Posts Tagged ‘ Philosophy ’

Encouraged by faculty at Georgetown

Apr 25th, 2019 1:03 pm | By

Brian Leiter is keeping track of the specialized but all too lively subtopic of Philosophy Grad Students And Even Faculty Hurling Abuse At Colleagues In Public over trans issues.

April 19 for instance:

A propos this earlier abusive outburst directed at feminist philosopher Holly Lawford-Smith (Melbourne), we now have this from Keyvan Shafiei:

As Leiter points out, the issue of course was not mere “profane language” – it was sweary name-calling, to be specific, piece of shit and fucking vile. People do this all the time: talk about mild generalities like “profanity” when the issue is misogynist or harshly sweary insults directed at specific people. Telling a particular person she’s “fucking vile” is not mere “profane language.” Keyvan Shafiei … Read the rest

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Is morality choice or perception?

Feb 14th, 2019 12:14 pm | By

Anil Gomes, a Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy at Oxford, explains Iris Murdoch’s version of moral philosophy at the TLS:

Her views on moral philosophy are set out in three papers published over this period, none of them in the mainstream philosophy journals where her former colleagues might have come across them, later collected together as The Sovereignty of Good (1970). She presents herself throughout these essays as opposing a certain picture of moral philosophy. It is a picture, Murdoch tells us, that can be found in the work of R. M. Hare, where moral utterances are a kind of prescription, in Sartre’s existentialism, where moral value is created by our undetermined choices, and in the hero of many

… Read the rest

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Ding ding ding went the trolley

Nov 9th, 2015 3:53 pm | By

The Trolley Problem, with extra bells and whistles.

Philosophers in this comic: Philippa Foot

Permanent Link to this Comic: http://existentialcomics.com/comic/106

Support the comic on Patreon… Read the rest

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When Hume lived in La Flèche

Sep 18th, 2015 10:24 am | By

Alison Gopnik has a terrific article in The Atlantic. Drop everything and read it, as I just did.

She starts with her personal crisis in which a lot of things fell apart and triggered other things falling apart, and she couldn’t work. (She’s a philosopher and a psychologist. I think I’ve quoted her in the past.)

My doctors prescribed Prozac, yoga, and meditation. I hated Prozac. I was terrible at yoga. But meditation seemed to help, and it was interesting, at least. In fact, researching meditation seemed to help as much as actually doing it. Where did it come from? Why did it work?

So she began to read Buddhist philosophy.

Then there’s David Hume. He had a crisis … Read the rest

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Everything is aired in the bracing dialectic wind

Jul 2nd, 2015 11:19 am | By

From Rebecca Goldstein’s Plato at the Googleplex:

Plato presents the journey to the light as a largely solitary one, though some unseen person does yank the prisoner out of the cave; but the format of the dialogues (as well as his having founded the Academy) encourages the view that, on the contrary, Plato conceived of philosophy as necessarily gregarious rather than solitary. The exposure of presumptions is best done in company, the more argumentative the better. This is why discussion round the table is so essential. This is why philosophy must be argumentative. It proceeds by way of arguments, and the arguments are argued over. Everything is aired in the bracing dialectic wind stirred by many clashing viewpoints. Only

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Moral decisions

Feb 24th, 2013 10:43 am | By

Eric has a post about what various things he writes about have to do with assisted dying.

Well, to put it briefly, as I say in the blog’s banner, I argue for the right-to-die, and against the religious obstruction of that right, so anything which impinges on the issue, even indirectly, is of importance to me. That’s why disputing scientism seems to me to be important, because it implicitly defines away all other forms of inquiry which do not satisfy the canonical rules of scientific inquiry and decision. And that includes morality.

Jon Jermey raises an interesting question in response to Eric.

Eric, once again I think the ball is in your court: what, exactly, is the difference

… Read the rest

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Yes but what should we do about it?

Oct 22nd, 2011 5:11 pm | By

Part 4 of the Heathen’s Progress is out. It’s about how atheists shouldn’t think science is their BFF, because it will stab them in the back sooner or later.

Julian is harsh about Sam Harris’s The Moral Landscape.

What’s worse, however, is when atheists talk of science as though it is the source of all the knowledge and wisdom we need to live. The most egregious recent example of this is Sam Harris’s The Moral Landscape, with its subtitle “How science can determine human values”. It’s hard to imagine a more hyperbolic claim about the power of science…

It is rather.

When Harris sounds convincing is when he is attacking the batty view that science has nothing to

… Read the rest

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