Maverick Philosopher

Footnotes to Plato from the foothills of the Superstition Mountains

Category: Ethics

  • Jordan Peterson on the Problem with Atheism

    Earlier this evening I was watching Tucker Carlson. He had a psychology professor on whose YouTube videos had been blocked  by Google but then later unblocked. His name is Jordan Peterson of the University of Toronto. I had never heard of him, and his performance on Carlson's show was not particularly impressive.  Having viewed his…

  • Elizabeth Harman’s Abortion Argument

    A curious new abortion argument by Princeton's Elizabeth Harman is making the rounds. (A tip of the hat to Malcolm Pollack for bringing it to my attention.) It is not clear just what Harman's argument is, but it looks to be something along the following lines: 1) "Among early fetuses there are two very different…

  • Sullivan is Right: Universalism Hasn’t Been Debunked

    Andrew Sullivan is down with a very bad case of Trump Derangement Syndrome. But he hasn't lost his mind entirely. He is hip to the absurdity of leftist talk about cultural appropriation.  After wading through yet another load of his anti-Trump hyperventilatory hysteria, I came upon these reasonable words of his: I love the phrase…

  • Prudential Anti-Natalism

    Karl White writes: If one assumes life has a negative value, or at the very least is a problem that needs solving, then surely it would follow that antinatalism is the prudential course. If we are unable to discern a meaning or a solution to life, then there can hardly be any justification for dragging…

  • The Dilemma of Sebastian Rodrigues in Endo’s Silence: Ethical or Merely Psychological?

    This entry assumes familiarity with the story recounted by Shusaku Endo in his novel, Silence. Philip L. Quinn's "Tragic Dilemmas, Suffering Love, and Christian Life" (The Journal of Religious Ethics, vol. 17, no. 1, Spring 1989, 151-183) is the best discussion of the central themes of the novel I have read. I thank Vlastimil Vohanka…

  • War, Torture, and the Aporetics of Moral Rigorism

    That the deliberate targeting of noncombatants is intrinsically evil and cannot be justified under any circumstances is one of the entailments of Catholic just war doctrine.  I am sensitive to its moral force. I am strongly inclined to say that certain actions are intrinsically wrong, wrong by their very nature as the types of actions…

  • A Note on Ayn Rand’s Misunderstanding of Kant

    Ayn Rand has some interesting things to say about the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) in her essay, “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World” (1960) in Philosophy: Who Needs It (Signet, 1982, ed. Peikoff, pp. 58-76). Here is one example:   He [Kant] did not deny the validity of reason – he…

  • Reading Now: Philippa Foot, Natural Goodness

    The book arrived yesterday via Amazon and I began reading it this morning.  Looks good! Oxford University Press, 2001.  Foot essays "a naturalistic theory of ethics: to break really radically both with G. E. Moore's anti-naturalism and with the subjectivist theories such as emotivism and prescriptivism that have been seen as clarifications and developments of…

  • Can an Atheist be Moral?

    This is another one or those questions that never goes away and about which reams of rubbish have been written. In Letter to a Christian Nation (Knopf, 2006), in the section Are Atheists Evil?, Sam Harris writes: If you are right to believe that religious faith offers the only real basis for morality, then atheists…

  • Being Judgmental Versus Making Moral Judgments

    To be judgmental is to be hypercritical, captious, caviling, fault-finding, etc.  One ought to avoid being judgmental.  But it is a mistake to confuse making moral judgments with being judgmental. I condemn the behavior of Ponzi-schemers like Bernie Madoff.  That is a moral judgment.  (And if you refuse to condemn Madoff and his behavior, then…

  • Abraham, Isaac, and Trumping ‘From Above’: A Partial Retraction

    I say on my Welcome page: I write about what interests me whether I am expert in it or not.  Some find this unseemly; I do not. I oppose hyper-professionalization and excessive specialization.  Every once in a while I post something that is mistaken, someone corrects me, and I learn something.  I admit mistakes if…

  • Are There Non-Moral Justifications for Action That Trump Moral Justifications?

    A reader offers the following comment on the immediately preceding post on the problem of dirty hands: You write that even if one admits an absolute moral standard there are (hypothetically) situations wherein 'moral considerations are trumped by survival considerations'. Yet surely the latter collapses into the former, for what is the implicit presumption that it…

  • The Problem of Dirty Hands

    I am trying to understand the structure of the problem of dirty hands. A clear example of a dirty hands situation is one in which a political leader authorizes the intentional slaughter of innocent non-combatants to demoralize the enemy and bring about the end of a war which, if it continues, could be reasonably expected…

  • Forthcoming in Faith and Philosophy: Review of W. E. Mann, God, Modality, and Morality

    Review William F. Vallicella William E. Mann, God, Modality, and Morality (Oxford University Press, 2015), ix + 369 pp. This is a book philosophers of religion will want on their shelves. It collects sixteen of William E. Mann's previously published papers and includes “Omnipresence, Hiddenness, and Mysticism” written for this volume. These influential papers combine…

  • A Possible Way to ‘Get Through’ to Liberals on Abortion

    Suppose I want to convince you of something.  I must use premises that you accept.  For if I argue from premises that you do not accept, you will reject my argument no matter how rigorous and cogent my reasoning. So how can we get through to those liberals who are willing to listen?  Not by invoking…