PEA Soup

PEA Soup 2.0

The next phase of PEA Soup is here.  As of this announcement, Dan Boisvert, Doug Portmore, and Josh Glasgow are stepping down from their posts as co-editors of PEA Soup with Dave Shoemaker.  Going forward, the blog will be run by Dave Shoemaker and David Sobel.

Those of us stepping down want to take this chance to thank everyone--contributors, commentators, participants in the Ethics-at-PEA-Soup discussions, and everyone else who is part of the PEA Soup family--for making the blog such a great place.  This June will kick off the tenth year of its existence, and when we started so many years ago, the four of us couldn't have predicted that such a wonderful community would take root here.  We are thrilled that this blog has become a valuable site for those working in ethics and cognate areas. 

We are also grateful to Shoemaker and Sobel for taking things over from here, and we look forward to the next era at PEA Soup.

Sincerely,
Dan, Doug, and Josh

Books Received in November

Authors and/or their presses kindly sent at least one of the editors the following books.

Ethics Discussions at PEA Soup: Sarah Buss's "Autonomous Action: Self-Determination in the Passive Mode," with Commentary by Hilary Bok

(Moving to the Front from Oct 10 and Sept 7, 2012)

Update Oct 19, 2012:  Professor Buss's paper can be accessed here.

Update Oct 10: Discussion will begin October 29th!  A link to Professor Buss's paper will be added shortly.

We are pleased to announce the next installment of Ethics at PEA Soup, which will feature Sarah Buss's article “Autonomous Action: Self-determination in the Passive Mode.”  We are also pleased that Hilary Bok has accepted our invitation to be our Lead Discussant.  Discussion should begin sometime in October, and we'll be sure to keep everyone posted when dates are more settled.

The Asymmetry Challenge for Expressivism

I'm in the midst of writing for a general audience about what I'm calling the 'Asymmetry Challenge' for (pure, noncognitivist) expressivism. The Challenge is to jointly solve the Sentential Mood, Truth-Aptness, and Asymmetric Embedding problems. These three problems are often recognized individually, though I think that jointly solving them is more difficult than many appreciate.

The source of the Asymmetry Challenge lies in the expressivist view that the moral sentences we typically use to express desire-like states or to prescribe behavior have important features that other kinds of sentences lack, even though these latter kinds of sentences paradigmatically express desire-like states or prescribe behavior. Moral sentences, unlike these other kinds of sentences, are declarative, truth-apt, and embeddable into a wider array of complex, linguistic constructions. But what feature could moral sentences have that these others sentences lack—again, especially when moral sentences function so much like these other types of sentences—that warrants this asymmetry? I'm hoping some of you may have suggestions or questions that might help me as I write my way through the Challenge.
 

Welcome Nomy Arpaly and Timothy Schroeder!

We are thrilled to welcome Nomy Arpaly and Timothy Schroeder to PEA Soup! Nomy, whose research interests include ethics, moral psychology, action theory, metaethics, and free will, is Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. She is the author of Merit, Meaning,and Human Bondage: An Essay on Free Will (Princeton U.P., 2006) and Unprincipled Virtue (Oxford U.P., 2002). Tim is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Ohio State University. He works broadly in the areas of moral psychology and philosophy of mind and is author of Three Faces of Desire (Oxford, U. P., 2004).  His current project is tentatively titled Reasons from Atoms. It's wonderful to have you both aboard!

Call for Abstracts--Ethics and Explanation 2013: Explanation in Mathematics and Ethics

Ethics and Explanation 2013: Explanation in Mathematics and Ethics, University of Nottingham, 18th-19th January 2013.

The theme for the conference is ‘Explanation in Mathematics and Ethics’. The aim of the conference is to investigate: (i) the connections between indispensability-type arguments in mathematics and ethics; (ii) connections between evolutionary debunking-style arguments in mathematics and ethics and (iii) more generally, other connections between the two areas that touch on the issue of explanation. Abstracts should fall under the themes of the conference (broadly construed).

May 2012 Books Received

Authors and/or their presses kindly sent at least one of the editors the following books.

 

Updates to PEA Soup

In light of feedback some of you have sent to the editors over the past several months, we have finally been able to make a few improvements to PEA Soup.  You've likely already noticed the most important ones, but just to make it "official," a brief description is below the fold:

“Ethics and Explanation” Conference, University of Nottingham, 18th-19th November 2011

The excellent lineup is below the fold.  For more information, go to the conference web site.

Also, a small number of student bursaries are available to cover up to 50% of the conference and accommodation fees only, offered on a first come first served basis. To apply for a student bursary please contact Dr. Neil Sinclair.
 
To participate please register online here (early registration would be greatly appreciated).

Ethics Discussions at PEA Soup: Philip Pettit's "The Instability of Freedom as Noninterference: The Case of Isaiah Berlin," with Commentary by David Schmidtz

We are pleased to present the next installment of PEA Soup's collaboration with Ethics, in which we host a discussion of one article from an issue of the journal.  The article selected from Volume 121, Issue 4 is Philip Pettit's "The Instability of Freedom as Noninterference: The Case of Isaiah Berlin" (open access here).  We are also extremely grateful that David Schmidtz has agreed to provide the critical precis of the article.  His commentary begins below the fold and is followed by several replies from Professor Pettit.