Needs, Values, Truth: Essays in the Philosophy of Value - Softcover

Wiggins, David

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0198237197 ISBN 13: 9780198237198

Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA, 1998

Synopsis

Needs, Values, Truth brings together of some of the most important and influential writings by a leading contemporary philosopher, drawn from twenty-five years of his work in the broad area of the philosophy of value. The author ranges between problems of ethics, meta-ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of logic and language, looking at questions relating to meaning, truth and objectivity in judgements of value. For this third edition he has added a new essay on incommensurability, in addition to making minor revisions to the existing text. The volume will stand as a definitive summation of his work in this area.

About this title

Synopsis

Needs, Values, Truth brings together of some of the most important and influential writings by a leading contemporary philosopher, David Wiggins; they are drawn from twenty-five years of his work in the broad area of the philosophy of value. The author passes to and fro between problems of ethics, meta-ethics, philosophy of mind, and philosophy of logic and language.

The following themes are prominent: the elucidation of the ideas of truth, objectivity, subjectivity and intersubjectivity the scope and limits of the attribution of the status of plain truth among the judgements of morals, politics and aesthetics the compatibility of moral cognitivism both with criticism and with a 'no-foundations' view of morals, politics and aesthetics the part played in the fixation of the sense of evaluative language by the antecedent possibility of agreement not only in judgements but also (the Humean addendum) in sentiments the philosophical ineliminability of explanations that explain a subject's thought by vindicating it, and the indispensability of evaluative and subjective categories to such vindications the irreplaceability and irreducibility for practical or valuational thinking of such ideas as those of need, self and metaphysical freedom. For this third edition the author has added a new essay on incommensurability, in addition to making minor revisions to the existing text. The volume will stand as a definitive summation of his work in this area.

About the Author

David Wiggins is at University of Oxford.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Publication date: 1998
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0198237197
• ISBN 13: 9780198237198
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 3
• Number of pages: 416