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Ideas for 'poems', 'Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value' and 'The Universe as We Find It'

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5 ideas

22. Metaethics / A. Ethics Foundations / 2. Source of Ethics / j. Ethics by convention
Nomos is king [Pindar]
     Full Idea: Nomos is king.
     From: Pindar (poems [c.478 BCE], S 169), quoted by Thomas Nagel - The Philosophical Culture
     A reaction: This seems to be the earliest recorded shot in the nomos-physis wars (the debate among sophists about moral relativism). It sounds as if it carries the full relativist burden - that all that matters is what has been locally decreed.
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 1. Nature of Value / f. Ultimate value
If we can't reason about value, we can reason about the unconditional source of value [Korsgaard]
     Full Idea: If you can only know what is intrinsically valuable through intuition (as Moore claims), you can still argue about what is unconditionally valuable. There must be something unconditionally valuable because there must be a source of value.
     From: Christine M. Korsgaard (Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value [1986], 8 'Three')
     A reaction: If you only grasped the values through intuition, does that give you enough information to infer the dependence relations between values?
An end can't be an ultimate value just because it is useless! [Korsgaard]
     Full Idea: If what is final is whatever is an end but never a means, ...why should something be more valuable just because it is useless?
     From: Christine M. Korsgaard (Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value [1986], 8 'Finality')
     A reaction: Korsgaard is offering this as a bad reading of what Aristotle intends.
22. Metaethics / B. Value / 2. Values / a. Normativity
Many reject 'moral realism' because they can't see any truthmakers for normative judgements [Heil]
     Full Idea: It is the difficulty in imagining what truthmakers for normative judgements might be that leads many philosophers to find 'moral realism' unappealing.
     From: John Heil (The Universe as We Find It [2012], 08.07)
     A reaction: I like that a lot. My proposal for metaethics is that it should be built on the concept of a 'value-maker'
22. Metaethics / C. The Good / 1. Goodness / b. Types of good
Goodness is given either by a psychological state, or the attribution of a property [Korsgaard]
     Full Idea: 'Subjectivism' identifies good ends with or by reference to some psychological state. ...'Objectivism' says that something is good as an end if a property, intrinsic goodness, is attributed to it.
     From: Christine M. Korsgaard (Aristotle and Kant on the Source of Value [1986], 8 'Three')