Passions Rule And Rule Passions

In his book Ruling Passions Blackburn tries to relocate ethics from the perspective of practice,he equates ethics with general practical reasoning,and he describes how ethics in traditional sense highlights from practical reasoning with the help of sentimental factors.He tries to adopt a non-reduction naturalism description to account the phenomena of value,and he accepts the distinction between doxastic and appetitive mental states.Value judgment,as the product of the phenomena of value,mainly indicates the doxastic mental states,and these could form a normative space for behavioral choice;whereas in our common sense we often ascribe the basis of behavioral choice to value judgment,and by this ascribe the choice to some doxastic mental states;although what matches behavioral choice is complex mental states compromising of both doxastic and appetitive.I think taking these together makes Blackburn possess a methodology to assess theories of behavioral choices,and Blackburn's account of the motivation theory shows obviously the application of this methodology.In concrete aspects,the sentimental factors that indicated by the word"passions" is the main strength of ethics,as oppose to this,the ability of reason is just subsidiary,but is also necessary.Both of these construct the internalizing process of ethics into subject,as the construction of some kinds of mental states.It is inevitable that Blackburn prefers Humean theory of practical reasoning provided with his naturalistic stance and the methodology of normative space.And from another perspective,Blackburn provides theoretical basis for the revival of Humeanism.This thesis tries to introduce and account the main points of Blackburn's ethical theory,and to summarize his methodology that made up fr-om his principle of explanation,and to introduce the application of this methodology.The preface accounts the backgrounds of the project and the forthcoming problems;Chapter two investigates possible directions of the research of ethics from practice,and mainly focuses on the different ways of research and what the practical reasoning means for Blackburn;Chapter three main accounts the different appearances of ethics in practice and the its major elements;Chapter four accounts the naturalistic stance through Blackburn's analysis of valuational phenomena,and supposes the naturalistic normative space as methodology.which arising from the accounts of the relationship between value judgment and behavioral choice;Chapter five investigates the application of the methodology,which mainly based on Blackburn's account of the theory of motivation,and takes Humean motivational theory as the necessary choice according to the methodology.