Mohan Matthen’s post Teleology in Big Systems brought up two options explaining how someone — Tom Nagel in Mind and Cosmos — would choose a teleological explanation over a naturalistic one. The first, below, got me thinking: First, he might be saying that though it is physically possible (by a fluke series of mutations, for example) for mentality to have come about, it would be better explained by teleology. (Let’s call this the “intelligibility” argument.) […]
Month: February 2013
Ethics Oppositions
What comprises an ethical decision according to theory? For the Consequentialist the crux is always in determining and executing the best consequences.* This means that making a consequentialist decision involves two steps. First is to imagine different possible futures and evaluate them. Once the evaluation is done, the consequentialist chooses the future scenario that maximizes the ‘Good’ (or what have you) and works towards realizing that scenario. Being moral is having skill in figuring out […]