Department of Philosophy
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Browsing Department of Philosophy by Author "Beaty, Michael D."
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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 Roles and the ethical life.(2018-06-06) Yan, Mengyao, 1987-; Beaty, Michael D.Role ethics, broadly speaking, is a normative ethical theory that has a prominent emphasis on roles. Although it was prominent in ancient cultures, such as in China and Greece, role ethics waned during the Enlightenment era. Not until very recently has role ethics been articulated in its own terms. Among current discussions on roles, the most systematic role ethics are Confucian role ethics (as interpreted by Roger Ames and some others), Epictetus’ role ethics (as interpreted by Brian Johnson), Sarah Harper’s rolecentered morality and Jeremy Evans’ role ethics. They are my primary interlocutors as I develop and defend an alternative approach to understanding, examining and guiding our ethical life. By arguing that our ethical life is pervasively structured by roles, and drawing on the lights that my primary interlocutors have shed, I propose a role-structured ethics or role ethics that addresses some central issues regarding the nature of roles, the self, role identification, role fulfillment, role conflicts, and changing roles. Importantly, I emphasize the place of traditions in constructing a complete normative role ethics. So throughout the dissertation, I outline and defend the basic structure of any plausible specific role ethics, which is neutral among various traditions. I call such a structure “Role Ethics.” In particular, I investigate the nature of roles and its relation to the self, role fulfillment and its relation to the concept of duties, virtues and skills, as well as the nature of role conflicts and how to approach them. Along these lines of exploration, I also argue that they have important implications on the dignity of persons, moral education, and the notion of practical wisdom. Last but not the least, due to the universality of roles in various traditions, I propose that Role Ethics can serve as a platform to bring various traditions into meaningful dialogue.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 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.