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Moral Being in Contemporary Views of the Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 April 2009

Robert L. Vance
Robert L. Vance
Affiliation:
Meredith College
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Abstract

Recent discussions of the nature of mind, emotion, and self have often intersected with renewed interest in the sources of morals and morality. In this article I examine proposals on these matters by Charles Taylor and two of his interlocutors, Thomas Wren and Justin Oakley. I describe and compare the “holistic” epistemological approaches of these three in their searches for the “moral self,” and then evaluate the adequacy of their correlative ontological proposals. Finally, I discuss the meta-ethical implications of these emotive views of selfhood in terms of the objective or subjective status of moral values to determine whether these views meet the philosophers' own criteria for moral plausibility.

Type
Articles
Information
Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie , Volume 45 , Issue 4 , Fall 2006 , pp. 713 - 729
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 2006

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References

Notes

1 Taylor, Charles, “Responsibility for Self,” in The Identities of Persons, edited by Rorty, A. O. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 281–89, esp. pp. 281, 299.Google Scholar

2 Oakley, Justin, Morality and the Emotions (London: Routledge, 1992), p. 38.Google Scholar

3 This point of view, which I have already described as a “holistic” view of an “intrinsic” self, is characterized by Thomas Wren as the standard “internalist” view of the moral self. See Wren, Thomas, Caring about Morality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), pp. 16–17.Google Scholar

4 Taylor, Charles, Sources of the Self (Cambridge, MA: Harvard Press, 1989), pp. 83–84.Google Scholar

5 Wren, Thomas E., “The Open-Textured Concepts of Morality and the Self” in The Moral Self, edited by Noam, Gil G. and Wren, Thomas E. (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1993), pp. 78–95, esp. pp. 79, 92–93.Google Scholar

6 Ibid., p. 94.

7 Dennett, Daniel, “Conditions of Personhood,” in The Identities of Persons, edited by Rorty, A. O. (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1976), pp. 175–96, esp. pp. 176–77.Google Scholar

8 Ibid., pp. 192–93.

9 Taylor, , Sources of the Self, pp. 448–49.Google Scholar

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13 Ibid., p. 34.

14 Hittinger, Russell, “Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self,” Review of Metaphysics, 44 (09 1990): 111–30Google Scholar, esp. pp. 112–13. See also Lane, Melissa, “God or Orienteering? A Critical Study of Taylor,” Ratio (06 1992): 46–56, esp. pp. 54–56.Google Scholar

15 Hittinger, , “Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self,” p. 129.Google Scholar

16 Taylor, , Sources of the Self, p. 19.Google Scholar

17 Ibid., pp. 4–5.

18 Ibid., p. 5.

19 Ibid., p. 7.

20 Ibid., pp. 6–7.

21 Ibid., p. 7.

22 Ibid.

23 Flanagan, Owen, Varieties of Moral Personality (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1991), pp. 12, 16, 54–55Google Scholar. See also Lane, , “God or Orienteering? A Critical Study of Taylor,” p. 47.Google Scholar

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26 Taylor, , Sources of the Self, p. 8.Google Scholar

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 Oakley, , Morality and the Emotions, p. 7.Google Scholar

30 Ibid., pp. 39–40, 78.

31 Ibid., pp. 40, 189.

32 Ibid., pp. 45–47, 188.

33 Wren, , “The Open-Textured Concepts of Morality and the Self,” p. 90.Google Scholar

34 Wren, Thomas E., Caring about Morality (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1991), p. 10.Google Scholar

35 Ibid., p. 16.

36 Ibid., p. 17.

37 Ibid., pp. 8–10.

38 Ibid., p. 10.

39 Ibid., p. 18.

40 Ibid., p. 19.

41 Ibid., p. 20.

42 Ibid., pp. 18–19.

43 Wren, , “The Open-Textured Concepts of Morality and the Self,” pp. 84, 87.Google Scholar

44 Ibid., p. 85.

45 Ibid., p. 79.

46 Ibid., p. 92.

47 Ibid., p. 94.

48 Oakley, , Morality and the Emotions, pp. 39–40.Google Scholar

49 Ibid., p. 39.

50 Ibid., p. 40.

51 Taylor, , Sources of the Self, p. 510.Google Scholar

52 Taylor, Charles, “Comments and Replies,” Inquiry, 34, 2 (06 1991): 237–54, esp. p. 247.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

53 Ibid., p. 249.

54 Ibid., p. 252.

55 Taylor, , Sources of the Self, pp. 317–19.Google Scholar

56 Wren, , “The Open-Textured Concepts of Morality and the Self,” p. 90.Google Scholar