I’m slated to teach moral theory next quarter, and I’m confronting a problem that’s plagued me in the past: whether (and how) to teach the divine command theory (DCT) of ethics. I’ve taught it in past courses, and have never felt entirely satisfied with how […] Read More
It’s clear from recent posts and comments that we’ve all been thinking much too hard. So in the spirit of holiday good cheer, I hereby present my own effort at the Ultimate Hard Case in Ethics (UHCE). Suggestions for making it still harder are of […] Read More
Suppose that Sue’s considered opinion was that Joe had all things considered most reason to do one thing. In what sense could Sue, in consistency with that thought, earnestly criticize Joe for failing to do something else? Of course, it could be that Sue thinks […] 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 Ethics class with the expectation that every minimally attentive student will get it right. However, I think that the question […] Read More
Jason was in Syracuse yesterday, and told me about this interview with Simon Blackburn from a couple of years ago: http://www.cfh.ufsc.br/ethic@/ETICA1~1.PRN.pdf Blackburn’s explanation of quasi-realism confirmed my non-expert opinion that there is no such thing as quasi-realism. Maybe someone can set me straight. Here is […] Read More
This is the sixth of a series of posts in which I try to make clear the different embedding difficulties that, as a family, are thought to present the most pressing objection to expressivism and to distinguish the different kinds of expressivism toward which each […] Read More
In his recent Moral Realism: A Defence, Russ Shafer-Landau argues that “moral facts are themselves intrinsically reason-giving, i.e. supply reasons for action regardless of the content of specific moral demands and their relation to other intrinsically or necessarily reason-giving kinds of considerations” (204). While he […] Read More
It continues to be fairly quiet here at the Soup, and I suspect at least part of the reason is that the kind of posts that have been put up over the last couple months have been, for the most part, pretty sophisticated, longish, and […] Read More
Been a little slow here at the Soup, so I thought I’d let you know a little about what I’ve been reading, namely, Hilary Putnam’s Ethics Without Ontology. I’ll only be discussing the first half of the book, which are lectures that Putnam delivered in […] Read More