Ethical Intuitionism

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1. statquontrarianOct 2020
   I've never created a reading list, so this was a fun exercise.

   Programming:

   * Analyzing Computer System Performance with Perl::PDQ - Gunther

   * The Mythical Man Month - Brooks

   Philosophy:

   * A Journey Around my Room - de Maistre

   * Anger, Mercy, and Revenge - Seneca

   * Schrödinger - What is Life?

   * Man's Search for Meaning - Frankl

   * Essays - Montaigne

   * Ethical Intuitionism - Huemer

   * The Consolations of Philosophy - de Botton

   * A Manual for Living - Epictetus

   * Meditations - Aurelius

   Psychology / Meaning / Purpose / Science:

   * Purpose and Meaning in the Workplace - Dik, Byrne & Steger

   * The Case Against Education - Caplan

   * Selfish Reasons to Have More Kids - Caplan

   * Dawkins - The Selfish Gene

   * A Confession - Tolstoy

   * Enlightenment Now - Pinker

   * The Better Angels of our Nature - Pinker

   * The Improving State of the World - Goklany

   * The Skeptical Environmentalist - Lomborg

   * Religion for Atheists - de Botton

   * Ending Aging - de Grey

   * Gut Feelings - Gigirenzer

   Fiction:

   * Heart of Darkness - Conrad

   * Candide - Voltaire

   * Brave New World - Huxley

   * Selected Works - Goethe

   * 1984 & Animal Farm - Orwell

   Politics:

   * Obedience to Authority - Milgram

   * The Problem of Political Authority - Huemer

   * The Communist Manifesto - Marx

   * Socialism - von Mises

   * Just One Child - Greenhalgh

   * The God That Failed - Crossman

   * Death by Government - Rummel

   Thought-provoking:

   * Free to Learn - Gray

   * The Beautiful Tree - Tooley

   * Education and the State - West

   * The Machinery of Freedom - Friedman

   * Against Intellectual Monopoly - Boldrine & Levine

   * From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State - Beito

   * The Not So Wild, Wild West - Hill

   * More Guns, Less Crime - Lott

   * Race & Economics - Williams

   * Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men - Hummel

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2. schizoidboyMay 2018
   Ethical Intuitionism by Dr. Michael Huemer

   It gave me a plausible alternative to Nihilism.

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3. statquontrarianDec 2020
   For introductions, my favorite is Alain de Botton's The Consolations of Philosophy.

   It's a fascinating subject but be prepared to be utterly confused the deeper you dive. I've concluded, like philosopher Michael Huemer, that few philosophical principles can be uncontroversially concluded. Excerpt from The Problem of Political Authority [1]:

   "Questions of this kind are notoriously difficult. How should we approach them? One approach would be to start from some comprehensive moral theory–say, utilitarianism or Kantian deontology–and attempt to deduce the appropriate conclusions about political rights and obligations. I, unfortunately, cannot do this. I do not know the correct general moral theory, and I don’t think anyone else does either. The reasons for my skepticism are difficult to communicate, but they derive from reflection on the problems of moral philosophy and on the complex, confusing, and constantly disputed literature about those problems. It is a literature in which one theory after another runs into a morass of puzzles and problems that becomes ever more complicated as more philosophers work on it. I cannot fully communicate the situation here; the best way of appreciating my skepticism about moral theory is to delve into that literature yourself. Here, I shall simply announce that I will not assume any comprehensive moral theory, and I think we should be very skeptical of any attempt to arrive at sound conclusions in political philosophy by starting from such a theory. Nor, for similar reasons, do I start by assuming any general political theory, though we shall arrive at a political theory in the end."

   As far as an overarching philosophy, I've concluded on intuitionism, closely approximated by Huemer's Ethical Intuitionism [2].

   [1] https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/1.htm [2] Excerpt: https://spot.colorado.edu/~huemer/5.htm

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4. antidesitterDec 2018
   Hope you find this material useful. The way I look at it is the other way around: The burden of proof lies squarely on the person who denies such an obvious proposition as (1). The same is true for similarly obvious propositions like "there is an external world which I can learn about through my senses" and "inductive reasoning is a valid way of attaining knowledge", which underpin the scientific enterprise and, moreover, any basis for critiquing (1) itself. One way to capture this is through the principle of phenomenal conservatism [1][2][3] as formulated by philosopher Michael Huemer. He has also written a book on the subject called Ethical Intuitionism.

   [1] https://philpapers.org/rec/HUEPCA

   [2] https://philpapers.org/rec/HUECPC

   [3] https://www.iep.utm.edu/phen-con/

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