Showing papers in "Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume in 1994"

Morals in Fiction and Fictional Morality

Abstract: Works of art from previous ages or from other cultures may contain or embody ideas that we find strange or disagree with. We take some differences in stride, but sometimes we object -the content we disagree with ruins our pleasure and we take it to be grounds for judging the work negatively. In the final five paragraphs of 'Of the Standard of Taste',1 David Hume attempts to locate this difference. We are not or shouldn't be bothered by representations of out of date fashions, he says. 'Where any innocent peculiarities of manners are represented'-like princesses carrying water from the spring, or ruffs and fardingales in pictures of our ancestors-'they ought certainly to be admitted; and a man who is shocked with them, gives an evident proof of false delicacy and refinement.' We are happy to overlook what we take to be factual mistakes. 'Speculative errors... found in the polite writings of any age or country... detract but little from the value of those compositions.' But moral differences are quite another matter, according to Hume. We do not, and should not, tolerate in a work 'ideas of morality and decency' that we find repugnant. Although 'I may excuse the poet, on account of the manners of his age, I never can relish the composition.' Morally reprehensible ideas constitute deformities in the work. Hume has a point here-actually more than one. That's the trouble. Our first task will be to disentangle them. I will begin with the simpler and more obvious strands and work toward the messier

The Value of a Person

Abstract: The basic intuition. Many people have the intuition that adding a person to the world is not valuable in itself, even if the person would enjoy a good life. If a new person will make such demands on the world's resources that her existence will do harm to people already alive, that is a reason against creating her. On the other hand, if a couple want a child, that is a reason for them to have one. But there is no reason that arises from the person's own interest. If a person could be created, and would lead a good life if she was created, the fact that her life would be good is not a reason for creating her. The existence of a person is ethically neutral in itself. I shall call this 'the basic intuition'. It must be qualified. If a person's life would be bad, were she to be created, that is a reason against creating her; a person's existence is ethically neutral only if her life would be good. Jan Narveson says, 'We are... neutral about making happy people'.2 That is the basic intuition. For instance, suppose a couple are wondering whether to have a child. Suppose there is no doubt their child's life would be good if they had one. But suppose the couple decide their own lives will be better on balance if they remain childless, and because of that they do so. Few people would think they are acting wrongly. It is not that we think the couple have a reason to have a child-her life would be good-that can justifiably be outweighed by their own good. Instead, we think there is no positive reason at all why they should have a child. If having a child would be bad for the couple

Carnap's Principle of Tolerance

Abstract: W hen one picks up a copy of Carnap's (1934; 1937) Logical Syntax of Language and thumbs through it, one has the distinct impression that one has picked up a logic book. There is, moreover, a clear sense in which this is true. On the other hand, these days logic books seem to be rather too ubiquitous and largely uninteresting, so we have a tendency to hear this claim as Logical Syntax is merely a logic book. This is not how things stood at the time of the writing of Syntax, however. Syntax was, arguably, Carnap's most important work in a line of works by the founders of the analytic tradition to place logic at the very centre of philosophy. Carnap's precursors in this included, of course, Frege, Russell, Wittgenstein and Ramsey.' Syntax does not merely fall within a proud lineage-the lineage that gave shape to analytic philosophy. Rather, it is also a bold, even radical change of orientation within that lineage. For the most important aspect of the view of logic put forward in Syntax is pluralism. There are two important aspects to this logical pluralism to note straight away: First, it is meant to solve or dissolve the fundamental disputes about the foundations of mathematics that were raging in the 1930s. Second and related, a plurality of formal logical systems trains the philosopher's eye on the essential change of method urged by Carnap: the domain of philosophical enquiry