PEA Soup

Philosophy of Happiness: The Video

Philosophers have long debated the nature of happiness, with some saying that happiness is just a certain kind of psychological state and others claiming that true happiness is not just a matter of having certain feelings but also requires genuine virtue.

The new field of experimental philosophy may not be able to help us arrive at a definitive resolution of this age-old debate, but at the very least, it does seem to have inspired a very funny interactive video!

(Note: To go through this interactive video, you have to click at the end of each segment to begin the next one.)

 

 

 

CFA: "Moral Motivation: Evidence and Relevance" Conference, Gothenburg, Sweden, 18-20 May 2012

Deadline for abstracts: January 20, 2012 (for instructions, see below)

The relation between moral judgments and moral motivation is a central issue in ethical theory. According to motivational internalism, making a moral judgment implies being motivated to act accordingly, at least under normal circumstances. The truth of motivational internalism is highly contested, and often taken to have implications for the nature of moral emotions and moral judgments, the meaning of normative terms, and the possibility of objective truth and knowledge in morality.
    During the last two decades, various new forms of motivational internalism have raised questions both about possible sources of evidence for and against these forms, and about the metaethical relevance of a defensible internalism. Some forms seem to be straightforward empirical claims, making traditional a priori arguments for or against internalism suspect; other forms make it unclear how internalism would favor moral anti-realism over realism. (For an overview of recent work on motivational internalism, see this Analysis paper.) 
    The conference Moral Motivation: Evidence and Relevance will bring together senior and junior scholars working on both issues of evidence and issues of relevance.

SLACRR 2 Program

St. Louis Annual Conference on Reason and Rationality
UM-St. Louis
May 22-24, 2011
Moonrise Hotel

The Department of Philosophy at UM-St. Louis is pleased to announce the program for SLACRR 2.  PEA Soupers on this year's program include Jamie Dreier (Keynote), Brad Cokelet, Jussi Suikkanen, Mark van Roojen, and Robert N. Johnson.  There is no fee to attend SLACRR, but since space is limited, we ask that you register, which you can do simply by emailing John Brunero or Eric Wiland at SLACRR@gmail.com.  More information about the conference is available at  http://www.umsl.edu/~slacrr/ 
 
The full program is below the break --->

Three Senses of ‘End’

Ever since Aristotle, the terms that are translated ‘end’ (e.g. the Greek word telos and the Latin finis) have played a starring role in ethical theory. But in fact there are three crucially different things that can be meant by speaking of the “end for the sake of which” an agent is acting.

1. In one sense, this “end” is the ultimate goal or end result that the agent is trying or intending to bring about.
2. In a second sense, this “end” is the object of the fundamental wish or desire that motivated the action.
3. In a third sense, this “end” is a state of affairs that the agent believes to be good, such that the agent believes the goodness of this state of affairs to explain what is good about the action.

Philosophy of Character Funding Announcement

The Character Project at Wake Forest University is very excited to launch its funding competition entitled "New Frontiers in the Philosophy of Character." This $300,000 RFP is aimed at work in philosophy on the topic of character, and proposals can request between $40,000 and $100,000 for projects not to exceed one year in duration. We hope to make between 5-6 awards. A residential incentive of $6,000 for one semester or $12,000 for an academic year will be offered to philosophy RFP winners who are willing to move to Wake Forest University during the award period, and this stipend would not count as part of the research funding request. A willingness to move will not be taken into account when evaluating proposals.

Since work here will primarily be theoretical, the funding is aimed at semester or yearlong sabbatical research leave projects involving a book manuscript or series of substantive articles on character.

This competition is supported by a generous grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

For more details, please visit www.thecharacterproject.com

An Argument for Non-Cognitivism?

I’ve been thinking of new ways to make progress in the cognitivism vs. non-cognitivism debate.  Suppose that I sincerely judge that eating meat is wrong (call the result ‘a moral thought’).  Is my moral thought then a belief that eating meat is wrong, or am I in some other kind of a mental state? To solve this question we need some way of classifying mental states as beliefs and non-beliefs. The traditional way to do this is to think of the different functional roles which different kinds of mental states have. Once we have figured them out, we can then think of what sorts of roles moral thoughts have – whether they have more belief-like roles or not. I want to try to think about whether the debate could go into a new direction from this starting-point.

Templeton Foundation's Big Question Series: "Does Moral Action Depend on Reasoning?"

    PeaSoupers may be interested to read a series of essays sponsored by the Templeton Foundation on the question, "Does Moral Action Depend on Reasoning?"  Al Mele, Joshua Greene, and Christine Korsgaard contribute, as well as several other philosophy-ish intellectuals, neuroscientists, etc. 

Emotion, reason, and moral convictions

In Nature, psychologist Paul Bloom has published a short rejoinder to 'social intuitionist' claims that rational deliberation has no role in shaping our moral convictions. His chief argument is that evolved emotional responses cannot explain how our moral sympathies change. A taste below the fold:

How Humeans Can Explain Reason-Choosing

One objection to Humean views about motivation, and to the 'Standard Model' of intention on which intentions are complexes of desire and belief, is that these views don't allow agents to choose their reasons for doing some action.  In Reasons Without Rationalism, Kieran Setiya presents the Standard Model as unable to explain how "Our reasons are in some sense 'up to us' -- we decide why to do something, as well as what to do --  and we seem to recognize our reasons, as such" (39).  Similarly, in Rationality in Action John Searle objects to desire-belief views of motivation, writing that "when one has several reasons for performing an action, one may act on only one of them; one may select which reason one acts on" (65).

I can see where these objections are coming from.  On a traditional Humean picture, reason is the slave of the passions, and it doesn't have the ability to hold one desire back so that another can motivate action.  Neither can it noninstrumentally create or strengthen a desire so as to make it and not another desire decisive in motivating action.  Nevertheless, I think a traditional Humean approach on which all motivating reasons are desire-belief pairs and all practical reasoning is instrumental can explain reason-choosing.  Let me show how this works. 

All Things Considered?

I'm reading Wedgwood's discussion of Normative Judgement Internalism (NJI), which has prompted me to think the following:

Philosophers often refer to all-things-considered judgments about what one ought to do.  But this concept is underanalyzed.   I venture that almost no one who uses this term actually has a clear idea about what it means.  *What* exactly are you judging if you judge that, all things considered, you ought to V?