Search engine for discovering works of Art, research articles, and books related to Art and Culture
Javascript must be enabled to continue!
Reason or Intuition?
View through CrossRef
This chapter pits the motives described in Chapter 2 against each other. If people pursue punishment, are they mainly driven by utilitarian or retributive motives? The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that retributive motives trump utilitarian motives. Sometimes people do use rational reasoning when punishing, but while emotion tends to increase punishment, reason tends to decrease punishment. At the same time, the chapter takes issue with authors who have positioned behavioral control as a “happy byproduct” of moral punishment. In the evolutionary history of our species, we evolved a moral punishment instinct because it was adaptive in controlling the behavior of selfish group members. Put differently, the power to control behavior is the very reason why humans evolved a punishment instinct as part of their intuitive moral psychology.
Title: Reason or Intuition?
Description:
This chapter pits the motives described in Chapter 2 against each other.
If people pursue punishment, are they mainly driven by utilitarian or retributive motives? The evidence overwhelmingly suggests that retributive motives trump utilitarian motives.
Sometimes people do use rational reasoning when punishing, but while emotion tends to increase punishment, reason tends to decrease punishment.
At the same time, the chapter takes issue with authors who have positioned behavioral control as a “happy byproduct” of moral punishment.
In the evolutionary history of our species, we evolved a moral punishment instinct because it was adaptive in controlling the behavior of selfish group members.
Put differently, the power to control behavior is the very reason why humans evolved a punishment instinct as part of their intuitive moral psychology.
Related Results
The Unity of Reason
The Unity of Reason
Abstract
The Unity of Reason is the first major study of Kant’s account of reason. It argues that Kant’s wide-ranging interests and goals can only be understood by r...
Intuition and Presence
Intuition and Presence
This chapter explicates the notion of ‘presence’ (Gegenwart) as it pertains to intuition. Specifically, it examines two central problems for the position that an empirical intuitio...
Imagination and Inner Intuition
Imagination and Inner Intuition
This chapter addresses the question of whether intuition is object-dependent. Kant’s account of the imagination appears to suggest that intuition is not object-dependent. On a rece...
Reason as Consequent Universal: On Thinking and Being
Reason as Consequent Universal: On Thinking and Being
Turning to the later Schelling, this chapter shows how Schelling regards reason itself as a matter of fact rather than as a self-founding truth of reason. There is not being becaus...
Practical Truth
Practical Truth
Abstract
Aristotle argues that the actions central to human flourishing are those that involve reason. But reason manifests itself in a human life in more than one w...
Kant's Moral World
Kant's Moral World
Abstract
This book provides a systematic interpretation of Immanuel Kant’s practical metaphysics, building up to his controversial claim that there are rational g...
Rationality in Greek Thought
Rationality in Greek Thought
Abstract
Rationality in Greek Thought - a collection of specially written essays by leading international scholars - fundamentally re-examines ancient ideas of reaso...
Between Logic and Intuition
Between Logic and Intuition
This collection of essays offers a conspectus of major trends in the philosophy of logic and philosophy of mathematics. A distinguished group of philosophers addresses issues at th...