Category Archives: metaphysics

Genocide, Nazi ‘morality’ and Moral Truth 1-2

If anything is morally wrong without qualification, it is genocide. I think the same about torture and abuse of children. Can I imagine being raised in a culture in which ‘I’ would think otherwise? Well, I suppose we can imagine many things. But I don’t know what the implications for ethics are.

Do we perceive real things, or just our representations of them?

This talk of “transcendental reality” distinct from “empirical reality” (the reality investigated by science and experienced by humans) is suspect, to say the least, unless you happen to be a Kantian or believer in transcendence of some kind.
I have great trouble accepting the claim by some people that they can “climb out of their minds” to the realm of the transcendent (whether this is a philosophical, metaphysical, or mystical claim); hence, I stand with the thinking of Richard Rorty, John Dewey, William James, Hilary Putnam and Donald Davidson on this issue.

PHILOSOPHY, SCIENTISM, AND DEEP REALITY?

There is plenty in philosophical literature which is not just analysis or elaboration of the work of science, and which is not modeled on science. What I stress is that philosophical discourse should at least strive for honesty, clarity and coherence, and that philosophers should not make obscurity a virtue, and should not offer vagueness and equivocation as profundity. I don’t have much patience for the pretentious type of speculative metaphysics which often parades as profound philosophy.