Specter of Reason

I've been discussing public displays of atheism with Jean Kazez , and it's about time I've made my case in a bit more detail. Jean says some prominent atheists are presenting views that aren't appropriate for general consumption. Jean mentions two specific views: first, that atheism is incompatible with objective morality; second, that science and religion are fundamentally incompatible. She says she's more confident about the first point, and that there is room for "reasonable" disagreement about the second one. I guess this means it would be unreasonable to even suggest that atheists should reject objective morality in public. That means I and a number of other atheists, including Russell Blackford, are unreasonable. There is a whole lot of history here--not so much between me and Jean, but between her and several bloggers far more prominent than myself. I'm talking about Russell , Ophelia Benson , and Jerry Coyne , among others. There are di...

Slightly modified on 24 Feb 2011. Moral noncognitivism is the view that moral statements (e.g., "X is morally wrong" and "Y is morally obligated to Z") have no truth conditions. They do not express propositions, and therefore cannot be said to express beliefs, where beliefs are defined as propositional attitudes. All this means is that moral statements do not denote facts about the world. Phrases like "morally wrong" and "morally obligated" do not cash out in factual terms. These phrases do not predict, explain, or otherwise refer to any properties, behaviors, or laws. When we look at the grammar, moral statements don't seem different from other sorts of expressions. We can add "I believe that" or "It is true that" at the beginning of moral claims. This might seem to count as a mark against noncognitivism, but I don't think it does. First, to clarify, the noncognitivist does not deny that such statements make sens...

Here's a nice quote which is relevant to some recent discussions on health and morality: Much as 'Medicine' is the name of a somewhat arbitrary consortium of more or less loosely connected inquiries and techniques, a consortium which neither has, nor needs, a logically trim statement of programme, so 'psychology' can quite conveniently be used to denote a partly fortuitous federation of inquiries and techniques. --Gilbert Ryle, The Concept of Mind , 1949, p. 323

I once again find myself having to defend Ryle against confused interpretations of his work. In this instance, the false allegations are that Ryle hated science , that Ryle didn't understand science , and that Ryle denied that human behavior has internal causes . These claims were made during a discussion at PhilPapers by Jonathan C. W. Edwards (Jo, as he prefers to be called), who apparently is a retired university faculty member in the field of biomedical sciences, and who is now a graduate student in philosophy. Jo started the discussion to talk about Descartes' attitude towards science and physicalism. One of Jo's more bizarre claims is that Descartes' mind/body distinction is a scientific and metaphysical precursor to the contemporary boson-fermion distinction in particle physics. I challenged him directly on that point, but I won't go into the details here. I'm more interested in defending Ryle. Jo is interested in Ryle primarily because of Ryle...