Catherine Wilson Quotes

• We are now returning to the 18th century empirical approach with the new interest in the evolutionary basis of ethics, with 'experimental' moral philosophy and moral psychology. As a result, we understand better why moral formulas are experienced as ineluctable commands, even if there is no commander and even if the notion of an inescapable obligation is just superstition. So moral philosophy has made huge progress.

  Catherine Wilson

  Philosophy, Psychology, Progress

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• El cortejo humano tiene algunos extremos salvajes. En un extremo del espectro está el acoso, el hostigamiento, el chantaje y el abuso de poder institucional, que sus destinatarios temen y detestan con razón. En el otro extremo está el amor, que, como decía Nietzsche, está más allá del bien y del mal y siempre merece nuestro respeto y compasión, incluso cuando está condenado al fracaso o es destructivo. En el amplio medio del espectro están todos los ambiguos y tragicómicos tejemanejes de nuestra especie.

  Catherine Wilson

  Compassion, Evil, Abuse

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Los movimientos hacia el contractualismo y el utilitarismo requirieron algunos ingredientes extra además del mortalismo, la negación de que Dios esté a cargo del mundo y la doctrina de que el dolor físico y psicológico son los mayores males.

  Catherine Wilson

  Pain, Moving, Evil

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• You can reasonably make the intellectual journey from thinking it's permissible to eat shrimp to thinking it's not permissible, or vice versa, whereas our slavery journey was uni-directional. We are as certain we are not going back to that old kind of slavery as we are that we aren't going back to the geocentric universe.

  Catherine Wilson

  Journey, Thinking, Intellectual

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• We call 'Slavery is wrong' a moral truth because there is a specific history of theoretical investigation of a particular kind of slavery. We discussed it for centuries in metaphysical, economic, biological, and philosophical terms; we listened to all the arguments pro and con, we read all the testimonies of slaves and witnesses, and we decided. Though this 'we" is not everybody on earth, or even most people, who've never thought about slavery much.

  Catherine Wilson

  Philosophical, People, Slavery

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• For seventeenth-century astronomers, the Epicurean doctrine of multiple worlds separated by void space was seen to fit with the new Copernican system in which every star was a sun, and the universe was a vast place with no centre.

  Catherine Wilson

  Stars, Space, Doctrine

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Highly unequal societies are morally defective because they get to be that way through the exploitation by the clever and well-positioned ones of the vulnerabilities and weaknesses of others. The well-off then use their acquired political power to refuse to make sacrifices for others. This system brings us a wonderful range of products and experiences for consumers at the top of the privilege scale, but it also degrades and benumbs the workers at the lower end, as Adam Smith and Marx both said.

  Catherine Wilson

  Clever, Sacrifice, Political

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• A moral rule is essentially 'advantage-reducing.' It prohibits you doing something you could do that would serve your interests at someone else's expense.

  Catherine Wilson

  Moral, Advantage, Reducing

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Morality has in the past made progress when we broadened the category of things we weren't permitted to harm (animals, 'infidels'); saw through some delusions and rationalisations about what harms are good for people themselves (prison punishment, hysterectomies for unhappy 1950s wives); and readjusted our for-the-good of others criteria so as to demand only reasonable sacrifices (ceasing to use children as handy chimney sweeps).

  Catherine Wilson

  Children, Sacrifice, Animal

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Gentlemanly, principled, helpful behaviour by older men vis-a-vis young women goes unnoticed, but it deserves real moral credit, and we could use more first-person testimony from the beneficiaries and practitioners about that too.

  Catherine Wilson

  Real, Men, Behaviour

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Moral claims aren't, as a class, truth-value apt or not.

  Catherine Wilson

  Class, Moral, Claims

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Quizá lleguemos a este punto y alcancemos una decisión en un sentido u otro con "La clonación humana es aceptable", pero dudo que ocurra nunca con "Está moralmente permitido comer gambas" o con la fórmula general "El adulterio está mal", cuya extensión prevista es, de nuevo, muy poco clara.

  Catherine Wilson

  Decision, Doubt, Shrimp

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• En Europa Occidental y Norteamérica algunas cosas son mejores de lo que eran -al menos en relación con sus nadires morales-, como la legislación laboral, la apertura de las profesiones a las mujeres, la intolerancia hacia la violencia doméstica, pero todavía hay muchas cosas moralmente inaceptables: el comercio de armas, los castigos crueles e inusuales, el parasitismo económico.

  Catherine Wilson

  Europe, Punishment, America

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• Moral theory develops from the divine command theory of medieval Christian philosophy, mixed up with a bit of ancient pagan virtue theory, to the purely secular moral sentiment and interpersonal reaction theories of Smith and Hume, to Kant's attempt to restore command theory but with something supersensible in the individual rather than God as the source of authority.

  Catherine Wilson

  Christian, Philosophy, Moral

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• There's Hobbes, who understood in the 1640s that the sovereign is not an appointee of God, or even a figure of superior virtue and wisdom, but just a functional device whose role is to keep people from hurting and killing each other.

  Catherine Wilson

  Hurt, People, Roles

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• There is no single test or formula for producing moral progress anymore than there is for generating scientific truths. It is a process involving theoreticians, fact-gatherers, protestors, martyrs for the cause, authors of first- person narratives who change the way we see and evaluate the distribution of harms and benefits.

  Catherine Wilson

  Progress, Benefits, Narrative

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• There's nothing a priori good about equality. One person has three televisions, the other has two, so what?

  Catherine Wilson

  Two, Three, Television

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• People formerly seemed unable to evaluate a woman's c.v. or to accept a range of personal and communicative styles from the exuberant and confident to the sober and pedantic. It's much better than it was, and a number of male philosophers have been extraordinarily helpful in detecting and criticising everyday sexism in the profession.

  Catherine Wilson

  Numbers, People, Everyday

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• It used to be that nobody would really argue with a woman, because what she thought (unless it was by way of providing helpful comments about one's own work) just didn't matter.

  Catherine Wilson

  Matter, Way, Arguing

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• We need grief as a precursor to emotional refreshment, and so consume it vicariously in somewhat titrated but powerful enough form through engagement with the arts.

  Catherine Wilson

  Art, Powerful, Grief

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• You can find many philosophy papers on the themes of 'love' and 'friendship,' most of which are cheerful and somewhat anodyne; you don't find many on the loss of friends, relatives, and lovers from death or alienation, though it happens all the time.

  Catherine Wilson

  Philosophy, Loss, Cheerful

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• I don't see how being a faster runner, or a better mathematician makes you 'deserve' access to a better life, or more influence on policy, in the absence of a social decision to play that game in the way it's proposed to be organised for some set of benefits.

  Catherine Wilson

  Games, Play, Decision

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• There are people who organise the contest, winners, losers, and people who benefit from the contest taking place.

  Catherine Wilson

  People, Benefits, Loser

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• If you live in an acquisitive society you are likely to be acquisitive, but it isn't deeply rooted in human nature, except in the sense that it's deeply rooted to be psychologically receptive to your peers and to advertising.

  Catherine Wilson

  Peers, Advertising, Human Nature

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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• People's wants are not fixed; they generally want what others in their chosen comparison class appear to be enjoying and what advertising presents to them as attainable for them and as bringing happiness.

  Catherine Wilson

  Clase, Gente, Quiere

  Fuente: www.3ammagazine.com

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