scholarly journals Common Notions and Instincts as Sources of Moral Knowledge in Leibniz’s New Essays on Human Understanding

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 141-169
Author(s):  
Markku Roinila ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Practical Philosophy ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
Natural Light ◽  
Sources Of Knowledge ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Necessary Truths ◽  
The Senses

In his defense of innateness in New Essays on Human Understanding (1704), Leibniz attributes innateness to concepts and principles which do not originate from the senses rather than to the ideas that we are born with. He argues that the innate concepts and principles can be known in two ways: through reason or natural light (necessary truths), and through instincts (other innate truths and principles). In this paper I will show how theoretical and moral reasoning differ from each other in Leibniz, and compare moral reasoning and instincts as sources of knowledge in his practical philosophy. As the practical instincts are closely related to pleasure and passions, which are by nature cognitive, my emphasis will be on the affective character of instinctive moral action and especially deliberation which leads to moral action. I will argue that inclinations arising from moral instinct, which lead us to pleasure while avoiding sorrow, can direct our moral action and sometimes anticipate reasoning when conclusions are not readily available. Acting by will, which is related to moral reasoning, and acting by instincts can lead us to the same moral knowledge independently, but they can also complement each other. To illustrate the two alternative ways to reach moral knowledge, I will discuss the case of happiness, which is the goal of all human moral action for Leibniz.

scholarly journals Ethical and Moral Competences of Upper Secondary Students: A Comparative Study

2020 ◽  
pp. 209653112097395
Author(s):  
Zhengmei Peng ◽  
Dietrich Benner ◽  
Roumiana Nikolova ◽  
Stanislav Ivanov ◽  
Tao Peng
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Education ◽  
Secondary Students ◽  
Chinese Students ◽  
Educational Background ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
Action Plans ◽  
Upper Secondary ◽  
Moral Competences

Purpose: This article presents the theoretical framework, research design, methodology, and main findings of the comparative measurement of ethical–moral competences of 15-year-old upper secondary students in Shanghai, under the ETiK-International-Shanghai project. Design/Approach/Methods: By dividing the ethical–moral competences into the categories of basic ethical–moral knowledge, ethical–moral judgment competence, and competence in developing ethical–moral action plans, a survey of 2,036 students was conducted, using a reliable and valid testing instrument. Findings: In general, 15-year-olds from homes with more educational resources perform higher in all three scales across all countries taken under consideration in our study. Furthermore, school practices, teaching, as well as quantity and quality of instruction play a very important role in the moral education process and especially in developing students’ proficiency levels of ethical–moral knowledge, reasoning competence, as well as students’ high abilities in developing moral action plans. When relevant educational background factors are held constant, Chinese students show lower average scores on basic ethical–moral knowledge and moral judgment competence. With exception of the tested Vienna students, all other European samples scored better than the Chinese students—also on the test for developing ethical–moral action plans. However, Chinese students are especially able to display outstanding empathy when dealing with suffering, misfortune, and sorrow, as well as in their willingness to help others. Originality/Value: The findings of this article can foster thinking about which topics should be further discussed to improve the ethical–moral knowledge and competences of Chinese students and highlight requirements for the further development of moral education in China at the levels of teaching, curriculum, teacher education, and research.

Harmony of the Senses in English, German, and French Romanticism

PMLA ◽  
1932 ◽  
Vol 47 (2) ◽  
pp. 577-592 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika von Erhardt-Siebold
Keyword(s):  
Combined Effect ◽  
Loud Sound ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Scientific Foundation ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Essay Concerning Human Understanding ◽  
French Romanticism

LOCKE'S mention in his Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) of the blind man who thought he understood what the color scarlet was because it was represented to him by the sound of a trumpet, startled people, like the trumpet blast or glaring color referred to, or even more like the combined effect of both loud sound and loud color. This unbelievable speculation was, however, soon substantiated by other similar observations and, henceforth, became a much repeated paradoxon of literature. The analogy between sound and color was first given a scientific foundation with Isaac Newton's Opticks in 1704. Newton in his comparison between sound and color went so far as to proclaim that the spaces occupied by the seven primary colors were similar to the relative intervals between the notes of the octave.

scholarly journals Francisco de Vitoria on Prudence and the Nature of Practical Reasoning

2019 ◽  
Vol 101 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-60
Author(s):  
Anselm Spindler
Keyword(s):  
Practical Reasoning ◽  
Thomas Aquinas ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
Medieval Philosophy ◽  
History Of ◽  
Francisco De Vitoria ◽  
Scientific Framework

Abstract The history of prudence is often depicted as a history of loss. According to one version, the scientification of moral knowledge in medieval philosophy calls into question the role of prudence in moral action (Nussbaum 1978). And while Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274) still tries to integrate prudence into a scientific framework of moral knowledge, the Salmantine theologian Francisco de Vitoria (1483–1546) eventually abandons this approach and excludes prudence from moral knowledge altogether (Fidora 2013). I would like to argue, however, that Vitoria plays a different role in this development: He does not exclude prudence from scientific moral knowledge but gives an integrated account that Aquinas lacks. But this integration comes at a price because he is eventually unable to explain how prudence allows an agent to deal with the problem of contingency in action.

The Constitutive A Priori

1992 ◽  
Vol 18 ◽  
pp. 179-214 ◽  
Author(s):  
Graciela De Pierris
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
A Priori ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Privileged Position ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Structure Of Knowledge

The modem rationalist tradition initiated by Descartes has as one of its central tenets the independence of the human understanding from the senses. Regardless of the different ways in which independence from experience is understood, there is much common ground among the modem views on the a priori. Yet Kant, culminating this tradition, introduces an entirely new conception of the a priori never before articulated in the history of philosophy. This is the notion of elements in knowledge which are independent of experience but nevertheless closely connected, in a special way, with experience.Although for Kant the a priori has a privileged position in the structure of knowledge - as it has for other modem rationalist philosophers - one of the most striking, and often neglected, aspect of his conception of the a priori is the great extent to which it is opposed to foundationalism.

The Mental Aspects of Ordinary Disease

1874 ◽  
Vol 20 (91) ◽  
pp. 387-409
Author(s):  
J. Milner Fothergill
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
The Body ◽  
Human Intelligence ◽  
Natural Light ◽  
Limited Extent ◽  
Dark Ages ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Natural Man ◽  
The Face ◽  
The Mind

The relations of body and mind are becoming not only much more comprehensible, but even much better understood, since science has shaken off the incubus of theological teaching as to the severance of soul and body. As long as the mind was something separated from the body, or only united to it by slack and loosely fitting ties, mental phenomena could have nothing to do with bodily conditions—insanity was a disease of the soul; and the monk, standing over a miserable lunatic chained to a staple in a wall, and flogging him in order to make him cast his devil out, was a logical outcome of this hypothesis, however repugnant to more recent and correcter views. The baneful psychology of theologians is now thoroughly undermined, and the erroneous and mischievous superstructure is cracking and gaping on every side, and ere long the ground occupied by a crumbling ruin will be covered by a gradually growing erection based on a foundation of facts, and reared by an expanding intelligence. The union of psychology and physiology is the closing of the circuit, in one direction, of the pursuit after knowledge, and forms the initiation of a rational and intelligible comprehension of the mind and of its relation to corporeal conditions. How such mistaken and false ideas of the word melancholia, as those entertained by the monk as an alienist physician, could have attained their sway in the face of such maxim as mens sana in corpore sano, only becomes intelligible when we remember the ignorance, the superstitious prejudices, the contempt for the knowledge of the natural man, which ever characterise the theological mind, and which found their highest expression during the monkish supremacy of the dark ages—that interval of black ignorance which intervened betwixt the decadence of Latin civilisation and that intellectual evolution, the Renaissance, which indicated the advent of the reign of human intelligence. Slowly but surely was the emancipation of the intellect from the fetters of priestly tyranny achieved, as death thinned the ranks of its opponents, and the grim despotism of Torquemada and his coadjutors waned into the pettier and less terrible persecution of more recent ecclesiastics, and the tremendous grip of hierarchical supremacy gradually merged into the palsied, nerveless grasp of a doting and dying theology, the mere spectre of its former self. Curious men were the Church's leaders of the middle ages. In their cathedrals the light of day was only permitted to enter to a limited extent, and that too through the medium of coloured glass, so as to produce the “dim religious light,” while artificial lights burnt up before their altars; so were their minds closed to the natural light of the human understanding, and artificially illumined by the creations of their diseased imaginations, amidst whose coloured rays the white light of truth was always obscured, if not rarely utterly lost. But in the mortality of man lies the hope, the salvation of truth.

scholarly journals Why Hume Cannot Be A Realist

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 143-161
Author(s):  
Jani Hakkarainen
Keyword(s):  
Modern Philosophy ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Metaphysical Realism ◽  
Secondary Qualities ◽  
Treatise Of Human Nature ◽  
Human Understanding ◽  
Realist Interpretation ◽  
The Senses ◽  
Decisive Objection ◽  
Sceptical Argument

In this paper, I argue that there is a sceptical argument against the senses advanced by Hume that forms a decisive objection to the Metaphysically Realist interpretations of his philosophy – such as the different naturalist and New Humean readings. Hume presents this argument, apparently starting with the primary/secondary qualities distinction, both in A Treatise of Human Nature, Book 1, Part 4, Section 4 (Of the modern philosophy) (1739) and An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Section 12 (Of the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy), paragraphs 15 to 16 (1748). The argument concludes with the contradiction between consistent reasoning (causal, in particular) and believing in the existence of Real (distinct and continued) entities. The problem with the Realist readings of Hume is that they attribute both to Hume. So their Hume is a self-reflectively inconsistent philosopher. I show that the various ways to avoid this problem do not work. Accordingly, this paper suggests a non-Realist interpretation of Hume's philosophy: Hume the philosopher suspends his judgment on Metaphysical Realism. As such, his philosophical attitude is neutral on the divide between materialism and idealism.

scholarly journals Moral Reasoning Performance Determines Epistemic Peerdom

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H.B. McAuliffe ◽  
Michael E. McCullough
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Review Literature ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Cognitive Reflection ◽  
Friendly Criticism

We offer a friendly criticism of May's fantastic book on moral reasoning: It is overly charitable to the argument that moral disagreement undermines moral knowledge. To highlight the role that reasoning quality plays in moral judgments, we review literature that he did not mention showing that individual differences in intelligence and cognitive reflection explain much of moral disagreement. The burden is on skeptics of moral knowledge to show that moral disagreement arises from non-rational origins.

Regard for Reason in the Moral Mind

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua May
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Empirical Literature ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Evolutionary Mechanisms ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
In Virtue Of

The burgeoning science of ethics has produced a trend toward pessimism. Ordinary moral judgment and motivation, we’re told, are profoundly influenced by arbitrary factors and ultimately driven by unreasoned feelings or emotions—fertile ground for sweeping debunking arguments. This book counters the current orthodoxy on its own terms by carefully engaging with the empirical literature. The resulting view, optimistic rationalism, maintains that reason plays a pervasive role in our moral minds and that ordinary moral reasoning is not particularly flawed or in need of serious repair. The science does suggest that moral knowledge and virtue don’t come easily, as we are susceptible to some unsavory influences that lead to rationalizing bad behavior. Reason can be corrupted in ethics just as in other domains, but the science warrants cautious optimism, not a special skepticism about morality in particular. Rationality in ethics is possible not just despite, but in virtue of, the psychological and evolutionary mechanisms that shape moral cognition.

Moral Action in Zhan Ruoshui’s 湛若水 (1466–1560) Philosophical Anthropology

2015 ◽  
Vol 42 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 318-341
Author(s):  
Youngmin Kim
Keyword(s):  
Philosophical Anthropology ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
The Self ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
Wang Yangming ◽  
The World ◽  
Philosophical Questions

This article frames Zhan Ruoshui’s philosophical anthropology in a way as to compare it with two competing positions—those of Chen Xianzhang and Wang Yangming—and explores it as an answer to a set of questions many mid-Ming philosophers shared, rather than to perennial, ahistorical philosophical questions. As against Chen Xianzhang and Wang Yangming, Zhan proposes his characteristic motto, suichu tiren tianli, as a way to unite the self and the world. The implication is that moral knowledge must be pursued neither (merely) in the dimension of things and affairs, nor outside the dimension of things and affairs.

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