Greg Detre
23 May 00
desirable vs detestable/visible (able/ought to be desired)
Moore � Bloomsbury group � friendship and intellectual appreciation
egoistic vs universalistic hedonism
would I prefer:
my children�s actual success which I believe to be failure
my children�s actual failure which I believe to be success
apparently, most people would prefer the former
synchronic vs diachronic
synchronic = concerned with or pertaining to the state of
a language, culture, etc., at one particular time, past or present, without
regard to historical development
with regard to a particular time rather than to historical development
diachronic = lasting through existing time
concerned with or pertaining to the historical development of a
language, culture
e. e.
evans-pritchard Social
anthropologists generally study synchronic problems while historians study
diachronic problems.
1. happiness (pleasure + absence of pain) = desirable because everyone does desire it
self-evidently intuitable desire for happiness?
but Mill = empiricist, needs more evidence than that
happiness = desirable conceptual truth
can you have pleasure on its own?
perhaps it comes with something else
pleasure = criterion for right action
Ari: pleasure supervenes upon activity
pleasure value = function of the value of the action
Raz: pleasure = related to wholehearted and successful participation in a valuable activity
(relaxation = could be said to be instrumental to my philosophising)
difference between sun worshiper vs child molester
value of the activity
whether it has teleological aims
2. general happiness = must be good for the aggregate of all persons
assumptions
i. morality
ii. teleological
iii. aggregate
iv. impartiality
welfare vs non-welfare values (e.g. God)
happiness with reference to intelligble values (arete � function)
can an ascetic be �happy�?
happiness = doing/being/feeling what I want to be doing/being/feeling???
impartiality = entailed by other 3 assumptions???
= in tension with prudential theory
�/span> dualism of practical reason
tension between right + good
morality requires ceding welfare to a hierarchy of values which includes non-welfare values
can only be done if you have a non-welfare value at the top of the hierarchy tree, e.g. God
or: say that even if my own welfare = at the top of my value tree
utilitarianism maximises this usually/justly, and I signed the Social Contract
but still leaves me best as a selfish altruist???
Mill: egoistic � impartial (but there isn�t actually this seamless progression)
why suspend egoism:� justice
(= the 1st morality assumption)
Soc contract
other people help me
God
empathy
difference between causal/constitutive connection
justice as a part of happiness
John�s headache is only partly caused by the tutorial
can be specified constitutively without reference to causes
e.g. the first step of a dance = both
RELTON � good hedonistic reasons for cultivating non-hedonistic position
read: Jim Urmson � former Corpus tutor � Aristotle�s ethics � ch Pleasure + Virtue
John Broom � founder of Journal of Economics and Philosophy � Moral Philosophy Professor next year
David Chalmers � possibly Wilde Reader in Mental Philosophy?
epiphenomenalism
mental = causally impotent
i.e. just because something tastes a certain way
re Nagel �conceptual truths� etc.
forms of necessity that aren�t a priori
e.g. bachelor = unmarried male
for a criticism of his RIP lecture � see Harre, R
values aren�t intrinsic
but they arise simultaneously and independently in us because we share so much of our nature/environ with each other
hence morality = relative to cultural ideals