Papers in Ethics and Social Philosophy, Volume 3

by David Kellogg Lewis

This third volume of Lewis' papers is devoted to his work in ethics and social philosophy. Topics covered include the logic of obligation and permission; decision theory and its relation to the idea that beliefs might play the motivating role of desires; a subjectivist analysis of value; dilemmas in virtue ethics; the problem of evil; problems about self-prediction; social coordination, linguistic and otherwise; alleged duties to rescue distant strangers; toleration as a tacit treaty; nuclear warfare; and punishment. The purpose of this collection, and the two preceding volumes, is to disseminate more widely the work of an eminent and influential contemporary philosopher.

Genres: Philosophy

268 pages, Hardcover

First published October 13, 1999

About the author

David Kellogg Lewis was a 20th century philosopher. Lewis taught briefly at UCLA and then at Princeton from 1970 until his death. He is also closely associated with Australia, whose philosophical community he visited almost annually for more than thirty years. He has made ground-breaking contributions in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophical logic. He is probably best known for his controversial modal realist stance: that there exist infinitely many concretely existing and causally isolated parallel universes, of which ours is just one, and which play the role of possible worlds in the analysis of necessity and possibility.

-wikipedia

Reviews

[Andrej Drapal · Rating 4 out of 5]

Few chapters rely on analytic philosophy, but by the end of the book, the chapters become more substantial, as the deontological issues are debated outside the binary analytic trap.