Notes for 11/18/2025

 

11/18/2025

[Philosophy Club every Tuesday at 5:00pm in CAS 436 ("The Cave")]

[Challenge for today: Try to think of (and possibly ask) at least one question.]

 

Is necrophilia (sex with a corpse) morally wrong or merely against social conventions?

 

Ethics: the use of reason in the service of the good.

 

 

Meta-ethics: the examination of ethical concepts (good, bad, right, wrong, obligation, etc.)

 

“What, exactly, does that mean?”

 

Normative ethics: How do we decide what is right and wrong? (Includes ethical theories)

 

Applied ethics: Are specific types of actions permissible or impermissible. (Include questions like is the use of autonomous weapons systems permissible?)

 

Both normative and applied ethics make use of the other main methodologies from this class:

 

“Why should we do that rather than something else?”

 

“What (moral) difference might it make if we act one way rather than another?”

 

 

What is the difference between ethics and morals?

 

(Generally, the difference is that ethics has to do with objective standards, while morals have to do with subjective values.)

 

However, this distinction is NOT well-preserved in detailed treatments of the topics.

 

Moral relativism : also called ethical relativism

 

Ethical subjectivism

Ethical objectivism

 

 

Similar to mathematical realism and mathematical conventionalism, we can distinguish moral realism and moral conventionalism

 

 

Again, Plato is a good example:

Plato’s theory of Forms

 

Master argument for Forms:

“All these things have something in common.

There must some THING that they have in common. That thing is the Form.”

 

Plato thought that the Forms formed a hierarchy. At the very top of this hierarchy is the Form of the Good. Goodness itself.

 

Whether or not any Form is a “good fit” to anything in the world presupposes the Form of the Good.

 

For Plato, an action will be good to the extent that it matches the Form of the Good.

 

We know whether or not some action is good in respect of the use of reason.

 

(Reason is a transcendent power of the soul to know the Forms.)

 

Plato’s allegory of the cave:

 

Imagine a prisoner who is shackled facing a wall. Behind him is a fire that casts shadows on the wall. The prisoner mistakes the shadows for real things. When freed, the prisoner leaves the cave and sees the sun and other objects daylight.

 

Shadows = objects of the senses.

Shackles = the body

 

Sun = Form of the Good

 

Objects in daylight = Forms seen with the soul (not the senses)

 

 

The Good has its own nature independent of belief, opinion, etc.

 

Central to this model is the view that the Good is known by reason (morality/ethics is known by reason)

 

If there is a God, is God a moral realist?

If there is a God, is God a mathematical realist?

 

Theistic voluntarism vs theistic intellectualism

 

“eternal truths’ (necessary truths) e.g. 1+1=2

 

Theistic voluntarists emphasize God’s omnipotence (absolute sovereignty)

-     God created the eternal truths (they are a function of the divine will)

-     God could have made 1+1=3

-     God would have to be a conventionalist

 

Theistic intellectualists emphasize God’s intellect

-     The eternal truths are co-eternal with God because they exist in the divine intellect

-     God could not made mathematical truths different than they are because they exist in the divine intellect which exists necessarily

 

Are moral truths eternal truths?

 

Authoritarian ethics:

Right & wrong are products of some authority who declares what is or is not good/permissible/right

 

An action is right if and only if the action conforms to a rule made by the proper authority

 

Plato’s Euthyphro dialog attacks authoritarian ethics

 

Motivated by piety

 

“Piety is what is loved by all the gods”

 

But why do they love it?

 

“Do the gods love it because it is pious, or is it pious because the gods love it?”

 

Authoritarian ethics are arbitrary

 

 

Divine Command Theory is an authoritarian ethic that grounds morality in the commands and prohibitions of God.

 

If authoritarian ethics is wrong, then what alternatives are there?

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