The aim of this course is to make students acquainted (or more acquainted) with several distinct topics in the large field of analytical ethics. All the topics we will be looking at are important for the field and worth knowing about. Which topics we will pick might depend to some extent on the participants’ interests; if you want to articulate such an interest and suggest that it be taken into account in some way, please do so as early as possible (ideally, per e-mail to me long before the first session). Below you can find some topics and texts that I propose we treat.
Since there will be few or no classroom presentations, it is vital for the sessions that everybody be prepared and able to contribute. Please take part in this course only if you are willing to plough through the texts for each session and to talk about them: to summarize them, to ask and answer questions about them, etc.
Credit points: there will be a written exam in the final session, consisting of one question from each of the areas we covered. While the course itself is in English, each participant can choose whether to write her or his exam in German or English.
The first session, on April 21st, will not just be a logistical quickie; we’ll do the full 180 minutes.
Ethics and response-dependency
Simon Blackburn, “Circles, finks, smells and biconditionals”, Philosophical Perspectives 7 (1993)
C. D. Broad, “Some Reflections on Moral-Sense Theories in Ethics”, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, New Series, 45 (1944–45)
The structure of value(s)
Erik Carlson, “Organic Unities”, in I. Hirose and J. Olson (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Value Theory, Oxford University Press, forthcoming
Desire fulfilment and self-sacrifice
Chris Heathwood, “Preferentism and Self-Sacrifice”, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 92 |
