The moral philosopher Jonathan Glover interviewed a number of anti-social people, including psychopaths, who have committed serious crimes and live in secure hospitals in order to investigate how they think about right and wrong and what sort of conscience they have. He thinks they have a conscience, but one unlike others’. They have strong feelings [...]
It’s Valentine’s Day and if you’re a cheap bastard who has not yet figured out what to get your beloved for $0, there’s still time to write her a song following these familiar steps: The Axis of Awesome: How to Write a Love Song – watch more funny videos Thanks to @FunnyVideos on Twitter. Your [...]
Drew Dyck has written a book called Generation Ex-Christian: Why Young Adults Are Leaving the Faith. . .and How to Bring Them Back. I want to focus on just a few passages from his interesting five page article from last fall in last November’s Christianity Today. Unlike many Christians who, despite living in a culture [...]
In his book Moral Status and Human Life: The Case for Children’s Superiority, law professor James Dwyer argues that children are not merely equal to adults in moral status but actually have a higher moral status than adults. Below is a brief video in which he sketches out the broad contours of his thought on moral [...]
Rachel Maddow covers the remarkable story about Wyoming State Representatives Lisa Shepperson and Sue Wallis making a small government conservatism argument against a paternalistic proposed abortion law: Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy Wallis is the mother of 7 and the grandmother of 1. More about her can be [...]
Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers recently wrote about being irked by “Dictionary Atheists”. He doesn’t like it when people say that atheism means nothing more than denying God. His post is long, but I just want to focus on the issue of the meaning of atheism: why complain about dictionary atheists? After all, aren’t they [...]
In reply to yesterday’s open philosophical question whether a Swedish law banning any school, even private ones, from indoctrinating students by teaching their religious tenets as truths (with the ulterior motive of undermining Islamic schools’ abilities to radicalize their students), Mary Young makes a rigorous and eloquent case against such bans well worth highlighting (and [...]
In reply to my post, Against Moral Intuitionism, James Gray defended his moral intuitionist leanings against my attacks on them. He starts by quoting me: But many people can be and have been persuaded that goodness is not a property of things but rather of people’s attitudes towards them. The very existence of anti-realists about the existence [...]
Sweden is planning to make it illegal, even for private schools, to teach religious doctrines as true. Their content may be discussed, of course, but they will not be able to be presented as facts. In The Guardian, Andrew Brown explains the issues involved and the ulterior motives which may really explain the legislation: The [...]
In reply to my post, Pleasure And Pain As Intrinsic Instrumental Goods, James objects: You are defining pleasure as intrinsic instrumental good. This is obviously not intrinsic goodness as I define it at all. Instrumental goodness is not intrinsic goodness. A successful pleasure instance is an intrinsically good instance of pleasure in-itself and for-itself, just for being [...]
It’s been well over a year since I’ve felt inclined to give out a ’nuff said award to a commentator, but Mary’s reply to my post on charity, religion, and conservatism definitely qualifies as a comment which deserves its own blog post and needs no further comment from me: The driving force behind what calls [...]
Last week a heinous, conscience-shocking injustice occurred when the brave, openly gay, Ugandan gay rights campaigner David Kato (pictured above) was murdered shortly after a Ugandan newspaper featured him on the cover with the headline: “100 PIctures of Uganda’s Top Homos Leak” and the words “Hang Them” next to it. The AP photo of the newspaper [...]
Tom Rhees has a fascinating article in which he analyzes religious and irreligious generosity by a number of metrics, yielding some revealing insights. The whole piece is worth reading. But I would like to focus on this last bit: Arguably, charity is a means to redistribute wealth from the rich to the poor. Seen in [...]
In a recent post I distinguished numerous times between moral and non-moral values and between different sorts of intrinsic and instrumental goods. James Gray asks for clarifications about how I use these terms: First, I don’t know that it matters to call something a “moral value.” Of course, there are instrumental values concerning morally neutral [...]
In the series of posts I began on Sunday and which has continued through this morning, I have developed and defended my naturalistic approach to understanding value as a realist. James Gray, despite being a moral realist, has balked at much in my attempts to do this and it has become increasingly clear that the [...]
In recent posts I have been arguing that there is one sense of the word “good” which can be analyzed in terms of facts and that this is the kind of “goodness” which we can consider a real part of the world. This real, intrinsic, factual sense of goodness is its meaning as “effectiveness”. We [...]
I have recently been arguing that the term good: must be cashed out in fact terms lest it just be a projection of our preferences and nothing more. [And] if it means anything objective, it means effectiveness. In reply, James Gray accuses me of reductionism: One, “good” does not have be defined in non-good terms. [...]
In this post, I explore the meanings and worths of two phenomena recognized by our language as of happiness, in reply to remarks by James Gray on my most recent post. For a little background for those joining late and who would like to catch up: I have been arguing in several posts now that goodness [...]
In a recent post I argued that goodness, objectively speaking, means effectiveness. Of course we use the word “good” for numerous purposes, to express that we find something pleasant, desirable, useful, advantageous to our interests, etc. But I want to argue that when it comes to the facts of reality, goodness has only this one essential [...]
In my most recent philosophical post, I have finally explained one of the most fundamental premises necessary for explaining and justifying my overall views on ethics. I explained my view that goodness objectively means effectiveness and that all further true ideas of “good” should be understood only as derivative from the basic good of effectiveness. Also [...]
All statements about values can be restated as statements of facts. The truth or falsity about value claims can be discovered by investigations of facts. Goodness is a word that can be defined by reference to certain kinds of factual relationships in the world. Whether or not something deserves to be called good can be [...]
In a long comment on my post from this morning, George raised the question of usage of “subjectivism” beyond my own interpretation of the word. Let’s look to the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, which should be as neutral an adjudicating source as the English-speaking philosophy world has. I selected this source for its independent, encyclopedia character [...]
Tom Gilson thinks that theism accounts for moral realism better than atheism does. My reasons for rejecting that view are here (though I am interested in tailoring a future post specifically to Gilson’s particular way of arguing for a theist basis for moral realism). For now, however, rather than counter Gilson’s positive claims for theism’s [...]
Jason of Lousy Canuck thinks I am quibbling over semantics in complaining about his characterization of morality as essentially “subjective” and he wants me to clarify how my position diverges in substance from his own. Answering his questions and his formulations may prove a fruitful way to clarify my own positions. So, here goes. He [...]
I hope soon to engage a few of the specifics of a debate going on at our friend George’s blog Misplaced Grace which started when a Christian apologist named Peter tried to argue that atheism has no way of ruling out pedophilia as immoral. Peter’s first remarks were critical of posts at Jason Thibeault’s blog Lousy Canuck. [...]