CADRE Comments

One of the classes I teach at the university is a course on Ethics, and I am using a book by Ralph Dolgoff, Donna Harrington and Frank M. Lowenberg entitled " Ethical Decisions for Social Work Practice " as the text. Overall, I think that it is a good Ethics textbook largely because it provides a balanced viewpoint on the need for values in social work. For example, the book makes the argument (without committing to it) that those engaged in social work cannot avoid making value judgments in ethical decisions because trying to do what is right necessarily involves making an value choice. Also, I book notes that some (including me) think it is ethically wrong for a social worker to cover-up her own values when counseling another person because it creates a false (and ultimately unproductive) relationship with the person being counseled. Still, one of the exemplars in the book gave me pause – not because I thought it raised a deep ethical quandary, but because I wondered how ...

Yes. Duh. Obviously I am following up on fellow Cadrist BK's excellent article from Wednesday, which I recommend reading first. (See also Metacrock's sociological article at his weblog. ) And I will reiterate what I said in the comments to another recent article of his , that I am far from being the world's biggest fan of arguments from socio-cultural utility. To this I will add that, just as obviously, no idea 'promotes' anything unless a person acts coherently in concert with the idea. Even people who believe (and promote) the idea that all human ideas (tacitly excepting their own human ideas, or this human idea of theirs anyway) are only irrational reactions to memetic stimulations, would agree that unless the 'idea' (or the electro-physical impulses which on this theory are the actual and only reality behind what we call an 'idea') stimulates a reaction along the same lines as the 'shape' of the 'idea' (or words to that ef...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, starting Chapter 36, can be found here. ] [This entry concludes Chapter 36, "Discovered Rational Secular Ethics?"] [I ended the previous portion by writing, "It should be noted... that this [special secular humanistic ethical] proposition... emphasizes personal responsibilities and choices, while at least ideally minimizing (or even avoiding?) the problems involved with self-centered pragmatism. It also emphasizes rational discovery by rational entities, just like the second theory, while avoiding (completely?) the problem of non-rationality of the source of ethics under the second theory. And it coheres with our intuitions regarding interpersonal relationships being the basis of ethics, in a way that monotheistic ethical grounding simply fails to do. [...] I think any accounting that doesn’t recognize and appreciate the serious strengths of this notion, will be fundamentally crippled when i...

[Note: the contents page for this series can be found here. The previous entry, Chapter 35, can be found here. ] [This entry starts Chapter 36, "Discovered Rational Secular Ethics?"] To put things bluntly: so far, no good. Each of the three general theories of ethics have been examined, and found wanting. Invented rational ethics; discovered non-rational ethics; discovered rational ethics--none of these turned out to be objectively ethical in the end. Objective realities were certainly connected to each of the theories--although in the case of God the objective reality was posited rather than commonly agreed upon. (Notice that in my recent discussion of theistic ethics, I didn’t try to connect the proposition of God to my previously developed synthetic argument. There is a reason for that; but I will discuss it later.) To a sceptic, this could hardly be considered an advantage!--especially since the result was demonstrably no better than what a sceptic could do with the fi...

I had been going to springboard from my original post on the third edition of the Humanist Manifesto, into a broader discussion of its principles and the logical coherency thereof; but when I read a recent review of the 1980 film Wolfen ( here on AICN ) by someone who had never watched it before, I thought... hey! Halloween's coming up, we should do a Halloween post, right? And I'm a big fan of both the film and the book (by Whitley Strieber). And the reviewer makes explicit a point about the movie that always rather bothered me in the background. And, hey!--that happens to tie into my recent post on the Humanist Manifesto and the logical coherency of its principles thereof! I love it when providence comes together. {gggg!} And then I got sick with the pseudo-flu and missed posting it, not only for Halloween, but for several weeks. I did manage to get it posted in time for Thanksgiving weekend! Barely! I’ll try to make some relevant connection to that later. So: first,...

This is a bit of a cheap shot, as I'll explain later. But I thought it might be an interesting way of opening a discussion on the philosophical merits of the third edition of the Humanist Manifesto--which returns to the optimistic outlook of the first version, without the numerous specific 'doctrinal points' of the first (1933) and second (1973) versions. Most notably, the third version eliminates language intending to thus start a new secular "religion" (which probably wouldn't fly well with the common secular critique of the bloody abuses of 20th century atheistic regimes on the ground that they had become secular "religions"); and the promotion of this new "religion" through classroom indoctrination of children. (A quick resource for links to SecHum documents and their history, can be found here on Wikipedia .) The new edition, released in 2003 by the American Humanist Association, is admirably brief; and will be printed below--with an u...

Introductory note from Jason Pratt: I am here appending in several parts some excerpts from an unpublished book of mine, originally composed late 99/early 2000, wherein I work out a progressive synthetic metaphysic. The current topic is ethical grounding, and an analysis of problems along the three general lines of ethical explanation. The previous entry, which introduced a promising variant of the first general ethical theory, can be found here. Technically I would have been starting chapter 32, "the solution to the question of ethics"; but as it happens, in this and my previous entry I am composing a whole new chapter, not written in my original text. I had given a variant of the first theory too short a shrift in my first text seven years ago; a problem I now am rectifying. .......[excerpt begins here] But, is this notion, of avowedly interpersonal human relationships, sufficient for objectively ethical grounding? It may be noticed that this secular, humanistic theory is ...

Introductory note from Jason Pratt: I am here appending in several parts some excerpts from an unpublished book of mine, originally composed late 99/early 2000, wherein I work out a progressive synthetic metaphysic. The current topic is ethical grounding, and an analysis of problems along the three general lines of ethical explanation. The previous entry, which critiqued an extremely common theistic variant of the third general ethical theory, can be found here. Also, incidentally, I have gone back and updated links in my previous entries, to make it easier for navigation between them. Any entry with a subsequent entry, now features a hyperlink at the bottom leading to the next entry. I plan to include a 'prequel' link to "The Heart of Freedom" at the bottom of each entry, but I haven't gotten around to doing it yet. Hopefully next time! Technically I would here be starting chapter 32, "the solution to the question of ethics"; but as it happens, I'm ...