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Right Action (right + action)
Selected AbstractsIntentions and Causes, Actions and Right ActionsRATIO, Issue 1 2000Robert N. McLaughlin I argue in this essay that belief/desire explanations are not logically true and not causal, and further that the antecedent of a true belief/desire conditional cannot be strengthened in such a way as to transform it into a true causal statement. I also argue that belief/desire explanations are not dispensable: they are presupposed in our justifications of scientific claims. The proposal is not that psychological determinism is false, but that some at least of our activities are not describable in causal terms. These arguments prepare the ground for a puzzle. If all human intentional behaviour is caused, then all actual linkages between psychological states and behaviour should be expressed in causal statements. But neither the action of asserting a causal statement nor the action of justifying the assertion can be described as the result of a cause. Therefore if one accepts that scientific claims can be justified, not all linkages between psychological states and subsequent action are expressible in causal statements. I do not offer a solution to this puzzle. [source] The Final Ends of Higher Education in Light of an African Moral TheoryJOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY OF EDUCATION, Issue 2 2009THADDEUS METZ From the perspective of an African ethic, analytically interpreted as a philosophical principle of right action, what are the proper final ends of a publicly funded university and how should they be ranked? To answer this question, I first provide a brief but inclusive review of the literature on Africanising higher education from the past 50 years, and contend that the prominent final ends suggested in it can be reduced to five major categories. Then, I spell out an intuitively attractive African moral theory and apply it to these five final ends, arguing that three of them are appropriate but that two of them are not. After that, I maintain that the African moral theory prescribes two additional final ends for a public university that are not salient in the literature. Next, I argue that employing the African moral theory as I do enables one to rebut several criticisms of Africanising higher education that have recently been made from a liberal perspective. I conclude by posing questions suitable for future research. [source] RIGHT ACT, VIRTUOUS MOTIVEMETAPHILOSOPHY, Issue 1-2 2010THOMAS HURKA Abstract: The concepts of virtue and right action are closely connected, in that we expect people with virtuous motives to at least often act rightly. Two well-known views explain this connection by defining one of the concepts in terms of the other. Instrumentalists about virtue identify virtuous motives as those that lead to right acts; virtue-ethicists identify right acts as those that are or would be done from virtuous motives. This essay outlines a rival explanation, based on the "higher-level" account of virtue defended in the author's Virtue, Vice, and Value. On this account rightness and virtue go together because each is defined by a (different) relation to some other, more basic moral concept. Their frequent coincidence is therefore like a correlation between A and B based not on either's causing the other but on their being joint effects of a single common cause. [source] Persuasion in International Politics: A Rationalist AccountPOLITICS & POLICY, Issue 4 2005James I. Walsh Governments offer us the promise of rewards or the threats of punishment to secure favorable international bargains, but they also draw on reasoned arguments to convince their bargaining partners to accept mutually beneficial agreements. Works that have studied such attempts at persuasion hold that it is most likely to succeed when the states involved share important normative values or are uncertain about what is the "right" action to take. Drawing on rational choice theory of strategic communication, this study seeks to expand understanding the conditions under which attempts at persuasion in international politics succeed or fail. Persuasion can occur for reasons other than shared values; under some conditions, one state can persuade another by altering the latter's beliefs about the rewards associated with available foreign policy options. [source] | ||||||||||