Mugen's Public Library
Ethics
Moral Disagreement & Moral Realism
In Mackie’s argument from relativity, he introduces a peculiar challenge to moral realists who believe in objective moral truths that exist independently of the beliefs and lived experiences of moral agents. The challenge lies in reconciling this objectivity with the phenomenon that our ecosystem of moral talk and study is riddled with moral disagreements amongst different cultures, time periods, and even individuals within the same community. If there exist objective moral truths that inspire our understanding of morality, and their existence is necessarily and naturally self-evident as to avoid a descriptively inaccurate meta-ethical theory of moral values that are epistemologically inaccessible to the regular moral knower, then why would we have so much disagreement across times periods and places?
Street's Evolutionary Debunking and Realist Theories of Moral Value
Street’s evolutionary debunking argument against realist theories of value recognizes Darwinian forces of natural selection as having had an instrumental role in shaping the bedrock of our normative systems, what she calls “proto-evaluative judgments”. These forces launched our bank of evaluative judgments with the aim of selecting for a capacity to survive rather than for an apprehension of attitude-independent moral truths. She thus argues that we have reason to doubt the epistemic validity of our moral systems (124). The realist is given two avenues, the first is to reject the relation between evolutionary forces and our evaluative truths, which leads to an implausible conclusion of unmitigated moral skepticism. The second is to acknowledge the relation and offer what Street calls a tracking account which would posit that evolutionary forces selected those most fit to grasp the evaluative judgements which are morally true (109). I will expand on Street’s arguments against both realist positions, and argue they were ultimately unsuccessful due to Katia Vavova’s third-factor account in response to Street, which if left unchallenged dooms debunkers to slip into rampant moral skepticism.
Did Jim kill Pedro? Utilitarianism and Consequentialist Replies
Firstly, Williams establishes that utilitarianism implies negative responsibility. Given that agents have a duty to promote the good in a system, if Jim refrains from stopping Pedro from killing 20 "Indians", Jim is also responsible for the outcome. Utilitarianism as an agent neutral moral theory assesses blameworthiness of agents based on their action or inaction towards the optimal outcome, assuming they have the capacity to influence it. All agents have equal duty to an outcome determined by the objective balance of goods and bads, and thus utilitarianism implies “boundless obligation” (p.110). On the other hand, it is worth noting that Williams claims that a moral theory mustn’t exempt actors from all obligations, just as in Jim’s case it would be “hard to think of anyone supposing” that Jim is exempt from any obligation to stop Pedro from killing (110). Williams draws a distinction in the moral significance between Jim having the capacity to stop a suboptimal outcome, and bringing that outcome about (109) just as Pedro has done. Jim did not make the killing happen, and thus did not bring about the outcome of the killings through Pedro, but rather Pedro brought the action of killing into being. Contrarily, utilitarianism assumes equal accountability to the outcome in a system where two agents have the causal levers to bring about or prevent that outcome. While it would be intuitive to assume Pedro is more accountable to the outcome than Jim, it is also intuitive Jim has some sort of obligation towards preventing the outcome. In order to understand where the line must be drawn an understanding of people’s priorities and moral projects must be understood.
A review of Myisha Cherry's What an [En]tangled Web We Weave: Emotions, Motivation, and Rethinking Us and the “Other”
Entangled empathy is a form of reflective empathy which “directs our attention to the things that need moral response”. Rather than feeling in artificial unison with a person or a non-human animal, this form of empathy aims to recognize the inherent intersectionality of interests amongst agents in a relationship based on the inhabitance of a common ecosystem. As opposed to sympathy which is the cognitive act of recognizing one’s pain, entangled empathy aims to unify both the emotional experience of another’s pain and the cognitive understanding of their unique experience of it.
Self, Friendship, and Community
Over the last few weeks, I’ve poured myself in conversation with a childhood friend on the subject of friendships. Growing up in a broken home, my friendships offered me refuge and the redemption of a love I’ve learned to fear and deny myself. In the enterprising eyes of my friend, these relations of dependency were an unprofitable distraction from an otherwise empowering solitude. In this paper, I will examine the roles of individualist and relational conceptions of the self in regard to self-love and its limits. I will determine that both conceptions are necessary considerations when developing healthy and lasting companion friendships. Concerns for the independence of an individual’s heart and mind underlie healthy relations with friends. In turn, a wholly individualistic self-interest precludes one from being a good friend to others and one’s self.
Freedom, Autonomy & Love in Ancient Greek, Medieval and Contemporary Political Thought
MY THESIS!!!
While the quest for freedom has not evaded any period of human intellectual history, the purported location of these keys has changed depending on the thinker, the period, and the form of freedom in question. Freedom from causal determinacy of the material world has often been interpreted as freedom from our own impulsive drives for pleasure and survival, or even from the ontological continuity of time and contiguity of space. Personal liberation of minds through a state-assisted rational investigation of the Good in the ancient Greek and medieval Arab worlds was prevalent in early political thought. Collective liberation of the disenfranchised from a tyrannical elite through civil disobedience or revolt on the other hand, with a few exceptions in early Greek and medieval thought, has largely gone unframed until the 18th century. It’s important to note that while philosophers will be developing their conceptual foundations of freedom in dialogue with the historical facts and ideological norms of their times, it is common for their views to diverge from the collective and epochal conscience. This work will explore the history of the philosophical concept of political freedom.
