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Single Idea 21835
[filed under theme 22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 2. Happiness / b. Eudaimonia
]
Full Idea
It would be nice if I could advance the case for Eudaimonics - empirical enquiry into the nature, causes, and constituents of flourishing, …and the case for some ways of living and being as better than others.
Gist of Idea
We need Eudaimonics - the empirical study of how we should flourish
Source
Owen Flanagan (The Really Hard Problem [2007], 4 'Normative')
Book Ref
Flanagan,Owen: 'The Really Hard Problem' [MIT 2007], p.107
A Reaction
Things seem to be moving in that direction. Lots of statistics about happiness have been appearing.
The
30 ideas
from Owen Flanagan
5332
|
People believe they have free will that circumvents natural law, but only an incorporeal mind could do this
[Flanagan]
|
5333
|
Philosophy needs wisdom about who we are, as well as how we ought to be
[Flanagan]
|
5334
|
We resist science partly because it can't provide ethical wisdom
[Flanagan]
|
5335
|
Emotions are usually very apt, rather than being non-rational and fickle
[Flanagan]
|
5336
|
Ethics is the science of the conditions that lead to human flourishing
[Flanagan]
|
5338
|
Normal free will claims control of what I do, but a stronger view claims control of thought and feeling
[Flanagan]
|
5339
|
Cars and bodies obey principles of causation, without us knowing any 'strict laws' about them
[Flanagan]
|
5340
|
Explanation does not entail prediction
[Flanagan]
|
5341
|
Only you can have your subjective experiences because only you are hooked up to your nervous system
[Flanagan]
|
5342
|
Physicalism doesn't deny that the essence of an experience is more than its neural realiser
[Flanagan]
|
5343
|
People largely came to believe in dualism because it made human agents free
[Flanagan]
|
5344
|
Free will is held to give us a whole list of desirable capacities for living
[Flanagan]
|
5345
|
We only think of ourselves as having free will because we first thought of God that way
[Flanagan]
|
5346
|
In the 17th century a collisionlike view of causation made mental causation implausible
[Flanagan]
|
5347
|
Behaviourism notoriously has nothing to say about mental causation
[Flanagan]
|
5348
|
Intellectualism admires the 'principled actor', non-intellectualism admires the 'good character'
[Flanagan]
|
5349
|
For Buddhists a fixed self is a morally dangerous illusion
[Flanagan]
|
5350
|
The Hindu doctrine of reincarnation only appeared in the eighth century CE
[Flanagan]
|
5351
|
We only have a sense of our self as continuous, not as exactly the same
[Flanagan]
|
5352
|
The idea of the soul gets some support from the scientific belief in essential 'natural kinds'
[Flanagan]
|
5353
|
The self is an abstraction which magnifies important aspects of autobiography
[Flanagan]
|
5354
|
We are not born with a self; we develop a self through living
[Flanagan]
|
5355
|
Cognitivists think morals are discovered by reason
[Flanagan]
|
21830
|
For Darwinians, altruism is either contracts or genetics
[Flanagan]
|
21831
|
Alienation is not finding what one wants, or being unable to achieve it
[Flanagan]
|
21832
|
Buddhists reject God and the self, and accept suffering as key, and liberation through wisdom
[Flanagan]
|
21834
|
Sensations may be identical to brain events, but complex mental events don't seem to be
[Flanagan]
|
21833
|
Research suggest that we overrate conscious experience
[Flanagan]
|
21837
|
Morality is normative because it identifies best practices among the normal practices
[Flanagan]
|
21835
|
We need Eudaimonics - the empirical study of how we should flourish
[Flanagan]
|