Joshua’s Comments (group member since Jun 22, 2012)

Joshua’s comments from the Philoso-holics Anonymous group.

I am going to be focussing a lot on continuing to build my category of reviews, but they are going to be heavily shaped by my University curriculum [a situation I'd imagine is not uncommon]. I just want people to know that one of the best things that we can do to get a group like this rolling is to send out invites to friends who are interested in engaging in the discussion.

If you guys have friends who are philosophically oriented or looking for good primers, I strongly recommend inviting them to the group. This is an open-ended group, so anything members want to talk about is available, and the more folks we have the better those discussions are liable to go.

I know we've got some diverse opinions on this group. I'm curious who stands where on ethics, so let's take a crack at a discussion thread, and see where it goes.

If you were going to take a single book outlining a theory of ethics to champion in an argument, what would it be? [Also, this is a good exercise for folks in the field, since identifying with a label can often be a big deal in ethics.]

For me, Parfit's constructive theory of ethics is a serious heavyweight, because of how well it combines respect for rational agents with rule-utilitarian approaches.

Also, hopefully this will generate a nice, diverse reading list for folks who are interested in what others find convincing. I'm really interested in finding some cool stuff in areas of ethics that I might think of as weak right now.

Anyway, this is my contribution: Reasons and Persons