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Readings
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The Reflective Life
Valerie Tiberius
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Moral Literacy
Barbara Herman
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Ethics and the Environment: An Introduction
Dale Jamieson
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On Human Rights
James Griffin
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Experiments in Ethics
Kwame Anthony Appiah
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Reasons without Rationalism
Kieran Setiya
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Moral Realism: A Defence
Russ Shafer-Landau
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The Way We Eat
Peter Singer and Jim Mason
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Metaphysical Essays
John Hawthorne
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Knowledge and Practical Interests
Jason Stanley
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10 Moral Paradoxes
Saul Smilansky
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Normativity and the Will
R. Jay Wallace
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Ethics without Principles
Jonathan Dancy
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Neuroethics
Neil Levy
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Ideal Code, Real World
Brad Hooker
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Self to Self: Selected Essays
J. David Velleman
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The Nature of Normativity
Ralph Wedgwood
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Structures of Agency: Essays
Michael E. Bratman
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The Second-Person Standpoint
Stephen Darwall
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Ethics and the A Priori
Michael Smith
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The Practice of Value
Joseph Raz
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The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life
Jeff McMahan
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Weighing Lives
John Broome
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Intricate Ethics: Rights, Responsibilities, and Permissible Harm
F. M. Kamm
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Reasons and the Good
Roger Crisp
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May 8, 2008
Ethicists Write Longer Papers Poll
By S. Matthew Liao
On why ethicists tend to write longer papers, Saul Smilansky has proposed the following hypothesis:
1. Do many people NOT write short papers because they believe that (with the exception of Analysis) the journals insist on longer papers?
Do you have this perception? Do vote and let us know. I’m creating this post so that people are aware that there is a new poll. Please continue the discussion at Saul’s original post. Thanks!
Loading …May 7, 2008
Elstein on Is There a Normative Question?
By S. Matthew Liao
Daniel Elstein from University of Leeds gave a talk recently at the Oxford Moral Philosophy Seminar on “Is there a normative question and if so, how can it be answered?” Here is an abstract of his talk:
A neglected debate in metaethics is between Kantian and Humean expressivists. Kantian expressivists like Korsgaard hold that there is a single normative question which metaethics must deal with, whereas Humeans like Blackburn hold that there are simply a slew of diverse normative questions, which are a matter for normative ethics rather than metaethics. I argue that that the counter-intuitive Kantian position can be defended by considering Copp’s normative regress argument, and I try to show how to understand Kant’s argument for the categorical imperative as a plausible response to this threat of normative regress.
May 5, 2008
I’d like to draw your attention to the following:
The UT-Austin philosophy department is pleased to announce a week-long
graduate student workshop on philosophical methodology, August 12 –
August 16.
Possible workshop subtopics include (but are not limited to)
intuition, conceptual analysis, reflective equilibrium, reduction, and
ontological commitment.
Already confirmed speakers include Julia Driver (Washington University/St. Louis), Marc Moffett (Wyoming), Roy Sorensen (Washington University/St. Louis), Ernest Sosa (Rutgers), and a number of UT faculty.
We hope to accept around 10 outside graduate student participants. If
you are interested in applying, please see our website for details:
May 2, 2008
Why do ethicists write such long papers?
By Saul Smilansky
I’ve been looking through the recent issue of Analysis. It has 13 papers, of which one is on meta-ethics, and there’s nothing in either normative or applied ethics. This is a fairly typical showing. There are occasional papers on free will (which is a distinct topic, combining metaphysics and ethics), but very little ethics as such, and (my focus here) hardly any normative or, indeed, applied ethics. Why? And why does this matter?
April 28, 2008
Appiah’s Experiments in Ethics: Chapter 5
By Guy Kahane
Towards the end of the chapter Appiah remarks that the greatest works in ethics exhibit a deep, irrepressible heterogeneity, heterogeneity that reflects a richness and complexity of the ethical life he believes that many moral philosophers overlook in their quest for neat (even: intricate) theories. This last chapter is certainly heterogeneous: starting with remarks on happiness and flourishing, it shifts to a brief discussion of meta-ethics and different forms of naturalism, moves on to poke fun at ‘quandary ethics’ and its contemporary successors, and ends with, well, a reminder of the irreducible complexity of the ethical life, and a plea for pluralism, both evaluative and methodological.
Thick Concepts Conference - First CFP
By Simon Kirchin
Apologies for cross-posting.
THICK CONCEPTS
University of Kent, Canterbury, UK
3rd-5th July, 2009
Invited Speakers:
Jonathan Dancy (Reading; Texas, Austin)
Daniel Elstein (Leeds)
Allan Gibbard (Michigan, Ann Arbor)
Chris Hookway (Sheffield)
Tom Hurka (Toronto)
Simon Kirchin (Kent)
Jerry Levinson (Maryland)
Adrian Moore (Oxford)
Michael Smith (Princeton)
Alan Thomas (Kent)
Pekka Vayrynen (Leeds)
Nick Zangwill (Durham)
Supported by The Mind Association, and The University of Kent.
Sayre-McCord on Metaethics for Blogginheads.tv
By S. Matthew Liao
Professor Geoff Sayre-McCord from UNC has recently recorded a chat with Will Wilkinson on metaethics for Bloggingheads.tv. Here’s the link to the diavlog: http://brainwaveweb.com/diavlogs/10593
Some of the topics covered are as follows:
* How to be a moral realist (03:36)
* What is metaethics? (04:38)
* What to do when your moral arguments fail to persuade (09:29)
* Can the fact that Hitler was evil help explain the Holocaust? (13:50)
* General moral principles in a world of diverse circumstances (17:04)
Enjoy :)
April 21, 2008
CF: Normativity and the Causal Theory of Action
By S. Matthew Liao
NORMATIVITY AND THE CAUSAL THEORY OF ACTION
One-day conference, 18 July 2008, 9am – 6pm Department of Philosophy, University of Bristol, UK Conference venue: Clifton Hill House, Bristol
SPEAKERS:
Michael E. Bratman (Stanford): From goal-directedness to the agent’s rational guidance
Lynne R. Baker (Umass, Amherst): Agency and the first-person perspective
Roman Altshuler (SUNY, Stony Brook): Rationalization as causation and diachronic mental holism
Matthias Haase (Basel): Rule-following and conceptual capacities
Maria Alvarez (Southampton): The causal theory of action: reasons, motivation and explanation
REGISTRATION
April 17, 2008
Appiah’s Experiments in Ethics: Chapter 4
By Thom Brooks
First of all, it is a genuine pleasure to contribute to this forum: I only hope my comments will not lag too far behind the quality of previous posts! Now to Experiments in Ethics . . .
Chapter four is entitled “The Varieties of Moral Experience” and my discussion will follow the sections of this chapter in order in an effort to provide an outline of the argument and substantive points, before concluding with some reflections.
April 7, 2008
Conference on Moral Particularism
By S. Matthew Liao
ETHICS WITHOUT PRINCIPLES: The Diversity of Contexts of Moral Particularisms
Date: May 10, 2008
Place: University of Paris I - Panthéon Sorbonne – ExeCo Centre Panthéon : 12, place du Panthéon, room 1, 75005 Paris, France
Contact e-mail : a.c.zielinska@gmail.com
Conference webpage: http://meliparen.blogspot.com/
Keynote Speakers: Jonathan DANCY, Sandra LAUGIER, and John SKORUPSKI
April 2, 2008
BSET 2008 Schedule
By S. Matthew Liao
British Society for Ethical Theory Annual Conference 2008, University of Edinburgh, 14 – 16 July 2008
Speakers and Papers
1. Carla Bagnoli (University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee): Practical Reflection and Agential Authority
2. Campbell Brown (University of Edinburgh): The Composition of Reasons
3. Krister Bykvist and Jonas Olson (Jesus College and Brasenose College, University of Oxford): Expressivism and Certitude
4. William Dunaway (University of Southern California): Minimalist Semantics and the Problem of Creeping Minimalism
5. Barbara Herman (UCLA): TBA
6. Ulrike Heuer (University of Leeds): Wrongness and Reasons
7. Martin Peterson (University of Cambridge): The Asymmetry Argument
8. Wlodek Rabinowicz (Lund University): TBA
9. Mark Schroeder (University of Southern California): Holism, Weight and Undercutting
10. Alan Strudler (University of Pennsylvania): The Distinctive Wrong in Lying
11. Jonathan Way (University of Californian Santa Barbara): Defending the Wide-Scope Approach to Instrumental Reason
March 31, 2008
Appiah’s Experiments in Ethics: Chapter 3
By S. Matthew Liao
In this chapter, Appiah presents experimental studies that seem to challenge our use of intuitions. He then outlines some responses to these studies. I shall begin with a summary of the chapter, using Appiah’s subheadings for easy navigation. I shall then offer some commentaries on this chapter.
March 21, 2008
Utilitarianism and the Brain
By Guy Kahane
Everybody’s heard about Joshua Greene’s fMRI studies of moral judgement. Many have also heard about the study by Koenigs, Young, Adolphs, Cushman, Tranel, Cushman, Hauser and Damasio of patients with prefrontal damage. In a communication I co-authored with Nick Shackel and which has just come out in Nature, we criticise the methodology used in these studies.
March 17, 2008
Appiah’s Experiments in Ethics: Chapter 2
By Steve Clarke
The second chapter of Experiments in Ethics (E in E) is entitled ‘The Case against Character’, and it focuses on a recent critique of virtue ethics due to Gilbert Harman, John Doris and some other philosophers. The inspiration for their attack on virtue ethics is a body of experimental work produced by ‘situationists’, members of an influential school of thought in social psychology.
March 15, 2008
CF: Raz on Value, Respect and Well-being
By S. Matthew Liao
Manchester Centre for Political Theory (MANCEPT)
Value, Respect, and Wellbeing: Themes from the Work of Joseph Raz
Friday 9 May 2008
Time: 9.30am - 5.15pm
Venue: The Boardroom, Arthur Lewis Building, University of Manchester
Provisional Programme:
9.30 - 10.00 registration
10.00 - 11.15 session 1: Steven Wall (Bowling Green State University)
11.15 - 11.30 coffee
11.30 - 12.45 session 2: Leslie Green (University of Oxford)
12.45 - 1.30 lunch
1.30 - 2.45 session 3: Brad Hooker (University of Reading)
2.45 - 3.00 tea
3.00 - 4.15 session 4: Stephen Darwall (University of Michigan)
4.15 - 5.15 session 5: Discussion with replies by Joseph Raz (University of Oxford and Columbia University)
March 3, 2008
Appiah’s Experiments in Ethics: Chapter 1
By Neil Levy
Chapter One is essentially a ground clearing exercise. Appiah’s aim is to argue that experimental philosophy is not the innovative and threatening enterprise that it might seem: instead, it is a return to philosophy’s roots. Philosophy has traditionally been closely informed by scientific work, and the best philosophers have often engaged in science themselves. It is the era of conceptual analysis divorced from mere empirical engagement that is the aberration, not the turn to the empirical.
February 27, 2008
James Griffin’s On Human Rights
By S. Matthew Liao
Professor James Griffin’s outstanding and important book, On Human Rights, has now been published by Oxford University Press. Professor Griffin is the White’s Professor of Moral Philosophy, Emeritus, at Oxford University, and currently holds appointments at Oxford, Rutgers University and Australian National University.
Dr. John Tasioulas (Oxford) has some wonderful remarks regarding Professor Griffin’s book, which he presented at Professor Griffin’s book launch on January 23, 2008, and which can be found here.
Professor Griffin’s address to the audience at the book launch, in which he shares his motivation for writing the book, can also be found here.
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