Articles #Ethics

If, for example, we want to understand what just immigration policy looks like, then we’re better off beginning from people’s real, lived experiences of immigration or of living in communities to which people are immigrating, rather than more abstract concerns about freedom of movement, or by trying to determine what liberalism political theory requires, or trying to determine what ethical principles liberal theory is grounded in. Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Paul Neiman

Smith thinks that we evaluate both the sentiments that lead people into action, and the sentiments by which they react to things, first and foremost by way of their “fit” with what we think they ought to feel, and only secondarily by way of the consequences of what they do. This sets him sharply apart from utilitarianism – he is more distant from it than his friend Hume, for instance. Continuing the End Times series Richard Marshall interviews Sam Fleischacker

The “curious tension” you refer to arises from Descartes’s saying that this “me” is essentially incorporeal – a pure “thinking thing”, and his also saying that I am intimately united with my body. On the one hand Descartes wants to say that the immaterial mind is something complete and independent in its own right. This is what we have come to call ‘Cartesian dualism’. But on the other hand he wants to preserve the (traditional scholastic) idea that it is genuinely and substantially united to the body – that we are not incorporeal angelic spirits inhabiting mechanical bodies, but genuine human beings of flesh and blood. Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews John Cottingham

The disputed issue of what kind of intentional introduction children ought to have to religion, if any, centres around two questions. The first concerns how the responsibilities and permissions to make and provide for the introductions are to be distributed; the second concerns the manner, aims, and content of the introductions to be made and provided for. Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews John Tillson.

Metaethics is commonly treated as a subfield of philosophical ethics, but metaethical questions are largely theoretical rather than moral or practical. They are questions such as: Are there ethical properties, and if so what are they like (metaphysics)? How do we acquire ethical knowledge and justify ethical beliefs (epistemology)? What is the best theory of the meaning of terms like ‘good’ and ‘ought’ (philosophy of language)? And what is the nature of moral judgment and how does it motivate action (philosophy of mind/psychology)? Any full metaethical theory has to answer all of these questions and many subsidiary questions. Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Matthew Chrisman

I worry that too much focus on the technical can draw attention away from the social, ethical, and political dimensions of environmental decision-making in a complex, diverse, and globalized world. Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Marion Hourdequin

While some distance from or even outright scepticism about self-determination is typical in current moral theory, there is no comparable distance from reason. Modern ethics tends on the whole to avoid overt commitment to free will. But it is riddled with metaphysically unexplained claims about reasons and our responsiveness to them – about, in other words, reasons as exercising a power to move. Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Thomas Pink

In a nutshell, the late Cambridge pragmatist invites you to do two things. First, when presented with some apparently problematic concept (such as ‘wrongness’), don’t rush to ask what the concept stands for, or represents. Ask instead what function, or role, that concept plays in human thought. Second, when presented with some apparently problematic philosophical claim (such as ‘Wrongness exists’), don’t rush to treat it as an ‘external’ claim about the relationship between the problematic discourse and the world. Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Hallvard Lillehammer.

'The standard view of rights is based on the sensible thought that rights correspond to duties. There are two paradigmatic sorts of duties, and thus two paradigmatic sorts of rights. The duties are the duty not to harm and the duty to take care of one’s special commitments, commitments inside special relationships, such as promisor to promisee, or parent to child.' 'Thomson did a great job articulating the standard model of rights, and she set the terms of the debate. My job has been largely to show that the debate has reached a kind of dead end, and that we need to go back and rethink the standard model that she articulated so well. Continuing the End Times series, Richard Marshall interviews Alec Walen.