Ethics or moral philosophy is a branch of philosophy that “involves systematizing, defending, and recommending concepts of right and wrong behavior.” The field of ethics, along with aesthetics, concerns matters of value, and thus comprises the branch of philosophy called axiology.
What is truth? How can we know if something is true? Do all statements hold a truth value? Can we have subjective truths? When not considered too deeply, these questions seem obvious, but upon greater consideration, they are far more complex. Isn’t everything? In this article, I hope to explain truth and truth-apt statements, give…
When something is subjective, it is based on personal opinion*. We are saying that there is no real external truth value, just opinions. *The term subjective can mean different things, though they are mostly akin to this definition, and this is how it is being used in the article. Preferences and Standards We can see…
Consequentialist moral theories, like utilitarianism, are quick and easy to use, like using fingers in the air to gauge the direction of the breeze, but they are not without fault. In this post, I hope to demonstrate the issues with consequentialist moral theories. What is Consequentialism? Consequentialism, as its name suggests, is simply the view…
I have spent a lot of time thinking about free will and determinism, and a fair bit reading others thoughts on it too. I’ve been trying to sift through my own thoughts on the matter because I am still mostly agnostic towards the whole thing though I do lean towards a form of compatibilism that…
Whilst Morality’s purpose seems geared toward human flourishing and wellbeing, as described in the examination of various moral theories in ‘Does Morality have a Purpose?’ there is another component or two that I feel needs to be examined. To discuss this we will be looking at the higher-level moral theories, consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics….
Introduction In part one, there was a brief summary which depicted the timeline of events regarding the court proceedings between Kyle R. Curtis and Steven McRae. Within these proceedings, evidence has been put forth by both parties in an attempt to support their arguments. During the deposition, there are several references made to the evidence…
Read More “The Evidence – The NonSequitur Court Proceedings: Part 2” »
Wow, what a season that was. We’ve discussed personhood, morality, moral theories, Nietzsche’s critique of morality, free will, a conversation about objective vs subjective morality, ethics in politics, etc. The Fresh AiR Crew Hosts / Co-hosts Davidian/Joe Joe has continued to ask a number of questions that have left the guys wondering if he really…
Introduction The community requested me to make an analysis of the deposition of Kyle R. Curtis in regards to the civil lawsuit between Mr. Curtis and Steven McRae. Previously, I have done a similar breakdown on court documents filed by Mr. Curtis on Twitter. However, as the deposition is rather lengthy, a breakdown of this…
Read More “The Brief – The NonSequitur Court Proceedings: Part 1” »
I’ve written a few articles about vaccinations from the scientific point of view but felt it was time to turn my attention to the morality of the topic; both from the angle of if it is a moral obligation to be vaccinated, and the morality of forcing vaccinations on people. What do we mean by…
Read More “The Morality of Forced/Rejecting Vaccinations.” »
A synonym is a word or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word or phrase in the same language. What we should note from this is the word NEARLY. Nearly does not mean the same, but close to. This can cause problems when people conflate normative uses of words with various…
Read More “Sin-onyms; The sinful use of synonyms – CMT: Volume 9” »
Morality is the principles of good/bad right/wrong behaviour, but what is the purpose of these rules? To answer this question we have to look back and consider how morality came about, and how it served us in the past. We will also have to examine moral theories, past and present, to see how they work…
An article that seems to raise a few objections on our yearly reshare is TrolleyDave’s ‘Is Value Entirely Subjective?‘ To tell you the truth, when I first read his article there were some things I disagreed with too. Dave gave me a number of different articles to read about value. I was desperately trying to…
I’m an atheist. *Gasp* ‘Hold the phone!’ Hard to believe that an atheist runs an atheist site right? I’ve even been the keyboard warrior type of atheist, although that was many years ago. I spent lots of time debating theists desperately hoping that either they could provide me with some evidence of a deity, or…
So I’ve been challenged by our resident virtue ethicist to apply my learnings from our discussions and season 2 of our podcast (which is currently available on our Patreon, and will be released here soon) to consider the perfect human using virtue ethics. If you haven’t listened to the podcast or been following ArificialAgent’s “the…
Responding to YouTubers is not something I generally do, though admittedly it is something I have often been tempted by. However, I recently saw a video from YouTube PigPuncher that tempted me into responding. One of the reasons that this particular video and argument tempted me is that a response to it is not only…
Hello, and welcome to Fresh AiR! – I’m Joe… Words you will have heard a few times if you have already started listening to season one. What is Fresh AiR? ‘Fresh AiR’ is a podcast, hosted by Joe, Martijn and Dave. It is part of Answers in Reason but hopes to bring a fresh perspective…
