![\"\"](\"https:\/\/wp-media.patheos.com\/blogs\/sites\/278\/2014\/04\/Daniel-Fincke-Empowerment-Ethics-Camels-With-Hammers.jpg\" "\\"Daniel")
<\/a><\/p>\nI am a philosopher who specializes in ethics. For years, starting in my doctoral dissertation and then continuing right here on\u00a0Camels With Hammers<\/em>, I have been drafting, defending, and developing my own spin on the perfectionist and humanist ethical traditions that I call \u201cEmpowerment Ethics\u201d. I write about everything from the most abstract foundational issues related to the nature of value and morality themselves (what philosophers call \u201cmetaethics\u201d), to the most pressing moral controversies of our time, to how to live a good life in practical terms. For a full list of existing posts in this series (each with a descriptive title), see the bottom of this page. Bookmark this page and periodically check it to keep apprised of all the regular updates. A thorough overview of the views can be found in these three posts:<\/p>\n My Systematic, Naturalistic Empowerment Ethics, With Applications To Tyrants, the Differently Abled, and LGBT People<\/a> To boil it all down more succinctly, the gist of what I have dubbed \u201cEmpowerment Ethics\u201d is as follows:<\/p>\n I think I can argue in objectively factual terms that there is an overriding good that all humans should be concerned with. The good we should all strive for is to be as powerful according to our potential abilities as we can be. Every human being is made up of a set of powers. We do not just\u00a0have\u00a0<\/em>our powers but we\u00a0are<\/em>\u00a0our powers. We do not just have the powers of rationality, we exist\u00a0in<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0through<\/em>\u00a0them. We do not just have abilities to feel things emotionally, we exist\u00a0in<\/em>\u00a0and\u00a0through<\/em>\u00a0them. And the same goes for our powers of sociability, our bodily powers, our sexual powers, our creative powers, our technological powers, our artistic powers, and any other distinct categories of powers you can identify within us. Each of our major categories of powers is comprised of component powers and each of our powers can combine into larger powers.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the\u00a0power<\/em>\u00a0part. The empowerment part specifically comes in when we realize that fulfilling our powers to their maximum means empowering others through the exercise of our abilities. The most marvelous thing about human powers is how much they can spread into other people and how much we need other people to use their powers to empower us. Every ability we have grows in its effectiveness the more that it increases the total net powerful effectiveness of the total number of people. When I am so powerful as to be able to empower you to be more powerful, then I am powerful not just in myself but also in you and in those you further empower, and so it goes, on and on.<\/p>\n I think this truth should guide all of us. What is best for each one of us is that we make ourselves as effective creators of power in the world as we can, in order that we may be more powerful through all of that power that we generate. And the way to create the most power in the world is to make our endeavors the kinds that empower others.<\/p>\n And the ethics part comes in here: Sometimes we get shortsighted, myopic, and selfish. Ethical emotions, rules, character traits, practices, habits, attitudes, dispositions, etc. are developed by our brains and our societies to help us do what is empowering for the most people in the long run even when we are tempted not to. This is ultimately in our own interests since we depend on other thriving humans and their contributions to live maximally well ourselves and since our fullest realizations of our powers involve empowering others. While the best ethics may objectively vary with changing life conditions, we can reason out our general ethical principles and particular moral judgments the best when we make maximum empowerment our highest ideal.<\/p>\n And, in a nutshell, that\u2019s what \u201cempowerment ethics\u201d is about.<\/p>\n Below are all my posts so far in my blog series laying out \u201cEmpowerment Ethics\u201d. Each post is self-contained, so use the questions in their titles to guide you to the topic that you are most interested in or that you need answered well before you will accept my positions on ethics:<\/p>\n What is Empowerment Ethics?<\/a> In Which I Answer Leah Libresco\u2019s Moral Philosophy Concerns So You Don\u2019t Become A Catholic Too<\/a><\/p>\n Goodness Is A Factual Matter (Goodness=Effectiveness)<\/a><\/p>\n Grounding Objective Value Independent Of Human Interests And Moralities<\/a><\/p>\n Non-Reductionistic Analysis Of Values Into Facts<\/a><\/p>\n Effectiveness Is The Primary Goal In Itself, Not Merely A Means<\/a><\/p>\n What Is Happiness And Why Is It Good?<\/a><\/p>\n On The Intrinsic Connection Between Being And Goodness<\/a><\/p>\n Deriving An Atheistic, Naturalistic, Realist Account Of Morality<\/a><\/p>\n How Our Morality Realizes Our Humanity<\/a><\/p>\n From Is To Ought: How Normativity Fits Into Naturalism<\/a><\/p>\n Can Good Teaching Be Measured?<\/a><\/p>\n Some People Live Better As Short-Lived Football or Boxing Stars Than As Long Lived Philosophers<\/a><\/p>\n The Objective Value of Ordered Complexity<\/a><\/p>\n Defining Intrinsic Goodness, Using Marriage As An Example<\/a><\/p>\n The Facts About Intrinsic and Instrumental Goods and The Cultural Construction of Intrinsic Goods<\/a><\/p>\n Subjective Valuing And Objective Values<\/a><\/p>\n My Perspectivist, Teleological Account Of The Relative Values Of Pleasure And Pain<\/a><\/p>\n Pleasure And Pain As Intrinsic Instrumental Goods<\/a><\/p>\n What Does It Mean For Pleasure And Pain To Be \u201cIntrinsically Instrumental\u201d Goods?<\/a><\/p>\n Against Moral Intuitionism<\/a><\/p>\n Moral vs. Non-Moral Values<\/a><\/p>\n Maximal Self-Realization In Self-Obliteration: The Existential Paradox of Heroic Self-Sacrifice<\/a><\/p>\n On Good And Evil For Non-Existent People<\/a><\/p>\n My Perfectionistic, Egoistic AND Universalistic, Indirect Consequentialism (And Contrasts With Other Kinds)<\/a><\/p>\n Towards A \u201cNon-Moral\u201d Standard Of Ethical Evaluation<\/a><\/p>\n Further Towards A \u201cNon-Moral\u201d Standard Of Ethical Evaluation<\/a><\/p>\n On The Incoherence Of Divine Command Theory And Why Even If God DID Make Things Good And Bad, Faith-Based Religions Would Still Be Irrelevant<\/a><\/p>\n God and Goodness<\/a><\/p>\n Moral Mutability, Not Subjective Morality. \u00a0Moral Pluralism, Not Moral Relativism.<\/a><\/p>\n How Morality Can Change Through Objective Processes And In Objectively Defensible Ways<\/a><\/p>\n Nietzsche: Moral Absolutism and Moral Relativism Are \u201cEqually Childish\u201d<\/a><\/p>\n Immoralism?<\/a><\/p>\n Is Emotivistic Moral Nihilism Rationally Consistent?<\/a><\/p>\n The Universe Does Not Care About Our Morality. But So What?<\/a><\/p>\n Why Be Morally Dutiful, Fair, or Self-Sacrificing If The Ethical Life Is About Power?<\/a><\/p>\n A Philosophical Polemic Against Moral Nihilism<\/a><\/p>\n Why Moral Nihilism Is Self-Contradictory<\/a><\/p>\n Answering Objections From A Moral Nihilist<\/a><\/p>\n If You Don\u2019t Believe in Objective Values Then Don\u2019t Talk To Me About Objective Scientific Truth Either<\/a><\/p>\n Is Anything Intrinsically Good or Bad? An Interview with James Gray<\/a><\/p>\n
\nPaths To Moral Objectivity: Pragmatics<\/a>
\nA Map With A Few of My Paths to Objective Morality<\/a><\/p>\n
\nWho Is Anyone To Tell Others What To Do?<\/a>
\nHow Can We Find External Criteria To Assess Morality\u2019s Truth and Authority?<\/a>
\nIs Empowerment Ethics Atheistic?<\/a>
\nCan Morality Mean Something Other Than Absolutist Morality?<\/a>
\nIs Morality Just Subjective?<\/a>
\nAre Individuals\u2019 Moralities Merely Personal?<\/a>
\nIs Morality Relative?<\/a>
\nDoes Everyone Mean Something Different By The Word \u2018Good\u2019?<\/a>
\nAre Moral Issues Too Subjective To Argue Over?<\/a>
\nCan Atheists Condemn Rape Without Theistic Moral Absolutism?<\/a>
\nIs Morality Just Culturally Relative?<\/a>
\nCan There Be Objective Morality When So Many People Disagree About Morality?<\/a>
\nObjective Human Flourishing: A First Response To Jerry Coyne About Ethics<\/a><\/p>\n
\n<\/span>General posts on morality\u2019s validity:<\/p>\n