An Interview with Shelly Kagan
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Plato's Republic and Stoicism CHRISTOPHER GILL I. Introduction In
Colloquium 6 Ethical Reflection and the Shaping of Character: Plato's Republic and Stoicism CHRISTOPHER GILL I. Introduction In this article I explore a striking, and perhaps paradoxical, feature of Greek ethical thought. This is that, in at least two areas of Greek philosophy (Plato's Republic and Stoicism), a complex and credible model of ethical development is combined with an ideal type of character which is often seen as hopelessly unrealistic, and perhaps positively repellent: the ideal which the Stoics call apatheia, or 'absence of passion.' By examining certain aspects of Platonic and Stoic thinking, I aim to bring out both the credibility of their model of ethical development and also the plausibility of the idea that this development might lead to a form of apatheia that is not wholly repellent. The model of ethical development, in broad outline, is a two-stage one: first, the development of pre-reflective virtue, through an upbringing and participation in interpersonal and communal relationships; then that of post-reflective virtue, through systematic ethical debate or dialectic, a form of virtue based on, but deepening or modifying, pre-reflective virtue.1 This model can be subdivided into On this model, and the alternative Greek model, in which reflection is a prerequisite for virtue, see Gill 1996b, 4.6, 5.7; also, on the characteristic structures of thinking in Greek ethical philosophy, Annas 1993, esp. chs. 1 and 22. Here, as elsewhere, I use 'her/him' and 'he/she' indifferently as indefinite two versions. The first is represented by Aristotle's ethical writings, especially the Nicomachean Ethics, and Stoic theory, at least in one prevalent pattern? In this version, the development towards pre- reflective virtue can occur, in principle, within conventional societies; post-reflective virtue may modify pre-reflective virtue, but needs to be based on this. -
Defending Options Author(S): Shelly Kagan Source: Ethics, Vol. 104, No. 2 (Jan., 1994), Pp
Defending Options Author(s): Shelly Kagan Source: Ethics, Vol. 104, No. 2 (Jan., 1994), pp. 333-351 Published by: The University of Chicago Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2381581 Accessed: 13-08-2014 16:42 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. The University of Chicago Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ethics. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 130.132.173.11 on Wed, 13 Aug 2014 16:42:57 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Defending Options ShellyKagan Suppose some act would best promote the overall good, objectively speaking. Are we morallyrequired to do it? Not necessarily,says ordi- nary,commonsense morality: after all, the act in question mightviolate someone's rightsor run afoul of some otheragent-centered constraint. Well, then, are we at least morallyrequired to performthe act with the best resultsof those acts that are not otherwiseforbidden? Here, too, ordinarymorality says no: thereis no such general moral require- ment to promote the good (not even within the confines of moral constraints).Rather, ordinary morality claims that in a certainbroad, but not unlimited,range of cases, agents have moraloptions: although they are morallypermitted to performthe act with the best conse- quences overall,they are not morallyrequired to do so; on the contrary, they are also morallypermitted to performinstead acts that are less than optimal, such as pursuing theirown interests. -
Churchland Source: the Journal of Philosophy, Vol
Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Reduction, Qualia, and the Direct Introspection of Brain States Author(s): Paul M. Churchland Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 82, No. 1 (Jan., 1985), pp. 8-28 Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2026509 Accessed: 07-08-2015 19:14 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Journal of Philosophy, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Philosophy. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 142.58.129.109 on Fri, 07 Aug 2015 19:14:45 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 8 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY structureof this idiom, moreover-its embeddingof a subordinate sentence-would have been clearly dictatedby its primitiveuse in assessing children's acquisition of observationsentences. Analogi- cal extension of the idiom to other than observation sentences would follow inevitably,and the developmentof parallel idioms for other propositional attitudeswould then come naturally too, notwithstanding their opacity from a logical point of view. Naturalness is one thing, transparencyanother; familiarityone, clarityanother. W. V. QtJINE Harvard University REDUCTION, QUALIA, AND THE DIRECT INTROSPECTION OF BRAIN STATES* DO the phenomenological or qualitative featuresof our sen- sations constitutea permanentbarrier to thereductive aspi- rations of any materialisticneuroscience? I here argue that theydo not. -
The Absurd Author(S): Thomas Nagel Reviewed Work(S): Source: the Journal of Philosophy, Vol
Journal of Philosophy, Inc. The Absurd Author(s): Thomas Nagel Reviewed work(s): Source: The Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 68, No. 20, Sixty-Eighth Annual Meeting of the American Philosophical Association Eastern Division (Oct. 21, 1971), pp. 716-727 Published by: Journal of Philosophy, Inc. Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2024942 . Accessed: 19/08/2012 01:08 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. Journal of Philosophy, Inc. is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to The Journal of Philosophy. http://www.jstor.org 7i6 THE JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY The formerstands as valid only if we can findcriteria for assigning a differentlogical formto 'allegedly' than to 'compulsively'.In this case, the criteriaexist: 'compulsively'is a predicate, 'allegedly' a sentenceadverb. But in countless other cases, counterexamplesare not so easily dismissed.Such an example, bearing on the inference in question, is Otto closed the door partway ThereforeOtto closed the door It seems clear to me that betterdata are needed beforeprogress can be made in this area; we need much more refinedlinguistic classificationsof adverbial constructionsthan are presentlyavail- able, ifour evidenceconcerning validity is to be good enough to per- mit a richerlogical theory.In the meantime,Montague's account stands: thereis no reason to thinka morerefined theory, if it can be produced, should not be obtainable within the frameworkhe has given us. -
Course Description an Examination of Philosophical Issues on the Theme of Relativism. Are Moral Standards Relative to Cultures A
Course Description An examination of philosophical issues on the theme of relativism. Are moral standards relative to cultures and/or moral frameworks? Are there incompatible or non-comparable ways of thinking about the world that are somehow equally good? Is science getting closer to the truth? Is rationality -- the notion of a good reason to believe something -- relative to cultural norms? What are selves? Is there a coherent form of relativism about the self? Discussion of these questions through the writings of contemporary philosophers such as Thomas Kuhn, Karl Popper, Gilbert Harman, Judith Thomson, and Derek Parfit. Emphasis on ways of making these vague questions precise, and critical evaluation of philosophical arguments. Texts Perry, John. A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality. Parfit, Derek. Reasons and Persons. Harman, Gilbert, and Judith Jarvis Thomson. Moral Relativism and Moral Objectivity. Kuhn, Thomas. The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. 3 ed. Additional Readings Pryor, James. "How to Write a Philosophy Paper." Blackburn, Simon. "The World." Popper, Karl. Selections from Logic of Scientific Discovery. Putnam, Hilary. "The 'Corroboration' of Theories." Alston, William. "Yes, Virginia, There Is A Real World." Assignments There is a reading assignment for each class meeting. These are often relatively short, but many require close study, and you should not postpone them. In accordance with HASS- D regulations, you will be expected to write approximately 20 pages. These will be divided among 4 papers (the HASS-D requirement is at least 3). There will sometimes be short reading quizzes or study questions for the recitation sections. You must complete these in order to pass the course. -
Non-Religious Ethics? a Critical Notice of Derek Parfit, on What Matters
Non-Religious Ethics? A critical notice of Derek Parfit, On What Matters The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citation Rosen, Michael. 2013. “Non-Religious Ethics? A critical notice of Derek Parfit, On What Matters.” International Journal of Philosophical Studies 21, no. 5: 755–772. Published Version doi:10.1080/09672559.2013.857818 Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:12967839 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Open Access Policy Articles, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#OAP Non-Religious Ethics? A critical notice of Derek Parfit, On What Matters The History Workshop was a movement of radical social historians which flourished in Britain in the 1960s and 70s. Its goal was to promote “history from below” – to tell the stories of those left out of conventional narratives, and, at the same time, to open up the practice of history itself. Anyway, when the group decided to start a journal, there was a debate over whether it should carry book reviews. Weren’t book reviews – the ranking of others’ work, delivered in a tone of apparent omniscience – examples of exactly the kind of academic gate-keeping against which they had set themselves? So, in its early issues at least, the History Workshop Journal didn’t carry reviews but “Enthusiasms” – contributions in which someone would introduce a new book to readers in positive terms, without pretending to be marking it in some transcendental Prize Fellowship Examination. -
Distinguishing Science from Philosophy: a Critical Assessment of Thomas Nagel's Recommendation for Public Education Melissa Lammey
Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2012 Distinguishing Science from Philosophy: A Critical Assessment of Thomas Nagel's Recommendation for Public Education Melissa Lammey Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES DISTINGUISHING SCIENCE FROM PHILOSOPHY: A CRITICAL ASSESSMENT OF THOMAS NAGEL’S RECOMMENDATION FOR PUBLIC EDUCATION By MELISSA LAMMEY A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2012 Melissa Lammey defended this dissertation on February 10, 2012. The members of the supervisory committee were: Michael Ruse Professor Directing Dissertation Sherry Southerland University Representative Justin Leiber Committee Member Piers Rawling Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii For Warren & Irene Wilson iii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS It is my pleasure to acknowledge the contributions of Michael Ruse to my academic development. Without his direction, this dissertation would not have been possible and I am indebted to him for his patience, persistence, and guidance. I would also like to acknowledge the efforts of Sherry Southerland in helping me to learn more about science and science education and for her guidance throughout this project. In addition, I am grateful to Piers Rawling and Justin Leiber for their service on my committee. I would like to thank Stephen Konscol for his vital and continuing support. -
2014-PDF-Of-Philosophy-News
UNIVERSITY OF TORONTO DEPARTMENT OF PHILOSO PHY FALL 2014 IAN HACKI NG WSEI E NPAGS E 3BALZAN PRIZ E! PRACT ICAL ETH ICS – SHEL LY KAG AN ON SPECIESISM By Ellen Roseman Shelly Kagan, the Clark Professor of Philosophy at Yale University, drew a capacity crowd to the Roseman Lecture in Practical Ethics last fall. He is an engaging, funny and whip- smart speaker. And he chose an intriguing topic, one that is not usually explored in mainstream philosophy courses. The title: What’s wrong with speciesism? In a bestselling 1975 book, Animal Liberation , Australian philosopher Peter Singer claimed that most of us Shelly Kagan with Ellen Roseman are “speciesists” in our attitude toward, and treatment of, animals. Singer, now a bioethics professor than persuasive. “People have rights. Animals don’t,” he tells Speciesism is supposed to be a kind at Princeton University, created me after the lecture. “There’s a of morally unjustified prejudice, akin a splash when he called for an huge crowd of people working to racism or sexism, Kagan said in animal rights movement. Kagan on this issue. I thought a lot of his notes for the lecture. “Although read the book while in graduate the arguments were weak.” I found that charge compelling for school. He became a vegetarian. years, I now find that I have my But in a second reading of the Kagan thinks the crucial concept doubts,” he explained. “It now seems book in 2011, while preparing is to define the meaning of a to me that most people are not actu - to give an animal ethics seminar “person.” Going back to British ally speciesists at all, but something to Yale students, Kagan found philosopher John Locke’s work rather different.” some of Singer’s arguments less ...continued on Page 2 We wish to thank the generous donors to the Department of Philosophy, without whom Philosophy News would not be possible. -
The Pragmatic Turn in Philosophy
Introduction n recent years the classical authors of Anglo-Saxon pragmatism have gar- Inered a renewed importance in international philosophical circles. In the aftermath of the linguistic turn, philosophers such as Charles S. Peirce, William James, George H. Mead, Ferdinand C. S. Schiller, and John Dewey are being reread alongside, for example, recent postmodern and deconstructivist thought as alternatives to a traditional orientation toward the concerns of a represen- tationalist epistemology. In the context of contemporary continental thought, the work of Jacques Derrida, Jean-Francois Lyotard, and Gilles Deleuze comprises just a few examples of a culturewide assault on a metaphysical worldview premised on what Michel Foucault called the empirico-transcendental doublet, and presents a wealth of potential exchange with the pragmatist critique of representationalism. In both cases, aspects of pragmatist thought are being used to add flexibility to the conceptual tools of modern philoso- phy, in order to promote a style of philosophizing more apt to dealing with the problems of everyday life. The hope for a pragmatic “renewing of phi- losophy” (Putnam) evidenced in these trends has led to an analytic reexami- nation of some of the fundamental positions in modern continental thought as well, and to a recognition of previously unacknowledged or underappreciated pragmatic elements in thinkers like Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Wittgenstein. Within the current analytic discussions, a wide spectrum of differing and at times completely heterogeneous forms of neopragmatism can be distinguished, which for heuristic purposes can be grouped into two general categories according to the type of discursive strategy employed. The first of these consists in a conscious inflation of the concept of pragmatism in order to establish it as widely as possible within the disciplinary discourse of philosophy. -
Is Psychology What Matters in Survival?
This is a repository copy of Is Psychology What Matters in Survival?. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/164032/ Version: Published Version Article: Gustafsson, Johan orcid.org/0000-0002-9618-577X (2020) Is Psychology What Matters in Survival? Australasian Journal of Philosophy. pp. 1-14. ISSN 1471-6828 https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2020.1791193 Reuse This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) licence. This licence allows you to distribute, remix, tweak, and build upon the work, even commercially, as long as you credit the authors for the original work. More information and the full terms of the licence here: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/ Takedown If you consider content in White Rose Research Online to be in breach of UK law, please notify us by emailing [email protected] including the URL of the record and the reason for the withdrawal request. [email protected] https://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ Australasian Journal of Philosophy ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rajp20 Is Psychology What Matters in Survival? Johan E. Gustafsson To cite this article: Johan E. Gustafsson (2020): Is Psychology What Matters in Survival?, Australasian Journal of Philosophy, DOI: 10.1080/00048402.2020.1791193 To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2020.1791193 © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group Published online: 19 Oct 2020. Submit your article to this journal Article views: 209 View related articles View Crossmark data Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=rajp20 AUSTRALASIAN JOURNAL OF PHILOSOPHY https://doi.org/10.1080/00048402.2020.1791193 Is Psychology What Matters in Survival? Johan E. -
Consequences of Pragmatism University of Minnesota Press, 1982
estratto dal volume: RICHARD RORTY Consequences of Pragmatism University of Minnesota Press, 1982 INTRODUCTION 1. Platonists, Positivists, and Pragmatists The essays in this book are attempts to draw consequences from a prag- matist theory about truth. This theory says that truth is not the sort of thing one should expect to have a philosophically interesting theory about. For pragmatists, “truth” is just the name of a property which all true statements share. It is what is common to “Bacon did not write Shakespeare,” “It rained yesterday,” “E equals mc²” “Love is better than hate,” “The Alle- gory of Painting was Vermeer’s best work,” “2 plus 2 is 4,” and “There are nondenumerable infinities.” Pragmatists doubt that there is much to be said about this common feature. They doubt this for the same reason they doubt that there is much to be said about the common feature shared by such morally praiseworthy actions as Susan leaving her husband, Ameri- ca joining the war against the Nazis, America pulling out of Vietnam, Socrates not escaping from jail, Roger picking up litter from the trail, and the suicide of the Jews at Masada. They see certain acts as good ones to perform, under the circumstances, but doubt that there is anything gen- eral and useful to say about what makes them all good. The assertion of a given sentence—or the adoption of a disposition to assert the sentence, the conscious acquisition of a belief—is a justifiable, praiseworthy act in certain circumstances. But, a fortiori, it is not likely that there is something general and useful to be said about what makes All such actions good-about the common feature of all the sentences which one should ac- quire a disposition to assert. -
THE HORNSWOGGLE PROBLEM1 Patricia Smith Churchland, Department of Philosophy, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 3, No. 5ñ6, 1996, pp. 402ñ8 THE HORNSWOGGLE PROBLEM1 Patricia Smith Churchland, Department of Philosophy, University of California at San Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA. Abstract: Beginning with Thomas Nagel, various philosophers have propsed setting con- scious experience apart from all other problems of the mind as ëthe most difficult problemí. When critically examined, the basis for this proposal reveals itself to be unconvincing and counter-productive. Use of our current ignorance as a premise to determine what we can never discover is one common logical flaw. Use of ëI-cannot-imagineí arguments is a related flaw. When not much is known about a domain of phenomena, our inability to imagine a mechanism is a rather uninteresting psychological fact about us, not an interesting metaphysical fact about the world. Rather than worrying too much about the meta-problem of whether or not consciousness is uniquely hard, I propose we get on with the task of seeing how far we get when we address neurobiologically the problems of mental phenomena. I: Introduction Conceptualizing a problem so we can ask the right questions and design revealing experiments is crucial to discovering a satisfactory solution to the problem. Asking where animal spirits are concocted, for example, turns out not to be the right question to ask about the heart. When Harvey asked instead, ëHow much blood does the heart pump in an hour?í, he conceptualized the problem of heart function very differently. The recon- ceptualization was pivotal in coming to understand that the heart is really a pump for circulating blood; there are no animal spirits to concoct.