Selected works by recent participants

Philip Goff, "A Priori Physicalism, Lonely Ghosts, and Cartesian Doubt" (2012)

David Papineau, Thinking About Consciousness (2004)

Lawrence Krauss, A Universe From Nothing (2012)

Roy Sorensen, Seeing Dark Things: The Philosophy of Shadows (2008)

Paul Humphreys with Mark Bedau (eds.): Emergence: Contemporary Readings in Philosophy and Science (2008)

John Symons with Fabio Boschetti: "Novel Properties Generated By Interacting Computational Systems" (2011)

Matt Bedke and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

August 22nd, 2011
http://www.vimeo.com/27922390

Matt Bedke (left) and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong (right) on ethical intuitions.

Bedke and Sinnott-Armstrong consider the extent to which we can justifiably trust our ethical intuitions. They discuss the analogy between ethical intuitions and color perceptions (2:55), a potential difference between ethical intuitions and non-ethical philosophical intuitions (19:45), Sinnott-Armstrong’s work on framing effects (27:11), and Bedke’s critique of non-naturalist ethical intuitionism (60:44), among other topics.

Continue reading Matt Bedke and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

2 comments   Epistemology, Metaethics, Moral psychology

Roger Crisp and Daniel Star

October 17th, 2010
http://www.vimeo.com/15886361

Roger Crisp (left) and Daniel Star (right) on normative reasons.

Reasons for action occupy an increasingly central place in recent moral philosophy. Why? Crisp and Star address that question, and provide a handy taxonomy of different kinds of reasons, before they turn to two interrelated issues. First, they discuss the prospects for an analysis of reasons. Star offers an analysis in terms of evidence: a reason to φ is evidence that one ought to φ. Then (at 42:55) they discuss the buck-passing account of goodness — the view that reasons are provided by features of an object that make the object good, but not by its goodness itself — and Crisp explains why he finds fault with that account.

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 Podcast Video [62:35m]: Download
Leave a comment   Metaethics, Moral psychology

Jason Brennan and Neil Sinhababu

September 26th, 2010
http://www.vimeo.com/15237134

Jason Brennan (left) and Neil Sinhababu (right) on political liberties and hedonism.

In this episode, Brennan and Sinhababu air two different arguments on two different topics. First, Brennan argues, contrary to a widely held view, that a given individual’s political liberties should not be considered valuable for that individual: he contends that political liberties do not achieve the ends that would give them such value. Then (starting at 35:21) Sinhababu presents his argument in favor of universal hedonism: he contends that emotional perception (which often seems contrary to hedonism) is unreliable, whereas phenomenal introspection (which he thinks supports hedonism) is reliable.

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One comment   Metaethics, Moral psychology, Political Philosophy, Value Theory