“[This approach] displays the characteristic philosophical lust to vanquish the skeptic by arguing him out of his skepticism, without appeal to moral and political considerations or to the facts of everyday life. [...] But more often than not, if you give the skeptic everything he wants, then he will be successful in repulsing your attacks and terrorizing your position.” IfsWantGivingFactsPoliticalMoralSuccessfulPositionApproachPhilosophicalEverydayArguingLustAppealsCharacteristicsBeing SuccessfulConsiderationDisplaySkepticismEveryday LifeSkepticVanquish Author:Dale Jamieson
“People who go around saying that it is wrong to fly and to eat meat are not so much making appeals to us from within our shared morality, but engaging in something more like "persuasive definition." They want us to look at the world and ourselves in a different way. Someday these prohibitions against flying and eating meat may be written into our moral psychology, but it will only be after there are viable, widely shared alternatives that are beginning to be widely adopted.” PeopleWorldWayWantLooksMayDifferentMoralPsychologyWrittenMoralityEatingDefinitionsFlyingAlternativesAppealsMeatDifferent WaysSomedayEngagingAdoptedWant UProhibitionPersuasiveEating Meat Author:Dale Jamieson
“Moral revolutions are typically seen retrospectively. Prospectively, the revolutionaries tend to look like crazy people, and sometimes they are.” PeopleLooksSometimesMoralCrazyRevolutionRevolutionaryCrazy People Author:Dale Jamieson
“The Consequentialist trinity is typically regarded in this way: Bentham is crude, Mill's writings are full of howlers and inconsistencies, and Sidgwick was too smart to fully embrace Consequentialism. All of these great traditions in moral philosophy express strands of our moral consciousness and they should all be treated as research programs rather than as fully determinate views that can be leveled by a counterexample or by a clever argument.” WayShouldWritingPhilosophyViewsConsciousnessMoralSmartResearchProgramArgumentTraditionEmbraceCleverTreatedCrudeMillsTrinityStrandsInconsistencyMoral PhilosophyConsequentialism Author:Dale Jamieson
“Some philosophers think that the idea of a consequentialist virtue theory is strange, but the real strength of consequentialism is that it can emulate the requirements of other moral theories when it is the case that acting on those theories would improve the world.” ThinkingWorldIdeasRealActingMoralCasesVirtueStrangeTheoryPhilosopherRequirementsEmulateReal StrengthConsequentialism Author:Dale Jamieson
“Since for me moral demands necessarily flow from human psychology, I don't think we can be obliged to do something that we are not motivated in any way to do. In other words, I'm an "internalist" about morality.” ThinkingWayHumansMoralPsychologyMoralityDemandFlowMotivatedObliged Author:Dale Jamieson
“The problem is that for almost any feature of humanity that you can name, whether it's the ability to suffer, whether it's the capacity to reason, whether it's having lives that can go better or worse, there are at least some other non-human animals that have all of these features as well. So to exclude non-human animals from the range of moral concern but to include all humans, just seems morally arbitrary.” ReasonProblemSufferingHumanityAbilityAnimalMoralConcern Author:Dale Jamieson
“People talk about the idea of special relationships, that is, the morality only really binds people who stand in some kind of contractual relationship with each other but in fact if you take that seriously as a criteria of when we have a moral relationship then it's hard to see why we would have moral obligations to strangers for example or people who live across the sea from us but yet, every decent person believes that we do.” PeopleBelieveKindMoralSpecialMoralityStrangerObligationDecentMoral Obligation Author:Dale Jamieson
“I must say that in my own mind, I think what's important is for us, as a society, to radically reduce the consumption of meat. This is more important than some fraction of us become moral saints and become vegetarians so it would be much better if we would reduce meat consumption by three quarters of each of us as an individuals would only eat one-quarter as much meat as we do now then that half of the population should become vegetarian. We should see this as a collective challenge rather than an issue about individual, moral period.” ThinkingMindImportantIndividualChallengesMoralSaintVegetarian Author:Dale Jamieson
“None of us are rational economic men as we're supposed to be portrayed in economic theory where mixes of passions, of desires, of moral principles, of self-deception, of altruism, of concern of others, of concerns for ourselves and an interest in our bank accounts. And social policies have to be responsive to the complexity of who we are as people or else, like the war on drugs, they're simply going to fail.” PeopleMenWarDesirePassionInterestMoralFailingEconomicPolicyDrugConcernRationalComplexityAltruismWar On Drugs Author:Dale Jamieson
