Selected Essays

by Michael Slote

Overview

In Selected Essays Michael Slote collects some of the most important papers of his career, articles that were both influential as well as those that remain relevant to philosophical debates today. The papers range over a number of important topics—not all of them within or having to do with ethics. Three of the papers have to do with ways in which one might fill out or expand upon traditional utilitarian views—while remaining within the utilitarian tradition. Two of the papers focus on free will, and another pair discuss rational choice and argue that traditional views about individual rationality unduly limit our possibilities.

The papers outside ethics deal with such topics as counterfactuals; Wittgensteinian accounts of "cluster terms;" some familiar concepts we use that cannot apply to reality; and a paradox about the possibility of circumstances where it is linguistically inappropriate to assert what one believes. In addition to the previously published essays, Slote includes more recent and unpublished papers that deal with the uses of empathy in the context of global issues of justice; the limitations of the "moral reasoning" model of normal moral thinking; and the relevance of empathy to the epistemic ideal of objectivity. The final paper of the volume speaks about recent developments in ethical theory and what they may tell us about the possibilities of future progress or lack of progress in that field.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780195391435
Publisher:	Oxford University Press, USA
Publication date:	12/31/2009
Pages:	344
Product dimensions:	6.40(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Michael Slote is Professor of Ethics at the University of Miami.

Table of Contents

Introduction
1. The Theory of Important Criteria
2. Value Judgments and the Theory of Important Criteria
3. The Rationality of Aesthetic Value Judgments
4. Inapplicable Concepts
5. Morality and Ignorance
6. Time in Counterfactuals
7. Assertion and Belief
8. Understanding Free Will
9. Selective Necessity and the Free-Will Problem
10. Is Virtue Possible?
11. Morality Not a System of Imperatives
12. Review of Alvin Plantinga's God and Other Minds
13. Utilitarianism, Moral Dilemmas, and Moral Cost
14. Object Utilitarianism
15. Utilitarian Virtue
16. Moderation, Rationality, and Virtue
17. Rational Dilemmas and Rational Supererogation
18. Ethics Naturalized
19. Nietzsche and Virtue Ethics
20. Caring Versus the Philosophers
21. Global Caring, Global Justice
22. Empathy and Objectivity
23. In Place of Moral Reasoning
24. Some Thoughts for the Future

Editorial Reviews

"Slote's reflections offer some real insights, sometimes into the philosophers he considers, but more into the nature of moral thought in general." —Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

From the Publisher