Reddit reviews The Sources of Normativity

Okay. Here's some books and stuff. The first is co written by the most famous ethicist alive.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0199603693/ref=rdr_ext_tmb

https://www.amazon.com/Value-Reality-Desire-Graham-Oddie/dp/0199562385/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1435241913&sr=8-1&keywords=Value%2C+Reality+and+Desire

https://www.amazon.com/Sources-Normativity-Christine-M-Korsgaard/dp/052155960X/ref=sr_1_sc_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466476980&sr=1-1-spell&keywords=thesources+of+normativity

http://fas-philosophy.rutgers.edu/chang/Papers/Railton-MoralRealism.pdf

http://davidobrink.com/publication/autonomy-ethics

http://law.huji.ac.il/upload/WOE.pdf

I think the question "why should I do good?" can be interpreted in a couple of ways.

One might interpret the question as saying something like, "I don't give a shit about other people; convince me to do good instead of completely ignore the needs and wishes of others!" If you're in that kind of situation - if you don't actually care about anybody or anything but yourself - then I don't think I philosophy can do much to help you. Maybe you're a psychopath.

A different way to interpret the question is something like this: you may care very much about other people and try your best to be a nice and friendly person, but there are times when the demands of morality can be extremely daunting - you might find yourself in a situation where you feel morality requires you to risk your job, your fortune, your relationships, or even your life. In these situations, it's pretty understandable for someone to ask himself, "Should I sacrifice so much for this 'moral' compulsion I feel?"

How you understand morality can affect your answer to this question. If it turned out that the demands of "morality" were nothing more than what the majority of your culture currently expects you to do, then I think it would be quite reasonable to say, "If that's what morality is, then fuck morality! I'm not going to sacrifice my life (or job, relationships, etc.) just because people expect me to do such-and-such!" (EDIT: Note that I'm not saying it would then be reasonable to act like a total jerk. You might still continue to be a nice and generous person, but not because "morality" demands it.)

The question now becomes whether there is some explanation of morality which wouldn't give you that reaction.

This is basically what Christine Korsgaard calls 'the normative question'. I think she does a great job of articulating it in her book The Sources of Normativity. Her newer book Self-Constitution explores very similar themes. Maybe you will find them interesting.

http://www.amazon.com/dp/052155960X/ref=rdr_ext_sb_ti_sims_1

http://www.amazon.com/Self-Constitution-Identity-Integrity-Christine-Korsgaard/dp/0199552800/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1418020161&sr=1-1&keywords=self-constitution

>why should I continue to strive to selfless?

Don't conflate being selfless with doing the good/right/moral thing. For example, in situations where fairness is a chief concern (like sharing a pie amongst a group of people), doing the right thing isn't a matter of being selfless, but is rather a matter of treating everybody equally - including yourself. Even in the situations I discussed above (where you might feel that morality requires you to make a huge sacrifice), I don't think being selfless is a good attitude to have.

Plants are also just as alive as cows and pigs.

Some people who stop eating meat do so for primarily moral/ethical reasons. Why would eating meat be unethical? Because many non-human animals (dolphins, dogs, cats, pigs, octopuses, etc.) seem to have a degree of self-awareness/"consciousness" that makes using them as merely an means to an end and not an end-in-themselves ethically problematic. (No plants or fungi exhibit anything like this.)

Not eating something simply because it belongs to the kingdom Animalia doesn't make much sense. Sponges are animals but are more similar to plants in many ways. It seems to me that if sponges were tasty, then there would be no ethical problem with eating them, even though they are animals.

But then you are left with an entire spectrum of animals with varying degrees of intelligence/concept-of-self/consciousness: sponges, corals, worms, anemones, snails, insects, most fish, snakes, chicken, cows, pigs, octopuses, dogs, apes, dolphins, humans (that's very roughly from least to most intelligent).

So the question is where, along the spectrum, does using the animal for food become ethically problematic, i.e. less like eating a plant and more like eating a person. Some people put that line between fish and other commonly eaten animals, like cows and pigs. More likely there is no distinct line, it simply becomes less ethical to use animals as you move up the spectrum, even if it is difficult to quantify how unethical it is. Then it becomes a case of wagering personal benefits and desires against potential but uncertain levels of wrongness, and some people find their comfort level puts fish on one side of that and mammals on the other.

As it is, fish seem pretty uniformly dumb, but they are a large and heterogeneous group. We may find that some are relatively smart, though, the way that corvids (crows, ravens, bluejays) are significantly smarter and more aware than other orders of birds, or the way that some octopuses are also pretty smart, while most other cephalopods and molloscs are dumb as rocks.

So there's your answer. It's not an arbitrary cultural distinction with no basis in reality.

This book provides a pretty good (neo-Kantian) account of how and why the structure of the rational mind both makes ethical considerations possible and makes things separable into "things that can be wronged" and "things that can't be wronged". She even has a chapter on animals, although she refrains from making any strong conclusions.

https://www.amazon.com/Sources-Normativity-Christine-M-Korsgaard/dp/052155960X

Never done this one before but going from what /r/bookclub has, it looks like you need to change your sidebar text from this:


> The Sources of Normativity By Christine M. Korsgaard

to this:

> |The Sources of Normativity|
> |:--:|
> |MODERNIMAGE|
> |By Christine M. Korsgaard|

Then go to the stylesheet and upload an image of the bookcover, keeping it close to the size width 100px, height 150px:

Try this one for your current book, http://i.imgur.com/ONrsctG.jpg

make sure to name the image 'modern'

Then add this to your code:

.side a[href*="http://www.amazon.com/Sources-Normativity-Christine-M-Korsgaard/dp/052155960X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1375318280&sr=1-1&keywords=sources+of+normativity#modern"] {
background-image :url(%%modern%%);
width:100px;
height:150px;
background-repeat: no-repeat;
background-position:0 0;
display:block;
font-size: 0px;
cursor: default;
border: 1px solid #876824;
}


When you want to change it to a new book, in the sidebar you need to just change that amazon link but make sure to keep the #modern at the end of the link, then upload a new book picture, and then change the link in that code to the new amazon link.

It should end up looking like this /r/izzytest3/ (not including your other formatting)

Note that this is the lecture, not the book (which is apparently longer, edited, and with commentaries).