Official Website for Amitabha Palmer
Notes and Thoughts on A. J. Ayer’s Critique of Ethics and Theology Favourite Quote: “The propositions which describe the phenomena of moral experience must be assigned to psychology or sociology. The exhortations to moral virtue are not propositions at all, but ejaculations or commands which are designed to provoke the reader to action of a […]
Read More The Hoorah/Boo Theory of Ethics: A. J. Ayer Part 1Hamdi vs. Rumsfeld: Is The Detention of US Enemy Combatants Lawful?OverviewIn the immediate aftermath of 9/11, Yaser Hamdi an American citizen was captured by the Northern Alliance, then turned over to the US military in Afghanistan. The US government declared him an enemy combatant and detained him without access to legal council or the opportunity […]
Read More Citizens Can Be Lawfully Detained: Oxymoron?Notes and Thoughts on Imre Lakatos’ ‘Science and Pseudoscience’My favourite quote:“But the history of thought shows us that many people were committed to absurd beliefs. If the strength of beliefs were a hallmark of knowledge, we should have to rank some tales about demons, angels, devils, and of heaven and hell and knowledge. Scientist, on […]
Read More Thaaaats Not Science: Part 2G. E. Moore’s Open Question ArgumentReviewIn the previous post we took a look at G. E. Moore’s naturalistic fallacy which, if you recall, is (short version): (1) Simple ideas/concepts cannot be defined by their properties because then they would be the same as their properties. Eg. ‘Yellow’ cannot be defined as ‘bright’ because ‘yellow’ and ‘bright’ […]
Read More Maybe It’s Good that Helping Old Ladies Across The Street Brings About Happiness? But, Is It Good That It’s Good?The Principle of Autonomy One of my favorite aspects of Kant’s moral philosophy is the principle of autonomy; however, as with any prima facia appealing idea there are usually problems lurking below the shiny surface. I think I wrote about the principle of autonomy (PA) in an earlier post but for my own good […]
Read More Do You Trust People Who Watch Jersey Shore? Kant and the Principle of AutonomyIs Morality Self-Evident? Preamble Up until now we have just taken it on faith that Kant is right in that the supreme principle of morality is the Categorical Imperative (CI) in its various incarnations (i.e., formulation of universalization, of natural law, and of humanity as an end). Now Kant begins his argument for why […]
Read More What Can We Know About Morality from the Concept of Freedom?Intro “I don’t do that because I have morals“. Whenever I hear that I want to reply, “Yeah? So do I; and my morality tells me that it is good to strangle people who say stupid things”. My evidence is purely anecdotal but it seems every time I here this it’s from a […]
Read More The Moral Law, God, and Helping Little Old Ladies Across the StreetIt’s probably because there’s an exam next week, but quite a few students come in for my office hours for the logic class that I TA. For those of you who aren’t familiar with doing formal logic proofs they are mechanical, at least at the basic level. Think of it as math. You have […]
Read More How to Teach Formal Logic in TexasPreamble Lets do a quick and dirty summary of where we are so far in Kant’s argument regarding obligations to act morally when we know what the correct moral action is. When we left off Kant had made the case that some things are ends in themselves; in ordinary language we say that some […]
Read More Do I Have to Do What I Know Is Right? (Part 2)This entry was prompted by a conversation I had with a good friend the other day. Out of the conversation it became quite evident that outside of my ivory tower the unwashed masses have a misconception of the very important world…nay…universe-changing work that philosophers do. I was actually surprised at how worked up I […]
Read More What the Crap Is Philosophy?
Wrestling with Philosophy 