Official Website for Amitabha Palmer
Preamble: I’ve been working on this paper for longer than I care to admit but I have to turn it in at some point. I’ve written about 4 or 5 different versions of it all with different solutions or non-solutions to the puzzle I present. Anyhow, a few notes: (A) For some reason the footnotes […]
Read More Cilantro, Moral Truth, and JustificationOk, I can’t take it any more. I’m supposed to be working on a paper but the recent flood of articles regarding Planned Parenthood and abortions are making me loco–but not for the reasons you might think. I’m not going argue for a position regarding abortion but I just want to point a few things […]
Read More Abortion, Animal Rights, and Moral ConsistencyOverview of CoherentismThe issue on the table is to figure out what it takes for a moral claim to be epistemically justified. The coherentist offers the following general account of justification. A moral belief is justified to the degree that it coheres with the believers other beliefs. In short, justification is cashed out in terms […]
Read More Evidence for Moral Claims Part 2: CoherentismFor a couple of years now I’ve been perplexed by the following problem: What counts as evidence for or justifies a moral belief? Even in asking the question I’m a bit confused because are two possible interpretations of the question (possibly more). We might say that what justifies a moral belief is that it is […]
Read More What Counts as Evidence for a Moral Belief?Notes and Thoughts on Moral Disagreement as Discussed in Parfit’s “On What Matters” Ch. 34Parfit Vs Basic Argument from DisagreementSuppose you and your counterpart are in ideal epistemic conditions. You are aware of and agree on all the non-normative facts yet your opinions differ on what the true moral belief is. In a way, we […]
Read More Parfit on Moral Disagreement: Part 2Notes and Thoughts on Parfit and Moral Disagreement (Ch. 34)IntroductionBefore getting into the philosophy, for those of you who aren’t familiar with the trolley thought experiments, answer these questions before proceeding:Trolly Q1: You are driver of a runaway tram which you can only steer from one narrow track on to another; five men are working […]
Read More Moral Disagreement Part 1: Parfit(apology–I haven’t proof read this yet)Yo, check it. I think I might actually have my paper topic for metaFX. Stop. That would be the best DJ name for a philosopher ever, DJ metaFX. Anyway, I is going to talk about whever der is such ting as normativity in reasons–that is, whether there’s such a ting […]
Read More Normative Truth: Good and Bad Reasons. (Parfit)Holy Crap! It’s 4:10am and I’m going to start this now? Am I insane? Yup. Actually, I have to do a presentation on this articles in 2 days so I’m forcing myself to get through the entire article tonight so tomorrow I can pick and choose the parts I’ll use for my presentation. I should […]
Read More Want to Discover Moral Truth? Part 3 How to Be a Moral Realist by Richard Boyd“Moral Music”– A. Clapham There’s a story from Greece that Athena, goddess of wisdom, took up an aulos (for a picture, look here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aulos ), and began to play. The instrument, however, gave the goddess a flushed expression, as it took a lot of force to play it effectively. Not wanting to tarnish her looks, […]
Read More Moral Music: Guest Blogger A. ClaphamNotes and Thoughts on Bernard Williams’ Internal and External ReasonsKey Quote: “Does believing that a particular consideration is a reason to act in a particular way provide, or indeed constitute, a motivation to act?”OverviewOne of the central debates within meta-ethics is between the various strands of naturalism, on the one side, and those of non-naturalism […]
Read More How To Turn An Assailant Into Your Friend: Internalism vs Externalism
Wrestling with Philosophy 