Moral Imperative
   HOME
*





Moral Imperative
A moral imperative is a strongly-felt principle that compels that person to act. It is a kind of categorical imperative, as defined by Immanuel Kant. Kant took the imperative to be a dictate of pure reason, in its practical aspect. Not following the moral law was seen to be self-defeating and thus contrary to reason. Later thinkers took the imperative to originate in conscience, as the divine voice speaking through the human spirit. The dictates of conscience are simply right and often resist further justification. Looked at another way, the experience of conscience is the basic experience of encountering the right. An example of not following a moral imperative is making a promise that you do not intend to keep in order to get something. Global Economic Moral imperative Toby Ord Explores a moral imperative driven by a utilitarian view in relation to economics and global health. A hypothetical example he gives is that a group has $40,000 to spend on blindness. The money c ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Categorical Imperative
The categorical imperative (german: kategorischer Imperativ) is the central philosophical concept in the deontological moral philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Introduced in Kant's 1785 ''Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals'', it is a way of evaluating motivations for action. It is best known in its original formulation: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law."It is standard to also reference the ''Akademie Ausgabe'' of Kant's works. The ''Groundwork'' occurs in the fourth volume. Citations throughout this article follow the format 4:x. For example, the above citation is taken from 4:421. According to Kant, sentient beings occupy a special place in creation, and morality can be summed up in an imperative, or ultimate commandment of reason, from which all duties and obligations derive. He defines an ''imperative'' as any proposition declaring a certain action (or inaction) to be necessary. Hypothetical imperati ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant (, , ; 22 April 1724 – 12 February 1804) was a German philosopher and one of the central Enlightenment thinkers. Born in Königsberg, Kant's comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics have made him one of the most influential figures in modern Western philosophy. In his doctrine of transcendental idealism, Kant argued that space and time are mere "forms of intuition" which structure all experience, and therefore that, while " things-in-themselves" exist and contribute to experience, they are nonetheless distinct from the objects of experience. From this it follows that the objects of experience are mere "appearances", and that the nature of things as they are in themselves is unknowable to us. In an attempt to counter the skepticism he found in the writings of philosopher David Hume, he wrote the '' Critique of Pure Reason'' (1781/1787), one of his most well-known works. In it, he developed his theory of ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Pure Reason
Speculative reason, sometimes called theoretical reason or pure reason, is theoretical (or logical, deductive) thought, as opposed to practical (active, willing) thought. The distinction between the two goes at least as far back as the ancient Greek philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, who distinguished between theory (''theoria,'' or a wide, bird's eye view of a topic, or clear vision of its structure) and practice (''praxis''), as well as ''techne''. Speculative reason is contemplative, detached, and certain, whereas practical reason is engaged, involved, active, and dependent upon the specifics of the situation. Speculative reason provides the universal, necessary principles of logic, such as the principle of non-contradiction, which must apply everywhere, regardless of the specifics of the situation. On the other hand, practical reason is the use of reason to decide how to act. It contrasts with theoretical reason or speculative reason. Some may try and refer to pract ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Toby Ord
Toby David Godfrey Ord (born July 1979) is an Australian philosopher. He founded Giving What We Can in 2009, an international society whose members pledge to donate at least 10% of their income to effective charities, and is a key figure in the effective altruism movement, which promotes using reason and evidence to help the lives of others as much as possible. He is a senior research fellow at the University of Oxford's Future of Humanity Institute, where his work is focused on existential risk. His book on the subject '' The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity'' was published in March 2020. Early life and education Ord was born in Melbourne, Australia, in 1979. He later attended the University of Melbourne, where he initially studied computer science. On completing his first degree, he switched to studying philosophy to pursue his interest in ethics, later stating: "At this stage I knew that I wanted to make a large positive difference in the world and it ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Gary Locke
Gary Faye Locke (born January 21, 1950) is an American politician and diplomat serving as the interim president of Bellevue College, the largest of the institutions that make up the Washington Community and Technical Colleges system. Locke served as the 21st governor of Washington (1997–2005), the 5th King County Executive (1994–1997), the 10th United States ambassador to China (2011–2014), and the United States Secretary of Commerce (2009–2011). Locke is the first Chinese American governor as well as the first Asian American governor in the continental United States. He was also the first Chinese American to serve as U.S. ambassador to China. Early life Gary Locke was born on January 21, 1950, in Seattle, Washington, and spent his early years living in the Yesler Terrace public housing project. A third-generation Chinese American with paternal ancestry from Jilong village, Taishan, Guangdong, China, Locke is the second of five children of James Locke, who served as a ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  




José Ángel Gurría
José Ángel Gurría Treviño, also known as Ángel Gurría, (born 8 May 1950) is a Mexican economist and diplomat. From 1 June 2006 to 31 May 2021, he was the secretary-general of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Early life and education Born in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Gurría graduated with a bachelor's degree in Economics from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM) and undertook postgraduate studies at the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom and at Harvard University in the United States. Besides his native Spanish, Gurría speaks French, English, Portuguese, Italian and German. Career Early career Gurría served in the financial area of Mexico’s Federal Electricity Commission (CFE), National Development Bank (Nafinsa), Rural Development Fund, and the Office of the Mayor of Mexico City from 1968 to 1976. From 1976 to 1978, Gurría served as Mexico’s Permanent Representative to the International Coffee Organization (IFO ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Thomas Pogge
Thomas Winfried Menko Pogge (; born 13 August 1953) is a German philosopher and is the Director of the Global Justice Program and Leitner Professor of Philosophy and International Affairs at Yale University. In addition to his Yale appointment, he is the Research Director of the Centre for the Study of the Mind in Nature at the University of Oslo, a Professorial Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at Charles Sturt University and Professor of Political Philosophy at the University of Central Lancashire's Centre for Professional Ethics. Pogge is also an editor for social and political philosophy for the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy and a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters. Early life Pogge received his PhD from Harvard University with a dissertation supervised by John Rawls. Since then, he has published widely on Immanuel Kant and in moral and political philosophy, including various books on Rawls and global justice. Ma ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Deontological Ethics
In moral philosophy, deontological ethics or deontology (from Greek: + ) is the normative ethical theory that the morality of an action should be based on whether that action itself is right or wrong under a series of rules and principles, rather than based on the consequences of the action. It is sometimes described as duty-, obligation-, or rule-based ethics. Waller, Bruce N. 2005. ''Consider Ethics: Theory, Readings, and Contemporary Issues''. New York: Pearson Longman. p. 23. Deontological ethics is commonly contrasted to consequentialism, virtue ethics, and pragmatic ethics. In this terminology, action is more important than the consequences. The term ''deontological'' was first used to describe the current, specialised definition by C. D. Broad in his 1930 book, ''Five Types of Ethical Theory''. Older usage of the term goes back to Jeremy Bentham, who coined it prior to 1816 as a synonym of ''dicastic'' or ''censorial ethics'' (i.e., ethics based on judgement). The mor ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Teleology
Teleology (from and )Partridge, Eric. 1977''Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English'' London: Routledge, p. 4187. or finalityDubray, Charles. 2020 912Teleology" In ''The Catholic Encyclopedia'' 14. New York: Robert Appleton Company. Retrieved 3 May 2020. – via ''New Advent'', transcribed by D. J. Potter is a reason or an explanation for something which serves as a function of its end, its purpose, or its goal, as opposed to something which serves as a function of its cause. A purpose that is imposed by human use, such as the purpose of a fork to hold food, is called ''extrinsic''. ''Natural teleology,'' common in classical philosophy, though controversial today, contends that natural entities also have ''intrinsic'' purposes, regardless of human use or opinion. For instance, Aristotle claimed that an acorn's intrinsic ''telos'' is to become a fully grown oak tree. Though ancient atomists rejected the notion of natural teleology, teleological accounts of non ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Ethical Dilemma
In philosophy, ethical dilemmas, also called ethical paradoxes or moral dilemmas, are situations in which an agent stands under two (or more) ''conflicting moral requirements'', none of which ''overrides'' the other. A closely related definition characterizes ethical dilemmas as situations in which every available choice is wrong. The term is also used in a ''wider sense'' in everyday language to refer to ethical conflicts that may be resolvable, to psychologically difficult choices or to other types of difficult ethical problems. This article is about ethical dilemmas in the ''strict philosophical sense'', often referred to as ''genuine ethical dilemmas''. Various examples have been proposed but there is disagreement as to whether these constitute ''genuine'' or ''merely apparent'' ethical dilemmas. The central debate around ethical dilemmas concerns the question of whether there are any. Defenders often point to apparent examples while their opponents usually aim to show their exi ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


picture info

Concepts In Ethics
Concepts are defined as abstract ideas. They are understood to be the fundamental building blocks of the concept behind principles, thoughts and beliefs. They play an important role in all aspects of cognition. As such, concepts are studied by several disciplines, such as linguistics, psychology, and philosophy, and these disciplines are interested in the logical and psychological structure of concepts, and how they are put together to form thoughts and sentences. The study of concepts has served as an important flagship of an emerging interdisciplinary approach called cognitive science. In contemporary philosophy, there are at least three prevailing ways to understand what a concept is: * Concepts as mental representations, where concepts are entities that exist in the mind (mental objects) * Concepts as abilities, where concepts are abilities peculiar to cognitive agents (mental states) * Concepts as Fregean senses, where concepts are abstract objects, as opposed to mental obje ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  


Intention
Intentions are mental states in which the agent commits themselves to a course of action. Having the plan to visit the zoo tomorrow is an example of an intention. The action plan is the ''content'' of the intention while the commitment is the ''attitude'' towards this content. Other mental states can have action plans as their content, as when one admires a plan, but differ from intentions since they do not involve a practical commitment to realizing this plan. Successful intentions bring about the intended course of action while unsuccessful intentions fail to do so. Intentions, like many other mental states, have intentionality: they represent possible states of affairs. Theories of intention try to capture the characteristic features of intentions. The ''belief-desire theory'' is the traditionally dominant approach. According to a simple version of it, having an intention is nothing but having a desire to perform a certain action and a belief that one will perform this action. ...
[...More Info...]      
[...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]