We can establish empirical criteria for free actions, and investigate human actions on the presupposition we are free. — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
Consequentialist theories begin with a very simple and undoubtedly valid point: Every action aims at a future end, and is seen as… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
We commit not only theoretical error but also moral wrong in objectifying ourselves or other rational beings, ignoring their capacities for free… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
We cannot predict the effects of our actions, especially our collective actions over generations or centuries, to use instrumental reasoning toward these… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
One rational standard of action is how well it promotes the end it seeks. Another standard is whether it aims at ends… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
For the utilitarian, there is a fact of the matter about the good (the general happiness, or whatever conception of the good… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
Consequentialist theories pretend that we can set some great big ends (the general happiness, human flourishing), provide ourselves with definite enough conceptions… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
Smith could not be expected to have anticipated the horrors that were to come. But even in his own time, he was… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
Kant does not think that along with choice of an action we also choose in each case the motive from which we… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
Our decisions need not be seen as resting on procedures that are merely instrumental in making judgments that are reliably truth-tracking. The… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
For the utilitarian, there is a fact of the matter about the good (the general happiness, or whatever conception of the good the utilitarian… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
No theory about our bodies as mere objects of observation and calculation (as distinct from partners in communicative interaction, assumed to be free) can… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
Kantian ethical theory distinguishes three levels: First, that of a fundamental principle (the categorical imperative, formulated in three main ways in Kant's Groundwork); second,… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
Some empirical feelings, such as sympathy, are indispensable parts of certain moral virtues. — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
We commit not only theoretical error but also moral wrong in objectifying ourselves or other rational beings, ignoring their capacities for free action and… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
Kant certainly was sympathetic with the metaphysical tradition of rational theology that he criticized. — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
That Hegel's theory is derivative from Fichte's does not prevent it from being strikingly original and of independent value. — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
It is sad to witness the persistence in our society of the racism and xenophobia that seems to be a permanent part of our… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
It is rational to choose the right means to your ends to develop very elegant abstract formal theories of rational choice, and then turn… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
We can never prove that we are free or integrate our freedom in any way into our objective conception of the causal order of… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
Kant regards the universalizability test for maxims as focused on a very special sort of situation: one where the agent is tempted to make… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
My own view is that Kant's conception of the duality of the good (morality and happiness, the good of our person and the good… — Allen W. Wood Copy Share Image
