This paper analyzes the ethical themes and theory portrayals by particular characters in Star Trek: Into Darkness. It is concluded that the film can be understood as explicating the pros and cons of both "male" and "female" ethical perspectives, and that a comprehensive understanding of morality requires some synthesis of both perspectives.

In 1966 Gene Roddenberry, then a relatively unknown TV writer, created what was to become a cultural sensation. From cell phones and tablets, to MRI machines and medical jet injectors, Star Trek has undoubtedly anticipated much of the technology that we take for granted today. Moreover, the disagreements, fights and jokes between Captain Kirk (William Shatner), Dr Leonard ‘Bones’ McCoy (DeForest Kelley) and Mr Spock (Leonard Nimoy) were expertly crafted for dramatic impact. But I’m not writing this to (...) confess to you my obsessive infatuation with the Star Trek universe. Instead I want to discuss how the beliefs and practices of Vulcans like Spock are similar to those of the Stoic school of philosophy. (shrink)

Science fiction fandoms tend to contain significant numbers of fans who feel angry and resentful about the handling of the franchise they are fans of, because of the stories the franchises owners have told. The paper addresses the question of when, if ever, such anger and resentment are justified. Special attention will be paid to Star Trek fandom, but other fandoms will be considered, including those for Star Wars and Doctor Who. Various proposed justifications for anger and (...) resentment will be considered, including that franchise owners have misled fans about the stories they would tell, have wasted opportunities to produce good art, have reduced the value of older art, have engaged in a form of cultural appropriation by repurposing old characters, have caused needless offense of a sort akin to the offense of religious sensibilities, have offended against the principle of utility, and have taken advantage of unjust copyright laws. The paper does not champion a conclusion about when, if ever, fan anger and resentment are justified. However, it is concluded that, contrary to what is often assumed, it is not obvious that fan anger and resentment are always unjustified, and so fan anger and resentment cannot always be dismissed out of hand. (shrink)

Philosophy and space travel are characterized by the same fundamental purpose: exploration. An essential guide for both philosophers and Trekkers, Star Trek and Philosophy combines a philosophical spirit of inquiry with the beloved television and film series to consider questions not only about the scientific prospects of interstellar travel but also the inward journey to examine the human condition. The expansive topics range from the possibilities for communication among different cultural backgrounds to questions about the stoic temperament exhibited (...) by Vulcans to Ferengi business practices. Specifically chosen to break new ground in exploring the philosophical dimensions of Star Trek, these articles boldly go where no philosopher has gone before. (shrink)

The Absolute, philosophized most saliently about by Georg Hegel, encompasses the entirety of reality. The absolute is composed of five dimensions – height, length, width, time, and justice. The five dimensions operate dialectically, and the normative values of reality inhere within the fifth dimension – hard, soft, moral, ethical, yellow, etc. ad infinitum. The normative values from the fifth dimension, in combination with the brain, comprise the human mind. With the issues of climate change, world-wide biosphere destruction, nuclear weapons, international (...) trade regimes, humanity has created the phenomenon of global politics – thereby changing the fifth dimension. The argument in this volume is that the broadcast iterations of Star Trek allow us to comprehend significant aspects of justice and the politics of globalism – created through the advent of science, technology, engineering, etc. The creators of Star Trek hold that nationalism is a psychological pathology and internationalism is rationality. (shrink)

This book examines how humanity faces the absence of a coherent, universal conception of justice. By analyzing Star Trek, this book argues that in order to obtain true democracy and justice the productive forces of society must be geared toward achieving a thriving society, the whole individual, and the ecology.

Freud divided people in three libidinal types: narcissist (doer), obsessional (thinker), and libidinal (lover). Kirk (narcissist), Spock (obsessional) and McCoy (libidinal) complemented each other, giving the show depth and balance.

Star Trek scripts have often grappled with dilemmas of medical ethics. The most explicitly medical-ethics-oriented Star Trek episode is named, aptly enough, “Ethics.” The script was written by Sara Charno and Stuart Charno, authors of two other Star Trek episodes. “Ethics” first aired on 2 March 1992. In the fall of 1992, we began to use this “Ethics” episode to motivate discussions in our first-year medical students’ course on medical ethics and the doctor-patient relationship. (...) We asked students to write essays addressing one of the many ethical dilemmas posed by the episode. Over the years, the episode has become a tradition. Both students and instructors find the formulation of dilemmas in the context of a science-fiction story to be both liberating and stimulating. In this essay, we will discuss this particular episode in some detail and then provide a brief synopsis of other episodes that might be used in ethics courses in a similar way. (shrink)

This volume explains how Star Trek allows viewers to comprehend significant aspects of Georg Hegel's concept the absolute, the driving force behind history. Gonzalez, with wit and wisdom, explains how Star Trek exhibits central elements of the absolute. He describes how themes and ethos central to the show display the concept beautifully. For instance, the show posits that people must possess the correct attitudes in order to bring about an ideal society: a commitment to social justice; (...) an unyielding commitment to the truth; and a similar commitment to scientific, intellectual discovery. These characteristics serve as perfect embodiments of Hegel's conceptualization, and Gonzalez's analysis is sharp and exacting. George A. Gonzalez is Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Miami, USA. He specializes in the fields of political theory, popular culture, and environmental politics and policy. In the areas of popular culture and political theory he has published two articles in the journal Foundation: The International Review of Science Fiction, as well as the book The Politics of Star Trek: Justice, War, and the Future. (shrink)

Reunites the editors of Star Trek and Philosophy with Starfleet’s finest experts for 31 new, highly logical essays Features a complete examination of the Star Trek universe, from the original series to the most recent films directed by J.J. Abrams, Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness Introduces important concepts in philosophy through the vast array of provocative issues raised by the series, such as the ethics of the Prime Directive, Star (...) Trek’s philosophy of peace, Data and Voyager’s Doctor as persons, moral relativism and the Federation’s quest for liberation, the effect of alternate universes on reality and identity, the Borg as transhumanists, Federation Trekonomics, Star Trek’s secular society, and much, much more…! An enterprising and enlightening voyage into deep space that will appeal to hardcore fans and science fiction enthusiasts alike Publishing in time to celebrate the 50th Anniversary of the original TV series. (shrink)

For 50 years, Star Trek has been an inspiration to its fans around the world, helping them to dream of a better future. This inspiration has entered our culture and helped to shape much of the technology of the early 21st Century. The contributors to this volume are researchers and teachers in a wide variety of disciplines; from Astrophysics to Ethnology, from English and History to Medicine and Video Games, and from American Studies to the study of Collective (...) Computing Systems. What the authors have in common is that some version of Star Trek has inspired them, not only in their dreams of what may be, but in the ways in which they work - and teach others to work - here in the real world. Introduced with references to Star Trek films and television shows, and illustrated with original cartoons, each of the 15 chapters included in this volume provides insights into research and teaching in this range of academic fields. (shrink)

Henrik Hansemann, Star-Trek-Experte und früherer Chefredakteur des deutschen Fanportals Treknews.de, sucht und findet Antworten auf Fragen der Logik, Ethik und Moral, die sich im Star-Trek-Universum stellen - immer fundiert und durchweg unterhaltsam. In "Die Philosophie bei Star Trek" werden zum Beispiel folgende Fragen beleuchtet: - Kann es irdische Existenzen zwischen den Sternen überhaupt geben? - Welche Auswirkungen hat das Leben im Enterprise-Universum auf die menschliche Gesundheit und auf die moderne Medizinethik? - Ist Beamen tatsächlich (...) möglich und was würde beim Beamen mit der Seele geschehen? - Wie geht Star Trek mit den Themen Tod, Jenseits und Auferstehung um? - Welche philosophischen Überlegungen stecken hinter der ethnischen und linguistischen Vielfalt des Star-Trek-Universums und wo sind die Grenzen des Universalübersetzers? - Wie realistisch sind die in Star Trek gezeigten technologischen Erfindungen und welche Fragen ergeben sich daraus für unser Verständnis von uns selbst - vom Menschen und seinem Wesen? - Ist eine vermenschlichte Maschine überhaupt noch eine Maschine? - Was ist das Q-Kontinuum und warum hilft es der Besatzung der "Enterprise" in Notsituationen? "Die Philosophie bei Star Trek" beleuchtet auf spannende und humorvolle Weise die Fernsehserien und zahlreichen Kinofilme rund um Kirk, Spock & Co. (shrink)

This paper focuses on salient features and benefits of the assimilation of popular culture into classroom discussions in philosophy courses with students of diverse backgrounds. Specifically, the author accounts for the pedagogical success of the incorporation of Star Trek episodes, as a hermeneutical tool, into the curriculum. Each episode provides a forum for students to comprehend the timeless character of philosophy and persistent problems in the history of philosophy. The varied philosophical themes explored in each episode also provide (...) students with a general introduction to a wide variety of philosophical issues and topics ranging from metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics and politics. (shrink)

Professor Richard Hanley faced the dilemma plaguing so many philosophy professors today—how to entice students into the classroom. Based upon his own successful course, Is Data Human presents a thoroughly unique and enjoyable way of introducing students to the basic concepts of philosophy as seen through the lens of Star Trek. From the nature of a person, of minds, and of consciousness, to ethics and morality, to the nature and extent of knowledge and free will, Hanley brings a (...) fresh perspective to the contemporary debates concerning humankind’s place in the world.Dare to boldly go where no philosophy professor has gone before—a classroom packed with eager and enthusiastic students. (shrink)

A discussion of José-Antonio Orosco’s new book, Star Trek’s Philosophy of Peace and Justice: A Global, Anti-Racist Approach. Orosco has been finding wisdom in Star Trek episodes since he watched late night reruns with his mother. Then, recently, in honor of the 50th anniversary of Star Trek’s debut, Orosco began to teach the series as source material for peace philosophy. Philosophical concepts can be brought to bear on Star Trek stories; but Orosco (...) argues that the stories also assert philosophical meanings that are instructive to peace studies. Martin Luther King Jr. was a fan of the first season, famously encouraging the late Nichelle Nichols (1932-2022) to persist in the role of Nyota Uhura after she had decided to resign. In our book discussion, Orosco centers the importance of Critical Race Theory as a tool for exploring Star Trek’s presentation of peace and justice. Andrew Fiala questions Orosco about Star Trek’s militarism. Jennifer Kling asks how the treatment of refugees intersects with Starfleet’s Prime Directive, which commands noninterference with intergalactic populations. (shrink)

This text gives a critical account of various, often conflicting interpretations of slash fiction - stories based on characters from popular TV show, The Star Trek, written by fans. What makes slash fiction, a subgenre of fan fiction, specific is a homoeroticization of characters that in the original narratives are either explicitly or implicitly heterosexual. Whether such?homoerotic pairing? has any foundation in the original Star Trek narrative, remains an open question. Answers to this question vary greatly. (...) An affirmative answer, however, begs a further question: whether these narratives are?homosexual representations? in a strict gay/lesbian sense? The authors propose that slash represents a non-hegemonic narrative which transgresses borders set up in the original narrative - queering, reexamining thus both sex and gender. (shrink)

Discutir a potencialidade imagem em movimento no ensino de Filosofia e a compreensão do filme como discurso significante, conjugando as experiências desenvolvidas em pesquisas e sala de aula. Apresentar também recortes de disciplina ministrada que utilizou textos filosóficos e episódio de StarTrek Deep Space Nine. O filme é entendido como texto fílmico, um objeto em cuja materialidade estão inscritos diferentes códigos da linguagem cinematográfica, e como documento informacional, que comporta diferentes níveis de informações que necessitam ser reconhecidas e trabalhadas, a (...) fim de que o uso pedagógico seja satisfatório. Assim, para além do entretenimento, o texto fílmico tem a possibilidade de ser usado como recurso pedagógico e de análise social. Observa-se como constitutivos do universo Trek os filmes realizados para o cinema e as séries televisivas. (shrink)

Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's humanism is well known. While it may be that the inclusion of talk about gods reflected the interest in religion in his own time, the way that the show talked about gods reflects a humanist theology that's at least compatible with, and perhaps an expression of, Roddenberry's own vision. If the relationship of Star Trek to humanism has been unambiguous, its relationship to, and view of, posthumanism is less clear. Posthumanism can (...) refer to the notion that an all‐embracing ethos of the kind offered by humanism ought to be reconfigured to incorporate other beings besides terrestrial ones. If compassion is the defining attribute of a god, then Star Trek's humanist theology encourages not only to believe that divinity is a real possibility for humanity in the future, but also to recognize it as a possibility in the present. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Utopian Enterprises: Growing Up with Star TrekMark Jendrysik (bio)It might be hard to imagine today, when new Star Trek entertainment product seems to be everywhere, that there was once a time when Star Trek meant the seventy-nine episodes of the original series and nothing else. And it might be hard to imagine a time when episodes of a television series had to be watched (...) at one particular time, with no guarantee those episodes would ever be seen again—before the VCR, before streaming, when you had to race home and not miss a moment of the program. When Star Trek came on at 4 p.m., I sat glued to the TV, hoping my mother wouldn’t call me to dinner until 5. You might also remember telling friends who missed the program about the plot and experiencing the Rashomon effect as debates raged about what happened or did not happen on the show the afternoon before.In this article, I try to reconstruct the experience of watching Star Trek (“the Original Series,” or TOS, not that we called it that) for the first time as a child in the mid-1970s. This will be a reconstruction in Margaret Atwood’s sense of the term. I cannot at this distance of time be certain that my recollections have not been modified with the knowledge of years, or by a desire to make the experience of Star Trek perhaps more central to my life than it [End Page 359] was at the time. I will also reflect on Star Trek as a utopian and anti-utopian artifact. I do this because it seems to me that the Original Series has become the object of various caricatures that don’t do justice to the complexity and ambiguity of the program.Sci-fi in a Simpler Time?I ask you, if you are old enough, to cast your mind back to a time when Star Trek was not a multiplatform cultural juggernaut. I was born in 1964 and, perhaps predictably, I was enthralled by the space program as a child. After all, I grew up in the waxing years of the space race, just after Alan Shepard made his orbit around Earth. I was five years old when Neil Armstrong made his famed walk on the moon. The moon landings and Skylab missions provided hours of respite for my mother, too, as I sat glued to the television listening to Walter Cronkite’s calm voice. I read issues of National Geographic about the space race until they fell apart. I read all the books in my school’s library about space. A picture book with an introduction by Werner Von Braun showing future space habitants seemed to present an obvious future path for humanity.1 My friends and I were firmly convinced that one day, and soon, we would go live and work in space!By the early 1970s I had become a big fan of science fiction. In that simpler time sci-fi meant my Uncle Tom’s collection of anthologies that he had left at my grandmother’s house. On many afternoons in her sunroom, I tried to work through stories that were more than a little above my reading level. Poul Anderson’s story “The Queen of Air and Darkness” (1971) made a particularly strong impression on me in its treatment of colonialism and resistance (not that I would have used those terms at the time). Isaac Asimov’s Y/A2 book series Lucky Starr: Space Ranger (1952–58) was another favorite. I was enthralled with the stories set on Mars, Venus, and across the solar system. When I met the author in 1974, he seemed embarrassed by my love of these fairly slight works that he had published under the pseudonym “Paul French.” When I asked him to sign one of my “Lucky Starr” books, he laughed and said something like “those were a long time ago.”Sci-fi also meant movies that showed up on our local independent television stations, often as part of programs with titles like “Sunday Adventure Theater.” My friends and I became quite the connoisseurs of various voyages to the... (shrink)

As with many science fiction works, the Star Trek franchise uses allegory to address contemporary social issues. Taking a liberal humanistic stance, it addresses race and racism using aliens as allegorical stand-ins for humanity. However, the producers of the Star Trek franchise were inadvertently perpetuating the racism they were advocating against. Operating within the framework of normative Whiteness, the producers privilege the White American male as the average human being. The characters of other racial and cultural (...) backgrounds try to assimilate into the normative Whiteness defined by the producers or they are simply in the background to support the White lead characters. By drawing on previous work on the original series and The Next Generation, this article examines episodes from Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise to determine how the Star Trek franchise reinscribes, or sometimes destabilizes, the mode of racial and cultural homogeneity assumed by the producers. (shrink)

This chapter reviews Star Trek's course in wrestling with issues of political and social secularization. Any debate about secularization is a set of arguments about the best relationship between religious beliefs and institutions on the one hand, and political, social, and economic structures on the other. The chapter provides several moral arguments as to why liberal democracies like the United States should pursue greater secularism in the future. A popular but particularly unhelpful way of framing this debate is (...) in terms of religion versus reason. Deep Space Nine is the Trek series in which one society's religious interests and the Federation's secular commitments create the most friction. Some characteristics of religious thinking are quite antagonistic to political principles of a liberal democracy. Long since grown out of the antagonistic Roddenberry attitude toward religion in the public sphere, secularism in the Star Trek series reminds the human adventure is just beginning. (shrink)

This text gives a critical account of various, often conflicting interpretations of slash fiction - stories based on characters from popular TV show, The Star Trek, written by fans. What makes slash fiction, a subgenre of fan fiction, specific is a homoeroticization of characters that in the original narratives are either explicitly or implicitly heterosexual. Whether such?homoerotic pairing? has any foundation in the original Star Trek narrative, remains an open question. Answers to this question vary greatly. (...) An affirmative answer, however, begs a further question: whether these narratives are?homosexual representations? in a strict gay/lesbian sense? The authors propose that slash represents a non-hegemonic narrative which transgresses borders set up in the original narrative - queering, reexamining thus both sex and gender. (shrink)

Themes of peace and violence arise throughout the Star Trek canon. Indeed, Star Trek reveals a sweeping understanding of the multiple dimensions and issues related to peace studies, including explorations of various forms, causes, and justifications of violence, along with alternatives to violence. Peace, understood as freedom to pursue opportunities and not merely as freedom from violence, is intimately related to justice. Any genuine attempt to understand and promote peace requires addressing issues of injustice as both (...) a form and cause of violence. In exploring the nature of peace, it is useful to comprehend the connections among conflict, violence, and force. Violence seems to be universal, and efforts to eliminate it seem futile. Examples of choosing not to kill or engage in violence belie the claim that violence is natural for humans. Indeed, Star Trek is replete with examples of how to respond to violence in nonviolent ways. (shrink)

Philosophers and other thinkers have pondered tough questions about the nature of reality for thousands of years. Now, science seems to be discovering increasing support for this ancient concept, and Star Trek's holodeck technology offers great insights into understanding both old and new theories about what's real. The accumulation of data over the last twenty‐five years from a variety of scientific fields reveals that the reality seems to be holographic in nature. On the holodeck, there are two types (...) of people: players, like Data pretending to be Henry V or Sherlock Holmes, and non‐player characters (NPCs), holographic people created to interact with the players. Traditional mystical approaches offer the examples of prophets, saints, and saviors as similar to these holocharacters, with some traditions even providing teachings and techniques for individuals who seek to overcome their own holoprogramming. (shrink)

Utilitarianism is the theory that whether an action is morally right or wrong depends entirely on how beneficial or harmful it will be for everyone involved, only the net balance of benefit and harm matters. Most utilitarians believe that the only thing valuable in itself is happiness, and the only thing bad in itself is suffering; so, to maximize utility is to maximize happiness and minimize suffering. Utilitarians would be baffled by the common Vulcan view that emotions are best gotten (...) rid of. According to utilitarianism, the duty to put the needs of the many ahead of the needs of the few extends even to people one has personal relationships with, like friends and family. The protagonists of the Star Trek franchise would seem to agree, as they generally place personal loyalty over public duty. (shrink)

Clears up misconceptions about irrationalism and looks at madness, dreams, laughter, genius, imagination, altered states, and emotions.

Clears up misconceptions about irrationalism and looks at madness, dreams, laughter, genius, imagination, altered states, and emotions.

In a Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, Cpt. Picard is captured and trapped on a planet with an alien captain who speaks a language incompatible with the universal translator, based on their societal historical metaphors. According to Shapiro (2004), the concept of a universal translator removes everything alien from alien languages, and since the Tamarian language refers only to their historical and cultural archetypes, Picard can only establish dialogue by invoking human analogues, such as Gilgamesh. The purpose (...) of this paper is threefold. First, we will tie such communication to standard cognitive models in cognitive linguistics, pioneered by Lakoff and Johnson (1980) and Lakoff (1987). Second, we will show that metaphorical imaging resembling the Tamarian language is already present in our culture, by analyzing Dawkins's (1982) notion of a meme, who presupposes that memes as cultural living structures physically reside in the brain, and comparing that to a common format of a meme in pop culture. We will also contrast this concept with living natural languages such as Wolaytta, using a great number of proverbs, which can be seen as desemanticized metaphors that are used to embody different domains of the social realm of life (Make et al. 2014). Third, we will compare the notion of such a language with the current state of machine-learning and deep-learning techniques for natural language processing of metaphorical phrases, pinpointing that even deep learning today is powerless without sufficient training datasets (cf. Perifanos et al. 2020) or specific known word contexts and embeddings (Rei et al. 2017), compared to the same situation the universal translator was faced with when dealing with the Tamarian language. (shrink)

This Handbook maps a central terrain of philosophy, and provides the definitive guide to it. An illustrious team of philosophers explore the concept of a reason to do or believe something, in order to determine what these reasons are and how they work. And they investigate the nature of 'normative' claims about what we ought to do or believe.

There are three components to boundary objects as outlined in the original 1989 article. Interpretive flexibility, the structure of informatic and work process needs and arrangements, and, finally, the dynamic between ill-structured and more tailored uses of the objects. Much of the use of the concept has concentrated on the aspect of interpretive flexibility and has often mistaken or conflated this flexibility with the process of tacking back-and-forth between the ill-structured and well-structured aspects of the arrangements. Boundary objects are not (...) useful at just any level of scale or without full consideration of the entire model. The article discusses these aspects of the architecture of boundary objects and includes a discussion of one of the ways that boundary objects appeared as a concept in earlier work done by Star. It concludes with methodological considerations about how to study the system of boundary objects and infrastructure. (shrink)

Is there an objective moral standard that applies to all our actions? To what extent should I sacrifice my own interests for the sake of others? How might philosophers of the past help us think about contemporary ethical problems? As the most recent addition to the Blackwell Readings in Philosophy series, History of Ethics: Essential Readings with Commentary brings together rich and varied excerpts of canonical work and contemporary scholarship to span the history of Western moral philosophy in one volume. (...) Editors Star and Crisp, noted scholars in their fields, expertly introduce the readings to illuminate the main philosophical ideas and arguments in each selection, and connect them to broader themes. These detailed and incisive editorial commentaries make the primary source texts accessible to students while guiding them chronologically through the history of Western ethics. Structured around a thematic table of contents divided into three distinct sections, History of Ethics charts patterns in the development of ethical thought across time to highlight connections between intellectual movements. Selections range from the work of well-known figures such as Plato, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Mill to the work of philosophers often overlooked by such anthologies, including Butler, Smith, Sidgwick, Anscombe, Foot, and Frankena. Star and Crisp skillfully arrange the collection to connect readings to contemporary issues and interests by featuring examples such as Aquinas on self-defense and the doctrine of double effect, Kant on virtue, and Mill’s The Subjection of Women. Written for students and scholars of ethics, History of Ethics is a comprehensive collection of readings with expert editorial commentary that curates the most important and influential work in the history of ethics in the Western world. (shrink)

Daniel Whiting’s excellent new book, The Range of Reasons (2022), makes a number of noteworthy contributions to the philosophical literature on reasons and normativity. A good deal has been written on normative reasons, and it is no easy thing to make novel and promising arguments. Yet, this is what Whiting manages to do. We are sympathetic to some of his ideas and critical of others. It makes sense for us to focus on the first half of his book, where Whiting (...) presents two accounts of normative reasons (the first superseded by, although possibly also compatible with, the second). We welcome this opportunity to clarify our own current views on the nature of normative reasons by contrasting them with Whiting’s views. (shrink)

Chenyang Li argues, in an article originally published in Hypatia, that the ethics of care and Confucian ethics constitute similar approaches to ethics. The present paper takes issue with this claim. It is more accurate to view Confucian ethics as a kind of virtue ethics, rather than as a kind of care ethics. In the process of criticizing Li's claim, the distinctiveness of care ethics is defended, against attempts to assimilate it to virtue ethics.

Knowing Better presents a novel solution to the problem of reconciling the seemingly conflicting perspectives of ordinary virtue and normative ethics. Normative ethics is a sophisticated, open-ended philosophical enterprise that attempts to articulate and defend highly general ethical principles. Such principles aspire to specify our reasons, and tell us what it is right to do. However, it is not plausible to suppose that virtuous people in general follow such philosophical principles. These principles are difficult to articulate and assess, and we (...) do not think that advanced philosophical expertise is a necessary requirement for virtue. At the same time, the virtuous do not only accidentally get things right; rather, they act well in a reliable fashion, and they do so by responding appropriately to genuine reasons. Daniel Star argues that the solution to this problem requires a new approach to understanding the relation between ethical theory and ordinary deliberation, a new way of thinking about the nature of practical authority and normative reasons, a new account of the nature of virtue, and a rethinking of how best to understand the role that knowledge plays in deliberation and action. (shrink)

This paper explores the generally overlooked relevance of an important contemporary debate in mainstream epistemology to philosophers working within ethics on questions concerning moral knowledge. It is argued that this debate, between internalists and externalists about the accessibility of epistemic justification, has the potential to be both significantly influenced by, and have a significant impact upon, the study of moral knowledge. The moral sphere provides a particular type of strong evidence in favour of externalism, and mainstream epistemologists might benefit from (...) paying attention to this fact. At the same time, the terrain of moral epistemology (approached as a sub-field of metaethics) needs to be reshaped by the realisation that externalists can steal the thunder of intuitionists when it comes to knowledge constituted by seemingly self-evident beliefs.1. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to introduce a two level account of moral thinking that, unlike other accounts, does justice to three very plausible propositions that seem to form an inconsistent triad: (1) People can be morally virtuous without the aid of philosophy. (2) Morally virtuous people non-accidentally act for good reasons, and work out what it is that they ought to do on the basis of considering such reasons. (3) Philosophers engaged in the project of normative ethics are (...) not wasting their time when they search after highly general moral principles which could not be discovered or be justifiably accepted through non-philosophical thinking, and which specify the good reasons that virtuous people act on, as well as provide a criterion or criteria for determining what it is that people ought to do. (shrink)

Star Trek is a series of philosophical thought experiments that challenges viewers to arrive at consistent positions about some of life's toughest questions. It isn't an exaggeration to say that, with very few exceptions, Star Trek has done more to teach audiences about the nuances of reality, science, morality, and friendship than any other show in the history of television. Casuistry is a method of analysis that makes use of case studies, either real or fictional; in (...) order to examine what should happen in similar real‐life situations. The combination of science and fiction creates three virtues that Star Trek's creative team pushes to their boundaries in order to constantly engage viewers to be active watchers and thinkers. This chapter considers two prime examples of Star Trek's use of casuistry to make tangible contributions to important philosophical discussions. (shrink)

Star Trek is fundamentally about the triumph of the human spirit. Star Trek envisions a future in which humans have put away their petty differences to explore the cosmos, supported by an egalitarian society founded on the dignity of individuals and the loftiness of the human spirit, all the while boldly moralizing through progressive ideas. While exploring a hypergiant star, the Enterprise encounters the ship of an unknown species: the Vissians, which has a third gender, (...) called a cogenitor. Philosophers such as Immanuel Kant and Plato imagine morality as timeless and changeless, something that any rational being can understand. Vice and virtue may be compared to sounds, colors, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind. Hume believes that facts and values are always separate things. (shrink)

Star Trek is a successful popular cultural endeavor because it allows for exactly different kind of imaginative escapism, the possibility of joining in on an alternative narrative. In “The City on the Edge of Forever”, the Enterprise orbits a mysterious planet, where on its surface someone or something is causing temporal and spatial displacement. This chapter uses Romanticism as a philosophical gateway to the sublime experience that is the Guardian of Forever. The Guardian of Forever is the cause (...) of the spatial displacement and ripples in time that shake the Enterprise at the episode's beginning. Friedrich Nietzsche in his writings on Greek history, adopted the Romantic attitude toward the past by suggesting there are certain meaningful archetypes in the Greek past: in the context of “City on the Edge”, James T. Kirk represents the Tragic Hero, Spock the Apollonian figure, and McCoy the Dionysian figure. (shrink)