Praise and Blame: Moral Realism and Its Applications: Moral Realism and Its Applications

by Daniel N. Robinson

How should a prize be awarded after a horse race? Should it go to the best rider, the best person, or the one who finishes first? To what extent are bystanders blameworthy when they do nothing to prevent harm? Are there any objective standards of moral responsibility with which to address such perennial questions? In this fluidly written and lively book, Daniel Robinson takes on the prodigious task of setting forth the contours of praise and blame. He does so by mounting an important and provocative new defense of a radical theory of moral realism and offering a critical appraisal of prevailing alternatives such as determinism and behaviorism and of their conceptual shortcomings.

The version of moral realism that arises from Robinson's penetrating inquiry--an inquiry steeped in Aristotelian ethics but deeply informed by modern scientific knowledge of human cognition--is independent of cognition and emotion. At the same time, Robinson carefully explores how such human attributes succeed or fail in comprehending real moral properties. Through brilliant analyses of constitutional and moral luck, of biosocial and genetic versions of psychological determinism, and of relativistic-anthropological accounts of variations in moral precepts, he concludes that none of these conceptions accounts either for the nature of moral properties or the basis upon which they could be known. Ultimately, the theory that Robinson develops preserves moral properties even while acknowledging the conditions that undermine the powers of human will.

Genres: Philosophy

240 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2002

About the author

Daniel N. Robinson is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Georgetown University and a Fellow of the Faculty of Philosophy, Oxford University.

Robinson has published in a wide variety of subjects, including moral philosophy, the philosophy of psychology, legal philosophy, the philosophy of the mind, intellectual history, legal history, and the history of psychology. He has held academic positions at Amherst College, Georgetown University, Princeton University, and Columbia University. In addition, he served as the principal consultant to PBS and the BBC for their award-winning series 'The Brain' and 'The Mind', and he lectured for 'The Great Courses' series on Philosophy. He is on the Board of Consulting Scholars of Princeton University's James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions and is a Senior Fellow of BYU's Wheatley Institution. In 2011 he received the Gittler Award from the American Psychological Association for significant contributions to the philosophical foundations of Psychology.