How do we judge whether an action is morally right or wrong? If an action is wrong, what reason does that give us not to do it? Why should we give such reasons priority over our other concerns and values? In this book, T. M. Scanlon offers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other. According to his contractualist view, thinking about right and wrong is thinking about what we do in terms that could be justified to others and that they could not reasonably reject. He shows how the special authority of conclusions about right and wrong arises from the value of being related to others in this way, and he shows how familiar moral ideas such as fairness and responsibility can be understood through their role in this process of mutual justification and criticism. Scanlon bases his contractualism on a broader account of reasons, value, and individual well-being that challenges standard views about these crucial notions. He argues that desires do not provide us with reasons, that states of affairs are not the primary bearers of value, and that well-being is not as important for rational decision-making as it is commonly held to be. Scanlon is a pluralist about both moral and non-moral values. He argues that, taking this plurality of values into account, contractualism allows for most of the variability in moral requirements that relativists have claimed, while still accounting for the full force of our judgments of right and wrong.
"I refuse to allow other people’s judgement to limit me even more."
When your debt is scattered among several credit cards and loans, it's hard to know how much you have. Here are 10 signs that you have too much debt.
Find checks, security deposits, and refunds on unclaimed property.
It’s going on 400 years since Shakespeare died, but his impact is still felt in modern English. The following chart details close to 40 different sayings that are credited to Shakespeare, including "bated breath", "out of the jaws of death", and "in a pickle". Some of the credits are probably erroneous, and others are corrupted versions of Shakespeare’s…
In 2017, there was a massive data breach with Equifax and during that time, it's likely you were among the millions of people that had their personal information exposed. Finally, two years later, Equifax has
Sapiosexual: It has nothing to do with being different, as it is with thinking different. Here're 5 Signs You Are An Absolute SapioSexual.
Has this ever happen to you?
We owe a big thank you to past scientists who set the stage for today's modern technologies even though some of their creations can be puzzling to us now. Think of Leonardo Da Vinci and his flying car or Thomas Edison and his discovery of the light bulb. Their brilliant ideas have shaped the world we live in and continue to inspire innovations.
Here’s How Good You Are at Apologizing, Based on Your Personality Type Apologizing can be a difficult task for anyone, since it seems to be a rather harsh blow of embarrassment. Some people are much more capable of apologizing than others, and seem to have a natural ability for making amends. Here is how good …
Thought experiment: just suppose that the gorilla in the Cincinnati zoo was named “Trump” instead of “Harambe?” Wonder if the reaction would have been the same? Just say …
Free and Funny Cry For Help Ecard: And I owe you... ...way more blowjobs than I thought. Shit. Create and send your own custom Cry For Help ecard.
I apologize if I ever was a toxic person in your life, I'm maturing more every day, correcting my wrongs. Being Me, Personality Quotes.
When the cashier announced the amount we owed, Isaac took the credit card from my hand, skillfully swiped it through the payment terminal and handed it to me...
This post owes its inspiration to the video “The Alt-Right Playbook: I Hate Mondays”, by Innuendo Studios. Catholics are well acquainted with a distinctive doctrine, meant to explain the origin of…
Most people don’t know anything about Colorado Judge Philip Gilliam, except that he wrote a hard-hitting letter in a Denver newspaper in 1959 (called Open Letter to Teen-ager) that went viral on Facebook in 2012 — very viral, in fact. How did this happen? Well, Judge Gilliam published his little op-ed on December 6, 1959. […]
Yuppie and yuppify are products of the 1980s, but they owe a debt to predecessors from decades prior. Hippie (referring to a long-haired, unconventionally dressed young person who rejects societal
There are not many authors out there where I’ve read every book they’ve written, but Sophie Kinsella is one of them. (This is actually only partially true – I’ve read every book she’s written under So
Project Nim is the new documentary about a chimpanzee raised in a human household as part of an experiment to see if chimps could learn language. Director James Marsh and two of the people who cared for Nim talk with Terry Gross about the controversial study.
