Dear all, Nakul Krishna (Cambridge) will be speaking at the next meeting of the Moral Sciences Club with a talk titled *Two Conceptions of Common-Sense Morality. *The abstract for this talk is below:
*The notion of ‘common-sense morality’ has, from the mid-nineteenth century onward, constituted the naïve backdrop to moral philosophy. Moral philosophers have standardly construed the aims of ethics in terms of the interpretation and critique of common-sense morality. In this, they have adopted a method self-consciously defended by Henry Sidgwick in his influential book The Methods of Ethics (1874). Sidgwick saw himself practising philosophy in a basically Socratic tradition, working out what ‘we’ believe and subjecting those beliefs to criticisms in the light of our other beliefs, and more general theoretical considerations. I shall argue that Sidgwick’s focus on finding criteria for right and wrong action drew attention away from two things Socrates acknowledged: that much about our ethical outlooks is poorly captured in our beliefs, and that our ethical beliefs (when we have them) are often not beliefs about right and wrong. Coming to understand the historical contingency of Sidgwick’s approach to ethics can help us to pose the question of what, if anything, is lost in conceiving of ethics as Sidgwick did? Are there other ways in which modern ethics could be Socratic?* The meeting will be held on Tuesday the 27th from 2.30 until 4.15 in Sidgwick Hall in Newnham College. The meeting will be followed by tea and coffee in the philosophy faculty. For those who have not yet paid, there is a yearly membership fee of £7.50 for students and £15 for others (alternatively, students can pay a one-off fee for the meeting of £2 and others can pay a one-off fee of £3). These fees can be paid online (at the following link: http://onlinesales.admin.cam.ac.uk/browse/extra_info.asp?compid=1&modid=1&catid=75&prodvarid=87) or in cash on the day. We look forward to seeing many of you there. Best wishes, Adam Bales and Daisy Dixon -- Daisy Dixon and Adam Bales Secretaries of the Moral Sciences Club Faculty of Philosophy University of Cambridge [email protected] http://www.phil.cam.ac.uk/seminars-phil/seminars-msc _____________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the CamPhilEvents mailing list, or change your membership options, please visit the list information page: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEvents List archive: http://bit.ly/CamPhilEventsArchive Please note that CamPhilEvents doesn't accept email attachments. See the list information page for further details and suggested alternatives.
