Value objectivists like myself tend to think of practical reasoning as the process by which an agent forms beliefs about what things have value, and […] Read More
Category: Normative Ethics
One of our readers has suggested that one of us post something on last Sunday’s New York Times Magazine piece on stem cells and animals. […] Read More
Recently I gave some lectures on Kant’s moral philosophy in my introductory ethics class. After explaining the “first formulation” of the Categorical Imperative — act […] Read More
Fred Feldman (Pleasure and the Good Life) and Chris Heathwood (“The Problem of Defective Desires”) point out the following paradox for desire satisfaction theory, which […] Read More
Here’s a philosophical problem I’ve been thinking about lately. The problem is that an ethical position I like conflicts with a metaphysical position I like. […] Read More
Proponents of intrinsic value have sometimes attempted to argue for its existence via the following sort of regress argument: Something is valuable; but […] Read More
In his classic paper “Moral luck,” Thomas Nagel claims that Kant denied the relevance of moral luck (i.e., Kant denied that any factor outside an […] Read More
This post over at E.G. got me thinking. E.G. writes: "Consider two demands: 1. A moral theory must be able to accommodate many or most […] Read More
What is utilitarianism? That may seem like an easy question — the kind of thing one might include on a quiz in one’s Intro to […] Read More