty, Michael D.; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.Contemporary moral realists assume that goodness is a property susceptible to Kripkean/Putnamian developments in philosophy of language and metaphysics. However, close attention to the actual use of the term ‘good’ reveals that ‘good’ does not refer to a property but to a predicate-forming functor. Relying on an argument advanced by P. T. Geach, I argue that the semantics of ‘good’ is such that statements of the form “x is good” are semantically incomplete. In order to complete such statements some substantive has to be understood. I go on to argue that the semantics of ‘good’ has profound implications for metaethics. First, I show that goodness is not a property capable of figuring into necessary a posteriori identities. Thus, most contemporary defenses of moral realism fail. Second, I show that the semantics of ‘good’ reveals that ‘good’ must modify something that has a nature and function. I go on to argue that if it is true that ‘good’ must modify something that has a nature and function, then human goodness is both unique and uniform. Human goodness is unique because human nature is. Human goodness is uniform because human nature is. Third, I show that the correct metaphysics for functions is a normative account that supports the semantics of ‘good’ provided earlier. In the process of defending a normative account of functions I show that theories of functions that rely solely on evolutionary theory fail. Lastly, I consider and respond to some standard objections to moral realism. In particular, I examine the argument from motivation, the argument from queerness and the argument from the supervenience of the moral on the non-moral. I show that the metaethical theory that emerged in the first three parts of the dissertation easily handles each of these arguments.Item Theism and the justification of first principles in Thomas Reid’s epistemology.(2013-09-24) Poore, Gregory S.; Buras, Jackson Todd.; Philosophy.; Baylor University. Dept. of Philosophy.The role of theism in Thomas Reid’s epistemology remains an unresolved question. Opinions range from outright denials that theism has any relevance to Reid’s epistemology to claims that Reid’s epistemology depends upon theism in a dogmatic or a viciously circular manner. This dissertation attempts to bring some order to this interpretive fray by answering the following question: What role or roles does theism play in Reid’s epistemology, particularly in relation to the epistemic justification of first principles? Chapters 2-4 lay the foundation for answering this question and clarify some terminology. Chapter 2 distinguishes key senses in which Reid uses the terms “principle” and “first principle.” Chapter 3 argues for a novel interpretation of common sense and the principles of common sense. This interpretation avoids a number of objections to Reid’s principles of common sense. Chapter 4 considers the initial externalist justification of Reid’s first principles. It shows Reid has a surprisingly well-developed proper-functionalism and brings to light several overlooked elements of his epistemology. Chapters 5-8 argue theism can and does play various important and philosophically respectable roles in Reid’s epistemology, particularly in relation to the justification of first principles. Chapter 5 argues that even on the standard foundationalist interpretation of Reid’s epistemology, theism can and does boost the justification of first principles. Chapter 6 shows Reid’s epistemology is not a form of simple foundationalism but contains coherentist elements. This enables theism further to boost the justification of first principles. Chapter 7 reveals that Reid’s epistemology contains different kinds or levels of knowledge, and shows that theism enables the highest form of knowledge, which I call scientia. Chapter 8 argues that within Reid’s epistemology theism helps protect and preserve the justification of first principles.