6. Moral Reasoning and Moral Imagination

1999 ◽  
pp. 109-126
Author(s):  
Patricia H. Werhane
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Imagination

scholarly journals “Where Are We Going?” Dante’s Inferno or Richard Rorty’s “Liberal Ironist”

Religions ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 49
Author(s):  
Dennis Sansom
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Imagination ◽  
Moral Action ◽  
Moral Excellence ◽  
Internal Contradiction ◽  
Practical Life

This paper elucidates the structure of moral action by arguing that Dante’s explanation in the Inferno of why people end up in their respective circles of hell is superior in terms of accounting for the structure of moral reasoning to Richard Rorty’s promotion of the “liberal ironist.” The latter suffers an internal contradiction—it wants a well-lived life without any overriding aims, but such a life is understandable only in light of affirming life-aims. The former convincingly shows that the structure of action reveals the truth of the well-known apothegm—“we reap what we sow.” The main point for Dante is not who is rational (for even the rational can be vicious, as depicted in the Inferno), but whose aims actually fulfill the practical life. This comparison of Dante and Rorty can have larger pedagogical aims, helping students to understand better what Albert William Levi calls “the moral imagination” and deepening their appreciation of how metaphors and paradigms of moral excellence provide, or fail to provide, an overriding unity and purpose to our actions.

Pragmatism and Moral Knowledge

1998 ◽  
Vol 24 ◽  
pp. 227-252 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Bakhurst
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Moral Imagination ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Deliberation ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Facts

In the last twenty years there has been a dramatic revival of interest in the idea that there can be genuine moral knowledge. The noncognitivist assumptions that dominated so much twentieth-century ethical theory no longer seem the obvious truths they once did to so many thinkers. It is now common to hear the claim that moral values are genuine constituents of the furniture of the world - or at least of its upholstery- and that moral deliberation and judgment legitimately aspire to truth. Morality, it is frequently argued, is a realm of discovery rather than invention, and moral reasoning, and the play of moral imagination, must be constrained by how the moral facts stand.Such “realist” or “cognitivist” views in ethics take many forms. This essay considers whether a pragmatist account of moral knowledge might fruitfully be developed. My project will recommend itself only to those who believe that pragmatist insights serve to support relatively robust conceptions of truth and justification.

Moral reasoning is the process of asking moral questions and answering them

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark Alfano
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Dependent Process ◽  
Asking Questions ◽  
Path Dependent ◽  
Path Dependent Process ◽  
Moral Questions

Abstract Reasoning is the iterative, path-dependent process of asking questions and answering them. Moral reasoning is a species of such reasoning, so it is a matter of asking and answering moral questions, which requires both creativity and curiosity. As such, interventions and practices that help people ask more and better moral questions promise to improve moral reasoning.

Upgrading Moral Reasoning

1980 ◽  
Vol 25 (12) ◽  
pp. 1000-1000
Author(s):  
WILLIAM J. WINSLADE
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning

In a Higher Voice: Postformal Operational Thought and Postconventional Moral Reasoning

1992 ◽  
Vol 37 (7) ◽  
pp. 695-696
Author(s):  
John Snarey ◽  
Steven M. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning
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