Philosophy Now Forum

Pragmatism The practical consequences. Which might be seen as merely making a wheel that goes round. Or merely assuming that an object is good because it works and represents technological progress. But as an ethical value it relates to other values, and society, either by absence or its presence. A...

Rules
In the current rancorous row over the anti-value of racism.
It is forgotten that Ethics is about Values.
Practical rules cannot define a value. they merely provide fashionable approximations.
For Christians it may be appropriate to mention that he talked more about values than rules.

The British don’t understand freedom, he said as he shot his neighbour.
A society of individual freedom has limited individual tolerance.
A society of shared tolerance has limited freedom.
A society with no liberty has no individualism.

Corbyn – Compare and Equate Is it not dangerous ethically to employ the term compare, when what is meant is equate. Everything on earth can and should be compared, and to say something equates is a comparison. If we cannot compare ourselves to Facism then free-discussion as against free-speech is be...

Liberty
Diagrammatically, Liberty is an ethical dimension opposed to tyranny
As a dimension it may be seen as extending from Freedom to Tolerance
Freedom as a value of an egotistical libertine society – and consonant end values.
Tolerance as a value of altruistic society – and consonant end values.

Freedom of Religion
If we have as an end value and live in altruist-democracy.
Religions with contrary values cannot be tolerated.
The term that is applicable is, as ever that of Tolerance.
Freedom as an isolated value is ethically ambiguous.

Equality – Rights - Duty Tendentious people employ the terms Equality and Freedom to justify anything their egos see fit to demand. For an Altruist Democracy, equality should be seen as a balance of Rights and Duties for people and corporate bodies including national states. If British people have a...

Globalisation as a Value Globalisation is a modern aspiration and as such may be some kind of ethical value. But it appears to be even more ambiguous than basic values in general. It can represent any kind of horror story according to how various knaves make use of it. Alexander the Great was one of...

Holism and Reductionism and Polls One great mistake we can make in ethics is to employ reductionist thinking where we should use holism, and the reverse. Nelson is not lauded by England as a person, but as an admiral in a particular set of situations. From an English holistic viewpoint he did us gre...

Fetal Rights and Citizenship Citizenship presumably begins at birth for the simple reason of the child being obviously a separate person at that point. We have more advanced knowledge today of fetal development. A person needs to be defined by its development and possession of faculties, and the foe...

Love and Anger Love is opposed to hate, and anger to calmness. But it is fashionable today to use Love as if it is an ethical value. In reality it is a passion that with anger etc may be used in conjunction with morality to express approval and disapproval in righteous anger. Self-serving people may...

Rhetoric of Homonyms Some words as spelt are exactly the same in pronunciation. This forms the basis of much confused and dangerous rhetoric. Faith, and faith, are quite distinctly two terms but, more often than not conflated. The term, Faith, tends to be employed as denoting a religion, or system o...

Eternal value should signify universal value, applicable to all human societies, not some ethereal figment. Both elementary and end values appear to be relevant to all communities of sapient creatures. There will be some people who are incapable of understanding these values, but their community wou...

Society, Religion, Homosexuality et al. We live in a society or polity based more on whimsical fashion than on philosophy. A society based on the agenda or god of a religion, will judge individuals according to their obedience to that agenda. There would be no prior idea of virtue. Therefore, partic...

The Autonomous Democracy As the sides of a triangle relate to its angles so do elemenary ethical values relate to end values. The whole of sapient universal life and what it surveys, is the subject of ethics and described by its ethics. Human life on this planet exists in an ethical relationship wit...