On the one hand, "the attack on moral relativism was part of an effort to rearm the West spiritually" for the battle ahead, while "the attack on cognitive relativism aimed at making a clear distinction between the scholarship and science of the Free World and the debased practices of its enemies" (282). In the long run, the opinions should fall beyond the margins of historiography, and therefore the judgment of any work of historiography should not be preset by a conceptual disagreement. Novick's perspective on the objectivity question undoubtedly guided his book. However, his beliefs are unable to create the past. Even the most simple personal beliefs and bias can skew the appearance we see of the
Nanx Dakum PHIL 100 TA: Xuan Wang Proff: Dave McElhoes December 2, 2011 ‘A Defense against the Teleological Argument’ ‘Introduction’ In this paper I will argue that the Teleological argument is not a good argument for God’s existence. First I will explain the argument, and then I will object to specific premises of the argument. I will also point out the strengths of the argument and what a theist could say to counter my objections. I will explain objections such as the ‘Bad Engineer Objection’ to expose the weaknesses of the Teleological argument and prove that my thesis is indeed correct. To strengthen my credibility I will also use other objections by different philosophers.
As a further definition, Mackie posits that an objective moral value has the quality of ‘ought-to-be-pursued-ness’, it is something one should or ought do because it contains an inherently normative aspect. If Mackie’s argument is to succeed, it must prove that this supposed normative aspect has no existence within any act in itself, but has its origin in the agent of said act, and as such, all moral claims are false. Mackie’s exposition of moral relativism comes in the form of two main arguments, the first being his ‘argument from relativity’, the second, his ‘argument from queerness’. It is with the argument from relativity that I shall be here concerned. The argument from relativity is based around the purely ‘descriptive’ idea that it is an empirically observable fact that there seems to be
Yet before analysing this, it is important to consider the main ideas behind Descartes’ meditations. The first of these see’s Descartes engage in a process of radical doubt, one which he believes will leave him with one certain truth, and thus a truth which can be used as a criterion to judge every other idea which he may obtain (Cottingham, 1992). The reason for this being the deceptive nature of the senses from which all his knowledge was obtained from. “All that up to the present time I
In William L. Rowe’s essay The Ontological Argument Rowe carefully details an argument that, upon first read, appears to convincingly prove that God does not exist. His argument has, however, been even more carefully torn apart and examined by some of the worlds greatest philosophers and is often criticized. In my essay I will prove that Rowe’s argument although seemingly perfect comes nowhere near disproving the existence of a God. Quote #1 “…Anselm insists that anyone who hears of God, thinks about God, or even denies the existence of God is, nevertheless, committed to the view that God exists in the understanding.” I will use this quote to support the idea of God. This quote does not prove his existence but it does prove that
Holmes espoused a form of moral skepticism and opposed the doctrine of natural law, marking a significant shift in American jurisprudence. As he wrote in one of his most famous decisions, his dissent in Abrams v. United States (1919), he regarded the United States Constitution as "an experiment, as all life is an experiment" and believed that as a consequence "we should be eternally vigilant against attempts to check the expression of opinions that we loathe and believe to be fraught with death." His jurisprudence influenced much subsequent American legal thinking, including judicial consensus supporting New Deal regulatory law, pragmatism, critical legal studies, and law and economics. The Journal of Legal Studies has identified Holmes as one of the three most cited American legal scholars of the 20th century. Holmes was known for his pithy, short, and frequently quoted opinions.
The Hermeneutic Conception of Culture Heidegger, the founder of the hermeneutic paradigm, rejected the traditional account of cultural activity as a search for universally valid foundations for human action and knowledge. His main work, Sein und Zeit (1927), develops a holistic epistemology according to which all meaning is context-dependent and permanently anticipated from a particular horizon, perspective or background of intelligibility. The result is a powerful critique directed against the ideal of objectivity. Gadamer shares with Heidegger the hermeneutic reflections developed in Sein und Zeit and the critique of objectivity, describing the cultural activity as an endless process of "fusions of horizons." On the one hand, this is an echo of the Heideggerian holism, namely, of the thesis that all meaning depends on a particular interpretative context.
In defense of Kant, I would start by pointing out that the formula of universal law is only the first one of the formulations he gives of the categorical imperative. It would be unfair to judge the whole of Kant’s moral theory by the incompleteness of the formula of universal law. As I understand it, Kant continued with the other formulations at least partly because because he recognized that the formula of universal law seemed incomplete as the sole categorical imperative. One problem with the formula of universal law seems to be that it can generate a contradiction (and so be a morally impermissible action to take) for something which actually isn’t a moral concern. This is an issue that has been raised by others, but now I’ll formulate a more personal example to illustrate this problem.
At the same time, however, our personal set of opinions control how we see things around us. We are the ones that are given the choice of what is being seen and what is believed. Empiricism began with John Locke who attacked Cartesian idea that reason alone could provide us with knowledge. Locke came out with the term of “Tabula Rasa.” It means that the mind comes into life blank, or empty and is written on by experience. Later, Philosopher Hume came out with his version of the “tabula rasa” principle, the copy theory of ideas.
Rather than be content with what history had taught them, they would seek the truth, rather than settle for superstition and fear. Postmodernism, as Granz points out, derived from this philosophy. Its thought denies the very grounds on which western cultures have based their “truths”: absolute knowledge and meaning. Jean-Francois Lyotard, a French philosopher and leading postmodernist, was sceptical about the Enlightenment, and wrote about Grand Narratives and Little Narratives in reaction to this theory. The Grand narrative (known as meta-narratives) is a term used in the Enlightenment to describe everything inside a certain framework.