Author: Myers

The problem with moral psychology

Myers E1: What makes morality moral?, E2: What makes right acts right?, P3: What am I? , , , ,

You can’t learn about morality from brain scans. Thomas Nagel’s review of Joshua Greene’s Moral Tribes. Many interesting issues in the review: human rights v. the greatest happiness of the greatest number, trolleyology, moral instinct, and others.

Nagel says of Greene: “Greene wants to persuade us that moral psychology is more fundamental than moral philosophy. Most moral philosophies, he maintains, are misguided attempts to interpret our moral intuitions in particular cases as apprehensions of the truth about how we ought to live and what we ought to do, with the aim of discovering the underlying principles that determine that truth. In fact, Greene believes, all our intuitions are just manifestations of the operation of our dual-process brains, functioning either instinctively or more reflectively. He endorses one moral position, utilitarianism, not as the truth (he professes to be agnostic on whether there is such a thing as moral truth) but rather as a method of evaluation that we can all understand, and that holds out hope of providing a common currency of value less divisive than the morality of individual rights and communal obligations. ‘None of us is truly impartial, but everyone feels the pull of impartiality as a moral ideal.'”

Nagel isn’t so sure and explains why.

Rethinking consciousness

Myers E2: What makes right acts right?, P3: What am I?

Why we should rethink what we’ve been told about consciousness.  This article describes two competing ideas about consciousness:   “physical processes within the stuff of the brain produce consciousness rather in the way that a generator produces electricity” v. “the relationship of consciousness to the brain may be less like the relationship of the generator to the electricity it produces and more like that of the TV signal to the TV set.” And from there this provocative piece considers the policy ramifications of these ideas, concluding with something like Mill’s liberty principle: “If we as adults are not free to make sovereign decisions – right or wrong – about our own consciousness, that most intimate, that most sapient, that most personal part of ourselves, then in what useful sense can we be said to be free at all?”

Unsolvable problems in philosophy

Myers P0: Philosophy in general, P1: What should I do?, P2: What can I know?, P3: What am I?

8 philosophical questions that we’ll never solve?  “Philosophy goes where hard science can’t, or won’t. Philosophers have a license to speculate about everything from metaphysics to morality, and this means they can shed light on some of the basic questions of existence. The bad news? These are questions that may always lay just beyond the limits of our comprehension.” But is this bad news? Do you really want to have the answers? Not if that would mean the end of philosophizing!

Dignity’s due

Myers E2: What makes right acts right?, P1: What should I do? ,

Why are philosophers invoking the notion of human dignity to revitalize theories of political ethics? Samuel Moyn’s review of two new books about human dignity outlines a history of the concept of human dignity, including Kant’s role in redefining the idea. “One philosopher, however, the German Enlightenment sage Immanuel Kant, thought about human distinction precisely in terms of dignity—namely, the priceless worth conferred on us by our freedom to choose. … Kant insisted that man’s ‘rational nature’—our ability to set ends—makes every human life of highest value, and indeed provides the basis of all value in the world.”

The review goes out to show the tension between the deontological idea of respect for human dignity and the utilitarian value of humans caring about the welfare of others : “Today, human dignity is a principle chiefly for those who admire judges and want them to have the power to check the state in the name of basic humanitarian values. Its currency is a sign that our morality has been redefined around the worst that can transpire in history rather than some better order that could be achieved through political contest and struggle. A consensus about dignity may have become deep enough for us to insist that the state not torture, but it has proved far less helpful when some of us insist that our fellow humans care about one another’s broader welfare or collective emancipation. Isn’t that undignified?”

F. P. Ramsey: greatest philosopher of the 20th century?

Myers P0: Philosophy in general , ,

Restoring F. P. Ramsey.  “F. P. Ramsey has some claim to be the greatest philosopher of the twentieth century. In Cambridge in the 1920s, he singlehandedly forged a range of ideas that have since come to define the philosophical landscape. Contemporary debates about truth, meaning, knowledge, logic and the structure of scientific theories all take off from positions first defined by Ramsey. Equally importantly, he figured out the principles governing subjective probability, and so opened the way to decision theory, game theory and much work in the foundations of economics. His fertile mind could not help bubbling over into other subjects. An incidental theorem he proved in a logic paper initiated the branch of mathematics known as Ramsey theory, while two articles in the Economic Journal pioneered the mathematical analysis of taxation and saving.” All this before he died at the age of 26. Learn more about Ramsey’s theory of truth in this Philosophy Bites podcast.

Has a Manhattan jeweler explained everything?

Myers P2: What can I know?

David Birnbaum and his Summa Metaphysica.  “David Birnbaum made his fortune selling jewellery to movie stars. Now he has published a ‘remarkable and profound’ investigation into the origins of the universe. Is there any reason to take it seriously? … Is it still conceivable – as it was a century ago – that a gentleman amateur, with some financial resources, could make a real, revolutionary contribution to our understanding of the mysteries of the universe? There is no shortage of people who would say no, at least in Birnbaum’s case.”

Spinoza and Leibniz

Myers P2: What can I know? ,

Matthew Stewart’s The Courtier and the Heretic is about Leibniz (the courtier) and Spinoza (the heretic). It is a superb introduction to their ideas and also an exciting story. As Liesl Schillinger put it in Great Minds Don’t Think Alike, a book review in the New York Times, “With ‘The Courtier and the Heretic,’ Stewart has achieved a near impossibility, creating a page-turner about jousting metaphysical ideas that casts the hallowed, hoary thinkers as warriors in a heated ideological battle.” This book review, along with Mad, bad and dangerous to know – it can only be a philosopher and Of miracles and monads, will give you a good idea of Stewart’s book and of Spinoza’s and Leibniz’s ideas.