Action Quotes by Allen W. Wood

10 Action quotes by Allen W. Wood

Allen W. Wood’s brief musings blend philosophical depth with practical urgency. In ten short quotes, he invites you to consider how thought and deed intersect, making it a thoughtful pause for any planner.

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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

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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

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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

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We can establish empirical criteria for free actions, and investigate human actions on the presupposition we are free.

Allen W. Wood

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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Some empirical feelings, such as sympathy, are indispensable parts of certain moral virtues.

Allen W. Wood

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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

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Kant certainly was sympathetic with the metaphysical tradition of rational theology that he criticized.

Allen W. Wood

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That Hegel's theory is derivative from Fichte's does not prevent it from being strikingly original and of independent value.

Allen W. Wood

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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

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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

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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

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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

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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

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