moral philosophy

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The Ignorance Next Door, and What to Do about It

Philosophers sometimes complain about how colleagues in other fields don’t know enough about what philosophy is and what philosophers do, even as said colleagues make pronouncements about philosophy, or decisions that affect philosophy department, or changes to curricula or requirements relevant to philosophy course offerings, and so on. (more…)

Immoral Moral Philosophers

In a recent post at The Splintered Mind, Eric Schwitzgebel (UC Riverside) asks whether it matters “if ethicists walk the walk.” (more…)

Article Spotlight: “The Ordinary Meaningful Life” by Joshua Glasgow

After a bit of a delay, we’re resuming the Article Spotlight series, in which the authors of recent journal articles are invited to write brief posts here about them. (more…)

FTX, Moral Philosophy, Public Philosophy

Does the FTX debacle hold lessons for moral philosophers? For those interested in public philosophy? (more…)

The Philosopher Advising Billionaires on Philanthropy

“Advising billionaires on how to give away their money and encourage them to give more is definitely not where I saw my life going.” (more…)

Nussbaum Wins Balzan Prize

Martha Nussbaum, the Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, has been named one of the winners of the 2022 Balzan Prizes. (more…)

What Is This AI Bot’s Moral Philosophy?

Delphi is an AI ethics bot, or, as its creators put it, “a research prototype designed to model people’s moral judgments on a variety of everyday situations.” Visitors can ask Delphi moral questions, and Delphi will provide you with answers. (more…)

Philosophy of Well-Being: A “Dysfunctional” Situation?

A “responsible definition of wellbeing,” says Anna Alexandrova (Cambridge), “needs to be appropriate to the goals of the project—epistemically accessible, reasonably simple, in other words fit for purpose… Philosophers of wellbeing in the analytic tradition think very differently.” (more…)

Philosophers On Access to Medicine

Three philosophers discuss some of the moral and political questions involved in providing access to medicine and medical care in this edition of Philosophers On. (more…)

Large Grant Funds Boundary-Pushing Study of Moral Judgment

Santiago Amaya, professor of philosophy at the Universidad de los Andes (Colombia), has been awarded a $250,000 grant to support his project, “Off the Rails: Moral Psychology Beyond Traditional Borders.” (more…)

A Collection of Stories for Teaching Ethics

Luc Bovens, professor of philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, has created a website that gathers together and organizes various “short stories in world literature by both classical and contemporary writers” that may be useful in teaching a range of questions in ethics and social and political philosophy. (more…)

Philosophy and “The Empirically Tractable”

I think you are right to be suspicious of the tendency of this institutional paradigm to postulate truths that are ‘basic’, ‘ultimate’ or ‘fundamental’ just at the point where things begin to look interesting or problematic from the point of view of those we in the profession pretentiously refer to as ‘non-philosophers’. (more…)

Three Observations About Moral Philosophy Today

Below are three features of contemporary moral philosophy that I’ve observed, and that may be worth discussing. I present them largely without judgment, except to say here that each seems like a mixed bag. Feel free to discuss, evaluate, elaborate, etc. These aren’t the only observations I have about moral philosophy today, but they are ones that recent events have..

Ethics Professors and Ethical Standards

Should ethics professors be held to higher ethical standards in their personal behavior? A post on that topic by Eric Schwitzgebel (UCR) at The Splintered Mind (which I had put in the Heap of Links last week) asks that question. (more…)

Getting Ethics into Non-Philosophy Courses & other Strategies for Expanding Ethics Instruction

Questions about right and wrong action, what kinds of things are of value, and what kinds of persons we should be—i.e., ethics—arise in nearly every area of scholarly inquiry. This provides opportunities for philosophy departments to play a role at their universities outside their traditional courses. (more…)

Individuals, Institutions, and Conservatism in Moral Philosophy

How many effective altruists does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
None. There are better uses of their time.

How many critics of effective altruism does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
Who knows? They’re still waiting for structural reform to take care of it.*

A few years back, the movement known as “effective altruism” began to make a splash, and over the..

Diversity in Moral and Political Philosophy Journals

Alex Guerrero (U. Penn) looked at four leading journals in moral and political philosophy to see how they have been doing in terms of racial and ethnic diversity over the past decade. Some findings:

0.9% of authors 1.6% of editors are racialized as black
1.2% of authors and 0% of editors are Latina/Latino
4.9% of authors and 4.3% of editors are Asian
18.2%..