Why Do I Believe No Gods Exist?
I’ve written many articles about atheism, atheists, theists, gods, logic, rationality, ethics and morality etc. but as this is my 100th published post on Answers in Reason I wanted to do a special post. I wanted to give you an insight into my past and what lead me to my present, as well as how AiR came about and eventually lead to our podcast and YouTube channel. I felt it would be good to address why I believe no gods......
The Truth of it All – SciPhi
The Truth is Out There! What is truth? How can we know if something is true? What is a truth-apt statement? Do all statements hold a truth value? How does truth relate to morality? Can we have a subjective truth? In this stream, we hope to cover off these questions and examine a few theories of truth. There are actually quite a few theories of truth, but the most important ones are: Correspondence theory Coherence theory Semantic Theory Pragmatic Theory......
Artificial Ethics – SciPhi
Artificial Ethics We venture into the world of AI and consider the ethical implications and applications. Will our future overlords be moral and just? We will be considering how morality is used in the automated world from now and into the future, looking at various thought experiments, and pondering ethical culpability and responsibility when things go wrong! Topics Our topics on Artificial Intelligence and Ethics will include (but not be limited to) What do we mean by Morality (short version,......
Moral Particularism & Value Pluralism
Moral Particularism and Value Pluralism Do particular circumstances affect the moral value of an action? Are there multiple values to assess when looking at moral judgements? Are there any particular standards we should base morality on or is it just what we feel is right at the time? Joi@kriss, @trolleydave and @davidian for tonight’s ethical discussion in which we explore moral particularism and value pluralism. Moral Particularism and Value Pluralism – The Video This podcast was origionally a live video......
The Problem of Dirty Hands – SciPhi
What is ‘The Problem of Dirty Hands’? We discuss the problem of dirty hands, no, not the german porn star. We question if it is possible to do the “right thing” by doing the “wrong thing”? We also question if that makes the “wrong thing” a “moral action”. If you hadn’t guessed ‘Dirty Hands’ is a term used in Ethics. We discuss the problem of dirty hands through the lens of a few different moral theories, and if it even......
Feedback on: Morality and Misconceptions – SciPhi: 023
What’s this feedback stream about? Having streamed ‘Morality and Misconceptions’ Found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bhLwA… We have collated the feedback we have received so far. Some were minor tweaks about the ordering of the slides, which we have amended for the final PDF/Slideshow available here: Whilst others were questions and critique – some from very long conversations on Twitter, that felt best to answer on another stream. If you haven’t watched the first stream yet, it is worth doing so combined with......
The Problem with Consequentialism
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 that normative properties depend only on consequences. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/consequentialism/ Simply put, the consequences of an action decide if it is moral (good), immoral (bad), or amoral......
Morality and Misconceptions – SciPhi: 018 [Video]
Morality and Misconceptions Morality is a complex topic often discussed on the internet. There are a number of misconceptions surrounding it and as such, I created some “cards” for quick reference based on a number of learnings from a variety of sources and moral theories. W e will be leaning on a number of things we learned from Season 2 of Fresh AiR. As well as leaning on: Does Morality Have a Purpose? On Value Is Value Entirely Subjective? Morality,......
Morality, Agency and Intent
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. I will not be going deep into each moral theory, as I feel we have done enough of that analysis in the aforementioned article as......
The Morality of Forced/Rejecting Vaccinations.
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 moral? As we discussed on ‘Does morality have a purpose?’ we could see the ultimate purpose of morality is human wellbeing & flourishing. Therefore, anything......
