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In a series of posts this semester, I am blogging all (or almost all) the lecture topics for the two Philosophical Ethics classes I am teaching this semester. Each of these posts primarily explicates the reading or a theme that dominated class discussion in a way that should be accessible to novices (such as my [...]
Archive for the ‘Authority’ Category
Philosophical Ethics: Hobbes On The Source Of Authority
October 4th, 2009 
Daniel Fincke 
Posted in Authoritarianism, Authority, Cultural Secularism, Ethics, Featured, Historical Philosophy, Moral Psychology, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Political Secularism, Politics, Secularism 
Tags: "State of Nature", An Unjust Law Is Not A Law", Aquinas, Augustine, Bella Contra Omnes, Divine Command Theory, Free Rider Problem, Hobbes' Cardinal Virtues of War, Martin Luther King Jr, Monarchism, Moral Authority, Political Philosophy, Prisoner's Dilemma, Social Contract Theory, Sovereigns, Thomas Hobbes, Voluntarism 
No Comments »Camels With Hammers Philosophy
September 27th, 2009 Daniel Fincke After this introductory paragraph, every sentence in this post will summarize and link a different post expressing my views, primarily on topics related to atheism, philosophy, and ethics—which are the primary preoccupations of this blog. I am organizing all of these links into this one summary statement of “Camels With Hammers’ Philosophy.” This post will [...]
Posted in About This Blog, Applied Ethics, Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Authoritarianism, Authority, Autonomy, Christianity, Contemporary Ethics, Cultural Secularism, Duty, Epistemology, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Faith, Featured, Fundamentalism, God, Historical Ethics, Historical Philosophy, Homophobia, Homosexuality, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Metaethics, Metaphysics, Moral Psychology, Nietzsche, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Political Secularism, Politics, Psychology, Religion and Science, Religious Extremism, Religious Rights, Religious Secularism, Secularism, Sociobiology, Teleology, Virtues, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Camels With Hammers 3 Comments »On Unjustifiably Leveraging One’s Credibility
August 18th, 2009 Daniel Fincke WIC writes this reply to recent remarks I made to him. I am only quoting here the portion I specifically address, to read his counter to me in its entirety, click here. The question then becomes whether or not Collins is truly ‘sloppy’ outside the lab in regards to religion. You, Harris, Myers, and other [...]
Disambiguating Faith: The Threatening Abomination Of The Faithless
August 14th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Faith is a form of loyalty. But more than that, faith is a form of trust which does not calibrate itself to objective standards of trustworthiness but trusts people despite their limitations as provably trustworthy people or even despite counter-evidence to the notion that they are worthy of trust at all. Even more than that, however, faith [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Authority, Disambiguating Faith, Ethics, Faith, Featured, Fundamentalism, Moral Psychology, Philosophy, Religion, Religious Moderates, Secularism Tags: Faithfulness, Faithlessness, God as Personification of Tradition, God as Proxy For Tradition, Godlessness, Loyalty, Morality as Tradition, Religious Liberals, Tradition, Traditionalism, Trust 19 Comments »The Evolutionary Advantages And Present Disadvantages Of Our Conformist Minds
August 1st, 2009 Daniel Fincke John Wilkins has a good post on the value of our minds’ readinesses to defer to authorities from an evolutionary standpoint: The evolutionary justification for this is, of course the following: if evolution were a designer, trying to ensure that thinking beings learned and knew what they had to to survive, a cheaper rule than [...]
For God or Morality? On Those Who’d Hold Morality Hostage For Faith
August 1st, 2009 Daniel Fincke In his recent critique of Francis Collins, the Christian Evangelical and geneticist recently appointed by Obama to head the National Institutes of Health, Sam Harris referenced the slides from one of Collins’s speeches. I want to take two posts (but possibly more if there are comments or if I otherwise have extra relevant ideas on [...]
Posted in Atheism, Atheistic Ethics, Authority, Christianity, Epistemic Justification, Epistemology, Ethics, Faith, Francis Collins, Fundamentalism, God, Metaethics, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Psychology, Rationalism, Religion, Secularism, Uncategorized, Why I Am Not A Christian Tags: Divine Command Theory, Fideism, Galileo, Moral Justification, Moral Objectivity, Nihilism, Religious Divided Loyalties, Religious Moral Equivalence, Sam Harris, The Argument From Morality, Voluntarism 4 Comments »Further Towards A “Non-Moral” Standard Of Ethical Evaluation
July 17th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In reply to a recent post, Tyler writes: Your definition of ethics and morality is well taken and allows for further interesting debate on culture and moral systems but it still requires assumption of benefit. Defining phrases like “fully flourishing life” and “most excellent characters we can develop” require a standard of evaluation which I [...]
Posted in Authority, Duty, Ethical Pluralism, Uncategorized Tags: Arete, Atheistic Ethics, Autonomy, Care, Equality, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Excellence, Fairness, Fruits and Ladders, Harm, Human Flourishing, Ingroup Loyalty, Jonathan Haidt, Justice, Metaethics, Moral Goods, Moral Psychology, Moralism, Motives, Non-Moral Goods, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Purity, Quality vs. Quantity, Sociobiology, Tyler Samien, Values, Virtues 8 Comments »You Are Not A Bible Character
July 12th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Father Stephen Freeman gives a well-deserved epistemological and moral rebuke to the haphazard, self-serving, and hermeneutically arbitrary way that Mark Sanford, like many other religious people throughout history, has taken biblical stories as justifications for his decisions: The problem with such use of Biblical imagination is that it simply has no controlling story. Nothing tells [...]
Towards A “Non-Moral” Standard Of Ethical Evaluation
July 6th, 2009 Daniel Fincke In a previous post, I raised some remarks from psychologist of morality Jonathan Haidt, in which he discussed his theory that moral thinking appeals to 5 essential modules hardwired into our brains by evolution. In the interview I cited from a couple of years ago he only referred to 4 of the 5 modules but [...]
Posted in Atheistic Ethics, Authority, Autonomy, Duty, Ethical Pluralism, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Metaethics, Moral Psychology, Morality, Philosophical Ethics, Philosophy, Sociobiology, Virtues Tags: Arete, Aristotle, Care, Equality, Excellence, Fairness, Harm, Human Flourishing, Immanuel Kant, Ingroup Loyalty, Jonathan Haidt, Justice, Moral Goods, Moralism, Motives, Nietzsche, Non-Moral Goods, Purity, Thomas Hurka, Tyler Samien, Values, Virtues 9 Comments »Against Faith and In Defense of Naturalism and Induction
June 30th, 2009 Daniel Fincke It should not be necessary for understanding this post, but in case you’d like to catch up on the full debate with Camels With Hammer Reader/Debate Spar Extraordinaire Shane leading up to this post, here are the previous installments: Objections to Religious Moderates and Intellecuals 1 Objections to Religious Moderates and Intellectuals 2 Objections to [...]
Posted in Atheism, Authoritarianism, Authority, Evidence, Faith, God, Miracles, Naturalism, Philosophy, Philosophy of Science, Religion Tags: Anomalies, Christology, Hume, Inductive Reasoning, Justification, Non Overlapping Magisterium, Philosophy, Propitiation, Religion, Supernaturalism, Superstition, Trinity No Comments »Objections To Religious Moderates and Intellectuals (part 3)
June 25th, 2009 Daniel Fincke Shane’s reply to this post addressing him (and you can find part 1 which initiated the conversation here): An excellent response! Much more in-depth than my teasing comment probably warranted. Sorry, but my response is a bit rambling. That comes with the blog commenting genre, I think. My earlier point wasn’t about intellectual virtues or [...]
Posted in Atheism, Authority, Education, Epistemology, Intellectual Vices, Intellectual Virtues, Philosophy, Psychology, Religion, Religious Moderates, Uncategorized, Virtues Tags: Artists, Bultmann, Epistemology, Myth, Philosophy, Religion, Religious Education, Religious Intellectuals, Standards of Evidence, Uncategorized No Comments »
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