It is common to hear that deep ecology “has reached its logical conclusion and exhausted itself” in a vacuous anthropomorphism and absurd nonanthropocentrism. These conclusions should be rejected. Properly understood, neither objection poses a serious problem for deep ecology so much as for the ethic of “ecological holism” which some philosophers—wrongly—have taken to arise from deep ecology. Deep ecology is not such an ethic, but is best understood as an aesthetically articulated conception of what, following Robinson Jeffers, may be called (...) “Wild Mind,” and such a Wild Mind is characterized—not criticized and condemned—by just that anthropomorphism and nonanthropocentrism critics focus on when they attack the ethic of ecological holism. (shrink)

We argue that two main accounts of hypocrisy— the deception-based and the moral-non-seriousness-based account—fail to capture a specific kind of hypocrite who is morally serious and sincere "all the way down." The kind of hypocrisy exemplified by this hypocrite is irreducible to deception, self-deception or a lack of moral seriousness. We call this elusive and peculiar kind of hypocrisy, pure hypocrisy. We articulate the characteristics of pure hypocrisy and describe the moral psychology of two kinds of pure hypocrites.

To take the idea of a non-anthropocentric ethic of nature seriously is to abandon morality itself. The idea of humanity is not an optional extra for moral seriousness. Non-anthropocentric environmental ethicists mistake the kind of value non-human entities may bear. It is not moral value, but aesthetic value.

Many deep ecologists call for a 'new ecological ethic'. If this ethic is meant to be a moral ethic, then deep ecology fails. However if deep ecology is interpreted as an aesthetic movement, then it is both philosophically coherent and practically adequate.

It is a common enough view that market agents are self-interested, not benevolent or altruistic – call this market egoism – and that this is morally defensible, even morally required. There are two styles of defence – utilitarian and deontological – and while they differ, they confront a common problem. This is the availability problem. The problem is that the more successful the moral justification of self-interested economic activity, the less there is for the justification to draw upon. Religious justifications (...) of market egoism at least make a stab at dealing with the problem; secular accounts typically do not. (shrink)

Invisible Hand accounts of the operations of the competitive market are often thought to have two implications for morality as it confronts economic life. First, explanantions of agents economic activities eschew constitutive appeal to moral notions; and second, such moralism is pernicious insofar as it tends to undermine the operations of a socially valuable social process. This is the Mandevillean Conceit. The Conceit rests on an avarice-only reading of the profit-motive that is mistaken. The avarice-only reading is not the only (...) way of characterising the profit-motive, and there are some positive grounds for thinking the benefits of profit pursuit are better attributed to the “lucrephile”, and not the avarice-only “lucrepath”. (shrink)

Many think doing animal ethics demands we see moral humanism as a speciesist prejudice of the kind found with sexism and racism. The only serious case for this rests on the Argument from Marginal Cases. We find that argument to the point, but show that properly understood it supports humanism. Understanding why it does this lets us see how we ought to go on in animal ethics.

Socialists and defenders of laissez-faire share the view that in the market agents pursue their self-interest, not the good of others. On this basis, socialists reject the market as an arena of immorality, while laissez-faire theorists attempt to defuse the charge by relying on the providential consequences of the "invisible hand," However, both stances presuppose a view of morality that too sharply separates self-interest and altruism. Some try to separate the economic arui morality into discrete spheres. In contrast, a compatibilist (...) account shows the ways a concern for personal profit and a concern for others can come together. Such a motivationalist approach allows one to re-conceive the "invisible hand." It is no longer a serendipitous justification of the merely self-interested, but an invitation to think of the various mixtures of altruism and self-interest required to produce those results that may commend the market. (shrink)

When it comes to morality, the New Atheists appear to think that their rejection of religion, except for the removal of fundamentalist distortions, changes nothing. We think that this is because they have not thought things through. Atheism might not be a threat to shame morality, but it is certainly a threat to guilt morality. Given that there are reasons to doubt the viability today of shame morality, we face a far greater problem if atheism triumphs than the New Atheists (...) admit. (shrink)

When it comes to morality, the New Atheists appear to think that their rejection of religion, except for the removal of fundamentalist distortions, changes nothing. We think that this is because they have not thought things through. Atheism might not be a threat to shame morality, but it is certainly a threat to guilt morality. Given that there are reasons to doubt the viability today of shame morality, we face a far greater problem if atheism triumphs than the New Atheists (...) admit. (shrink)

Book Information A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice. A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice Raimond Gaita London Routledge 2000 xxxi, 293 Hardback £17.99 By Raimond Gaita. Routledge. London. Pp. xxxi, 293. Hardback:£17.99.

To take the idea of a non-anthropocentric ethic of nature seriously is to abandon morality itself. The idea of humanity is not an optional extra for moral seriousness. Non-anthropocentric environmental ethicists mistake the kind of value non-human entities may bear. It is not moral value, but aesthetic value.

Bernard Williams says that 'the characteristic and basic expression of a moral disposition in deliberation is not a premise which refers to that disposition'. If this means that we can never properly self-ascribe virtues and deliberate from this, then Williams is wrong. To deny this possibility is to be committed to either of two positions, neither of which is all that attractive (and certainly not attractive to Williams). The first position demands that virtue cannot know itself; while the second rests (...) on the pessimistic view that morality itself can demand of us our moral identity. (shrink)

Environmental politics needs more than piecemeal institutional efforts and more than calls for a set of 'new' values. It needs a realistic, comprehensive, and effective policy programme. Such a programme can be derived from a conjunction of Hardin's work on the 'tragedy of the commons' and Beck's analysis of the 'risk society', and involves exploiting the possibilities for the internalisation of risk provided by the insurance and reinsurance industries. Such exploitation requires tailored changes to the politico-legal environment, enforcing strict liability (...) for the production of risk, permitting any and all agents adversely effected by such negative externalities to initiate action for damages. The aim is not to clog up social and economic life with endless legal disputation, but through such a threat to ensure that environmentally significant investment and productive strategies are actively constrained by actuarially calculated strategies for risk internalisation. (shrink)

Book Information A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice. A Common Humanity: Thinking about Love and Truth and Justice Raimond Gaita London Routledge 2000 xxxi, 293 Hardback £17.99 By Raimond Gaita. Routledge. London. Pp. xxxi, 293. Hardback:£17.99.

The 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury drew on the naturalism of Locke to open up a naturalistic reading of experience conceived as a matter of reality revealing pattern perception that was lost to view in the impact of subsequent idealist readings of Locke's epistemology offered by Bishop Berkeley (1685–1753) and David Hume (1711–1776). This essay recovers and explicates Shaftesbury's alternative to idealist conceptions of pattern making.

Philosophical Investigations, Volume 45, Issue 4, Page 471-489, October 2022.

Often a concern for truthfulness becomes the celebration of radical truthfulness, where this involves both the utter refusal of deception and that all moral and political beliefs be fit to survive publicity. An unfortunate consequence of this is that it has blinded us to a fair and accurate understanding of the nature and role of an important technique of virtue—temperance. Temperance implies a strategy of renunciation and withdrawal from the full content of our psychological lives. It involves us in pursuing (...) and sustaining a practice of deliberative silence about those purposes and ends which, as we see things, threaten us with corruption and the world with evil. (shrink)

In the preface to the Philosophical investigations, Wittgenstein notoriously wrote ‘It is not impossible that it should fall to the lot of this work in its poverty and in the darkness of this time,...

We have built our understanding of politics (the understanding that is today, letting us down) on a one-sided understanding of freedom as the ability or capacity to do as we wish, and have forgotten the role that self-discipline—self-control and self-mastery—have in ensuring real freedom. And we have done this at the same time as losing our capacity to think of polhics in terms of the virtues and vices of our ruling elites. To rectify these connected failures we need to look (...) again at Plato's politics. (shrink)

abstract One sometimes finds leading economic thinkers expounding the metaphysical thesis that the ultimate ethical value of an object reflects nothing about the properties of the object in itself and instead reflects the subjective tastes of the valuer. Could anything in economics qua economics provide a warrant for such ethical subjectivism? And what might tempt economists to speak on such broadly meta‐ethical issues? In this paper we argue that a partial explanation for the subjectivist cast‐of‐mind of much economic theory is (...) to be found in the recent history of price formation theory. (We focus in particular on the so‐called ‘Marginalist’ and ‘Ordinalist’ Revolutions in price theory.) We argue that although such price formation theory provides no warrant for drawing ethical subjectivist conclusions, it does provide an explanation as to why such conclusions might be drawn. Thus we explore how the particular history of the development of what is called ‘value theory’ might well lead one (albeit unwarrantedly) towards ethical subjectivism. (shrink)