Everyday Ethics

Hello all,

It’s been a little slow in the world of every day ethics, which I figure means one of three things:

1.  We’re in some sort of lull with regard to ethical issues in the news, perhaps explained by the looming onset of summer, where everyone seems to calm down just a bit.

2.  I’ve become some sort of ethical genius, with no serious ethical issues arising in my personal life.

3.  I’m not paying attention particularly well.

I tend to think that the problem is more #3 than the other two, but perhaps it’s a bit of 1 and 3.  Clearly not #2, lets get that straight right off the bat.

In any event, since I’m not feeling particularly inspired to write about issues of every day ethics, I’ll take just a moment to promote an upcoming talk that I’ll be giving.

The University of Colorado at Boulder hosts its Fifth Annual Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress on August 9-12 in Boulder, Colorado.  It’s a great lineup, and I’m fortunate to be a part of it.

I’ll be presenting a paper that comes out of some of my dissertation research, though not a line of thinking that I’m still pursuing.  In the paper, I argue that:

-in general, we should think of actions for which we are morally responsible as a subset of actions which are self-expressive

-in particular, certain compatibilists about moral responsibility are committed to this view, on pain of defending a view that is both mysterious and incompatible with our best developmental account of moral agency.

-this result makes it unclear why actions for which we are morally responsible are the biographically important, value-adding feature of our lives that these particular compatibilists claim it to be.

I’ll post a copy of this paper over at my Academia.edu page after June 15th, so feel free to click over and check it out if you’re interested.

Maybe I’ll see you in Boulder!

About the Author

Elijah Weber is a graduate student at Bowling Green State University. He holds a Master's degree in philosophy from Colorado State University, and Bachelor’s degrees in sociology and philosophy from Chapman University. He currently lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan with his wife Laura, his son Brandon, and two cats.