Electric Agora (archive)

Tag: Morality

  • Epiphanies and Moral Life

    by Kevin Currie-Knight ___ Sophie Grace Chappell (Open University) talks with Kevin (East Carolina University) about her book Epiphanies: An Ethics of Experience. (Oxford: 2022) They talk about what epiphanies are, why they should count as a type of reason (often more persuasive than more formal conceptions of reason), and why philosophers should better appreciate…

  • Caring

    By Kevin Currie-Knight ___ Political and cultural polarization is on the rise. And it’s not just that we increasingly see things differently, but that we’re more hostile to views that differ from ours, often seeing them as threats rather than mere differences. Social media – and this likely bleeds into other online and real-life spaces…

  • Remarks on Religion

    By Daniel A. Kaufman ____ By now, most readers know that I am an atheist, as I do not believe in the existence of God or anything supernatural. Readers also likely know that I am Jewish by lineage and culturally and that I think God is useless both as an explanation and as a moral…

  • Compelled Birth and the Liberal Polity

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ____ Abortion is now illegal in the State of Missouri, where I live. If my twenty-year-old daughter was to become pregnant, she would be required to carry the baby to term and give birth to it, under threat of a felony conviction. In a number of the states in which 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…

  • Bits and Pieces: The Obligatory; The Supererogatory; Prudential Cases; Arguments.

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ___ [1] Philosophers sacralize moral obligation and maintain that moral considerations are always overriding of all others, and yet ordinary people (as well as philosophers in their ordinary lives) hold actions done from earnest desire in much higher esteem than those done from duty. “Don’t just do it out of a…

  • Close Reading

    by Mark English ___ Young children are notoriously bad liars, but even mature and sophisticated users of language reveal themselves in ways of which they are all too often unaware. Listeners and readers inevitably make judgments based not so much on the literal meaning of what we say as on what they perceive to be…

  • 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…

  • MEANING, INTELLIGIBILITY, MORALITY, AND GOD: A CONVERSATION WITH JOSHUA RASMUSSEN, PART 2

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ____ The second of a two-part conversation with Joshua Rasmussen of Azusa Pacific University on a broad variety of issues, related to the meaning of life, morality, the intelligibility of the world, and God. Technical difficulties interrupted us, so the conversation is being presented in two parts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d8vwO9YSq-0&ab_channel=ElectricAgora 01:10 Does longevity…

  • Meaning, Intelligibility, Morality, and God: A Conversation with Joshua Rasmussen, Part 1

    by Daniel A. Kaufman ____ The first of a two-part conversation with Joshua Rasmussen of Azusa Pacific University on a broad variety of issues, related to the meaning of life, morality, the intelligibility of the world, and God. Technical difficulties interrupted us, so the conversation is being presented in two parts. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y-p33YkCHXA&list=PLFBaXJ7yNOYERObvjSkJfoDOgtMWVhWse&index=9&ab_channel=ElectricAgora 02:50 Meaning in…