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Australian philosopher, literary critic, legal scholar, and professional writer. Based in Newcastle, NSW. My latest books are THE TYRANNY OF OPINION: CONFORMITY AND THE FUTURE OF LIBERALISM (2019) and AT THE DAWN OF A GREAT TRANSITION: THE QUESTION OF RADICAL ENHANCEMENT (2021).

Tuesday, February 21, 2012

Kitcher on the ethical project

A brilliant article by Philip Kitcher over here on the ABC portal (they do publish some good stuff that goes against the grain of the editor's own beliefs). What is disheartening is that no one seems to have understood it. As I write, there are only four comments, none of which really seem to have followed the argument - and the first most recent one on the page is especially stupid.

Edit: A few more comments there since I posted this, but still not a lot of comprehension being shown so far.

2 comments:

David Duffy said...

There is a more extensive discussion of the book in an earlier article on the same site at:

A Convenient Untruth: God and the Evolution of Ethics by Tim Dean.

Dave Ricks said...

I like the article very much for placing concepts or definitions of ethics on a time scale with human existence. This is a good interdisciplinary use of the theory of evolution - not to model all the details, but to check for context. Will it blend?

I just imagine more people could accept these ideas if the word "progress" was replaced by "development" as used in other fields. I constantly made that substitution in my reading.