philopapers

Innes Crellin attacks the “Anglo-Saxon” approach to moral philosophy. Those who seek some meaning in the concept of ‘morality’ find it confused and distorted. What it means seems to vary from one authority to another. In the media and in popular usage, the word has assumed a rhetorical flavour that has disguised any real meaning […]

Peter Lloyd savages the “continental” approach to moral philosophy. “ I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken” Oliver Cromwell, 1650 One of the threats to world peace is from people who share Professor Innes Crellin’s view of the nature of moral values (“The anachronism of morality”, Philosophy

Anja Steinbauer says Don’t Trust the Ethicists (too much). Ethical issues are a messy business. Trying to get a firm grip on them is like holding a handful of sand and see it trickle through your fingers. Many philosophers love ethics. Equipped with their professional buckets and spades – virtues, maxims, systems and values –

Warwick Fox on an approach to the environment which is also a way of living. Deep ecology is one of about nine major approaches to our relationship with the world around us that have been mapped out by environmental philosophers in recent years. I’m not going to discuss all these approaches here, but it might

Paul Gregory on How to End Packages and Bundling. A major practical problem with democracy is how opinion can be organised and measured so that something resembling a general will, or a majority, or a consensus, can be identified. How can one possibly establish all the relevant opinions and values people hold? How can we

Ramsey McNabb on knowing how other people feel. Tragically, Hector’s father is involved in a car accident and dies. Hector is devastated. An acquaintance, Anita, tells him that she knows just how he feels. Angered at her presumption, he responds, “No, you don’t know how I feel!” After all, how could she know how he

Carolyn Suchy-Dicey considers the dilemma of teaching moral autonomy. Last night while working for a wedding, a girl I will call Sarah seemed her normal, bubbly self. She was given a simple task, one we do for every event, but had some difficulties performing it properly. Her response was to yell, blame, shove, and walk

Stuart Greenstreet on why global warming won’t be stopped. Plato was deeply pessimistic about the ability of the human race to govern itself. In The Republic he has Socrates say: “Unless either philosophers rule in our cities or those whom now we call rulers and potentates engage genuinely and adequately in philosophy, and political power

John Capps argues that Senator McCarthy’s anti-Communist purges helped positivism to triumph over pragmatism in American universities in the 1950’s. The McCarthy era still casts a long shadow over American politics and culture. From 1953 to 1954 Senator Joseph McCarthy summoned hundreds of witnesses before the Senate’s Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations with the stated intention

Walter Ott doesn’t think so. Mrs White devoted much of her working life to her business, a small laundromat. Upon her death, her son Jimmy wonders what to do with it. Would he be harming Mrs White if he were to sell it? Does he have some kind of duty to keep it going, no