cloth 1-56639-287-X $89.50, Feb 95, Available
232 pp
6x9
"This is an original and provocative work that assertsand arguably demonstratesthe conjunction between ethics and metaphysics. Stahl writes in an authentic and distinctive voice; he not only presents argumentsit is clear that he also believes them. The point he stresses repeatedly is not a version of 'compatibilism' between science and ethics, between the material and moral worldsbut the necessity of the relation between them (and so also, of course, of its possibility). This is an important thesis from which both moral philosophers and researchers in the sciences can learn. Stahl calls attention to significant issues in ethics and in the relation between ethics and epistemologyand does this in a way that is at once challenging and evocative. This is a valuable addition to the literature."
Berel Lang, State University of New York at Albany
Given the evolutionary and developmental processes that form a human being, can we plausibly believe that people can make rational and autonomous choices about their lives? How can such choices be non-arbitrary and compelling if there are no norms outside the historical process against which they can be judged? And if that historical process is simply an accidental episode in an indifferent universe, what sorts of meanings can individual lives and choices have?
These are the questions that Gary H. Stahl addresses in this original and provocative work. Drawing on arguments from biology and psychology as well as from the history of philosophy, Stahl examines the naturalistic meaning that can be assigned to moral agency, choice, and responsibility, in order to assert the conjunction between ethics and metaphysics. His focus is the process within which the self and the other, defined in terms of each other, emerge within evolution and development so as to generate an irreducible level of meaning.
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Tree Original Questions
1. On Not Reducing Agents to Organisms
People and Process
Levels of Process
The Emergence of Persons within Process
Methodological Problems and Prospects
2. Biological and Ethical Processes
Health at Different Levels of Process
"Health" and "Disease" as Integrative Concepts
Morality as an Ordering Principle
Health and Morality as Levels of Integration
Emergent Levels of Space and Time
Replies to Some Criticisms
Implications of the Bioethical Parallels
3. The Exemplary Status of Moral Acts
Meaning in History
History and Evolution as Limits to Moral Meaning
Acts in Moral Space and Time
Moral Judgment as Both Reflective and Determinant
Transition to the Issues of History
4. W.W. Miller and the Midworld of Action
Miller's Role in the Discussion
Miller's Basic Philosophic Stance
The Finite Act as Constitutional
The Role of "Functional Objects"
Transition Back to the Original Questions
5. The Constitutional Status of the Three Original Questions
The Status of the Original Questions
The Questions as Representing the Dialectic of Process
Reformulations of Question 1
Reformulations of Question 2
Reformulations of Question 3
Transition to Issues of Methodology
6. Self and the Focus of Significance
The Status of Inquiry in The Developmental Sciences
Organism and Environment Can Be Treated as Separate Entities
Similar Outcomes Are the Result of Similar Processes
Science Is Value Free
The Concept of "Locus of Significance"
Transition to Issues of Development
7. Meaning as the Order of Processes
The Continuity of Developmental Processes
Deprivation Experiments, Both Biological and Moral
The Inseparability of Subject and Object
The Drive toward Reductionism
Irreducible Outcome in Development
Taking the Outcome as the Locus of Significance
8. Albert Hofstadter and the Dialectic of Process
The Next Steps of the Argument
The Historical Dialectic of Aesthetic Theory
The Level of Truth of Statement
The Level of Truth of Things
The Level of Truth of Spirit
The Relations between the Three Modes of Truth
Relationships between the Levels of Ownness
The Interpenetration of the Three Modes of Truth
The Demand for Ownness with All That Is
9. Human Transactions as the Locus of Significance
What Remains to Be Done
Necessity Is in the Conditions of Process
Returning to Socrates' Question
The Problem of the RegressOne More Time
Dissolving the Problem of Schematism
The Emergence of Meaning in Time
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Gary H. Stahl is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado, Boulder.
In memoriam: "A full life is constituted by the history of its relations to others, and a full death must include these. We are dealing here with solidarity and unique relations among people, not with death that enforces a solitude apart from them."
Gary H. Stahl (1932-1998)
Buy this book! | View Cart | Check Out
© 2015 Temple University. All Rights Reserved. http://www.temple.edu/tempress/titles/743_reg.html