Learn more about personaldevelopment with this collection
How to practice self-compassion
How to identify and challenge negative self-talk
How to build self-confidence
Immanuel Kant said that a human being’s innate practical reason gives rise to a universal set of “moral laws” which any rational person knows they must follow.
But even if we know the universal laws, why should we feel compelled to follow them? Kant’s answer was that we must postulate a belief in God and the immortality of the soul and that we simply must push the doubts of pure reason aside to make way for faith. This is the meta-ethical problem.
26
260 reads
MORE IDEAS ON THIS
The belief that nothing is morally right or wrong(moral nihilism), and the belief that morals are culture-specific(cultural relativism) seems to be in retreat everywhere. There are 2 motivations for this -
32
470 reads
This claim argues that we have no ethical obligation to act well beyond what makes us personally happy or satisfied. This seems extremely close to making ethics purely subjective.
Philosophers, like Nietzsche, argue that a person truly concerned with their ‘self’ w...
23
228 reads
David Hume observed that we can never move readily from scientifically understanding facts about the world to determining what values people should hold to. It became clear that just knowing objective facts about human nature and desires couldn’t necessarily lead us to a clear se...
25
414 reads
Sidgwick argued that it is happiness that we should take as the motivation for being good. So if happiness was what was intrinsically good, we must, at times, even put our own desires aside to maximize the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. But what might motiv...
22
206 reads
This claim(adopted by authors like Sam Harris) argues that we should use the tools of modern science to assess what human beings want and what their characteristics are, for instance, by looking at evolutionary biology or psychology and develop an ethical framework in accordance with human na...
22
215 reads
The final claim is that the values that ‘matter’ in some sense exist independently of us. In this view, ethical values are rather like a mathematical formula. Human beings bring them into existence through developing logical ways of thinking about important issues.
This is as far away from...
24
203 reads
Read & Learn
20x Faster
without
deepstash
with
deepstash
with
deepstash
Access to 200,000+ ideas
—
Access to the mobile app
—
Unlimited idea saving & library
—
—
Unlimited history
—
—
Unlimited listening to ideas
—
—
Downloading & offline access
—
—
Personalized recommendations
—
—
Supercharge your mind with one idea per day
Enter your email and spend 1 minute every day to learn something new.
I agree to receive email updates