Philosophical Criteria Research Articles

The Primacy of Philosophical Theology

The center of theology, I shall argue, is philosophical theology, that is, philosophical analysis of fundamental religious concepts and claims. Whether there can be any revelation, general or special, and which putative revelation or revealed theology, if any, is genuine must be settled by reference to philosophical criteria. Whether the very concept of God itself is a coherent concept such that there could be a revelation, a legitimate object of faith, and a source of religious truth, must be made out on philosophical grounds. … The critical question is: Can philosophy justifiably be the kind of arbiter I am maintaining it can?

Moral Commitments, Legal Validity and Duty Under Law

An assumption commonly underlies views which hold that moral utterances are capable of being correct or incorrect, valid or invalid. It is that we must find out whether a moral assertion is correct or incorrect by referring it to an objective rational or empirical standard. But the characteristics of the standard vary from theory to theory and even within individual theories. Utilitarians, for example, agree that the standard must be found in the human experiences consequent upon action. But they cannot agree whether the experiences should be those of the members of an actual community or an ideal community, whether these experiences should be computed for each case or for the average case, or whether the experience itself should be simply pleasure or something having intrinsic value. But there is one area of morals in which we consistently reach agreement without having to resort to a common ultimate criterion of duty. Let us ignore for the purposes of this discussion those higher duties, often called virtues, such as courage, benevolence, devotion to excellence, which require special capacities and gifts not possessed by all persons; and ignore also the question of what forms our duties would take in a perfectly constituted society. Let us attend exclusively to those duties which we do now have and fulfil or transgress from day to day. Here at least it is undeniable that people who hold very different views about ultimate criteria frequently reach agreement on the nature of their duties. And a man may on occasion acknowledge the force of a moral rule even though the rule is inconsistent with the philosophical criterion he himself regards as most appropriate. How is this fact of our agreement on actual rules in the face of disagreement about criteria to be explained ? I will argue that the explanation is to be found in the logic of our use of moral rules; that although statements of obligation are not themselves logically true, our duties of compliance spring from the logical relations between such statements and our own performances, and not directly from the relations between these statements and observable features of experience. The procedure I think we follow in arguments about obligations has two main parts. The first part concerns the relation between rules and performances and depends upon the fact that statements of obligation and permission, unlike statements asserting practical advantage, are normative and therefore inherently general. If, given some purpose, the act b on one occasion is desirable under conditions a, it may be the case that, given the same purpose and conditions, the performance of b will always be desirable.

Events, Periods, and Institutions in Historians' Language

Historians and meta-historians have sometimes been guilty of loose talk about the Weltgeist and of glib references to inflated forces and factors. One might infer from some quasi-historical writings that things like the Enlightenment, the German Character, the Bourgeoisie, the Spirit of Liberty, and Nationalism existed and acted independently of the actions of individual men. More toughminded historians and philosophers have objected to this kind of history, sometimes because it seemed to make unhappy metaphysical assumptions, sometimes because it was alleged to involve a denial of free will and to have offensive moral implications, and sometimes just because it was judged vague and sloppy historical writing. There is a temptation in the face of a too free use of certain kinds of expressions to generalize from abuses and lay down an abstract philosophical criterion with which to divide good history from bad. It has been argued, for example, by the defenders of a thesis or rather a tangle of related theses which goes by the name of individualism that terms which refer to individual men or concrete objects and properties or dispositions of men and objects can be distinguished from purported names and characteristics of such problematical things as events, periods, institutions, forces, factors, movements, nations, spirits, and social classes. Various restrictions on the use of terms of the latter kind have been proposed by the methodological individualists, including, in the strongest form of the thesis, the requirement that all names of so-called social wholes be given strict definitions in terms of expressions of the first category. The thesis, in several formulations, has generated a lively debate, but one carried on largely in the abstract. I shall argue in this paper that no general prohibition against the use of holistic terms can be justified, that the distinction between legitimate and illegitimate uses of such terms is a problem for historians rather than for philosophers or methodologists a problem that must be handled case by case. Further, I shall contend, the use of holistic terms does not, in general, have the pernicious metaphysical consequences alleged by some of the methodological individualists.

The Artistic Process As Qualitative Problem Solving

are appropriate for the evaluation of such a wide variety of discourse. When judged by literary criteria the literary efforts of artists are found to range from the grotesque to the polished and, at times, the elegant. For examples of this stylistic range one need only compare the Dada manifestoes with Delacroix's Journal. When judged by philosophical criteria the generalizations of artists rank from the superficial, and occasionally the incoherent, to the profound. This intellectual gamut is readily noted by comparing a random sample of the flood of statements by contemporary artists published in catalogues and magazines with Leonardo's Notebooks. When judged by educational criteria treatises on art run from the highly specific to the broadly theoretical. One thinks of Cennini's Book of the Art, the original

The Artistic Process as Qualitative Problem Solving

are appropriate for the evaluation of such a wide variety of discourse. When judged by literary criteria the literary efforts of artists are found to range from the grotesque to the polished and, at times, the elegant. For examples of this stylistic range one need only compare the Dada manifestoes with Delacroix's Journal. When judged by philosophical criteria the generalizations of artists rank from the superficial, and occasionally the incoherent, to the profound. This intellectual gamut is readily noted by comparing a random sample of the flood of statements by contemporary artists published in catalogues and magazines with Leonardo's Notebooks. When judged by educational criteria treatises on art run from the highly specific to the broadly theoretical. One thinks of Cennini's Book of the Art, the original

''Philosophies of Management" in Philosophical Perspective

Although any view of the social role of manage ment can be shown to have assumptions about the nature of man and society, it is necessary to create such views with philosophical criteria in mind from the beginning. This last has not been done, and the consequences are that the decision- making manager is isolated from general theories about social values. Social responsibility is defined in terms of conformity to the mores of the society in which the businessman—manager —is operating. This truncates his thinking just below the level where philosophical decisions must be made, because it eschews the role of management in guiding social change and totally ignores the classical content of social philosophy and the methods of ethical analysis. There is an analogous fallacy of reducing ethics to psychology, which is a common con ceptual failing of management as well as of managerial "philos ophers" such as Mayo and Drucker. These failings, combined with a reluctance to face a reassessment of the ethics of profes sionalism, decrease the ability of management to cope with basic disagreements among systems of values. The foregoing can be illustrated by reference to three problems: social respon sibility, the destructive reduction of ethics to psychology, and the conflict between the ego and the ethics of professionalism.