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2012-11-20
For those that are interested, I've written up a response at philosophyetc.net that defends consequentialism from some of the interesting objections that Stratton-Lake raises in this paper.

2012-11-12
I am delighted that someone of Kitcher's ability has tackled the meta-ethical implications of understanding morality as an evolutionary adaptation. Further, Christine Clavien has advanced that good cause by providing an inspiringly insightful and clear review of important implications of his work. 

However, the science of the matter actually supports a much stronger hypothesis than Kitcher's "morality evolved to overcome altruism failures".That stronger hypothesis may have different meta-ethical implications.

Relevant criteria for scientific truth regarding morality as an evolutionary adaptation Include explanatory power for descriptive facts and puzzles, no contradiction with known facts, simplicity, and integration with the rest of science. By these criteria, a superior hypothesis can be stated as "morality overcomes a universal cooperation-exploitation dilemma by motivating or advocating altruistic cooperation strategies". That is, morality is composed of assemblies of biolog ... (read more)

Latest replies: Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/7433 Reply

2012-02-03
In this blog post, I outline a new form of Satisficing Consequentialism that meets Bradley's requirement that it "does not permit the gratuitous prevention of goodness."

2011-09-10
I couldn't find Tim's email so am instead posting here a link to my critical discussion of his paper (which may also be of interest to other readers):
Moral Judgments, 2Dism, and Attitudinal Commitments.


Cheers,
Richard

2010-06-26
Hi,

Jonathan Way writes: "Some irrational states can be avoided in more than one way. For example, if you believe that you ought to A you can avoid akrasia by intending to A or by dropping the belief that you ought to A".

Rather than avoiding akrasia by dropping the belief that one ought A; Jonathan Way has very clearly given a definition of the condition. Clearly the writer has in mind a prior sense of duty in the mind of a person described. This person's path is either to perform his duty, or to discover that his proposed action is not obligatory.

2010-05-05

Reply to NDPR review of Benner, Machiavelli’s Ethics.

Posted on May 5, 2010 by dikaiosis

My book Machiavelli’s Ethics was recently reviewed by Cary J. Nederman in the Notre Dame Philosophical Review. Here is the review:

http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=19448

Nederman published a book on Machiavelli (Machiavelli: A Beginner’s Guide, Oneworld Publications, March 2009) a few months before mine came out. Since our aims and approaches are very different, disagreements are to be expected. However, the review also contains some serious misrepresentations of my arguments. As the NDPR does not have a policy of publishing authors’ replies to reviews, I try to set the record (partly) straight here.    (Comments welcome)

1. Nederman thinks that I deal in an unjustifiably selective way with recent Machiavelli scholarship. He writes, “the way in which the preceding literature is or is not brought to bear on the arguments of this book has, in my opinion, the effect of distorting the record and, at times, of ... (read more)


2009-12-23

Many medical research protocols pay for medical care for subjects who do not have insurance but bill insurance companies if they do. Is this ethical?



e.g. 2 subjects in a cancer chemo protocol, each has an annual income of $100,000:

A Has chosen to pay for insurance. His insurance is billed for care.

B Has no insurance. He pays nothing.

 Is this ethical?



Latest replies: Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/2502 Reply

2009-08-02
(tried to post elsewhere, but there are bugs)

Looking at display, images of contemporary art in London galleries


There was a discussion about the word 'display' occurring in the title of this book. In presupposing, in the management or handling of artworks, what are traditionally skills--works are disposed in some sort of way carefully within an exhibition space; that's just part of what it is to mount an exhibition--we paid quite real skills not much regard. But the use of 'display'1 (again) indicated our consciousness of a degree in which that handling or manipulation of artworks, and within artworks, in spaces of their actual presentation, acknowledged something particular and differently but orthodoxly definite in the progress of contemporary art including relational expectations in situations in which artists conceived of their works being shown, displayed.
   For the editor, who is a curator, there is a sense of that kind of self-consciousness as now part of a repertoire ... (read more)

2009-05-27
Cross-posted from http://mleseminar.wordpress.com/
...

The paper we discussed this week is here and my (very short) handout is here.

Schroeder is offering more of a general structure for an expressivist account than a fully-worked out one, and one of the points he’s fairly vague on is what descriptive predicate should typically follow the ‘is for’ attitude. For the purposes of the paper, he adopts a proposal of Gibbard’s, which analyses disapproval (a technical term for the expressivist) in terms of being for blaming for; so the idea is that ‘Jon thinks murder is wrong’ should be rendered as ‘Jon is for blaming for murdering’.

(Note that we can’t just adopt the ‘is for’ proposal without any descriptive predicate: ‘is for the non-occurrence of’ because this collapses two readings we want to keep distinct; the non-occurrence of not-murdering is the same as the occurrence of murdering, while not blaming for not murdering is not the same as blaming for murdering.)

Taken literally, it looks like ... (read more)

Latest replies: Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/1097 Reply

2008-12-28
Huemer (p.911) objects to the Average Utility Principle on the grounds that it implies:
The Sadistic Conclusion: In some circumstances, it would be better with respect to utility to add some unhappy people to the world (people with negative utility), rather than creating a larger number of happy people (people with positive utility).
This does seem counterintuitive, at least at first glance.  But further reflection reveals that it is not much of a move from the (not especially outrageous) claim that adding mediocre lives can make a world worse. For then we may expect that adding a great many mediocre lives could make a world much worse (transforming it from a predominantly flourishing world to a predominantly mediocre one).  In any case, if this is a harm at all, then it isn't surprising that it could outweigh the modest harm of adding a single moderately bad life.  We are tempted to draw a bright line between lives that are worth living and those that aren't, but ... (read more)
Latest replies: Permanent link: http://philpapers.org/post/174 Reply

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