Part 1A Ethics

Undergraduate Course

This is the web page for the Philosophy Part 1A course Ethics given by Richard Holton at the University of Cambridge, Michaelmas and Hilary terms 2020/21. This page provides links to papers and other texts that may be useful and to pdf versions of the handouts. If you have suggestions or comments, please let me know by emailing me at rjh221@cam.ac.uk

The course will cover the syllabus topics on Metaethics (fact and value; objectivity and subjectivity) and Moral Psychology (egoism and altruism; empathy; cognitive and affective attitudes); as well as providing a general introduction, part of the aim is to show how issues from these two areas interact.

Before each online class (with the exception of the first), I'll post a podcast on this page. If you want to see me, the corresponding video is on the Part 1A Metaphysics Moodle site, under 'Panopto' on the right-hand side, but it doesn't contain any extra material. There will be places in the podcast where you will need to follow it in conjunction with the handout. The online class will take place on Wednesdays at 2.00 pm on Zoom. I will send out an invitation to that class, by email, to every student registered for that class, using their Cambridge email addresses. At least 24 hours before that, all registered students should email me at rjh221@cam.ac.uk,, from their Cambridge email account, with one question about the material. The class will be a mixture of me talking, and me calling on people to ask their questions in person. The questions can be as broad or as detailed as you like, but if you ask about things that we will obviously be getting on to in subsequent weeks, I'll be less likely to call on you. I'll try to make this as much like a real class as possible, so, unless you have a really good reason not to, please keep your cameras on so that everone can see who is there and we can all start to get to know each other. Fake backgrounds are fine to cover up whatever mess your room might be in. Please also keep your microphone muted unless you are speaking.

Lectures

Introduction: Some Puzzles and Some Considerations

(11 November) Handout

Primary

Judith Jarvis Thomson The Trolley Problem Yale Law Journal 94 (1985)

What's Special About Ethics?

(18 November) Handout

Podcast for Lecture 2:

Primary

John Mackie Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong Ch. 1 The Subjectivity of Values

Secondary

John Searle, ‘How to Derive ‘Ought’ From ‘Is’’ in Philosophical Review 73, 1964

Gillian Russell, ‘In Defence of Hume's Law’ in Hume, ‘Is’, and ‘Ought’: New Essays, ed. Charles Pigden

Gillian Russell and Greg Restall, ‘Barriers to Inference’ in Hume, ‘Is’, and ‘Ought’: New Essays, ed. Charles Pigden

Egoism I: A Priori Issues

(25 November) Handout

Podcast for Lecture 3:

Primary

Bishop Butler Fifteen Sermons Sermon XI

Egoism II: A Posteriori Issues

(2 December) Handout

Podcast for Lecture 4:

Primary

E. Fehr & U. Fischbacher, ‘The Nature of Human Altruism’ Nature 425 (2003) 785-91

Secondary

S. Stich, J. Doris and E. Roedder, ‘Altruism’ in The Moral Psychology Handbook (Discusses Batson, and Sober and Wilson)

Aspects of our Moral Sensibility I: Cooperation; The Moral/Conventional Distinction

(27 January) Handout

No podcast for lecture 5 I'm afraid

Primary

Michael Tomasello, Why We Cooperate, esp. pp. 22-69.

Secondary

Victor Kumar, ‘Moral Judgement as a Natural Kind’ Philosophical Studies, 172, 2015. (Amongst other things, a good summary of empirical work on the moral/conventional distinction.)

Aspects of our Moral Sensibility II: Emotion; Empathy; Psychopathy; Internalism

(3 February) Handout

Podcast for Lecture 6:

Primary

Jonathan Haidt, ‘The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail’ Psychological Review 108, 2001
Joshua Greene, ‘The Secret Joke of Kant's Soul’ in W. Sinnott-Armstrong (ed)Moral Psychology, Vol. 3: The Neuroscience of Morality 2007

Secondary

Essi Viding Psychopathy: a Very Short Introduction OUP 2019. (A very clear introduction to recent empirical work on psychopathy.)
Victor Kumar, ‘Psychopathy and Internalism’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 43, 2016. (Summary of philosophical work on the relevance of psychopathy to internalism, together with a nuanced proposal.)

Subjectivism, Non-Cognitivism, Expressivism

(10 February) Handout

Podcast for Lecture 7:

Primary

C.L. Stevenson, ‘The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms’ Mind 46, 1937 (The positive proposal starts on p. 18, Section II)

Secondary

Elizabeth Camp ‘Metaethical Expressivism’ OUP 2019. (An excellent summary of work on expressivism and non-cognitivism, and of the difficulties of making them plausible without collapsing them into realism. Quite dense though; you might want to come back to it again later.)
C.L Stevenson's daughter Anne Stevenson, was a very distinguished poet who died just last year. Two poems of hers I'd specially recommend for their philosophical interest are ‘Small Philosophical Poem’ and ‘Elegy’.

Problems for Expressivism

(24 February) Handout

Primary

Peter Geach ‘Assertion’ Philosophical Review 1965

Secondary

James Dreier ‘Meta-Ethics And The Problem Of Creeping Minimalism’ Philosophical Perspectives 18, 2004.
Mark Schroeder ‘What is the Frege-Geach Problem?’ Philosophy Compass 2008.
Mark Schroeder Noncognitivism in Ethics; Taylor and Francis 2010. (A textbook outlining much of the recent debate)

Responses to the Frege-Geach Problem

(3 March) Handout

Podcast for Lecture 9:

Primary

David Copp ‘Realist Expressivism’ Social Philosophy and Policy 2001
Allan Gibbard ‘Precis of Wise Choices, Apt Feelings’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. 52, 2001 (after that you can try the book)

Secondary

Mark van Roojen ‘Moral Cognitivism vs. Non-Cognitivism: Embedding Problem Response Strategies’ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2018.

Smith on the Moral Problem

(10 March) Handout

Podcast for Lecture 10:

Primary

Michael Smith ‘Internal Reasons’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 1995

Secondary Quality Accounts

(17 March) Handout

Primary

The classic recent statement of the approach, though rather hard going in places, is:
John McDowell ‘Values and Secondary Qualities’ reprinted in G. Sayre-McCord (ed.) Essays on Moral Realism 1988
For a critical discussion see:
Hallvard Lillehammer‘Values and Secondary Qualities’ from his Companions in Guilt 2007

Secondary

For a general introduction to the idea of a response-dependent concept, and of the circumstances in which it gives rise to immunity from error, see the first two sections of:
Richard Holton ‘Intentions, Response-Dependence and Immunity from Error’ in P. Menzies (ed.) Response Dependent Concepts (ANU Working Papers in Philosophy 1) Canberra, 1991, pp.83-121.
For a nice discussion of what is peculiar about colour see:
Kathleen Akins and Martin Hahn ‘The Peculiarity of Color’ in P. Davies (ed.) Color Perception Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science, Volume IX, 2000.