A Map With A Few of My Paths to Objective Morality

April 19, 2013 By 14 Comments

Yesterday I kicked off a series called “Paths to Objective Morality”. In response to commenters vigorously challenging my choice of vocabulary in calling morality “objective”, I decided to lay out my justification for my word choice systematically and to explain how it will be justified in each of the major components of my overall account of [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Authority, Contemporary Ethics, Duty, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Ethics, Historical Ethics, Moral Psychology, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , 14 Comments

Paths to Moral Objectivity: Pragmatics

April 18, 2013 By 19 Comments

On this blog I regularly declare myself for “objective morality”. But what I mean by the term is often misunderstood. My views are a bit idiosyncratic. People typically need to read a handful of the right posts to get a full picture so that they can situate the context for any one post. Those who [...]

Filed Under: Contemporary Ethics, Ethics, Metaethics, Morality, My Theory of Morality's Rational Foundations and Nature, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , 19 Comments

On the Moral Value (and Dangers) of Dutifulness

April 10, 2013 By 2 Comments

What kinds of motives are morally relevant? Which are important? Why are they important? When are they important? How do they relate to one another? What are their respective places in the best overall moral framework? In a few posts I hope to answer such questions as these. I am going to distinguish various kinds [...]

Filed Under: Applied Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Duty, Ethics, Intellectual Virtues, Love, Moral Psychology, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Virtues Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments

Hot, Passionate, Rational Sex

April 2, 2013 By 11 Comments

I posted to Facebook what I thought was a very interesting article about consent that argued it should be about asking a sexual partner whether they want something so that they have the chance to say “yes” rather than only pushing their boundaries until they say “no”. The idea was to look at consent as [...]

Filed Under: Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Ethics, Love, Psychology, Sex Tagged With: , , , , , , , , 11 Comments

Is Religious Circumcision of Male Infants Morally Defensible?

July 27, 2012 By 102 Comments

Last month a court in Cologne, Germany ruled against allowing the circumcision of children too young to give consent. CBS News summarized the facts: a German court ruled that circumcision infringes on a child’s right to be protected from bodily harm. The regional court in Cologne said that circumcision went against the “fundamental right of [...]

Filed Under: Andrew Sullivan, Applied Ethics, Autonomy, Bio-Medical Ethics, Civil Rights, Contemporary Ethics, Ethics, Law, Law, Law & Politics, Morality, News, News Discussion, Politics, Religion, Religious Rights, Secularism, Separation of Church and State, World Affairs 102 Comments

How Ethics Is More Like Physics Than Faith

July 2, 2012 By 48 Comments

People who use the free speech that they take for granted in free societies to disparage moral philosophy as useless, superfluous, and incapable of progress since it does not function like a natural science are as naive and guilty of practical contradiction as people who use the internet to talk about how science can not attain any genuine truths because it cannot square its own metaphysical foundations or tell us about the meaning of life.

Filed Under: Applied Ethics, Authority, Contemporary Ethics, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Ethics, Ethics, Historical Ethics, Moral Psychology, Morality, My Theory of Morality's Rational Foundations and Nature, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy Tagged With: , 48 Comments

In Which I Answer Leah Libresco's Moral Philosophy Concerns So You Don't Become A Catholic Too

June 28, 2012 By 121 Comments

Leah Libresco was an irreligious person with little interest in religious issues until as a Yale undergraduate she began dating a Catholic, reading Catholic theology and apologetics, and going to church with him. She wrote a blog about her process of weighing Catholicism against atheism. Recently, she converted to Catholicism. I have previously analyzed some of [...]

Filed Under: Atheism, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Christianity, Contemporary Ethics, Duty, Ethics, Ethics, Morality, My Theory of Morality's Rational Foundations and Nature, New Atheism, New Atheism, Philosophical Ethics, Religion, Roman Catholic Church, Teleology, Virtues Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 121 Comments

Is Anything Intrinsically Good or Bad? An Interview with James Gray

June 14, 2012 By 2 Comments

James Gray blogs at Ethical Realism. He is passionate about advancing philosophy education and exploring moral realism both in ways accessible to beginners and engaging for advanced philosophy students. The interview below was done as part of a blogathon to support the Secular Student Alliance. Please donate to this worthy organization! And see more links [...]

Filed Under: Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Epistemic Justification, Epistemic Justification, Ethics, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, My Theory of Morality's Rational Foundations and Nature, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Teleology, Teleology, Virtues, Virtues 2 Comments

On Unintentionally Intimidating People

May 28, 2012 By 10 Comments

While most of us rightly want to be exceptional in some way or another, we often feel a lot of social and moral pressure not to think of ourselves as generally better than others. And, even more urgently, we feel pressure not to convey to others that we think ourselves superior and not to be [...]

Filed Under: Applied Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Ethics, Ethics, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Intellectual Virtues, Moral Psychology, Moral Psychology, Morality, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Psychology, Psychology, Psychology, Social Psychology, Social Psychology, Virtues, Virtues Tagged With: , , , , , , 10 Comments

Dying Responsibly

March 31, 2012 By 14 Comments

Yesterday the New York Times published a must-read op-ed by Susan Jacoby about the costly disconnect between Americans’ values and their practices when it comes to end-of-life health care. Just a few key statistical takeaways: A third of the Medicare budget is now spent in the last year of life, and a third of that goes for care in [...]

Filed Under: Applied Ethics, Applied Ethics, Autonomy, Autonomy, Bio-Medical Ethics, Bio-Medical Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Contemporary Ethics, Ethics, Ethics 14 Comments