This book raises a number of ideas and questions that are both important and interesting. However, it is often unclear what the author thinks about maThis book raises a number of ideas and questions that are both important and interesting. However, it is often unclear what the author thinks about many of them in the end. There are many rhetorical questions—and seemingly many genuine questions also—that are simply left as questions. At many other points we get involved reconstructions of the history of later 20th century feminist thought, without a clear statement of what the upshot of the history is for the contemporary topics at issue. Much of this feels like inside baseball; and I was not sure what the point of it was in a general audience text (as opposed to an academic text aimed at other feminist philosophers).
Finally, there is the issue of empirics. There are many claims of the form 'feminists have argued that social practice x causes y result'. Well, does x actually cause y? Take for instance the effects of pornography on the mental lives and outward behavior of heterosexual men. Despite devoting a whole chapter to pornography, the book offers us very little in the way of empirical analysis. The familiar 'correlation does not imply causation' line is trotted out, and one, *maybe* two studies are briefly mentioned without any substantive discussion (what were the sample sizes in these studies? the p values? did they replicate? What does an up-to-date review of the relevant empirical literature have to say?). Causal inference is notoriously difficult (see https://www.cold-takes.com/does-x-cau... and https://slatestarcodex.com/2014/12/12...), and after reading the chapter on pornography, I don't feel much better informed on the issue than I did going in. ...more
I found this book very helpful to read as an academic philosopher working on Buddhism. I think it would be a difficult read for someone who has not stI found this book very helpful to read as an academic philosopher working on Buddhism. I think it would be a difficult read for someone who has not studied both analytic metaphysics and Buddhism at at least the undergraduate level. I would have preferred a concise presentation of the Madhyamaka view alongside an assessment of its plausibility in the context of contemporary analytic philosophy, as opposed to the details the book offers on textual exegesis and the historical Madhyamaka-Nyaya dialectic; but this simply reflects my own interest in contemporary philosophy over history of philosophy. ...more
I found the empirical points in this book interesting (particularly the psychology of trolleyology). However, I didn’t find its philosophical thesis pI found the empirical points in this book interesting (particularly the psychology of trolleyology). However, I didn’t find its philosophical thesis persuasive. The major worry is that meta-ethics don’t fit well with the ethics.
Greene rejects meta-ethical realism, which I understand as the conjunction of two claims, namely (i) that there are objective, mind-independent moral facts (facts about what is morally right and wrong and valuable and disvaluable) and (ii) that we can (in principle) find these facts out through a priori reflection. So, he goes in for meta-ethical anti-realism, on which (roughly) moral “facts” and reasons are mind-dependent, i.e., dependent on what we happen to care about (being the contingent flesh-and-blood creatures that we are). At the level of normative (i.e. first-order) ethics, Greene goes on to endorse utilitarianism. The problem is that utilitarianism is much more plausible conditional on meta-ethical *realism* than it is on meta-ethical anti-realism.
Utilitarianism violates our intuitions across a variety of cases (witness e.g. Transplant, (Very) Repugnant Conclusion, experience machine, and hedonium, not to mention giving zero non-instrumental normative significance to personal relationships, ground projects, justice, or fairness). That utilitarianism is deeply counterintuitive is not strong evidence against it if meta-ethical realism is true. For if meta-ethical realism is true, there’s no reason to think that normative reality matches up well with our intuitions. (For the objective, mind-independent moral facts might 'stare back at us' in the way that physical reality does (think e.g. of the radically counterintuitive nature of quantum mechanics).) But if meta-ethical anti-realism is true, ethics can’t radically depart from our intuitions. Since utilitarianism does radically depart from our intuitions, it is unlikely given anti-realism.
At other points in the text, Greene retreats to the claim that utilitarianism is just supposed to be a tool for resolving moral disagreement. But if we’ve agreed there are no objective, mind-independent moral facts to which we have epistemic access, and so that we are left (at best) with systematizations of our cares and concerns, why should we allow utilitarianism – which does not do well at capturing many things that most of us care about – to be the arbiter of moral disagreement?...more
Somewhat of a letdown in the wake of Bostrom's prior work. I don't regret reading this, but I also don't know whether I would recommend it. Most of thSomewhat of a letdown in the wake of Bostrom's prior work. I don't regret reading this, but I also don't know whether I would recommend it. Most of the philosophical action occurs in a relatively small percentage of the book; much of it is merely interesting and/or nice-to-know rather than need-to-know. ...more
Loading...
