Just Right

Here is a trio of short audio interviews with philosophers talking about Aristotle's virtue ethics. All three interviews come from the "Philosophy Bites" podcast.

• Aristotle's ethics
  
  
• Aristotle on happiness
  
  
• Virtues
  

Kant's a Tool

I thought it might help us all if I opened up a post dedicated solely to complaining about how tough the Immanuel Kant reading was. Leave your best Kant insults in the comments of this post.

[can't get enough Kant?]
[smitten by Deontological Ethics?]
[want tips on reading these articles?]

Links Worthy of a Swine

Here are some links that are loosely related to the stuff on happy ethics (utilitarianism) that we are studying.

• A neat little biography of know-it-all John Stuart Mill
• An advanced encyclopedia article on happy ethics and other theories that focus on consequences of an action
• Another dinosaur comic! This one's on utilitarianism!!
  
• There's a lot of psychological research on happiness popping up lately. Here's one overview of the psychology of happiness. And here's a second one.
• There's a great book on the psychology of happiness called Stumbling on Happiness
  
• Recent studies suggest that our baseline level of happiness doesn't change much throughout our life. So, even if we won the lottery, we wouldn't wind up that much happier. This is potentially very depressing news, although some say there's room for some optimism.
• The trolley problem gets brought up a lot when evaluating happy ethics. There's some new research on the psychology of the trolley problem.

So what makes you happy? WaWa? Ping pong? Cookies? Pancake Krimpets?

God Stuff

Here are some links on God Ethics (divine command theory).

• A transcript and audio of the entire F.C. Copleston & Bertrand Russell debate on the existence of God excerpted in our John Arthur reading
  
• A quick explanation of the Euthyphro Dilemma, the big criticism of God Ethics
  
• An advanced overview of God Ethics, again from my favorite free online philosophy encyclopedia
• Lots of philosophy links related to the broader question of whether there is or is not a god
  

Relative to You, But Not to Me

(click to enlarge)

Here are some links on our first topic: are moral claims merely opinions or are they factually based?

• BASIC: a conversation between cartoon dinosaurs on moral relativism
• INTERMEDIATE: a clarification of what moral relativism is and is not
  
• ADVANCED: a detailed overview of various versions of moral relativism from my favorite free online philosophy encyclopedia (yes there are more than one free online philosophy encyclopedias)
• Ruth Benedict and Herodotus
• The Kwakiutl from Northwest America [Google Kwakiutl!]
• The Dobu of Melanesia
• Cannibalism!
• An interview with a moral psychologist who supports a sophisticated version of moral relativism
• An argument against the DIVERSITY THESIS: cultures morally agree more than they disagree
• A video lecture titled "Is Morality Real or Do We Make it Up?"