Physical Ethics
by Alfred Barratt (9780217028004)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: formed, and the more completely is the end attained. It must be remembered too that these functions are not disconnected but all united under a central government. Yet the whole is nothing but the sum of its parts, and therefore the end of the whole is nothing but the sum of the partial ends. Organization adds nothing new, it only arranges. I need hardly add that functions and ends are no independent entities; they are merely approving names for results or effects. (See below, Axiom 7.) 7. Approbation is the standard whereby we judge of the moral value of actions, and is the universal mark of the due performance of a function and of the attainment of an end. Obs, The quality of exciting moral approbation or its contrary distinguishes one action from another, and our conception of function or end of action is determined by the anticipation of such approval. So far as we approve the action of any part of our organism, so far do we hold that it attains its end, and vice versa, so that Object of Approbation and end of action are co-extensive. This will be more clearly seen under the definition of Good. Apart from approbation the end has no objective existence in nature, any more than the lions and bears of astronomical charts. We write it there and then forget our own handwriting. Final cause is merely a certain anticipated effect: and approbation is its mark. Definitions. 1. Good is the object of moral approbation. The highest good is therefore the ultimate object of such approbation, the end of action. Obs. This definition does not, as at first sight appears, reverse the true order of thought. We do not approve a thing because it is good, for?' good' means to us nothing more than a signal of approval. As to what good is in itself, or even if there be such a thing, no ...

USD $33.81

   Dispatch: 3 to 7 business days, stock levels permitting