Reddit Reddit reviews The Elements of Moral Philosophy

We found 8 Reddit comments about The Elements of Moral Philosophy. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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Philosophy
Philosophy of Ethics & Morality
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The Elements of Moral Philosophy
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8 Reddit comments about The Elements of Moral Philosophy:

u/Mentalpopcorn · 7 pointsr/TrueAtheism

> Morality is subjective and there are NO moral absolutes.

Honest question: have you ever taken an ethics class? I ask because there is an entire class of people - ethicists - whose task it is to study exactly the question of right and wrong and very few of them hold your position. This is not an argument that democracy determines truth, but rather that when 99% of experts think X and random Joe Shmoe thinks Y, you have to consider that Joe Shmoe is probably wrong (an appeal to authority, which contrary to popular belief is a valid inductive argument and not a fallacy, as opposed to appeal to false authority).

If you're interested in the arguments against moral relativism - of which there are many - ethicist James Rachels deals with them nicely in The Elements of Moral Philosophy(free pdfs online if you don't care about piracy). If you were to be able to demonstrate that his reasoning and proof against relativism was wrong you'd become pretty famous pretty quickly.

But basically, to say that all moral statements are equal is to say that we cannot consider reason when determining ethical answers. That is, if I were to ask you why it's wrong to steal you could probably come up with a good argument. If, however, you were a radical Muslim who believed that subjugating women was right, your argument would have to contain some sort of fallacious reasoning (e.g. an unproved premise such as god, or an appeal to tradition, etc).

The major ethical systems - utilitarianism, deontology, etc - are not based on whims but on well reasoned, deductive arguments. If you want to argue they are invalid then you must find a flaw in the reasoning. You cannot simply state that all morality is subjective without first dispelling the arguments for moral systems which already exist.

u/Crunkenstien · 3 pointsr/CampingandHiking

Here's a starter guide.

What I meant about the logic part, is that two people might disagree about what is right or wrong. One of them might still be incorrect. The disagreement doesn't mean that both people are right.

And what I mean about not criticizing, is that the one rule or moral relativism is that no one's moral philosophy is incorrect. If you tell me I have it wrong that there are universal moral laws, you just did relativism wrong. In fact, if my culture punishes you for something, you just have to accept that.

u/Snow_Mandalorian · 2 pointsr/askphilosophy

Absolutely. Even as a non-believer I acknowledge the Euthyphro as the starting point of an interesting conversation regarding DCT, not where the conversation ends.

Most intro to ethics books don't say the above. For example, the best selling intro to ethics book of all time has a chapter on morality and religion and it treats the dilemma as decisive. Whether that's an okay thing to teach intro to ethics students or not may in part be based on what we think we ought to be teaching them in the first place. Most philosophers aren't egoists, so the textbooks teach the main objections to egoism and move on. Most philosophers aren't relativists either, so we teach the main objections and move on.

Sure, we could say "but, things get a little trickier, because there are certainly some interesting and sophisticated defenses of these views that avoid these objections" but I'm not sure what value that would be to intro to ethics students who aren't really interested in a philosophical career. So I guess it depends on whether you think we should be giving a general overview of the field and the main objections to the views or whether we should give them more details and exceptions than they actually really need to know.

u/GroundhogExpert · 2 pointsr/tumblr

There was a very long debate about psychological egoism, a debate ended by an American philosopher James Rachels in this book: https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Moral-Philosophy-James-Rachels/dp/0078038243

Philosophy doesn't lend itself very well to bumper sticker wisdom.

u/thetourist74 · 1 pointr/askphilosophy

Well, if you want a concentrated course of study you might consider looking for secondary sources that focus on particular areas of research in philosophy rather than trying to read very few (5-10) authors in real depth. I see Kant has been suggested, for example, and while I would never doubt his importance as a philosopher, if you set out with the intention of reading the bulk of his works as you say you might you would have to tackle a great deal of dry, technical material which I think would prove to be a lot more work than you could expect. Same could be said for Aristotle, Plato, Hegel, Descartes, nearly anyone you really might care to list. I don't know if you've read much philosophy, but you might instead look at something like an introduction to philosophy, an intro to ethics, or an intro to the philosophy of mind. These are only some examples, there are books like this for pretty much any area of study that attracts your interest. I'm sure others could provide suggestions as well.

u/bearCatBird · 1 pointr/Anarcho_Capitalism

I just finished reading this book.

And I'm 100 pages into this book.

The first says:

> Morality is the effort to guide one’s conduct by reason - to do what there are the best reasons for doing - while giving equal weight to the interests of each individual affected by one’s decision. Moral Philosophy is the study of what morality is and what it requires of us. There is no simple definition of morality. But there is a “minimum conception” of morality - a core that any moral theory should accept. What do we know about the nature of Morality?

>1. Moral Judgments must be backed by good reasons.

>2. Morality requires the impartial consideration of each individual's interests.

The second book compares morality to art. While all art is subjective, people still practice and study art and become knowledgeable. It would be foolish to think we couldn't learn something from those who devote much time and energy to the subject. In the same way, we can learn about morality.

u/grammar_counts · 1 pointr/askphilosophy

> What does it mean for a truth to be relative to something else?

Well, my entire post was an attempt to answer this question of meaning (see the second sentence, starting with the phrase 'meaning that...'), and it directly addresses the example of your second paragraph, but maybe what I said was unclear.

The relativist thinks that to say "X is wrong" full stop is either incoherent or short-hand for something of the form "X is wrong according to framework F", where the relevant framework is implicitly determined, maybe by criteria of salience.

Again, the analogy to speed is instructive. Suppose a baseball is traveling at 90mph relative to frame F but at 5mph relative to frame G. The question, "but what is its real speed?" is incoherent. If someone at rest in frame F says "the ball is traveling at 90mph", we take him implicitly to be saying that the ball is traveling at 90mph relative to frame F.

Now, suppose someone at rest in G is evaluating the statement of the person at rest in F. Is it true or false? It's true that the ball is moving at 90mph in frame F, but false that it's moving at 90mph in frame G. What should this person at rest in G say?

Answer: he should say that it is traveling at 90 in frame F, traveling at 5 in frame G.

The question of moral truth is analogous, according to relativists.

Other views may use the label 'relativist', but the one I describe is a standard view in philosophy, as defended by Gilbert Harman (in the link I gave above) and criticized by Judith Thomson (same link) as well as by James Rachels in the popular introductory reader, Elements of Moral Philosophy.

u/CharlestonChewbacca · 1 pointr/DebateAnAtheist

Morality is a human concept. Something we've created as a framework for the values we evolved as a social species.

There's a great book called Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture, and Wisdom that goes through this in some detail.

To understand how we developed this, it's also necessary to understand how morality has been defined and discussed through the ages. The Elements of Moral Philosophy is a great place to start if you're interested in learning about that.

Basically, I do that which is best for me, which is almost always that which is best for those I love and society as a whole. Conflicts in these interests can create interesting ethical dilemmas, but that's what makes ethics such an interesting subject.