Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

I claim no originality for this, but the question of the actual source isn't really worth investigating. There once was a man who said "Damn! I'm sad that I know that I am A lifetime of acts On determinist tracks: Not even a bus, I'm a tram."

I've discussed trolley problems before. This is a new version, in a new philosophical context.  One common issue in the philosophy of religion is: does religious belief help people act morally? If so, how?  Nietzsche famously contended that the "death of God" had great implications for morality, for the transvaluation of values, implications which he welcomed. Many theists accept that judgment, but dis-value what Nietzsche valued.  Many atheists and agnostics deny that there is any such implication. One interpretation of Nietzsche's somewhat cryptic comments on the subject is that the idea of equality -- that my life is worth as much as yours, or in a variant that no quantitative comparison can or should be made between my life's value and yours -- is a religious presumption at heart. It depends upon the background notion that we are all alike creatures of the same Creator and it will not long outlast the death of that idea.  In that spirit, Brian Leite...

I believe I've made a breakthrough in my development of a personal moral philosophy. It involves the acknowledgement that one of my favorite essays of William James, the fellow for whom this blog is named, is at best seriously flawed. A crucial piece is missing. Further, I have decided that the best available supplier of that missing piece may be a philosopher who was a contemporary of James, but hardly a friend or pragmatist colleague. The philosopher G.E. Moore. Well, I suppose we can consider this part of what is implied in the word "Refreshed" in the title of this blog. In The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life , James writes that various "marks and measures of goodness" have been brought forth by philosophers, without any of them giving rise to consensus. "Thus, to be a mean between two extremes; to be recognized by a special intuitive faculty; to make the agent happy for the moment; to make others as well as him happy in the long run;...

For those who, like myself, have developed a certain fondness for trolley car related hypotheticals as one of the ways in which moral philosophy is nowadays done, I offer simply: a link. http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10074.html Enjoy.