Ethics and the limits of philosophy

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1. ErrancerNov 2022
   Eh, this article touches on something important but 1. the material aspect of determinism is the most boring one, if everything is materially determined then so is our feeling of freedom therefore it doesn't really change anything. Strawson has a nice article about this called "Freedom and resentment" which shows that the thesis of determinism doesn't really change anything about our ethics. 2. the programming lingo seems to me to make the issue more obscure rather than clear but the problem he is mentioning is discussed under the name "second-order desires" and is quite important since it leads to much more interesting problem of determinism - the psychological determinism. Usually we believe we have certain freedom in choosing our beliefs through weighing and choosing our interpretations of what is happening. The issue of psychological determinism is threefold. First proposition is that our beliefs change due to some causes, they don't simply pop into our head. Second proposition is that our given beliefs will dictate what interpretations will make sense to us. Therefore every cause will make us believe what our current beliefs allow. Third proposition is that our actions are driven by combination of beliefs and desires. So ultimately we can't chose our actions since we can't choose our beliefs and the hope for "freedom" is lost. What is left is the will which is not free but driven by beliefs and desires that are outside "our" control.

   Now I don't know if I believe in this formulation of the problem but among all formulations of determinism throughout history this one is in my opinion the only one worth arguing about. I learned about it by reading two texts by Bernard Williams and I would say that he should be named the author of this formulation even though he never used such name. The first text is his book "Ethics and the limits of philosophy" and the second is the essay "How free does the will need to be?". If someone is interested in this issue then I would recommend following the citation trail of the essay.

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2. woodruffwAug 2016
   Consider the following: What type of world would ours be if everybody tortured cats for fun? Intuitively speaking, would that be a "good" world, or at least one that is more "moral" than our current one?

   Morality itself may not be universal in the same way that protons and neutrons are - it's unlikely that CERN will ever find a fundamental particle that interacts with humans to produce moral behavior. That being said, it isn't necessarily impossible to conceive of a (universal, consistent, intuitive) code whose rules maximize some moral good[1] (whether that good is pleasure, longevity, number of M&Ms per capita, etc).

   We can argue back and forth about whether moral goods are social or universal (I personally think that it depends on the moral good being considered), but neither option seems to detract from the core calculus of moral philosophy - whether or not someone ought to do something. If that fundamental question resonates with you, then you've just made a moral consideration. The trick then is to understand why you've made that consideration, whether or not it is a consistent one, and what first principles inspire it. If you think that question doesn't resonate with you, you might be an amoralist[2].

   [1]: I apologize for re-using "good" here - I'm using it in the sense of resources, not the moral sense. In the context of (utilitarian) moral philosophy, moral goods are those resources that we ought to maximize.

   [2]: Bernard Williams has written very extensively on amoralism, and particularly on the inconsistencies that amoralists must concede upon being presented with their own behavior. Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy and Morality: An Introduction to Ethics both contain great passages/chapters on amoralism and its inviability as a philosophical model.

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3. telemachosJul 2010

     Some from the canon:
   

   Plato: Defence of Socrates, Euthyphro, Crito (translated by David Gallop)

   The Modes of Scepticism by Julia Annas and Jonathan Barnes (a beautiful collection of texts from Pyrrhonian scepticism and analysis of their arguments; the best way I know to meet ancient scepticism)

   Descartes: Meditations on First Philosophy (The Cambridge University Press edition is very good; it's probably worth buying their Selected Philosophical Writings for a good basic Descartes text)

   David Hume: An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding and An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (I recommend the Oxford Philosophical Texts editions)

   Wittgenstein: Philosophical Investigations (terribly, terribly difficult, but very rewarding)

     A few contemporary things:
   

   Gilbert Ryle: The Concept of Mind

   Willard Van Orman Quine: From a Logical Point of View

   J. L. Mackie: Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong

   Thomas Nagel: Mortal Questions (short essays, well-written, very accessible)

   Bernard Williams: Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy

   Michael Smith: The Moral Problem

     Specialist, technical, odd:
   

   The Frege Reader by Michael Beaney (for modern logic and the beginnings of contemporary philosophy in the analytic style)

   J. L. Mackie: The Cement of the Universe: A Study of Causation

   William Kingdon Clifford: The Ethics of Belief (he argues, oddly but powerfully, that it's immoral to believe things on insufficient evidence or irrationally - an offense to morality, not just reason)

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