Ethics/Metaethics

Are our moral and religious values eternal and unchanging or were they shaped by contingent historical events in the distant past? If the latter is the case, did these events leave traces in our psychology in a manner which is not immediately obvious and accessible to us, but which could nevertheless become accessible? What would be the implications of such historical and psychological influences for our moral and religious values: might we need to reassess, and perhaps radically alter, all or some of our moral and religious beliefs? In this course we will discuss Friedrich Nietzsche’s and Sigmund Freud’s original answers to these questions. In the first part of the course, we will examine Nietzsche’s project of criticizing morality and religion, especially via a close reading of his Genealogy of Morals. We will discuss such themes as his genealogical account of Christian morality, the development and moralization of our conscience through religion, and will to power and the nature of truth. We will also consider broader explanatory and normative issues, such the scope and ambitions of Nietzsche’s critique of morality and its meta-ethical implications. In the second part of the course, we will read most of Freud’s cultural texts, such as Totem and Taboo, The Future of an Illusion, Civilization and its Discontents, and Moses and Monotheism, and discuss his genealogical accounts of morality and religion and their complex relations to human psychology. Throughout our discussion, we will be concerned with Freud’s notion of the unconscious and models of the psyche, as well as with the transition from individual to group psychology. Finally, we will also critically assess the status and plausibility of Nietzsche’s and Freud’s respective accounts: are these two philosophers telling us factual historical stories, mere psychological stories, or a combination of both? In order to answer these questions we will read works by leading philosophers and psychoanalysts, as well as passages from Scripture.

An exploration of some of the central questions in metaethics, moral theory, and applied ethics. These questions include the following: are there objective moral truths, as there are (as it seems) objective scientific truths? If so, how can we come to know these truths? Should we make the world as good as we can, or are there moral constraints on what we can do that are not a function of the consequences of our actions? Is the best life a maximally moral life? What distribution of goods in a society satisfies the demands of justice? Can beliefs and desires be immoral, or only actions? What is “moral luck”? What is courage? (A)  

In this course, we will read, write, think, and talk about moral philosophy, focusing on two classic texts, Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and John Stuart Mill's Utilitarianism. We will work through both texts carefully, and have a look at influential criticisms of utilitarianism and of Kant's ethics in the concluding weeks of the term. This course is intended as an introductory course in moral philosophy. (A)

Topic: Ideological Critique: Marx, Nietzsche, and the Frankfurt School (instructor: J. Edwards)
The term ideology is often used synonymously with ‘ethos’ or ‘world view.’ However, in philosophy it is generally used more narrowly as a pejorative term that identifies false or unwarranted beliefs, which serve the interests of some dominant group, and which are generally contrary to the interests of those who hold them. An ideological critique typically attempts to expose ideological beliefs and to explain how they can exist at all—why anybody would ever come to hold such beliefs and what could sustain their being held.In this course, we will examine several of the most important ideological critiques: Marx's claim that religion, ethics, and legal systems are “ideological humbug” that arise from and sustain relations of production; Nietzsche's claim that contemporary morality is life-denying and that it originates in a trick played on the strong by the weak some 2000 years ago; and the Frankfurt School's claim that fascism, state capitalism, and mass culture are all forms of social domination enabled by a means-ends rationality that emerged out of the Enlightenment.While each of these accounts is of independent interest, in this course they will also serve as case studies of the method of ideological critique more generally. In each instance we will be concerned with the following questions: What exactly is an ideological belief? Is there ever anything besides deliberate deception that could explain someone holding such a belief? Are there actually such things as real interests such that we could hold beliefs that are contrary to them? Can someone hold a single ideological belief, or are these beliefs the sort of things that only come in large packages? If we suspect that vast constellations of our beliefs might be ideological, is there any sure method of sorting out which ones are and which ones are not, or might our whole way of approaching these issues itself be hopelessly tangled in ideological thinking?

Topic: Reason, Desire, and the Good (instructor: M. Hopwood)

If I show no regard for the feelings of others, you might describe me as callous or cruel, but would it also make sense to describe me as irrational? Some philosophers have denied this, claiming that I only have reason to do whatever serves my existing motivations. If I have no desire to act morally, then I have no reason to do so either. Other philosophers have argued that a person who ignores moral considerations is guilty of a kind of rational defect; such a person is failing to see the importance of something that any fully rational agent would recognize. In this class, we will use this debate as an entry point into some of the most important and influential work in contemporary moral philosophy. We will look at Bernard Williams's attempt to pull morality and rationality apart, and the attempts of Aristotelians (Philippa Foot, John McDowell, Warren Quinn) and Kantians (Christine Korsgaard) to put them back together again. In the final section of the class, we will consider a very different perspective on the debate by taking up Iris Murdoch's claim that the failure to show due regard for others is not so much a failure of reason as a failure of love.

Topic: Ideological Critique: Marx, Nietzsche, and the Frankfurt School (instructor: J. Edwards)
The term ideology is often used synonymously with ‘ethos’ or ‘world view.’ However, in philosophy it is generally used more narrowly as a pejorative term that identifies false or unwarranted beliefs, which serve the interests of some dominant group, and which are generally contrary to the interests of those who hold them. An ideological critique typically attempts to expose ideological beliefs and to explain how they can exist at all—why anybody would ever come to hold such beliefs and what could sustain their being held.In this course, we will examine several of the most important ideological critiques: Marx's claim that religion, ethics, and legal systems are “ideological humbug” that arise from and sustain relations of production; Nietzsche's claim that contemporary morality is life-denying and that it originates in a trick played on the strong by the weak some 2000 years ago; and the Frankfurt School's claim that fascism, state capitalism, and mass culture are all forms of social domination enabled by a means-ends rationality that emerged out of the Enlightenment.While each of these accounts is of independent interest, in this course they will also serve as case studies of the method of ideological critique more generally. In each instance we will be concerned with the following questions: What exactly is an ideological belief? Is there ever anything besides deliberate deception that could explain someone holding such a belief? Are there actually such things as real interests such that we could hold beliefs that are contrary to them? Can someone hold a single ideological belief, or are these beliefs the sort of things that only come in large packages? If we suspect that vast constellations of our beliefs might be ideological, is there any sure method of sorting out which ones are and which ones are not, or might our whole way of approaching these issues itself be hopelessly tangled in ideological thinking?

Topic: Reason, Desire, and the Good (instructor: M. Hopwood)

If I show no regard for the feelings of others, you might describe me as callous or cruel, but would it also make sense to describe me as irrational? Some philosophers have denied this, claiming that I only have reason to do whatever serves my existing motivations. If I have no desire to act morally, then I have no reason to do so either. Other philosophers have argued that a person who ignores moral considerations is guilty of a kind of rational defect; such a person is failing to see the importance of something that any fully rational agent would recognize. In this class, we will use this debate as an entry point into some of the most important and influential work in contemporary moral philosophy. We will look at Bernard Williams's attempt to pull morality and rationality apart, and the attempts of Aristotelians (Philippa Foot, John McDowell, Warren Quinn) and Kantians (Christine Korsgaard) to put them back together again. In the final section of the class, we will consider a very different perspective on the debate by taking up Iris Murdoch's claim that the failure to show due regard for others is not so much a failure of reason as a failure of love.

Why be moral? Is there any principled distinction between matters of fact and matters of value?  What is the character of obligation?  What is a virtue?  In this course we will read, think, and write about twentieth century Anglo-North American philosophical attempts to give a systematic account of morality. (A)

Constant changes in healthcare settings, coupled with rapid advancements in technology, lead to increasingly complicated ethical dilemmas: Who decides what - patients, doctors or family members - and on what basis? What is the telos of the medical profession and how does it bear on what doctors can and cannot provide their patients? Can doctors refuse to provide treatment for conscientious reasons? Are abortions, assisted suicides, organ sales and surrogacy morally permissible? In this course, we attempt to answer these (and other) pressing questions. We will commence the course by analyzing two key concepts which are utilized in medical ethics debates: autonomy and paternalism. We will examine the value of autonomy and its relation to the question of competence, the difference between autonomy and authenticity, and the vexed question of when and how paternalism is justified. We will then discuss questions surrounding the telos of the medical profession, the physician’s duties as derived from this telos, and the circumstances, if any, in which the physician can deviate from this telos. We will also examine circumstances in which physicians can refuse to provide treatment on conscientious grounds. We will then proceed to examine specific medical ethical dilemmas surrounding the beginning and end of life. We will discuss ethical questions pertaining to abortion and parents’ right to refuse medical care for their newborn children, while examining the moral standing of fetuses and newborns. We will also examine ethical questions surrounding the autonomy, wellbeing and interests of demented patients, while raising broader philosophical questions pertaining to the nature of personal identity. Finally, we will discuss the moral permissibility of euthanasia and the right to assisted suicide. We will conclude the course by analyzing some of the key characteristics of markets, as well as their moral limits, and utilize our analysis in order to understand the moral status of organ sales and surrogacy.

Topic: Rules, Autonomy, and Metaphysics of Normativity (instructor: T. Tiisala)
It is a philosophical commonplace to use the expression ‘space of reasons’ to highlight the normative character of rationality in contrast to a notion of nature as a system of causal (or probabilistic) laws. Yet one may wonder whether this distinction entails a dualistic metaphysics, where two spheres of reality are so separated that a connection between them becomes unintelligible. In this course, we will examine a strategy to avoid such a dualism by explaining the normative standards of reasoning in terms of what is sometimes called ‘attitude-dependence’. In other words, we will focus on the idea that subjects who reason also constitute the norms of reasoning by holding each other responsible to some standards of correctness in thought and action. In particular, we will examine and elaborate the explanatory resources of this strategy, whose emergence we will trace to Kant’s notion of autonomy, in connection with the following three challenges. (1) The normativity of reasoning cannot be generally understood in terms of a self-conscious activity of rule-following, because in that case any rule for the application of a rule would require another rule for its own application, and infinitely so. (2) It cannot be completely up to one to decide which normative standards one is bound to, because that would preclude the possibility of error and thus also obliterate normativity. (3) Proposals that seek to overcome these two challenges by modeling reasoning as a discursive practice, accounting for its normative structure on the basis of social statuses of commitment and entitlement, are incompatible with the traditional way of understanding freedom as rational constraint and power as constraint due to an external force. Finally, we will investigate the limits of the explanatory strategy that relies on attitude-dependence by asking to what extent the attitudes on which it makes norms depend can be plausibly understood as elements in the natural history of the human species. We will read texts by Rousseau, Kant, Sellars, Ryle, Brandom, McDowell, Foucault, Canguilhem, Dennett, and others.

Topic: Reasons, Motivation, and Morality (instructor: N. Ben Moshe)

We often say things like “he ought to do so-and-so” or “she has a reason to do such-and-such”. But what do we mean when we talk about what people ought to do or about their reasons for action? What is the relation between people’s reasons and their motivations? Are there reasons which exist independently of our motivations? Or are all reasons somehow dependent on the motivations which we happen to have or which we would have if we were fully rational? Related questions extend into the realm of morality: Are there reasons which are specifically moral in nature? If so, how are they related to our motivations? Finally, is one irrational or in error if one does not act on moral reasons, or can there be a perfectly coherent, non-mistaken villain? In this course we will discuss some of the central meta-normative and meta-ethical positions regarding the nature of normative and moral reasons: Thomas Nagel’s realism, Christine Korsgaard’s Kantian anti-realism, Sharon Street’s Humean anti-realism, and Michael Smith’s hybrid of Humean-Kantian realism. We will introduce these positions by discussing Hume’s and Kant’s views on motivation and moral motivation, as well as the distinction between internal and external reasons and between motivating and normative reasons. We will also consider the nature of specifically moral reasons - in particular, reasons stemming from the motive of duty - and their alleged categorical force. Additional authors include Donald Davidson, Philippa Foot, Barbara Herman, John McDowell, Derek Parfit and Bernard Williams.

Topic: Rules, Autonomy, and Metaphysics of Normativity (instructor: T. Tiisala)
It is a philosophical commonplace to use the expression ‘space of reasons’ to highlight the normative character of rationality in contrast to a notion of nature as a system of causal (or probabilistic) laws. Yet one may wonder whether this distinction entails a dualistic metaphysics, where two spheres of reality are so separated that a connection between them becomes unintelligible. In this course, we will examine a strategy to avoid such a dualism by explaining the normative standards of reasoning in terms of what is sometimes called ‘attitude-dependence’. In other words, we will focus on the idea that subjects who reason also constitute the norms of reasoning by holding each other responsible to some standards of correctness in thought and action. In particular, we will examine and elaborate the explanatory resources of this strategy, whose emergence we will trace to Kant’s notion of autonomy, in connection with the following three challenges. (1) The normativity of reasoning cannot be generally understood in terms of a self-conscious activity of rule-following, because in that case any rule for the application of a rule would require another rule for its own application, and infinitely so. (2) It cannot be completely up to one to decide which normative standards one is bound to, because that would preclude the possibility of error and thus also obliterate normativity. (3) Proposals that seek to overcome these two challenges by modeling reasoning as a discursive practice, accounting for its normative structure on the basis of social statuses of commitment and entitlement, are incompatible with the traditional way of understanding freedom as rational constraint and power as constraint due to an external force. Finally, we will investigate the limits of the explanatory strategy that relies on attitude-dependence by asking to what extent the attitudes on which it makes norms depend can be plausibly understood as elements in the natural history of the human species. We will read texts by Rousseau, Kant, Sellars, Ryle, Brandom, McDowell, Foucault, Canguilhem, Dennett, and others.

Topic: Reasons, Motivation, and Morality (instructor: N. Ben Moshe)

We often say things like “he ought to do so-and-so” or “she has a reason to do such-and-such”. But what do we mean when we talk about what people ought to do or about their reasons for action? What is the relation between people’s reasons and their motivations? Are there reasons which exist independently of our motivations? Or are all reasons somehow dependent on the motivations which we happen to have or which we would have if we were fully rational? Related questions extend into the realm of morality: Are there reasons which are specifically moral in nature? If so, how are they related to our motivations? Finally, is one irrational or in error if one does not act on moral reasons, or can there be a perfectly coherent, non-mistaken villain? In this course we will discuss some of the central meta-normative and meta-ethical positions regarding the nature of normative and moral reasons: Thomas Nagel’s realism, Christine Korsgaard’s Kantian anti-realism, Sharon Street’s Humean anti-realism, and Michael Smith’s hybrid of Humean-Kantian realism. We will introduce these positions by discussing Hume’s and Kant’s views on motivation and moral motivation, as well as the distinction between internal and external reasons and between motivating and normative reasons. We will also consider the nature of specifically moral reasons - in particular, reasons stemming from the motive of duty - and their alleged categorical force. Additional authors include Donald Davidson, Philippa Foot, Barbara Herman, John McDowell, Derek Parfit and Bernard Williams.

This course will examine three central areas of philosophy—epistemology, ethics, and political philosophy—through the lens of issues raised by persistent disagreement. We will consider questions such as the following. What is the connection between the possibility of disagreement and objective truth? When should disagreement with our peers lead us to doubt what we think we know? What is the line between intellectual arrogance and having the courage of our convictions? Does the persistence of moral disagreement show that morality is subjective? Should the political community be neutral between parties that disagree on basic questions of morality, religion and justice? When is and isn’t it acceptable to just agree to disagree? No prior knowledge of philosophy is necessary for this course. (A)