Category Archives: Uncategorized

Religious freedom is a liberty right and not a claim right.  Therefore, the freedom to pursue religion does not give anyone a right to be subsidized, either directly or indirectly.   Indeed, subsidizing religion directly or indirectly violates the religious freedom … Continue reading →

One fact that seems to support relativism is that people do disagree about moral issues and that some of the disagreements correlate with cultural backgrounds. It supports it provided there are no alternative explanations. I have an alternative explanation. First, … Continue reading →

Ethical thought must take into account what Darwinian nature has made of us, and political provision must be made for that. But nothing ethical per se—nothing good or bad or even meaningful is to be found there. Same old criticism of … Continue reading →

There are many different moral codes.   Logically, at most one can be true and, possibly, all are false, unless morality is a matter of taste.   Relativism claims that more than one is true.  Therefore, relativism entails that morality is a … Continue reading →

So far, in arguing against relativism, I have pointed out that the “evidence” for it becomes less impressive when we do not give excessive credence to views held on religious grounds, when we dismiss so-called “revelations” when there is no … Continue reading →

Organisms vary in a wide range of ways.  There is no such thing as a species essence. Let us assume that morality says something other than that an organism should do what maximizes its genetic legacy.   If that was what … Continue reading →

In an earlier post, I argued that a plausible meta-ethical theory must explain impartiality in a world in which adaptations on their own would result in moral agents who were partial.   I did this in order to argue that the … Continue reading →

There are people who call themselves new natural lawyers.  The old natural law supported certain moral conclusions on the basis of certain arguments.  The arguments provided by the old natural law turned out to provide inadequate support for the results.  … Continue reading →

Although the fact that there are many moral theories does not mean that there is no such thing as morality, it would be good to reduce their number.   It can be done by specifying the characteristics that a plausible moral … Continue reading →

I have had students who have noted the many philosophical theories of morality and who have inferred that there is no truth of the matter.  If so, we might as well be relativists in order to avoid pointless arguments. But … Continue reading →