Kwame Anthony Appiah explores a thesis I’ve never heard before in his new book, The Honor Code: How Moral Revolutions Happen summarized by Matthew Pianalto: Judged by contemporary Western standards, honour has a mixed moral record. On the one hand, a sense of gentlemanly honour underwrote the practice of duelling, long after it had been [...]
In an e-mail to me, Caroline proposes thought provoking reasons for non-believers to encourage (or at least to not actively discourage) religious beliefs: It would also be nice if people would carry out actions in good conscience of just being decent human beings rather than in fear of reprisal in the afterlife, but as there [...]
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 [...]
Atheists do not exactly claim to “love sinners but hate sins” (if for no other reason than that most, if not all, of us reject the category of “sin” as a meaningful or valuable way to talk about ethical failure). Also, atheists may be more realistic than to think that we really do, or feasibly [...]
This is a renamed repost of July 24, 2009 post called “How Do I Love Thee? Let Me Count The Ways”: In the first part of this series, I explored the reasons for rejecting “unconditional” love as a candidate for the ideal essence of love since as a concept it is riddled with numerous problems [...]
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 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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
Would you ever call a terrorist brave? Were there brave Nazis? Does fighting using unjust tactics or fighting for an unjust cause make one’s own willingness to face mortal threats less brave or can one have the virtue of bravery even though one resorts to evil techniques or serves evil purposes? Assuming the soldier or [...]
With Sam Harris doing the rounds promoting a utilitarianism that seems to take the pleasures of sentient beings to be the good to be maximized, it’s as appropriate a time as ever to flesh out my objections to prioritizing pleasure and pain as the central goods in life. More specifically, you can read my already [...]
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 [...]
I love how he sums up Aristotle’s notion of practical wisdom, to paraphrase, “practical wisdom is about having a moral will and a moral skill”. The entire talk is a great defense of wisdom, the skill of moral judgment, against cultural overemphases on bureaucratic reliance on rules at the expense of all thinking: Schwartz’s books [...]
In a previous post, I discussed the intrinsic connection between being and goodness and between functional activity and being. I argued, for example that the various components of a heart need to function as a heart to be a heart and similarly that a human being must act morally to realize her humanity. Specifically, I [...]
Introduction This post is a long one but an important one for understanding what sophisticated Roman Catholic philosophers have traditionally meant when they have said that “God is good” and that the existence of evil is not to be taken as counter-evidence to their belief in God’s goodness. Very often we atheists are dismissed as [...]
All things, insofar as they are, have goodness. This is because, for any existent thing whatsoever, to be is necessarily better than not being (regardless of whether a given existent thing consciously acknowledges this or is even capable of thinking about it at all). This goodness is partly a function of the fact that every [...]
Previously I have argued that pride is the proper identification of the self with whatever excellently expresses, manifests, reflects, results from, or causes one’s own excellence. It is only fitting that we feel that we love and admire that which is good and love and admire it more the better it is and less the [...]
A somewhat unpleasantly hostile atheist is outraged that a nephew, with whom this atheist is admittedly not very close, announced on Facebook plans to study theology (in addition to political science). Here is what the atheist wants to say to the nephew “in a nutshell”: “In a nutshell, I think religion is: pernicious fraud and one [...]
I think the Maverick Philosopher‘s construal of the virtue of patriotism is generally on target and consistent with my framework for understanding the virtue of pride (which would be important since patriotism is, manifestly, a sub-species of pride) and humility (which I essentially wrote last week and am almost ready to post). The maverick one writes: [...]
From Three Poems by Nicole Cooley: Testimony: He or His Apparition About noon, at Salem, Giles Corey was press’d to death for standing Mute. — Samuel Sewall, Diary, September 19, 1692 The girls’ testimony is gravel scattered on the grass. Ann Putnam: Giles Corey or his Apperance has most greviously afflected me by beating pinching and almost [...]
Pride is essentially the personal identification with something admirable. When I am rightly proud of my traits, I rightly take the traits themselves each to be admirable in one way or another and rightly take myself to be admirable insofar as they are part of me and expressions of me. When I am rightly proud [...]
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 [...]