Dmitry Chernikov’s Blog

I tell you, Aquinas is a gift that keeps on giving. Here I was thinking it it was a nice insight to write in my notes something like this, verbatim:
shame vs. guilt:
shame if your ideal is low or bad. e.g., if you felt that wallowing in filth like a pig (or drinking yourself into stupor) [...]

Suppose that a robber in a restaurant yells at the customers: “I am not going to argue with you; just give me all your money. Any of you fucking pricks move, and I’ll execute every motherfucking last one of ya!” Hoppe’s argument fails to convict the robber of irrationality.
Similarly, suppose that in some bar a [...]

This is a remarkable article by Philippa Foot, stunning us with countless examples of how the word “good” is used. But, unbeknownst to her, all of these uses come under one of three categories: physical, moral, or metaphysical. Foot objects against the argument that reduces goodness to “that which is chosen.” And she is right: [...]

One version of emotivism claims that moral statements are “action-guiding” commands: “X is good” means “Do X!” The trouble with that is that a command can be obeyed or disobeyed, and one needs a reason to obey it. I mean, who are you to tell me what to do? The obvious rejoinder to “Do X!” [...]

Intellectual property issues are hot among libertarians now, spurred by Jeffrey Tucker’s live blogging of Against Intellectual Monopoly and renewed interest in Stephan Kinsella’s “Against Intellectual Property.” Below I attempt to sketch a theory of copyrights and trade secrets.
The crucial term relevant to IP is “information” whose nature it is to reside in minds [...]

Consider some examples:
(1) A runaway trolley driver can steer it on track A, killing 5, or on track B, killing 1.
(2) In order to survive, person Q needs the entire dose of the drug available at the hospital; but persons P1, …, P5 at the same hospital can be saved with just 1/5 of the [...]

Mises writes on this very topic that “soldiery virtues” are not good in themselves; and, in fact, whoever thinks that “must, to be consistent, likewise acknowledge as noble virtues the daring, intrepidity, and contempt for death of the robber.” (Liberalism, 24)
So, can courage be a vice? Is it better to be an insane vampire than [...]

Yes, insofar as they find fulfillment in 2nd-order desires to correct or counteract 1st-order desires. Without temptations there would be no need for virtues: human powers would on their own incline to good only.
Now is that man virtuous who adheres to virtue with great difficulty and inner struggle or one who adheres to it with [...]

What’s the difference between an art or skill and a virtue? The obvious one that comes to mind is that virtues are essential to human survival, and, while so is some art, if its possessor is to participate in social cooperation, no particular art is essential. On the other hand, each virtue, by quickening its [...]

Friendship imposes on one greater duties than social cooperation in general. It is the essence of friendship that friends ought to treat each other with more care than strangers ought to. But becoming friends with someone is not going above and beyond the call of duty impressed upon one by the larger society. This is [...]

Alasdair MacIntyre has brought to my attention the distinction in Aquinas between synderesis and conscientia. The former Aquinas understands as a natural habit comprising knowledge of first principles in morality, sort of obvious synthetic a priori notions:

In the field of moral conduct there are similar first principles of action, such as: “evil must be avoided, [...]

All our natural duties, including those demanded by a hyper-refined 1st-level morality such as act utilitarianism, can be grounded in our duties to God as Creator. Remember that the existence of God can be demonstrated by natural reason, or so I like to believe. So, God or God’s nature, if you will, is going to [...]

I spent a whole semester in Spring ‘06 studying supererogation, but now it seems to be an exceedingly simple concept.
Remember that I have divided virtue into 3 parts: the moral ideal, the degree of conformance to that ideal, and the enjoyment of that conformance.
Supererogation is defined as going above and beyond the call of duty. [...]

Artisans represent flux and freedom; Guardians, permanence and responsibility. The task of Rationals is to guide the flux by means of efficient laws, so that change improves matters. Artisans are deterred from performing actions that harm society or other human beings and are directed, subtly or overtly, into those venues in which their “selfish” freedom [...]

In the beginning of a relationship both the man and the woman want to “keep their options open.” As time goes on, and they learn about each other and come to value each other, their emotional and mental bond grows stronger, their investment into each other increases, the costs of a break-up grow higher, and [...]

The “Humean Motivation Theory” (HUM) is that what explains your actions is a desire coupled with the knowledge of the means to actualize the desire.
Internalism is a doctrine that a moral judgment motivates a person to act according to that judgment directly, without issuing any desires.
So HUM and internalism seem at odds with each other. [...]

Moral internalism claims that the motivation to do some X is inbuilt in a realization that X is right. It’s part of the meaning of “rightness” that you want to do what you have determined to be right. Externalism, on the contrary, does not believe that judgments entail desires or actions as a matter of [...]

Michael Smith articulates the following “moral problem”. The next three propositions, though individually plausible, are mutually inconsistent:
(1) Moral judgments express beliefs.
(2) Moral judgments have a necessary connection with being motivated.
(3) Motivation is a matter of having, inter alia, suitable desires.
The apparent problem is that believing that X is right motivates me to do X. “But [...]

As usual, Miller expresses this problem in such arcane terminology that it takes hours to untangle the points. But what he is saying is actually simple. Reductivists say that any moral property V can be reduced into or expressed as a non-moral property X. This issue then comes down to the is-ought dichotomy. Can a [...]

Although Miller uses this device, I’ll summarize and comment without it. “According to the Cornell realists,” he writes, “moral terms, such as ‘good,’ denote natural kinds which are not reducible to any other kind, in much the same way that ‘water’ and ‘gold’ denote natural kinds.” (An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics, 164) However, there is [...]