Nietzsche casts himself, quite provocatively, as an “immoralist”. In this post, I want to make clear what Nietzsche means by this term as a first step towards understanding the exact nature and scope of his hostility to morality. As should already be apparent to longtime Camels With Hammers readers, I am optimistic about philosophy’s possibilities [...]
In this post I just want to jot down some thoughts about a knotty issue. I probably will not make much progress in untangling all its strands but hopefully will stimulate a discussion that straightens things out at least a bit. Is political secularism inherently neutral or antagonistic to religiosity? There are a couple of [...]
This is one of the most concise, eloquent, and accurate statements on the problem with religious absolutism in morality and the superiority of secular, non-absolutist approaches to morality I have ever heard. And it is certainly Dawkins’s best 2 and a half minutes on the topic of morality I have ever heard: Thanks to Lucy. [...]
Earlier today, I argued that atheists can vigorously and outspokenly oppose bad faith-based ideas, values, and behaviors, but still love other aspects of the religiosity of their religious friends (and of religious people in general). I argued that religion can be as central to personal identity formation as sexuality is and that to indiscriminately hate [...]
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 [...]
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 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 [...]
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. [...]
Earlier today, I argued that atheists cannot duck metaethics challenges from theists (or anyone else) and that we should not respond to such challenges with the knee jerk response that we are being bigotedly assumed to be incapable of moral behavior. I wrote: it is not mere prejudice for theists to demand atheists give an [...]
A consequentialist assesses the ultimate worth of all the various features of our ethical lives according to whether or not they bring about some specific intrinsic good or goods that the consequentialist judges to be of primary value. All the various valuable features of our lives have their ultimate value with respect to how they [...]
A couple of weeks ago, I argued that there was a real distinction between “lacking a belief in any God or gods” on the one hand and “believing there is no God (or gods)” on the other hand. Primarily I saw the heart of the distinction as resting with the difference between on the one [...]
Earlier today, I drew attention to Greta Christina’s article formulating some ideas she picked up from Rebecca Newberger Goldstein. If you have already read either or both of those posts, you can just skip the next two paragraphs meant to catch up new readers. The Goldstein/Greta Christina argument built off of Jonathan Haidt’s theory of [...]
Yesterday I replied to Mary Midgley’s article out this weekend, which claimed that evolutionary theory does not refute Genesis since Genesis was not meant to be a literal description of how God made the world. In reply I revisted remarks and videos that I posted last fall which overviewed the ways that even if we [...]
Nietzsche’s writings on morality are famously provocative and controversial. His criticisms of morality in both theory and practice are so extensive and rhetorically scathing that many philosophers assume that he can offer little or nothing constructive to moral philosophy. Additionally, his glorification of the will to power sounds prima facie like a celebration of excessively [...]
In a series of posts this semester, I am going to blog all (or almost all) the lecture topics for the two Philosophical Ethics classes I am teaching this semester. Each of these posts will primarily explicate the reading or a theme that dominated class discussion in a way that should be accessible to novices [...]
After this introductory paragraph, every sentence in this post will summarize and link a different post expressing my views, primarily on topics related to atheism, philosophy, and ethics—which are the primary preoccupations of this blog. I am organizing all of these links into this one summary statement of “Camels With Hammers’ Philosophy.” This post will [...]
Over at Unreasonable Faith, guest contributor Custador thinks he is a bigoted atheist: The knowledge that my cousin is a creationist has actually made me dislike him. I wonder now if I’m any better than any other prejudiced person — a racist or a sexist or a homophobe — because I pre-judge a group of [...]
Francis Collins trots out a familiar old argument against atheism. The argument is that if there is no God then our morality is an illusion. Collins’s presentation of this argument features an unusual and suspicious spin. Collins knows that arguments can be made from evolutionary psychology that broadly moral thinking seems to have evolved in [...]
As part of a 9 page critical review of Robert Wright’s The Evolution of God, Jerry Coyne levels more than a few incisive challenges countering Wright’s faith in religion as an indispensible aid to moral progress. Here are just a few of Coyne’s key points. First he enlists David Hume to challenge Wright’s assumption that [...]
In reply to a recent post, Tyler writes: Your definition of ethics and morality is well taken and allows for further interesting debate on culture and moral systems but it still requires assumption of benefit. Defining phrases like “fully flourishing life” and “most excellent characters we can develop” require a standard of evaluation which I [...]
In a previous post, I raised some remarks from psychologist of morality Jonathan Haidt, in which he discussed his theory that moral thinking appeals to 5 essential modules hardwired into our brains by evolution. In the interview I cited from a couple of years ago he only referred to 4 of the 5 modules but [...]
Aaron writes this wonderfully thought provoking reply to my post about moral motivation apart from reference to God: I had an argument a few years back with someone over this. She thought I’d go to hell for not believing in Jesus, even thought she thought I was a great person. I found that troubling. It [...]