Electric Agora (archive)

Tag: Immanuel Kant

  • Whose Racism? Which Enlightenment?

    By Kevin Currie-Knight ___ Like so much else, the Enlightenment seems to be a flash point in the contemporary culture wars. Some, like Douglas Murray and Stephen Pinker, suggest that we are moving too far away from “enlightenment values” like liberty, equality, and the idea of a universal human nature (to which they oppose the…

  • A Foolish Impartiality is the Hobgoblin of Morality

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ____ Philosophy professors like to think that ours is a clarifying business, so some may be surprised to discover that we can be confused about things that most ordinary people are not. One of these things is partiality and impartiality and how they affect ethical questions. Certainly, the average person thinks…

  • Does Philosophy of Art-Criticism Rest on a Mistake?

    by Daniel A. Kaufman §1. In “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?” H.A. Prichard observed that mainline moral philosophy is essentially an exercise in epistemology, since its primary concern is with providing proof of the soundness of our moral responses — our feelings of obligation and duty — and we might very well say…

  • Kant and Bad Parking

    by Robert Gressis ____ Today, I was dropping my son off at school when I saw a desirable parking spot. Like just about every parking spot near my son’s school, it required parallel parking. So, I rolled past the spot, put on my turn-indicator, and waited for the cars behind me to clear so that…

  • Perception and “illusion” with Dr. Louise Moody

    by Daniel A. Kaufman I talk with Dr. Louise Moody about perception, “illusion style” arguments, and J.L. Austin. Louise has a PhD in philosophy and is an independent philosopher and feminist campaigner. [Note: There are points at which Louise’s mic cuts out for a second, but it does not substantially interfere with watching the discussion.]…

  • Will A.I. Be The Death of Us?

    by Charles Justice ____ Here are a number of scenarios, most of them science fiction, that have to do with computers or machines taking over the world: An apprentice learns a magic trick for making a tool take over all the work of cleaning his master’s workshop, but he can’t figure out how to shut…

  • on authority [and rousseau’s fork]

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ Hannah Arendt maintained that one has authority, when one commands obedience from others, not by exercising power over them, but because they recognize and respect one’s right to do so. [1] To accept authority, then, is to accept hierarchy, which, in turn, is to accept a substantial if not formal…

  • Two Introductory lectures on ethical theory

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ This semester, I am once again teaching all-online [hopefully for the last time].  Here are the two opening lectures for my Ethics and Contemporary Issues course, in which I give a brief overview of ethical theory.  Below them you will find the lecture notes that accompany the videos and which…

  • Prolegomena for a Pluralist Metaphysics: One More Thing (Some Stuff about God and Intelligibility)

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ Of all things the measure is man, of the things that are, that they are, and of things that are not, that they are not.    –Protagoras 1. A common mistake that people (and philosophers, especially) make is to look for intelligibility in the wrong place. This is made worse by…

  • Why I’m Sitting in this Chair

    by Robert Gressis A couple of months ago, I had a diavlog with our host, Dan Kaufman. In that discussion, we debated what Dan has usefully called the “morality everywhere” approach; roughly, this is the idea not only that just about all of our behavior is morally evaluable, but also that it is evaluable according…