The Definition of Morality - Part 5 of 5

Stephen Stich takes us on a journey through recent moral philosophy, meta-ethics, numerous studies in moral psychology, a discussion of the moral/conventional task, and some interesting moral dilemmas, in an attempt to define morality.
Lots of interesting things to consider.


Stich is primarily known in philosophy for his work in the philosophy of mind, cognitive science, epistemology, and moral psychology. In philosophy of mind and cognitive science, Stich (1983) has argued for a form of eliminative materialism—the view that talk of the mental should be replaced with talk of its physical substrate. Since then, however, he has changed some of his views on the mind. See Deconstructing the Mind (1996) for his more recent views. In epistemology, he has explored (with several of his colleagues) the nature of intuitions using the techniques of experimental philosophy, especially epistemic intuitions that vary among cultures. This work reflects a general skepticism about conceptual analysis and the traditional methods of analytic philosophy. In The Fragmentation of Reason he briefly sketched a form of epistemic relativism "in the spirit of pragmatism."

http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~stich/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Stich

http://www.semionet.com/FR/default.htm

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Stephen
• Stich
• morality
• ethics
• psychology
• philosophy
• moral
• conventional
• task
• Alasdair
• MacIntyre
• Paul
• Taylor
• Bernard
• Gert
• Richard
• Joyce
• Elliot
• Turiel
• Jonathan
• Haidt
• James
• Blair
• Williams
• relativism

[GameOfThriving]

Does anyone know if the speaker has addressed the complaint that his own research uses two examples where there is an explicit authority (a teacher, an officer on a ship) and the person being "punished" is breaking the rules of the context they are in (disrupting the class, dereliction of duty)?

[nurktwin1960]

In this final segment on The Definition of Morality, Stich alludes to "Friday's talk" where he supposedly will go into more detail about his own hypothesis about what morality is. Was this next lecture ever filmed?

It kind of left me dangling.

[Mthooz]

OMG! OMG! Do you have the "next Lecture" that Stich refers to in his slide at 4:43???

DOES ANYONE???

[nurktwin1960]

Thank you so much for uploading this series of lectures. I've been reading Stich's work on morality for about five years and it's wonderful to see a live lecture of him. A lot of my own thinking seems to dovetail with Stich's, as I think our concept of morality is more complicated than most people think.

[riversonthemoon]

"not sure what would count as "internal good" of practice of torture"

I suppose according to the definition above that it would be where 'human conceptions of the ends and goods involved, are systematically extended'. So I guess innovation that accomplishes the ends better would be an increase in the standards of excellence?

Perhaps bringing to bear a moral critique of the practice as you suggested would deal with these difficult cases. I'll definitely read the book when I get time.

Thanks.

[blahovej]

sh*t... my comment just dissapeared.

so in short:

1) Good poitn - but I am still not sure what would count as "internal good" of practice of torture. Gain of Information or certain sadistic pleasure would probably be "external good" in McIntyre´s terminology...

2) anyway - later on - chapter XIV. McIntyre suggests, that "practice" is not moraly good per se, but is also subordinated to moral critique - because of the notion of interconnectednes of practice-virtue-telos cluster.

[riversonthemoon]

No sweat!

And thanks again for subscribing. I just left a comment on your channel page.

[blahovej]

yes! sorry for the unclean expression. I´ll be back :-)

[riversonthemoon]

Thanks for your response. As I said, I'm not that familiar with McIntyre's work, so I'm glad to have the opportunity to wet my feet.

I wasn't saying that torture and genocide were inherent goods, rather that they were practices. And I think both of them fit McIntyre's definition of a practice as stated above, and would therefore have their own standards of excellence, ends and even 'goods' internal to those practices.

[blahovej]

if I understand this, troture and genocide are not "inherent" goods...