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HomeUpcoming EventsAlex King (SUNY-Buffalo/ANU): The Amoralist and The Anaesthetic
Alex King (SUNY-Buffalo/ANU): The Amoralist and the Anaesthetic

*Note unusual location*

Moral motivational internalism - the view that there's a necessary connection between judgments that an action is right or good, and motivation to do it - is pretty controversial. Attacks have often come in the form of various amoralists, i.e., those who sincerely judge that an action is right without being motivated to perform that action. Rather than tackle this debate head-on, I'll come at it from the side by discussing aesthetics. I'll discuss moral motivation internalism and a kindred spirit, normative motivational internalism - a parallel thesis about normative judgments. I'll argue that aesthetics, while genuinely normative, doesn't seem to fit an internalist mold, since an analog of the amoralist, whom I call the anaesthetic, clearly exists. Regardless of how compelling one finds the parallel between morality and aesthetics, the comparison sheds light on the internalism debate in a number of interesting ways.

Date & time

  • Mon 20 Jul 2015, 12:30 pm - 2:00 pm

Location

Coombs Seminar Room A

Event Series

MSPT seminars