pages tagged ethicsspwhittonhttps://spwhitton.name//tag/ethics/spwhittonikiwiki2015-11-18T17:09:12ZPretty solid review of effective altruismhttps://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/doinggoodbetter/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2015-10-11T02:42:00Z
<p><a href="http://www.lrb.co.uk/v37/n18/amia-srinivasan/stop-the-robot-apocalypse">Amia Srinivasan reviews “Doing Good Better” |
LRB</a></p>
Origin storieshttps://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/originstories/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2015-08-13T21:28:00Z
<p>I’m reading <em>On the Genealogy of Norms</em> by Shaun Nichols.</p>
<blockquote><p>Most genealogical accounts of norms focus on moral norms, and the most
familiar attempts to explain the genealogy of morals strive to give an
account of the origin of moral norms in our cultural past. The problem
with such origin explanations is not that we don’t have any good
explanations, but rather that we have too many good explanations, and
not enough historical evidence to decide between them. … Here is a
quick and incomplete catalog of some candidate explanations of the
cultural origins of moral norms prohibiting harming others.</p>
<ol>
<li>Nietzsche’s “slave morality” …</li>
<li>Reciprocal altruism: …</li>
</ol>
</blockquote>
<p>The list continues.</p>
<p>If there’s no way to ever find out whether it’s true bar time travel, is
it worth studying Nietzsche’s genealogy of morals? Most people who has
studied it would have an intuitive conviction that it was worth it. Can
we say why? Is it enough to say that even if it’s false it has
implications which are true of certain norms in certain contexts and we
can learn from this?</p>
Non-reductive virtue ethicshttps://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/godlessyetgood/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2013-05-13T09:42:00Z
<p>This is a very nice write-up of non-reductive virtue ethics. Wish I’d
written it.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.aeonmagazine.com/world-views/troy-jollimore-secular-ethics/">Godless yet good | aeon
magazine</a></p>
Love as a philosophical counter-examplehttps://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/lovecounterexample/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2012-03-02T14:53:00Z
<blockquote><p>Taking love and people-in-certain-relations as intrinsically valuable
helps show mistaken various views about acting rationally (or well).
First, maximization: i.e., if you value “item” C and if state S has
more C than does S’, you act rationally only if you choose S—unless S’
has more of other items you value than does S, or your cost in getting
S, as opposed to S’, is too high, or you are not well enough informed.
Where C is love (and indeed where C is many, if not more, valuable
things), this does not hold—not even if all the values involved are
self-regarding. Second, paying attention to value differences, being
alive to them and their significance for acting rationally: just
consider a person who (often) checks to see whether a love relation
with another person would be “better” than the present love. (J.
Stocker, ‘The Schizophrenia of Modern Ethical Theories’, <em>Journal of
Philosophy</em> 14 (1976), p. 459 n. 4)</p></blockquote>
Hume lays down the gauntlethttps://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/humereasonpassion/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2012-01-16T14:57:00Z
<blockquote><p>Nothing is more usual in philosophy, and even in common life, than to
talk of the combat of passion and reason, to give the preference to
reason, and assert that men are only so far virtuous as they conform
themselves to its dictates. Every rational creature, tis said, is
oblig’d to regulate his actions by reason; and if any other motive or
principle challenge the direction of his conduct, he ought to oppose
it, till it be entirely subdu’d, or at least brought to a conformity
with that superior principle. On this method of thinking the greatest
part of moral philosophy, antient [sic] and modern, seems to be
founded’ nor is there an ampler field, as well for metaphysical
arguments, as popular declamations, than this suppos’d pre-eminence of
reason above passion. The eternity, invariableness, and divine origin
of the former have been display’d to the best advantage: The
blindness, unconstancy and deceitfulness of the latter have been as
strongly insisted on. In order to show the fallacy of all this
philosophy, I shall endeavour to prove <em>first</em>, that reason alone can
never be a motive to any action of the will; and <em>secondly</em>, that it
can never oppose passion in the direction of the will. —Hume,
<em>Treatise</em>, bk. 2, pt. 3, §3, ¶1</p></blockquote>
Aristotle on being opinionatedhttps://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/nicethopinionated/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2011-12-31T17:13:00Z
<blockquote><p>The stubborn include the opinionated, the ignorant, and the boorish.
The opinionated are as they are because of pleasure and pain. For they
find enjoyment in winning [the argument] if they are not persuaded
to change their views, and they feel pain if their opinions are
voided, like decrees [in the Assembly]. Hence they are more like
incontinent than like continent people. —Aristotle, <em>Nicomachean
Ethics</em>, bk. VII</p></blockquote>
Violent writings on ethicshttps://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/violentethics/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2011-08-01T09:18:00Z
<blockquote><p>At first glance, this seems to imply a super-power view of defense,
that you are adequately defended only if you can annihilate the other
side. … Hare’s equation of defense and attack comes from two sources …
[t]he general point is that ethical theories in this style can
readily be seen as offensive weapons, aimed against prejudice, so that
if there is an important style of prejudice that is immune to them,
they are not well designed for their job and are likely to be
replaced, if not by prejudice, then by an ethical theory with more
firepower. To some extent, this is true of all of them, although they
differ from one another in their aggressive ambitions. —B. Williams,
<em>Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy</em>, ch. 5.</p></blockquote>
Mill and the Stoicshttps://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/millstoics/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2011-05-23T21:03:00Z
<blockquote><p>[I]n a very imperfect state of the world’s arrangements …
paradoxical as the assertion may be, the conscious ability to do
without happiness gives the best prospect of realizing such happiness
as is attainable. For nothing except that consciousness can raise a
person above the chances of life, by making him feel that, let fate
and fortune do their worst, they have no power to subdue him: whihc,
once felt, frees him from excess of anxiety concerning the evils of
life, and enables him, like many a Stoic in the worst times of the
Roman Empire, to cultivate in tranquillity the sources of satisfaction
accessible to him, without concerning himself about the uncertainty of
their duration, any more than about their inevitable end. —J.S. Mill,
<em>Utilitarianism</em>, ch. 2</p></blockquote>
Kant on reverance for the moral lawhttps://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/kantreverence/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2011-05-13T14:57:00Z
<blockquote><p>Thus the moral worth of an action does not depend on the result
expected from it, and so too does not depend on any principle of
action that needs to borrow its motive from this expected result. For
all these results (agreeable states and even the promotion of
happiness in others) could have been brought about by other causes as
well, and consequently their production did not require the will of a
rational being, in which, however, the highest and unconditioned good
can alone be found. Therefore nothing but the <em>idea of the law</em> in
itself, <em>which admittedly is present only in a rational being</em> —so far
as it, and not an expected result, is the ground determining the
will—can constitute that pre-eminent good which we call moral, a good
which is already present in the person acting on this idea and has not
to be awaited merely from the result. (Kant, <em>Groundwork</em>, 401 15–16)</p></blockquote>
<p>Went to tutor to beg for a reading list while he was drinking with
friends round a table in the quad, to which he replied “okay, read Kant”
to raucous laughter. I don’t think we were even going to do Kant this
week.</p>
<p>I am enjoying the <em>Groundwork</em> and am finding that most of Kant’s
sentiments line up very closely with the intuitive morality I use in
every day life. Most people find Kant unintuitive, and my tutor is a
committed Humean, so I’m going to have a hard time defending this stuff.
I have Susan Wolff’s <em>Saints and Heroes</em> lined up to read which attempts
to illustrate a perfect Kantian, a perfect utilitarian <em>etc.</em> and show
them to be rather unethical characters, so it’ll be good to see the
other side.</p>
John Locke Lectures 2011https://spwhitton.name//blog/entry/johnlocke2011/2015-11-18T17:09:12Z2011-04-29T22:12:00Z
<blockquote><p>Philosophy is a demanding intellectual discipline, with many facets:
logic, epistemology, philosophy of nature and science, metaphysics,
ethics, political philosophy, philosophy of art, rhetoric, philosophy
of language and mind. But a long tradition of ancient Greek
philosophers, beginning with Socrates, made their philosophies also
complete ways of life. For them reason, perfected by philosophy—not
religion, not cultural traditions and practices—constitutes the only
legitimate authority for determining how one ought to live. They also
thought philosophically informed reason should be the basis for all
our practical attitudes, all our decisions, and in fact the whole of
our lives. In these lectures we examine the development of this pagan
tradition in philosophy, from its establishment by Socrates, through
Plato and Aristotle, the Stoics, Epicurus, the Pyrrhonian Skeptics,
and Plotinus and late ancient Platonism.</p></blockquote>
<p>This looks fantastic. Unfortunately I’m only going to be able to attend
fortnightly.</p>
<p>(<a href="http://www.philosophy.ox.ac.uk/lectures/john_locke_lectures">source, retrieved
29/iv/2011</a>)</p>