PEA Soup

CFP: Ethics and the American Dream

CALL FOR PAPERS
Cal Poly Pomona 14th Annual Ethics Conference
April 14-15, 2009

"Ethics and the American Dream"

KEYNOTE SPEAKER: David Schmidtz, University of Arizona
SUBMISSION DEADLINE: November 1, 2008

Philosophers and other scholarly professionals are cordially invited to submit papers to be considered for the program of Cal Poly Pomona's 14th Annual Ethics Conference.  Papers should be submitted in a format suitable for blind review.  Papers should be 5,000-7,000 words in length, suitable for presentation in approximately 45 minutes.

New Hobbes blog

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.

Is there a duty to vote?

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.

A moral equivalent of Moore's paradox?

So here's an idea I've been fiddling with for a while and would be interested to hear if anyone thinks that further exploration of this idea would be fruitful. (I'm also trying out this line of thought later this month at the ETMP conference in Amsterdam, so I wouldn't mind some 'pre-feedback' before my presentation.)

I assume most of us are familiar with examples of Moore's paradox:
    (P) It's raining, but I don't believe it

Peter Railton (in the paper "Moral factualism" that he wrote for the Blackwell moral theory anthology edited by PEA Souper Jamie Dreier) suggests that there are moral equivalents of Moore's paradox:
    (Q) Hurting animals for fun is wrong, but I don't care

Calls for Papers: Emotions, American ethical tradition

Studies in the History of Ethics has announced calls for papers for two future symposia. Details follow.

On requesting a re-read

I'm interested in when it's legitimate to request that a journal reconsider a manuscript that it has rejected.  In particular, I'd be curious when it's appropriate to resubmit a manuscript  indicating that you feel the manuscript was not read with sufficient care. 

Since this is motivated by my own recent experience, I'll give a general picture of the situation in question (details concealed to protect the innocent).  But I sense that this occurs from time to time within philosophy, so perhaps others will find this discussion beneficial.

The Bowl is more than half full

<Cross-posted at In Socrates' Wake>

I wanted to put in a plug for what is certainly one of the best pedagogical developments in philosophy over the past decade: Ethics Bowl. I'm sure many of our readers are familiar with this competition and its value as a teaching tool. I'll only add my own observations here about the value of Ethics Bowl as a teaching tool and invite others to discuss their experiences with it. (I also have some tips for those interested in getting Ethics Bowl started on their campus, so please contact me if you're interested.)

As I see it, Ethics Bowl provides three things that are very hard to come by in traditional philosophy classroom settings:

The duty to die and the right of self-defense

Many philosophers believe that suicide is permissible in at least some circumstances.  Others go further and claim that there are circumstances in which suicide is morally obligatory — that there's sometimes a "duty to die."  While I accept that suicide may be morally permissible in some circumstances, I have reservations that there is a ever a duty to commit suicide. Here I'd like to explore these reservations, framing them in terms of self-defense, and enlist your help in trying to make sense of these matters.

Esotericism, part II

Many of you will likely recall my post last fall on esoteric normative theories. That was a wonderfully provocative discussion, one I'd like to pursue further.  In particular, I'd like to get a handle on the history of esotericism as an objection to normative theories, in the hope that I can distill out whether there is a single objection here or many; whether the objection is logically independent of other objections that can be made to normative theories; what force, if any, such an objection has; etc.

New teaching blog

A shameless plug/invitation: I've created a new blog on the teaching of philosophy, In Socrates' Wake. Please come visit, offer comments, etc. I'd also be interested if anyone would like to join up as a contributor. Thanks!