If Only I Owed You Nothing

A passage from David Velleman's Against the Right to Die struck me:

I don't pretend to understand fully the ethics of gifts and favors. It's one of those subjects that gets neglected in philosophical ethics, perhaps because it has more to do with the supererogatory than the obligatory.

Sure that's true, so long as you're not talking about human beings. Detailed norms of gift giving are a cultural universal, and if I can further overstep the bounds of my competence, I'll assert that they're never primarily supererogatory. I'm painfully aware of that fact, since I have a neurotic inability to navigate the social practices of gift exchange. Statements like this feed into my hunch that moral philosophers would benefit from more of an engagement with the study of culture, especially anthropology. To be clear, I don't know that Velleman is making any mistake here, since the opinion he's mentioning is one he suggests might characterize other moral philosophers.

What the Hell People?

I have my own entry in the "excruciating interactions with non-philosophers category." It's less succinct and more confusing than the ones recently posted on leiter's page. I'm sitting in the coffee shop, which is packed, and a stranger asks if she can share my table. Fifteen minutes later, I finish the chapter of Articulating Reasons, and put it down. She asks what it was.

...Her: Yeah, I was just telling my friend that I took some philosophy in college, but I'm in the sciences, so I didn't get along with the professor.

I'm too baffled to say much of anything, so forced conversation continues (xkcd describes my conversational skills).

...Me: yeah, my brother did biology at Duke.
Her: Do you two see eye-to-eye?
Me: yeah..
Her (as if she's surprised): That's nice.

My brother: not declaring war on his obnoxious little brother the philosopher since 2002. Once a year, I give thanks for his astonishing toleration.

2-trick-pony

Apropos Shawn's discussion of philosophers being n-trick ponies, I think I've figured out the two general tricks that I currently have:

1. Prod metaphysicians about their epistemology
2. Prod ethicists about their philosophy of mind.

Hopefully I'll get a few more in the near future. I also find that the more I read ethicists talking philosophy of mind, the less I feel like I understand it myself, since so much of their discussion glosses over major issues.

Department of over-eager reductions

Other people's opinions about the reasons that there are thus constitute potential challenges to my own opinions. I have something to learn about myself and my own reasons by finding out about others and their reasons. This is why books and movie films are so engaging. All of this is flat out inconsistent with the claim that our concept of a reason for action is quite generally relative to the individual;

--Michael Smith

Them's fightin words

"What you can imagine depends on what you know. Philosophers who know only philosophy consign themselves to a janitorial role in the great enterprises of exploration that are illuminating the mysteries of our lives."

--Damn, Dennett, you really got a set on you!

For the record, I won't be calling anyone a janitor.

Why does the world refuse to arrange itself to my wishes in every detail?

My continually growing affection for the Pittsburgh department notwithstanding, I graduated college a year too early.

Kenan Seminar: Empirical Moral Psychology (Phil 805) (305) - Joshua Knobe & Jesse Prinz

Recent philosophical work on moral psychology has taken an interdisciplinary turn. Philosophers have been calling on empirical findings to assess traditional theories, and psychologists have been exploring questions that emerged within philosophy. What role do emotions play in moral judgment? Is morality an evolved capacity? Could there be a faculty of moral intuition? What is the empirical viability of Aristotelian virtue ethics? How do notions of freedom and responsibility hold up in light of recent research on mind and brain? In this seminar, we will read articles addressing such questions, and, through the generous support of the Kenan foundation, we will also have the opportunity to engage in intensive discussion with some of the leading authors in the field. Visitors will include (at least) philosophers John Doris, Shaun Nichols, and Walter Sinnott- Armstrong, as well as psychologists Daniel Gilbert, Liane Young and Fiery Cushman.

This course will meet on Wednesday from 4:00-6:30. (Chapel Hill graduate seminars)

I should also note that I don't have class on Wednesdays this coming semester...