Moral Philosophy

[Anonymous No.11012543]

Who is your favorite moral philosopher and why?

I'll take suggestions for specific works too

[Anonymous No.11012692]

Aristotle because the enlightenment was a mistake with a bunch of autistic manchildren ruining ethics

[Anonymous No.11012712]

Humean sentimentalism is peak moral philosophy.

[Anonymous No.11012893]

>>11012543
I'm on the last chapter of After Virtue. Really good book. I fucking hope he resolves the issues of deciding with set of virtues, having virtue ethics objectively established, and why he chooses Aristotle over Nietzsche.

He's been building up the idea of "we dont know what set of virtues to choose; look at all of them!" and that looks like "we dont know what our telos is" and that would mean "we cannot have a rational basis for virtue ethics"

then again, I have one more chapter to go. Ch9-12 get me hot, I hope the last does the same.

[Anonymous No.11012901]

>>11012692
We gotta give a round of applause to Luther for saying "fuck you" to Scholasticism and Aristotle, thus opening the door to the "Enlightenment"

[Anonymous No.11013050]

>>11012893
There is no telos outside the mind.

[Anonymous No.11013161]

>>11013050
There is no telos in mind either

[Anonymous No.11013198]

>>11013161
Sure there is, we call it "intent".

[Anonymous No.11013235]

Hume’s Is-Ought problem: That oughtness is not a kind of isness; and that oughtness cannot be rationally derived from isness.

This second proposition presupposes the first, and so, both propositions are false as, given an intentionality – a teleology – oughtness is a kind of isness.

Hence, if one denies the rationality of intention, of aboutness, and denies that oughtness can be derive from isness, then nothing can be rationally derived, at least where a logical inference is made towards an end. That is, no logical inference can be made towards any end, for example, understanding the world, wholly or in its particulars.

[Anonymous No.11013293]

>>11012901
Clapping is a barbaric North American ritual.

[Anonymous No.11013298]

>>11013235
>iven an intentionality – a teleology – oughtness is a kind of isness
What?

>if one denies the rationality of intention
Your drives aren't rational. They are instincts and emotions and other mechanisms developed by the interaction of your genetics and your environment, through internal programs like the ones that allow for conditioning.

Reason is just a faculty you have, like vision, audition, motor reflexes, etc. It is there because it was caused epigenetically, not because it was "rational" for it to be there or because nature decided you ought to be like so. It just so happened that the chain of causality lead up to this.

[Anonymous No.11013315]

>>11013050
well there are tablets with commandments

[Anonymous No.11013318]

>>11013198
Yes but can the totality of "intent" be known? What is referred to as "intent" seems more like a hallucinatory and incomplete representation of some other psychic function of the mind. Because of this, I'm not convinced there is any telos in mind, at least none which are knowable.

[Anonymous No.11013329]

>>11013318
What is the issue with non-totality? Intent describes something people "get" that has significant predictive and explanatory power over their behavior (compared to a null hypothesis). That makes it useful info.

[Anonymous No.11013343]

>>11013298
Anon, I am saying that, given a goal, oughtness is a kind of isness.

Also, I mean rational as in 'a reason'

[Anonymous No.11013356]

>>11013315
There can be no law for applying laws.

[Anonymous No.11013378]

>>11013329
The real issue is that what eventually enters our wakeful mind as thought is just an echo (or collection of echoes interpreted as one thought) of the (supposed) original intent or telos. Because of this, the purpose behind a conscious thought becomes obscured to the point where we can even doubt if the origin begins in ones own mind or not. I definitely agree it may be useful, but that doesn't imply any sort of telos of mind.

[Anonymous No.11013379]

Kant is my hero. Hume is nothing more than a neckbeardy turbo-sperg who is only popular because everyone else is also a neckbeard and a turbosperg.

[Anonymous No.11013388]

>>11013379
That would also make Kant a neck beard sperg as it was Hume who awoke Kant from his "dogmatic slumber".

[Anonymous No.11013390]

>>11013379
Wow what an insightful buzzwordy reply

[Anonymous No.11013394]

>>11013388
that reasoning doesnt make any sense. Turbo-sperg is not transitive.

[Anonymous No.11013400]

>>11012543
I'll stick to the margins- Coleridge then Emerson. Neither are as valuable as Montaigne but then Montaigne doesn't express any interest in 'ethics' per se.

[Anonymous No.11013404]

In regards to modern empiricism, its myth of supposition is that some basic level of sensory experiences is intelligible without context.

The existence and limiting imperative of this "given" myth is unknowable from the myth alone, as all myths of supposition are inherently self-refuting.

[Anonymous No.11013419]

>>11013198
wut...

a telos is what justifies an intention, or what one would say in an attempt to make one's intentions and actions intelligible to others.

Like that famous passage in Anscombe where she says something to the effect of 'saying that you desire something by itself does not reveal what having it would amount to,' meaning that desires and intentions, while they may be agential, tend to be inscruitable without an appeal to something further and distinct, and that thing is a telos (or for Anscombe, a desirability characterization, but theyre similar enough for all intents and purposes).

If I said "i want a plate of mud," people would not understand. If I said "i intend to have a plate of mud," they would still be confused. If I said "in order to prove a point about the nature of practical deliberation and reasoning, I will pick up this plate of mud," suddenly things make sense.

[Anonymous No.11013428]

This thread is clearly filled with a bunch of filthy casuals

[Anonymous No.11013470]

>>11013428
>is in this thread
>on 4chan anyhow

[Anonymous No.11013788]

>>11013428
Enlighten us, anon.

[Anonymous No.11013792]

>>11013235
>just be yourself

[Anonymous No.11013957]

>>11013792
I don't recall ever saying that.

[Anonymous No.11013982]

>>11012692
This. At least practically, I think our best bet is post-Anscombean virtue ethics ala MacIntyre or whoever. I'm more into value theory via Nietzsche tho. Unironically a Nietzschean, which makes moral philosophy a side quest at best for me but mostly a joke lbr

[Anonymous No.11013987]

>>11013788
Jesus Christ our lord is the only answer that won't end you up in eternal hellfire.

[Anonymous No.11014005]

>>11012543
My favorite? Ayn Rand. I recommend The Virtue of Selfishness.

[Anonymous No.11014012]

>>11014005
sad.

[Anonymous No.11014141]

No speech nor reasoning, let alone higher arts and sciences, would arise if all men stood, from the first, outside of fellowship.
No man was ever born into Hobbes' so-called state of nature; for man’s state of nature is the state of society.
Individualists of Rand's ilk speak as though they rose out of the ground and shaped themselves in isolation.

[Anonymous No.11014147]

>>11014005
I am a disciple of this school of thought

[Anonymous No.11014308]

Can anybody give me a quick rundown on John Stearle? Does he have a central book I should check out?

[Anonymous No.11014328]

>>11013987
Perhaps a troll post, but it nonetheless contains great wisdom.

Humans will never settle upon a universal moral philosophy if left to themselves. There is no purely human universal morality. If we are to have a universal morality, it must be brought to us by somebody who can see all of humanity in a glance, and then decide what is best for us. It must be somebody outside humanity, in other words. And that's the point of Christian morality.

[Anonymous No.11014346]

>>11014328
I would say be careful when you use universal. It's entirely different from objective—which I assume is what you meant.

[Anonymous No.11015148]

>>11013293
Real intellectuals have a celebratory golden shower

[Anonymous No.11015164]

>>11014308
a dirtbag "philosopher of mind" who came up with a bogus thought experiment just to ensnare chinese girls for the rest of his career

[Anonymous No.11015169]

>>11012692
>>11012893
Virtue Ethics is just psychology. Prove me wrong.

[Anonymous No.11015181]

>>11014308
Searle believes that the mind is caused by but not reducible to the brain. He believs a mind is simply the product of what brains and brain-like organs do.
>>11015169
I don't even see how you could conclude that. It seems so silly that I can't even start to prove you wrong. Maybe elaborate a bit.

[Anonymous No.11015186]

>>11013050
If you're an atheist, just talk about teleonomy instead of teleology.
Works fine.

[Anonymous No.11015232]

>>11015181
Aristotle's entire approach in the NE is psychological. He begins with psychology and throughout returns to it. Open any modern commentary and you will find somewhere a diagram of the soul more detailed than the a diagram associated with De Anima.
It is all based on the idea that cultivating a certain set of habits is best psychologically, which results in eudaimonia.
The key to his entire ethics is where he says this:
>Again, our definition accords with the description of the happy man as one who ‘lives well’ or ‘does well’; for it has virtually identified happiness with a form of good life or doing well.
Or just a bit later, he says this, also highly insightful:
>It follows therefore that happiness is at once the best, the noblest, and the pleasantest of things

Interestingly enough, he does pretty much what a modern psychologist does as well. A psychologist gets you to change your ways and cultivate certain habits for the sake of eudaimonia.
It all rests on psychology.

[Anonymous No.11015243]

>>11014328
who said anything about needing universal morality? you're already assuming some absolutist standard before you even get in the game. and fun fact: absolutism contradicts itself, universality is a myth created by enlightenment faggots

[Anonymous No.11015258]

>>11015169
If by "psychology" you mean "clearing up conceptual and semantical confusion produced by our language." But that's all philosophy is anyway.

[Anonymous No.11015328]

>>11015243
It's easy to see why such an assumption would be made, one either has to assume that or be radically at odds with the world order (which is in many regards Christian in nature).