Demandingness as an Objection to Norms

A moral requirement to be universally benevolent could be very demanding, i.e. it could take great sacrifices of the agent’s welfare to live up to it. It has been argued that this is an objection to its validity, but this is denied in this chapter. Any reasonable morality will comprise norms that are quite demanding, e.g. a norm to let ourselves be tortured to death when this is necessary to prevent a million or billion from suffering the same fate. However, the fact that a moral norm is demanding could mean that you are not blameworthy if you fail to comply with it. This fact could also be a pragmatic reason for you not to try to comply with this norm but with a less demanding norm if your failure to comply will have bad consequences.

Li Zehou’s Ethics and the Structure of Confucian Pragmatic Reason

Li Zehou believes that human psychology, just like humanness or “human nature”, is not fixed or given, but is rather something characterized by changing developmental forms of human pragmatic reason, which is formed over millions of years, and is still continuously accumulating and changing. However, reason alone is by no means something that would absolutely separate humans from their sensuality and thus from other animals. The difference between human beings and animals primarily occurs somewhere else, namely in the very realm of the specifically human social existence, which is defined by “subjectality” (zhutixing 主體性) and includes specific human values. In this context, Li shows that Confucian pragmatic reason is formed and functions within the “emotio-rational formation” (qingli jiegou 情理結構), which is deeply rooted in the human world. It is based on actual human conditions and arises from human social emotionality, transforming these culturally integrated general communal emotions through rites in the process of “condensation of reason” (lixing ningju 理性凝聚) into rational concepts of right and wrong, good and evil. The rationality of these concepts governs the subjective personal feelings of each member of a community; the pragmatic nature of this rationality, however, is tightly linked to and intertwined with human emotions. In the concrete social life, these rational concepts can nevertheless dissolve—through the process of the “melting of reason” (lixing ronghua 理性融化)––in the heart-minds of people and thus become an integral part of individual emotions. This paper aims to posit the Confucian pragmatic reason into the framework of Li Zehou’s ethics and political axiology.

Is Teaching English as an International Language All about Being Politically Correct?

One comment I often receive when I talk about teaching English as an international language (TEIL) is that TEIL is all about being politically correct – a mere gesture to be inclusive and egalitarian, promoted by a certain ideological stance. It is true that there are certain ideologies, language and beyond, that are compatible with certain aspects of TEIL and this encourages some English Language Teaching (ELT) professionals to embrace or reject this approach to English language teaching. My stance on this issue, however, is that TEIL is not about being politically correct or promoting certain ideologies; rather, it is about understanding and accepting the realities of global use of English today and having our teaching grounded in this reality. The article provides a brief overview of what TEIL is and reviews some ideological arguments that seem compatible with TEIL. It then moves on to argue that TEIL is something all English language teachers can and should embrace, regardless of their ideological stance or beliefs about what English should be. This is for a pragmatic reason: to better prepare our students for the messy world of English today.

Wagering Against Divine Hiddenness

J.L. Schellenberg argues that divine hiddenness provides an argument for the conclusion that God does not exist, for if God existed he would not allow non-resistant non-belief to occur, but non-resistant non-belief does occur, so God does not exist. In this paper, I argue that the stakes involved in theistic considerations put pressure on Schellenberg’s premise that non-resistant non- belief occurs. First, I specify conditions for someone’s being a non-resistant non-believer. Then, I argue that many people fulfil these conditions because, given some plausible assumptions, there is a very good pragmatic reason to be a theist rather than an atheist. I assume it is more likely that theists go to heaven than atheists, and I argue there is a non-zero probability that one can receive infinite utility and a method of comparing outcomes with infinite utilities in which the probability of each outcome affects the final expected values. Then, I show how this argument entails there is no good reason to think that there are very many non-resistant non-believers.

Indirect epistemic reasons and religious belief

If believing P will result in epistemically good outcomes, does this generate an epistemic reason to believe P, or just a pragmatic reason? Conceiving of such reasons as epistemic reasons seems to lead to absurdity, e.g. by allowing that someone can rationally hold beliefs that conflict with her assessment of her evidence's probative force. We explain how this and other intuitively unwelcome results can be avoided. We also suggest a positive case for conceiving of such reasons as epistemic reasons, namely, that they exhibit a form of interpersonal normative parity that's typical of epistemic reasons but not pragmatic reasons. We then link this discussion to religious belief, suggesting that there are sometimes indirect epistemic reasons for religious belief, and that certain characterizations of religious belief are instructive in thinking about how to take account of indirect epistemic reasons.

Skepticism, Suspension of Judgment, and Norms for Belief

According to Sextus Empiricus, the Skeptic suspends judgment in response to equipollence. This fact has two significant implications. First, the Skeptic has at most indirect control over his suspension of judgment and so does not suspend judgment at will. Second, the skeptic accepts the norm of truth for belief. This is a norm according to which one ought to believe that p only if p is true. However, there are passages in the Outlines of Pyrrhonism that imply the Skeptic accepts the norm of utility for belief. This is a norm according to which one ought to believe that p only if the belief that p promotes one’s tranquility. I first argue that if the Skeptic suspends judgment in response to equipollence, then a pragmatic reason can’t be the reason for which the Skeptic suspends judgment. I then argue that the norms of truth and utility for belief are incompatible just in the sense that the acceptance of the one precludes the acceptance of the other. If Sextus describes the Skeptic as accepting both of these norms for belief, as I argue he does, his conception of Skepticism in the Outlines is not coherent.