Effective Altruism

2020 ◽  
pp. 547-563
Author(s):  
Judith Lichtenberg
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Moral Goodness ◽  
Consequentialist Theory ◽  
Effective Altruism ◽  
Better Than

In this essay I examine the contemporary movement known as effective altruism (EA). I argue that most understandings of EA imply some version of consequentialism. That in itself may sound like a rather modest conclusion (dictated by a certain vagueness in EA and the cornucopia of forms of consequentialism), but the arguments for it illuminate aspects of both EA and consequentialism. I also argue that the claim that one is obligated to maximize the good is not essential to consequentialism, that in fact this is a difficult claim to defend, and that therefore the standard “demandingness objection” misses the target. Nevertheless, what is essential to any consequentialist theory is the view that producing more good is always morally better than producing less. Deontological criticisms of this view are familiar. I focus instead on its clash with common-sense views about moral goodness and admirability.

scholarly journals God and the Playpen: On the Feasibility of Morally Better Worlds

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (4) ◽  
pp. 266
Author(s):  
Cheryl K. Chen
Keyword(s):  
Free Will ◽  
Actual World ◽  
David Lewis ◽  
Moral Good ◽  
Moral Goodness ◽  
Divine Intervention ◽  
Horrendous Evil ◽  
Good And Evil ◽  
Free Will Defense ◽  
Better Than

According to the free will defense, God cannot create a world with free creatures, and hence a world with moral goodness, without allowing for the possibility of evil. David Lewis points out that any free will defense must address the “playpen problem”: why didn’t God allow creatures the freedom required for moral goodness, while intervening to ensure that all evil-doing is victimless? More recently, James Sterba has revived the playpen problem by arguing that an omnipotent and benevolent God would have intervened to prevent significant and especially horrendous evil. I argue that it is possible, at least, that such divine intervention would have backfired, and that any attempt to create a world that is morally better than this one would have resulted in a world that is morally worse. I conclude that the atheologian should instead attack the free will defense at its roots: either by denying that the predetermination of our actions is incompatible with our freely per-forming them, or by denying that the actual world—a world with both moral good and evil—is more valuable than a world without any freedom at all.

scholarly journals Wątki moralne u Prousta

Etyka ◽  
1971 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 67-90
Author(s):  
Bohdan Zadura
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Common Experience ◽  
Naturalistic Approach ◽  
The World ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Moral Problems ◽  
Point Of Departure ◽  
Better Than

The essay deals with moral problems in Proust’s A la recherche du temps perdu. The novel has been viewed by many as a survey of the ruling customs, as an outstanding psychological novel, as a study of human characters, and as a story of the decline of aristocracy. The description of facts has been noted in this way, but not the underlying idea. This essay shows Proust not only as an etologist (in this respect his importance is not controversial), but also as a moralist. The essay consists of three parts. The first one deals with Proust’s views connected with the theory of knowledge to be found in the novel. Special emphasis is put on the influence both of the atmosphere of his home and that of his time on the formation of Proust’s views, as his point of departure was the positivistic method as well as scientific and naturalistic approach to all events. Further, it should be stressed – and this has escaped many readers for a long time – that having applied his method Proust arrived at general conclusions which have proved to be in a sheer contradiction with this method. No writer of fiction before him has pointed out the importance of subjective factors in cognition better than he did. In defiance of positivism, Proust denies neither the existence of the essence of things nor of qualitative differences. Considerations relating to Proust’s analysis of the phenomenon of remembering and of different kinds of memory (with particular stress on analogous memory) show how important they were for fixing his views on the insufficiency and inadequacy of intellectual cognition as well as on discovering its falsifications, simplifications and utilitarian character. Both the world of common experience and common sense and that of science are worlds of delusion. These conceptions show a striking coincidence with those of Bergson.

How Much Better than Death Is Ordinary Human Survival?

2019 ◽  
pp. 243-254
Author(s):  
Ivar R. Labukt
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Worth Living ◽  
Life Worth Living ◽  
Psychological Continuity ◽  
Policy Perspective ◽  
Human Survival ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Do So

According to common sense and a majority of philosophers, death can be bad for the person who dies. This is because it can deprive the dying person of life worth living. I accept that death can be bad in this way, but argue that most people greatly overestimate the magnitude of this form of badness. They do so because they significantly overestimate the goodness of what death deprives us of: ordinary human survival. I proceed by examining four philosophical theories of why human survival matters: (1) non-reductionism, (2) the psychological continuity view, (3) the continuity of consciousness view, and (4) the physical continuity view. I argue that all these theories fail to offer something that is both deeply egoistically important and found in ordinary human survival. In the final section, I discuss how we should think about preventing deaths from a policy perspective if death is a lesser personal evil than what is typically assumed.

The sofa is better than Freud

2017 ◽  
Vol 41 (S1) ◽  
pp. S488-S488
Author(s):  
G. Buffardi
Keyword(s):  
Therapeutic Relationship ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Psychological Model ◽  
Widespread Belief ◽  
Specific Factors ◽  
Model Training ◽  
Competing Interest ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Better Than

When it comes to the therapeutic dialog between doctor and patient, psychiatrist or psychotherapist and user, there are several factors that are taken into consideration, though some of these aren’t of a specific psychological model, they fulfill an important role both in the management of the relationship itself as well as in the care.Their importance in the therapeutic relationship is such that a doctor or a therapist cannot simply manage them by “common sense”, or follow his own propensity for dialogue: he must know them well and he needs a training on their own management with the same precision that is needed for the specific psychological model training.Contrary to widespread belief we think that education on non-specific factors has to be desirable and that the ability to manage them can be implemented both by a deeper understanding as well as by dedicated training tools.Disclosure of interestThe author has not supplied his/her declaration of competing interest.

scholarly journals FROM HUME’S “DELICACY” TO CONTEMPORARY ART

2018 ◽  
Vol 26 (54) ◽  
Author(s):  
Anne Sejten
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Contemporary Art ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Art Criticism ◽  
Major Step ◽  
Close Inspection ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
Vital Component ◽  
Standard Of Taste ◽  
Better Than

David Hume’s essay “Of the Standard of Taste” (1757)—which represents a major step towards clarifying eighteenth-century philosophy’s dawning aesthetics in terms of taste—also relates closely to literal, physical taste. From the analogy between gustatory and critical taste, Hume, apt at judging works of art, puts together a contradictory argument of subjectivism (taste is individual and varies from person to person) and the normativity of common sense (the test of time shows that some works of art are better than others). However, a careful reading of the text unveils a way of appealing to art criticism as a vital component in edifying a philosophically more solid standard of taste. Hume’s emphatic references to a requisite “delicacy” complicate the picture, for it is not clear what this delicacy is, but a close inspection of how Hume frames the criterion of delicacy by means of “practice” and the absence of “prejudice” might perhaps challenge us to address issues of contemporary art.

Utilitarian and common-sense morality discussions in intercultural nursing practice

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 201-211 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ingrid Hanssen ◽  
Lise-Merete Alpers
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Ethnic Minority ◽  
Common Sense ◽  
Nursing Practice ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Ethical Conflict ◽  
Clear Cut ◽  
Common Sense Morality ◽  
Patients Wishes ◽  
Better Than

Two areas of ethical conflict in intercultural nursing — who needs single rooms more, and how far should nurses go to comply with ethnic minority patients’ wishes? — are discussed from a utilitarian and common-sense morality point of view. These theories may mirror nurses’ way of thinking better than principled ethics, and both philosophies play a significant role in shaping nurses’ decision making. Questions concerning room allocation, noisy behaviour, and demands that nurses are unprepared or unequipped for may be hard to cope with owing to physical restrictions and other patients’ needs. Unsolvable problems may cause stress and a bad conscience as no solution is ‘right’ for all the patients concerned. Nurses experience a moral state of disequilibrium, which occurs when they feel responsible for the outcomes of their actions in situations that have no clear-cut solution.

scholarly journals The good and the bad: Are some attribute words better than others in the Implicit Association Test?

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jordan Axt ◽  
Tony Y. Feng ◽  
Yoav Bar-Anan
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Implicit Association Test ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Association Test ◽  
Similar Measurement ◽  
Implicit Association ◽  
Measurement Quality ◽  
Category Labels ◽  
Selection Of ◽  
Better Than

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is one of the most popular measures in psychological research. A lack of standardization across IATs has resulted in significant variability among stimuli used by researchers, including the positive and negative words used in evaluative IATs. Does the variability in attribute words in evaluative IATs produce unwanted variability in measurement quality across studies? The present work investigated the effect of evaluative stimuli across three studies using 13 IATs and over 60,000 participants. The 64 positive and negative words that we tested provided similar measurement quality. Further, measurement was satisfactory even in IATs that used only category labels as stimuli. These results suggest that common sense is probably a sufficient method for selection of evaluative stimuli in the IAT. For a reasonable measurement quality, we recommend researchers who use evaluative IATs in English to randomly select words from the set we tested in the present research.

1. Introduction

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-5
Author(s):  
Timothy Williamson
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Natural Science ◽  
Natural World ◽  
History Of Philosophy ◽  
Mathematical Methods ◽  
Philosophical Methods ◽  
History Of ◽  
And Mathematics ◽  
Better Than

The Introduction focuses on the history of philosophy and intersections between philosophy, common sense, natural science, and mathematics, exploring what it means to do philosophy well in practice. How do we confirm that the methods philosophers use are appropriate for answering their questions? How is philosophy related to science? From the ancient Greeks onwards, philosophy included the study of the natural world. Galileo and Newton were scientists, Descartes a mathematician. When natural science and mathematics grew apart and developed their distinct methodologies, why was philosophy not rendered obsolete? What can philosophical methods still do better than scientific and mathematical methods?

Commonsensism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roderick M. Chisholm
Keyword(s):  
Common Sense ◽  
Subject Matter ◽  
Theory Of Knowledge ◽  
Traditional Theory ◽  
Human Being ◽  
The World ◽  
Better Than

‘Commonsensism’ refers to one of the principal approaches to traditional theory of knowledge where one asks oneself the following Socratic questions: (1) What can I know?; (2) How can I distinguish beliefs that are reasonable for me to have from beliefs that are not reasonable for me to have? and (3) What can I do to replace unreasonable beliefs by reasonable beliefs about the same subject-matter, and to replace beliefs that are less reasonable by beliefs that are more reasonable? The mark of commonsensism is essentially a faith in oneself – a conviction that a human being, by proceeding cautiously, is capable of knowing the world in which it finds itself. Any inquiry must set out with some beliefs. If you had no beliefs at all, you could not even begin to inquire. Hence any set of beliefs is better than none. Moreover, the beliefs that we do find ourselves with at any given time have so far survived previous inquiry and experience. And it is psychologically impossible to reject everything that you believe. ‘Doubting’, Peirce says, ‘is not as easy as lying’. Inquiry, guided by common sense, leads us to a set of beliefs which indicates that common sense is on the whole a reliable guide to knowledge. And if inquiry were not thus guided by common sense, how would it be able to answer the three Socratic questions with which it begins?

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