3 ms·

I think the content is solid on average, but there are some challenges here with how/when to connect figures (really, this seems like an impossible task). For i

I think the content is solid on average, but there are some challenges here with how/when to connect figures (really, this seems like an impossible task). For instance, Mackie's denial of moral facts is a disagreement with quite a lot of people (ditto for Hobbes' contention that we are just machines). I was similarly surprised to see that Ramsey's connection of justification to reliable belief formation had no connections to reliabilist epistemolgy in the late 20th century. As far as the individual sentences, I didn't go through everything, but I thought the gloss of Sellars on the given was not on target. Also, did Anscombe really think that we needed new values for a secular culture? She was a devout Catholic, and frequently wrote from a Catholic perspective.

gjm11 8y ago
One of Anscombe's most influential papers, "Modern Moral Philosophy" (written in 1958), makes the following claims: "it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy [...] until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology", and "the concepts of [...] moral obligation and moral duty [...] and of what is [...] morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of "ought", ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible; because they are survivals, or derivatives from survivals, from an earlier conception of ethics which no longer generally survives, and are only harmful without it." The earlier conception of ethics is what she calls "a law conception of ethics" later in the paper, and she ascribes that to Christianity. The idea is that terms like "ought" and "bound" and "obliged" all presuppose an idea of ethics-as-law, and she's suggesting that if we've abandoned Christianity then we should abandon ethical notions that presuppose it. So I assume that's where the "new values for a secular culture" thing is coming from. I have to say that the impression I get from her paper isn't quite that, though; it feels more as if she is complaining that post-Christian ethics produces results she finds unacceptable, and would prefer that its practitioners stop (as she might see it) pretending that they're really doing ethics at all. (I just had a look at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article on Anscombe. It mentions both readings, and suggests that the "straight" one is more common, but my impression is that the author of that article agrees with me about what Anscombe was really up to.)
- hyperpape 8y ago
  Thanks. The immense confusion I felt while reading MMP a decade ago is all coming back to me! I share your sense that she doesn't seem optimistic about the ability of secular philosophers to do ethics at all, though it's definitely open to debate, and I don't pretend to know whether she was endorsing virtue ethics. (Regarding her own way of doing ethics, as opposed to meta-ethics, 14 years later, this is one of her speeches: http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/AnscombeChastity.php http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/AnscombeChastity.php).

gjm11 8y ago

One of Anscombe's most influential papers, "Modern Moral Philosophy" (written in 1958), makes the following claims: "it is not profitable for us at present to do moral philosophy [...] until we have an adequate philosophy of psychology", and "the concepts of [...] moral obligation and moral duty [...] and of what is [...] morally right and wrong, and of the moral sense of "ought", ought to be jettisoned if this is psychologically possible; because they are survivals, or derivatives from survivals, from an earlier conception of ethics which no longer generally survives, and are only harmful without it." The earlier conception of ethics is what she calls "a law conception of ethics" later in the paper, and she ascribes that to Christianity. The idea is that terms like "ought" and "bound" and "obliged" all presuppose an idea of ethics-as-law, and she's suggesting that if we've abandoned Christianity then we should abandon ethical notions that presuppose it. So I assume that's where the "new values for a secular culture" thing is coming from. I have to say that the impression I get from her paper isn't quite that, though; it feels more as if she is complaining that post-Christian ethics produces results she finds unacceptable, and would prefer that its practitioners stop (as she might see it) pretending that they're really doing ethics at all. (I just had a look at the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy's article on Anscombe. It mentions both readings, and suggests that the "straight" one is more common, but my impression is that the author of that article agrees with me about what Anscombe was really up to.)

hyperpape 8y ago
Thanks. The immense confusion I felt while reading MMP a decade ago is all coming back to me! I share your sense that she doesn't seem optimistic about the ability of secular philosophers to do ethics at all, though it's definitely open to debate, and I don't pretend to know whether she was endorsing virtue ethics. (Regarding her own way of doing ethics, as opposed to meta-ethics, 14 years later, this is one of her speeches: http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/AnscombeChastity.php http://www.orthodoxytoday.org/articles/AnscombeChastity.php).