-
Readings
-
The Reflective Life
Valerie Tiberius
-
Moral Literacy
Barbara Herman
-
Ethics and the Environment: An Introduction
Dale Jamieson
-
On Human Rights
James Griffin
-
Experiments in Ethics
Kwame Anthony Appiah
-
Reasons without Rationalism
Kieran Setiya
-
Moral Realism: A Defence
Russ Shafer-Landau
-
The Way We Eat
Peter Singer and Jim Mason
-
Metaphysical Essays
John Hawthorne
-
Knowledge and Practical Interests
Jason Stanley
-
10 Moral Paradoxes
Saul Smilansky
-
Normativity and the Will
R. Jay Wallace
-
Ethics without Principles
Jonathan Dancy
-
Neuroethics
Neil Levy
-
Ideal Code, Real World
Brad Hooker
-
Self to Self: Selected Essays
J. David Velleman
-
The Nature of Normativity
Ralph Wedgwood
-
Structures of Agency: Essays
Michael E. Bratman
-
The Second-Person Standpoint
Stephen Darwall
-
Ethics and the A Priori
Michael Smith
-
The Practice of Value
Joseph Raz
-
The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life
Jeff McMahan
-
Weighing Lives
John Broome
-
Intricate Ethics: Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm
F. M. Kamm
-
Reasons and the Good
Roger Crisp
-
-
October 29, 2007
New issue on metaethics
By Thom Brooks
The latest issue of the Journal of Moral Philosophy has just been published and all articles are on the topic of ‘metaethics’. Papers were originally presented at a conference organized by Fabian Freyenhagen at King’s College, Cambridge. The issue can be found here. The contents are as follows:
October 28, 2007
Some Questions About Moral Paradoxes 4
By Saul Smilansky
What should we do about moral paradoxes?
By now we should have a reasonably good idea of what a moral paradox is, of how a moral paradox differs from other things that might seem like it but are not, and of (some of) the sources of moral paradoxes. But what should we do about moral paradoxes? Some of the answers here will be surprising.
October 28, 2007
Kamm’s Intricate Ethics: Chapter 16
By Rahul Kumar
Chapter 16 of Intricate Ethics turns to an examination of Scanlon’s Contractualist moral theory. Focusing on particular themes that Kamm has discussed in the previous chapters, the aim here is to consider whether contractualism, as a metaethical theory of wrongness, offers a way of getting at the kinds of normatively relevant non-consequentialist distinctions that Kamm has identified as important without recourse to the careful scrutiny of cases. In what follows, I won’t try and summarize all the points Kamm makes in this chapter; rather, I’ll stick to what I take to be the points that have the most direct bearing on contractualism’s non-consequentialist credentials, namely what role the appeal to ‘wrongness’ is playing in the contractualist account and the kinds of considerations that are meant to be relevant for the reasonable rejection of a principle.
October 28, 2007
Prepunishment in the Garden
By Saul Smilansky
There is an excellent discussion on prepunishment going on in the Garden of Forking Paths blog. Normally I wouldn’t refer to discussions there as free will is a distinct topic, but this discussion is more on prepunishment and punishment in general than strictly on free will; and the discussion is really illuminating (but it takes a while to get going and the thread is long, so you need to be patient). Other Ethicsetcetniks involved are Neil Levy and Thom Brooks (and sorry if I’ve missed anyone else). The link is:
October 27, 2007
Neuroethics Accepting Submissions
By S. Matthew Liao
The journal Neuroethics, edited by one of our Contributors, Dr. Neil Levy, and published by Springer, is now accepting submissions. Good work getting this journal started, Neil! Here is a description of the journal:
October 24, 2007
Metaethics One-Day Workshop, Leeds, Saturday 24 November
By Gerald Lang
Ethics Etc. readers may be interested to hear that the new Centre for Ethics and Metaethics (CEM) in the Philosophy Department, University of Leeds, is holding a Metaethics One-Day Workshop on Saturday 24 November. The speakers will be Kent Hurtig, Nadeem Hussain, and Wlodek Rabinowicz.
October 22, 2007
Streumer on Irreducibly Normative Properties
By S. Matthew Liao
Presenters at the Oxford Moral Philosophy Seminar are now encouraged and given the opportunity to post their papers and/or aspects of their argument here on Ethics Etc for further discussions by both those who have attended the seminar and those who were not able to do so.
To kick off, Bart Streumer gave a talk today on whether there are irreducibly normative properties. Here is an abstract of his paper:
October 22, 2007
BSET Call for Papers
By Gerald Lang
Might I draw the attention of readers of Ethics Etc to the following call:
THE BRITISH SOCIETY FOR ETHICAL THEORY
2008 CONFERENCE
University of Edinburgh, UK
14-16th July 2008
October 18, 2007
Aggregation and the Separateness of Persons
By Iwao Hirose
Critics of utilitarianism usually rule out interpersonal aggregation. Many of them (e.g. Rawls, Nozick, and Nagel) appeal to the notion of the separateness of persons. According to them, we should rule out aggregation because aggregative principles do not take the separateness of persons seriously. This is a very familiar claim in moral and political philosophy. But I did not understand this claim. I now know why I did not understand it: Either (a) this claim is a truism or (b) it does not make sense.
October 14, 2007
Kamm’s Intricate Ethics: Chapter 15
By Mark Sheehan
Chapter 15, ‘Harms, Losses and Evils in Gert’s moral Theory,’ applies one of the upshots of the discussion in Chapter 14 to Bernard Gert’s moral theory. The chapter is very short and is perhaps best understood as a continuation of the discussion in Chapter 14 of the consequences of the distinction between harming/not-aiding and losses/no-gains for moral theory. In what follows I assume Kamm’s distinction as it is made out in Chapter 14.
October 14, 2007
Some Questions About Moral Paradoxes 3
By Saul Smilansky
Where do moral paradoxes come from?
In the first post we asked what is a paradox, and in the second how to distinguish moral paradoxes from non-paradoxes (such as curiosities or puzzles). But where do moral paradoxes come from? I will examine this question through a quick survey of a few of the paradoxes in 10 MORAL PARADOXES.
October 11, 2007
Reasons: Explanatory and Normative
By Joseph Raz
Most writers think that there are two fundamentally different concepts of reasons, though some maintain that there is only one concept and the appearance of duality is misleading, and is due to a failure to properly analyse the role of reasons in our thought. Among those who accept the duality thesis, there are disagreement about the nature and relations between the concepts. It is not always easy to tell where terminological differences end and substantive ones begin.
October 5, 2007
Kamm’s Intricate Ethics: Chapter 14
By Mike Otsuka
Chapter 14, entitled ‘Moral Intuitions, Cognitive Psychology, and the Harming/Not-Aiding Distinction’, engages with well-known empirical studies by Kahneman and Tversky that are thought to cast doubt on the reliability of our judgments about what ought to be done in particular cases. Kahneman and Tversky argue that such judgments are unreliable because they are susceptible to ‘framing effects’. A person’s judgments are subject to a framing effect if he comes to a different conclusion about what ought to be done in a given set of circumstances when presented with a different true description (i.e., framing) of the available options. One and the same policy can, for example, be described as protecting against losses or as yielding gains. According to Kahneman and Tversky, people tend to regard the sacrifice that is justifiable for the sake of preventing losses as greater than the sacrifice that is justifiable for the sake of securing equivalent gains. Hence their judgments shift if one and the same policy is (accurately) described (a) as protecting from losses or (b) as yielding gains:
October 4, 2007
Some Questions About Moral Paradoxes 2
By Saul Smilansky
How can we tell moral paradoxes from non-paradoxes?
In my previous post I proposed that we follow a fairly clear understanding of what a paradox is. A paradox needs to have premises we agree with, leading through argumentation that seems impeccable, to an unacceptable (or reluctantly acceptable but truly absurd) conclusion. I shall assume this understanding of paradox henceforth. But in practice, deciding whether we have a paradox at hand is often not so simple. One reason is that the paradoxicality depends on substantive moral beliefs. Recall the paradox about justice and the severity of punishment that I outlined in the comments to my previous post: if (say) someone does not think that we ever need to mitigate the punishment of those from underprivileged backgrounds, or denies that deterrence is effective, then he or she will not accept all the premises that go into making the paradox. The only thing we can do then is to engage in discussion and try to show that those premises are plausible, and that our discussant should not really reject them.
October 3, 2007
Kamm’s Intricate Ethics: Chapter 13 - A Rough Consequentialist Response
By Julian Savulescu
[This is intended as a rapid, rough blog response. It is unedited and unrevised and no doubt contains many errors of spelling, grammar and argument.]
In this chapter, Frances Kamm contrasts her own non-consequentialist ethical theory with Peter Singer’s version of consequentialism, utilitarianism. She examines his general ethical theory and its implications for killing/letting die, treatment of the disabled and animals, and famine relief. I will only offer a skeletal summary of the first half. I will focus on the second half, which for me is incredibly rich and stimulating and more oriented to practical ethics. I will attempt to give a consequentialist response to her arguments in the latter half of the chapter. The first half, however, is of great interest to those involved in normative theory and its foundations. For those interested in more detailed analysis and response to Kamm’s arguments, please move straight to the section 1. The Principle of Irrelevant Goods.
October 2, 2007
The Overseas Case Poll
By S. Matthew Liao
The Overseas Case is from Peter Singer, as is the
The Pond Case: I am walking past a shallow pond and see a child drowning in it. If I wade in and pull the child out, my $500 suit will be ruined.
See, e.g., Singer, P. Practical Ethics. 2nd ed. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press).
These cases are here by popular demand (John Alexander and Tom Douglas). Comments on these cases are welcome here. See also Kamm Chapter 11 for some discussions of these cases. Happy voting.
The Ethics Etc Poll
Loading ...Online Philosophy Journals
Philosophy Blogs
- BrainEthics
- Brains
- Certain Doubts
- David Chalmer's List of Blogs
- Epistemic Value
- Experimental Philosophy
- Legal Theory Blog
- Leiter's Report
- Natural Rationality
- Neuroethics and Law
- Online Papers in Philosophy
- PEA Soup
- Philosophy and Bioethics
- Practical Ethics
- Public Reason
- The Brooks Blog
- The Garden of Forking Paths
- Thoughts, Rants, and Arguments
Philosophy Events
-
