In his “Meta-Ethics and the Problem of Creeping Minimalism” (Philosophical Perspectives 18: 23-44), James Dreier poses an urgent question. (Well, as urgent as questions in “meta-meta-ethics” get.) The question is how to formulate the difference between moral realism and irrealism given that one can always […] Read More
(If one of your papers has recently become available online and you would like me to link to it in the next Ethics Alert, then please send me an email or an email attachment (.doc or .rtf) with the relevant information, following the format used […] Read More
Sorry folks, but I forgot to mention in my post yesterday that Parfit has sent along yet another updated manuscript, with the final chapter bearing the most revisions. What we’ll do, then, is discuss this most up-to-date version of Chapter 12 in two weeks (but […] Read More
This is the 9th of 11 virtual meetings on Derek Parfit’s book manuscript, Climbing the Mountain. In this pivotal chapter, Parfit finally ties together several of the loose threads of the last several chapters to come very close to endorsing a kind of Kantian “supreme […] Read More
There’s going to be a conference on Parfit’s Climbing the Mountain at the University of Reading in November entitled "Parfit Meets Critics — Critical Evaluations of Climbing the Mountain." The critics include James Lenman, Seiriol Morgan, Jenns Timmermann, Gideon Rosen, Michael Ridge, Michael Smith, and Michael […] Read More
I’m pleased to announce that Tim Chappell, Professor of Philosophy at The Open University, has agreed to become the latest contributor here at PEA Soup. Welcome aboard, Tim!
The following is a Pareto principle that concerns reasons for actions as opposed to the standard preferences for outcomes. I call it The Pareto Reasons Principle (PRP): If S must either do x or do y, and S has, with respect to one class of […] Read More
I’ve really missed OPP while it’s been on hiatus. And it looks like we’re not going to get many, if any, updates until the end of August. In any case, I’ve been toying with the idea that it would be good to have a weekly […] Read More
This marks the eighth of eleven e-meetings of our virtual reading group on Derek Parfit’s Climbing the Mountain—see here for further details. Next week, we will discuss Chapter 10 of the June 7th version of the manuscript, which can be found here. In Chapter 9, […] Read More