A forum for discussing Philosophy, Ethics, and Academia
Here’s a variation on the classic trolley problem that I haven’t seen before: Five innocent people are trapped in the path of an oncoming trolley. You could turn the trolley onto a sidetrack, away from the five. If you do so, the five will be […] Read More
Philosophical Examples: The Stark and the Dense by Vida Yao In “The Women of Trachis: Fictions, Pessimism, and Ethics,” Bernard Williams draws a distinction between dense and stark fiction, and their use in moral-philosophical discussion and reflection. Sophocles is his exemplar of the latter; Dickens the […] Read More
Options Without Constraints Richard Yetter Chappell The paradox of deontology counsels against including constraints in our fundamental moral theory. Consequentialists are generally suspicious of the associated asymmetries, e.g. between doing and allowing, or killing and letting die. We say you should just bring about the best outcome, […] Read More
Here. Looks tasty. Notes of wildflower, woods, and cheshire, with a full-bodied Australian finish (alongside two actual Finnishers).
Chap. 2 of J. S. Mill’s Utilitarianism is widely interpreted as defending qualitative hedonism, as a view about the nature of personal well-being. On views of this sort, your level of well-being is determined by certain facts about your pleasures and pains. However, it is not […] Read More
It is Normative Ethics Month at PEA Soup. Today’s post is by Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin (Sam Houston State University). Take it away Benjamin: Doing the Wrong Thing for the Right Reasons There are two senses in which a piece of conduct may be “immoral.” On the […] Read More
Welcome to our Ethics review forum on Errol Lord‘s The Importance of Being Rational (OUP 2018), reviewed by Nathan Howard. Excerpts from the blurb and the review are below, but you can read both in their entirety via OUP’s website and Ethics, respectively. (Though of course, you are […] Read More
A Dilemma for Effective Altruism This post focuses on an underappreciated debate in normative ethics, viz. the actualism/possibilism (A/P) debate and a problem that I believe it poses for effective altruists (EAs). Roughly, EAs implicitly assume contradictory positions in this debate and, moreover, taking a […] Read More
Kristina Grob and Nathan Nobis have a new, open access ( = free) “public philosophy” book on abortion: “Thinking Critically About Abortion: Why Most Abortions Aren’t Wrong & Why All Abortions Should Be Legal” It engages lots of common concerns and arguments about abortion that […] Read More