PEA Soup

Celebrating 125 years of Ethics at PEA Soup -- with R. Lanier Anderson on Marjorie Grene

We are very happy to kick off another PEA Soup celebration of the Ethics 125th anniversary retrospective series, with this special feature of R. Lanier Anderson's essay on Marjorie Grene's "Authenticity: an Existential Virtue." And, as an additional bonus, Professor Anderson has kindly offered us some background about Grene's life and work (below the fold). Enjoy! And hope to hear our readers' reactions in the comments. 

Celebrating 125 years of Ethics at PEA Soup -- with Amy R. Baehr on Zona Vallance

We are very happy to kick off a PEA Soup celebratation of the Ethics 125th anniversary retrospective series with this special feature of Amy R. Baehr's terrific essay on Zona Vallance's fascinating "Women as Moral Beings." Baehr concludes her essay by pointing out that "one lesson we may take from Vallance’s paper is that political philosophy will not present a vision of a just social world for us unless it situates the fact of dependency properly in our thinking." A powerful and still (sadly) timely lesson, I'd suggest.

Say what?

Always the non-conformist, I let my "special month" slip by without a post. I'd had been planning to contribute something about what Strawson's account of the reactive attitudes can do for consequentialists (a lot, I think, despite his being read by Darwall et. al. as an anti-consequentialist), but wasn't quite sure how to say it on here and still am not. But I thought that a fun idea for a thread might be made out of unexpected quotes from philosophers, i.e., ones where they are or seem to be saying something quite contrary to their well-known views. A few of you will have seen this quote from Mill (1831) in my Facebook feed last night:

". . . liberalism, which is for making every man his own guide & sovereign master,& letting him think for himself & do exactly as he judges best for himself, giving other men leave to persuade him if they can by evidence, but forbidding him to give way to authority; and still less allowing them to constrain him more than the existence & tolerable security of every man's person and property renders indispensably necessary. It is difficult to conceive a more thorough ignorance of man's nature, & of what is necessary for his happiness or what degree of happiness & virtue he is capable of attaining than this system implies."

Silence as a virtue?

Hello all. In the spirit of more spontaneous posts on PEA Soup, I'd like to share some thoughts and ask some questions about virtue ethics, an area in which I have little expertise but which I've been wanting to get to know better, and ancient philosophy, also not an area of specialization but one which I've just now dabbled in (but not in the way or in the area most would expect).

Animal welfare and Kant's unconditioned/conditioned good distinction

Inspired a bit by Ralph's post critiquing Kant's view of unconditioned or fundamental goods, I've been investigating why Kant arrives at his (in my opinion) dissatisfying view that we have only indirect duties to non-human animals. Here's my tentative analysis and conclusion.

The Deepest Error in Kant's Ethics

Unlike many other readers, I am inclined to read Kant as a kind of realist (rather than a “constructivist”) about goodness. Nonetheless, Kant holds a distinctive view of goodness: In his view, the fundamental kind of goodness can only be instantiated by the will itself.

According to Kant, this view of goodness is built into common sense moral thought. But in my opinion, this Kantian view is deeply mistaken. Indeed, it is the central illusion on which Kant’s ethics is based.

In this post, I shall first explain what this Kantianview of goodness amounts to; then I shall explain why I believe that this view is false.

Kant, Well-being, and Happiness

I’m intrigued by Kant’s remarks on happiness and well-being. I’ve been thinking of the traditional understanding of his view and a passage we’ve discussed in a reading group on the Second Critique. I’m left with jigsaw puzzle where I cannot seem to make all the parts fit. I would be thankful for any help.

 

G. E. Moore and his young godson

There’s a story that I heard from my father many years ago, which I’m tempted to share with PEA Soupers. G. E. Moore was a Cambridge friend and contemporary of my great-grandfather Ralph L. Wedgwood (1874-1956), and so when my grandfather John H. Wedgwood (1907-1989) was born, Moore agreed to be his godfather.

According to the story, my grandfather, then a small boy, had the following conversation with Moore, while Moore was visiting my great-grandparents’ house for a couple of days.

Small boy: What are you doing, Mr Moore?

Moore (earnestly): I’m writing a book, about the meaning of the word ‘good’.

Small boy: You mean, like when we say that something’s “gone for good”?

Moore (taken aback): Oh! I hadn’t thought of that!

The trouble with this story is that I really doubt that it’s true.

Does Mill believe in discontinuities?

As we all know, J. S. Mill claims that pleasures differ from each other, not only in quantity, but also in quality. Many commentators have read Mill as making the following two claims: 

1. Pleasures fall into two disjoint categories -- the "higher" pleasures and the "lower" pleasures.
2. There is a radical discontinuity between these two categories -- there is no amount (however large) of the lower-quality pleasures that can be more valuable than any amount (however small) of the higher-quality pleasures.

I believe that such discontinuity claims are intrinsically implausible. But that is not what I want to argue here. What I shall argue here is that there is no evidence that Mill made this second claim (2).

The Early Modern Philosophy Curriculum

Many philosophy departments require a course in the history of (usually early) modern philosophy for their majors.  My impression of the way such courses are usually taught is that they focus on metaphysics, epistemology, and philosophy of mind:  the metaphysics of substances; the epistemology of empiricism versus rationalism, both of which are classically foundationalist; ideas, impressions, and other varieties of sense data in the philosophy of mind. I imagine that this curriculum was set back in the mid-twentieth century, when M&E was considered “real” philosophy.  But nowadays, it strikes me as bizarre.