A Quick Look: The Debate Surrounding Ethical Vegetarianism

Defenses of ethical vegetarianism take various forms and can be based in a wide variety of moral theories. In this post, I present three common defenses of ethical vegetarianism and also describe two more contemporary defenses of eating meat.

A Quick Look: Consequentialism and the Problem of Alienation

Do our commonsense conceptions of love and friendship undermine the core features of consequentialism? Or can evaluating relationships in terms of consequences allow for genuine love and friendship? Find out what some philosophers have to say in this week’s post.

A Quick Look: Exploring Objective List Theories of Well-being

Whether young or old, many have often wondered what is ultimately good for people. In other words, what theory of well-being appropriately captures what is meant by our claims of the general goodness of someone’s life? In my newest post, I explore objective list theories of well-being, both their criticisms and defenses.

A Quick Look: Mackie’s Error Theory and Moral Anti-realism

Do objective moral values exist? Or are they fictions that are incompatible with the natural world? Let’s take a quick look at what some philosophers have to say.

Engel’s Coherence Grounding Justification Is Not Successful

Introduction In his paper, Coherentism and the Epistemic Justification of Moral Beliefs, Mylan Engel Jr. argues for what I refer to as Coherence Grounding Justification (CGJ), “that grounding particular moral judgments on our core moral convictions and other core nonmoral beliefs is, indeed, a legitimate way to justify moral judgments.”[1] To demonstrate this, he uses an example,

Sidgwick’s Prudence is Too Demanding

Introduction Henry Sidgwick considers three axioms to be self-evident moral principles.[1] In this post I will only use two of them: the Axiom of Prudence, which states that we should be impartial about different times in our own lives; and the Maxim of Benevolence[2], which states that we should regard the good of others impartially, that

Objective Moral Truths Can Motivate…Sometimes

The Problem Within the debate between objective and subjective views of morality, a question persists if objective moral truths can motivate moral agents to act. For the purposes of this post I will not address the larger debate since, while relevant, is not the core of the matter for the question being asked. We first