Sharon Lloyd, the noted Hobbes scholar, has started a new blog, Hobbes Today, focusing on Hobbes' moral and political philosophy. There are already intriguing posts about Hobbes' theories of human nature and of political sovereignty, and given the usual quality of Sharon's work, I'm sure that the level of discussion will be high.
Intuitively, it's clear that 'wrong' entails 'ought not'; and the term 'right' seems simply to be the contradictory of 'wrong' (after all, 'It's not right' seems at first glance to entail 'It's wrong', and obviously nothing can be both right and wrong). But then it follows that 'right' cannot entail anything stronger than 'it is not the case that ... ought not...'. I.e., 'right' cannot mean anything stronger than 'permissible'.
Intuitively, however, 'right' seems stronger than 'permissible'. If I say, "You're quite right to F", I seem to be expressing a much stronger sort of approval of your F-ing than if I merely said "It is quite permissible for you to F". It's natural to talk about "the right thing to do", but decidedly odd to talk about "a right thing to do" (whereas it's perfectly natural to talk about "a permissible thing to do"). So, what does 'right' mean -- does it just mean 'permissible' or does it mean something stronger?
The UT-Austin philosophy department is pleased to announce a week-long graduate student workshop on philosophical methodology, August 12 – August 16.
Possible workshop subtopics include (but are not limited to) intuition, conceptual analysis, reflective equilibrium, reduction, and ontological commitment.
Already confirmed speakers include Julia Driver (Dartmouth), Marc Moffett (Wyoming), Roy Sorensen (Dartmouth), Ernest Sosa (Rutgers), and a number of UT faculty.
We hope to accept around 10 outside graduate student participants. If you are interested in applying, please see the website for details.
As I understand it, an obligation dilemma exists where an agent faces a choice situation in which two (or more) of her available act alternatives are morally obligatory and yet it is impossible for her to perform both of those two act alternatives. Does anyone know of a moral theory or a moral theorist that endorses the existence of obligation dilemmas? Do you think that the divine command theory allows for obligation dilemmas in that it seems possible for God to command an agent to perform both of two mutually exclusive act alternatives? If the divine command theory does allow for the possibility of obligation dilemmas is this a good reason to reject the theory?
Rumor has it that there's a presidential election scheduled in the U.S. this fall, which raises the perennial ethical question: Is there a duty to vote? Harry Brighouse provides some excellent arguments for there not being such a duty, but here I'll lay out a few pros and cons and invite people to weigh in on whether there is such a duty.
THICK CONCEPTS: University of Kent, Canterbury, UK 3rd-5th July, 2009.
Continue reading "Conference Announcement and CFP: Thick Concepts" »
Geoff Sayre-McCord chatting about free will, metaethics, and stuff HERE.
When teaching ethics courses, I often spend some time with students going over some of the relevant social psychological literature. Studies like the Milgram experimients, the Asch conformity experiments, and Zimbardo's Stanford Prison Experiment are nice ways to show students, well, just how mean and stupid people can be. It's a nice way of showing the importance of ethical learning, but also the insufficiency of mere ethical knowledge in producing ethical behavior.
Turns out, however, that one of my favorite examples is a myth. Kitty Genovese, we all know, was attacked three times over the course of more than a half an hour, all in an alley in the sight of 38 witnesses, none of whom did as much as lift up the phone to call for help. A powerful indictment of humanity, and strong evidence of what psychologists have called the "bystander effect," right?
Below the fold is the call for papers for this year's Western Canadian Philosophical Association meetings. I thought it might be of some interest to the Soupers.
Why is Setiya’s
principle vulnerable to the problems that I listed in my previous post? What exactly is the diagnosis?
I suggest
that the diagnosis is that there are in fact two sorts of reasons. These two sorts of reasons do not always
coincide; and Setiya is implicitly conflating these two sorts of reasons here.
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