Some More Thoughts On Rawls’s Maximin Principle And Fairness

October 26, 2009 By 1 Comment

A week ago, I wrote a brief primer post explaining John Rawls’s maximin principle. In that post I explained that Rawls conceives of justice as being quintessentially concerned with fairness.  In order to determine what is maximally fair politically we must imagine ourselves behind a veil of ignorance behind which we do not know what [...]

Filed Under: Ethics, Featured, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Politics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

The Integral Role Of Emotions In Good Decision Making

September 26, 2009 By Leave a Comment

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio on the indispensable connection between emotions and value assessment and how these are necessary for decision making. The full talk: Your Thoughts?

Filed Under: Moral Psychology, My Theory of Morality's Rational Foundations and Nature, Psychology, Videos Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , Leave a Comment

Rational Beliefs, Rational Actions, And When It Is Rational To Act On What You Don’t Think Is True

August 19, 2009 By 2 Comments

We hold beliefs with various degrees of justification and the demands of rationality dictate to us that we proportion our degree of belief to the degree of our justification.  If I am looking at evidence for two sides of a position and I find that 60% of the evidence seems to favor side A, whereas [...]

Filed Under: Disambiguating Faith, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Ethics, Evidence, Faith, Featured, Philosophy Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , 2 Comments