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Lecture 2: Discussion Questions

PHIL 1011

1. Are you familiar with the feminist critiques of marriage and the nuclear family that Sam discussed briefly at the beginning of Lecture 2? Can you spell out these critiques in your own words? Are they persuasive? What moral and political implications might they have?

2. Sam characterised his mini sermon about “knowledge ore” as a kind of Socratic, gadfly-ish intervention. Was this too self-flattering? Presumably it depends on the value of the critique he was advancing. What was the point of it? How would you cash out the vision of university education he was criticising? What’s the alternative? How do these competing visions of education relate to broader issues about how we employ new technology to communicate, learn, and conduct human relationships?

3. Suppose Sam believes in God, and believes that God dispenses justice in the hereafter, punishing bad people and rewarding good ones. How might you convince him to get interested in the question of whether he should be moral “for its own sake”?

4. We discussed two versions of “Supernaturalism,” to use Gendler’s term. Why did the second (“Because Supernaturalism”) seem like a more plausible attempt to capture the Divine Command Theory of ethics? At least two responses to this question emerged in the lecture. The first was simpler: it was grounded in a claim about what the theist probably cares about most. The second was more circuitous. It came in the form of some arguments which purported to show that “Meaning Supernaturalism” has some strange consequences.

5. What is the Euthyphro problem? Why have many philosophers thought that this is a genuine “dilemma”? To answer this question, you should (a) try to formulate the arbitrariness objection in your own words, and (b) try to say why theists might be hesitant to give up on Divine Command Theory. Compare the following passage from Leibniz: “In saying … that things are not good according to any standard of goodness, but simply by the will of God, it seems to me that one destroys, without realizing it, all the love of God and all his glory; for why praise him for what he has done, if he would be equally praiseworthy in doing the contrary?” [Discourse on Metaphysics, 2]

6. Is the biblical story of the binding of Isaac an illuminating illustration of the Euthyphro problem? Explain your answer. How should we interpret this challenging text? Do you see why it has so vexed thinkers throughout the ages?

7. What did Sam mean in saying that no matter your religious beliefs, the Euthyphro problem should make you interested in “secular ethics”? Do you agree? Figuring this out will require characterising what Sam means by “secular ethics.”

8. Sam cited a passage from the Tan reading, which was about Confucius, but which he suggested might be useful to think about for a variety of reasons: “Ethical life actually begins not with an ethical theory or even explicit articulation of what is good or bad … but with an admiration for certain characters we encounter personally in life or imaginatively in narratives.” What connections do you see between this passage and the rest of the lecture?

9. Were you convinced by Sam’s responses to the two worries he mentioned about secular ethics? Was Sam fair to religion and religious people? Do you think you can make reliable inferences about Sam’s personal religious beliefs on the basis of Lecture 2?