PEA Soup

Expressivism and Moral Certitude

I’ve been reading Krister Bykvist’s and Jonas Olson’s wonderful paper entitled ‘Expressivism and Moral Certitude’ (HERE). Krister and Jonas argue that ecumenical forms of expressivism are unable to give a reply to Michael Smith’s objection to non-ecumenical forms of expressivism according to which expressivists cannot account for moral certitude. I have no quarrels with their arguments but I fail to see Smith’s problem for expressivists in the first place on which their argument is based. Here’s why.

Two Links

PhilPapers has launched and is now public. PhilPapers is a comprehensive directory of online philosophy articles and books by academic philosophers. They monitor journals in many areas of philosophy, as well as archives and personal pages. They also accept articles directly from users, who can provide links or upload copies.

Ratio's special issue on Parfit's On What Matters is out. Parfit's book was previously entitled Climbing the Mountain and has been much discussed on this blog -- see here.

6th Annual Metaethics Workshop

Russ Shafer-Landau is pleased to announce a call for abstracts for the Sixth Annual Metaethics Workshop, to be held at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, on September 11-13, 2009. Allan Gibbard (Michigan) will be this year's keynote speaker. Abstracts (of 2-3 double-spaced pages) of papers in any area of metaethics are due by May 1. There is a limit of one submission per person. Speakers in the 2007 or 2008 workshop are not eligible to submit abstracts for this year’s event. A program committee will evaluate submissions and make decisions by early June.

Referees in the sunshine

In "Stalking the Perfect Journal" (Essay 8 in The Great Eskimo Snow Vocabulary Hoax), Geoff Pullum lists some suggestions for improving academic journals; his focus is on linguistics journals, but as you might imagine the suggestions generally apply equally well to philosophy journals. His last and most radical suggestion is that with each paper published, the names of accepting referees be listed (that is, the ones who recommended that the paper be published).

Pullum names three advantages: (i) that hard-working referees would get a little acknowledgment; (ii) that sloppy, too-lenient refereeing would be discouraged; and (iii) that editorial referee selection would have some sunlight thrown on it.

I've mooted this suggestion for discussion among the editors at JESP. Are there any particular worries you can think of? Would this policy make you, personally, less likely to referee for a journal that adopted it?

Practical and Epistemic Reasons

We act for reasons all the time. Here's an interesting question: (Q1) what kind of thing are those reasons our actions are based on?

We believe things for reasons all the time too. Here's another interesting question: (Q2) what kind of thing are those reasons our beliefs are based on?

Set aside those two specific questions for the moment. I want to ask a more general question about the relationship between the two questions.

CFP: Northwestern Ethics Conference

CALL FOR PAPERS FROM FACULTY AND GRADUATE STUDENTS

NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY SOCIETY FOR ETHICAL THEORY AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY

THIRD ANNUAL CONFERENCE
APRIL 23–25, 2009

KEYNOTE ADDRESSES:
Samuel Scheffler, “The Normativity of Tradition”
Seana Shiffrin, “Inducing Deliberation”

Are relationships intrinsically valuable?

This is my first attempt at a PEA Soup post…thanks for reading this far!

It is very common to see philosophers say that special relationships – friendships, romantic relationships, family relationships and so on – can be intrinsically valuable. Raz and Scheffler each use this claim in their accounts of the source of special obligations. Jeske’s new book makes a similar suggestion. Kolodny says that loving a person necessarily involves taking your relationship with her to have intrinsic value. Consequentialists like Pettit and Railton say (or at least entertain the possibility) that special relationships in themselves add value to states of affairs.

I think that relationships can only have instrumental value. I have a preliminary point, four arguments and a debunking explanation.

The Logic Curriculum

I am getting ready to teach logic again.  It’s been a while, because I grew discontent with the standard curriculum.  Maybe PEA Soupers can help me out.  What are we trying to achieve in a logic class?

Announcing NEH Summer Institute and Seminar in Philosophy

NEH Summer Institute on Experimental Philosophy
June 22 to July 17
University of Utah
Ron Mallon and Shaun Nichols
Applications due March 2.
For more information, click here: http://www.hum.utah.edu/philosophy/faculty/mallon/Experimental_Philosophy/X%CE%A6_Home.html

NEH Summer Seminar on Metaphysics and Mind
June 8 to July 17
Washington University in St. Louis
John Heil
Applications due March 2.
For more information, click here: http://artsci.wustl.edu/~neh09/index.html

Welcome, John Turri!

We are pleased to announce that John Turri has accepted our invitation to become a contributor here at PEA Soup. John is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Huron University College, in London, Ontario. He already has a number of publications, including articles forthcoming in Noûs and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.