PEA Soup

Internalisms: Judgment and Existence

Judgment internalism (which holds that a necessary condition on a judgment of the form "x has reason to y", when stated by x, is that x have some motivation to y) is often used as a crucial plank in arguments for noncognitivism. Very roughly speaking, if there is a necessary connection between normative judgment and motivation, what could normative judgment be if not an expression of these various motivational or conative states? But some have claimed that there is a good argument for existence internalism (which holds--in the version I'm most interested in--that an agent x can have a reason to y only if they have an existing motivation to y) to be found in the truth of judgment internalism. The argument from judgment to existence internalism has always struck me as a little fishy, but I've only recently tried to figure out why. My diagnosis is below the fold, but I'd love to hear whether you think I've given this argument short shrift.

Experimental Metaethics

Steve Campbell from Michigan kindly directed my attention to a new paper that uses the methods of experimental philosophy to investigate the objectivity-question in metaethics. This paper by Geoffrey Goodwin and John Darley is entitled 'The Psychology of Metaethics: Exploring Objectivism' (downloadable from HERE). I have a couple of questions below but I think I need to explain the paper a bit first.

Faculty Fellowships

“The Murphy Institute’s Center for Ethics and Public Affairs at Tulane University is pleased to announce residential Faculty Fellowships for the 2009-2010 academic year. These fellowships, made possible by funds from the Tulane Murphy Foundation, are available to support outstanding faculty whose teaching and research focus on ethics, political philosophy, or questions of moral choice in areas such as, but not restricted to, architecture, business, government, law, medicine and environmental policy.” Read the full announcement here, and see below the fold for some further details of which I have first-hand knowledge.

The Second Poll: Results, Analysis, and Spin

The poll question was: If someone holds both (a) that an act is morally permissible if and only if it maximizes aggregate pleasure and (b) that nothing whatsoever (not even pleasure) is good, then s/he is what type of theorist?

And, as of 9:20 a.m. on 9/16/08, the results were as follows:

The First Poll: Results

The poll question was: Assuming that you're a consequentialist (if you're not one, then please don't take this poll), do you believe that the best outcome available to a given agent is always the one that she ought to prefer to all other available alternatives?

And, as of 9:20 a.m. on 9/16/08, the results were as follows:

Two Polls

If appropriate, please cast your vote in the following polls. Once I have a fair bit of data, I'll explain why I'm interested in people's answers to these questions.

Here's the first poll, a poll for only consequentialists:

Online Surveys & Market Research

Below the fold is a poll for all normative ethicists:

Public Reason's Political Philosophy Podcast Symposium

The blog Public Reason will begin its Fall 2008 Political Philosophy Podcast Symposium on September 19.  The schedule is below.  For more info, go to:    http://publicreason.net/2008/09/15/political-philosophy-podcast-synmposium-schedule/

Revise and resubmit deadlines?

Since we've talked a bit in the past here about the editorial practices followed by our profession's journals, I thought I'd ask what people think about journals giving authors deadlines to respond to 'revise and resubmit' letters.