The Fourth Steven Humphrey Excellence in Philosophy Conference (Reason and Value) will be held on February 16th-18th, 2008, at the University of California, Santa Barbara. More information here: http://www.philosophy.ucsb.edu/conferences/index.html.
Many philosophers think that whenever we are motivated to act, our motivation always involves a belief. E.g. according to the version of the Humean Theory of Motivation that is defended by Michael Smith, your motivation for action always consists of a desire and a "means-end […] Read More
The Tenth Conference of the International Society for Utilitarian Studies will be held on 11-14 September 2008, at the University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, California, U.S.A.). More information and call for papers here: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/Bentham-Project/info/isusX_call.htm. Submission deadline: February 18th, 2008. The 2nd Annual Conference of the […] Read More
Anyone interested in metaethics should take a look at Antti Kauppinen’s brilliant slideshows at the University of St Andrews. They can be accessed from the webpage of his course HERE.
Some philosophers opposed to consequentialism think that one of the basic mistakes that consequentialists make is to think that all value is located in states of affairs. (E.g., there are remarks to this effect in T. M. Scanlon’s What We Owe to Each Other; in […] Read More
For people in the Bay Area, or those interested in making a trip to it, there will be a small conference entitled "Mind, Agency, and Emotion: New Perspectives on Moral Psychology" held at the University of San Francisco on November 9th and 10th. Speakers will […] Read More
There’s a debate rumbling away on Brian Leiter’s Legal Philosophy blog about whether or not American legal philosophers are remiss for paying so little attention to deontic logic. This reminded me of something that bugs me about contemporary metaethics — viz., that so few contemporary […] Read More
I’m a contractualist. There – I’ve said it. My supervisor Brad Hooker is the rule-consequentialist. You might think that we have endless debates about which of the closely resembling views is right. Unfortunately we have better things to do. But, I do want to explain […] Read More
The “Open Question Argument” is supposed to establish something important for (meta)ethics; namely, that the property of being good (or value, or of what one ought to do, etc.) is not entailed by, and thus not identical to, any natural property like pleasure or knowledge. […] Read More