Moose and Dude

I've been busy posting on the new BG Ethics blog. Entitled "unideal observers," it is a blog run by the graduate students in the Bowling Green State University Philosophy Department. Lots of interesting conversations are up there, especially the one about moral intuitions. Just what role, if any, should they play?

I might post some thoughts about where I sit with respect to ethics some time soon, but some recent readings and conversations are beginning to make me think that I'm a pluralist about ethics. What does that mean? It means I think there's not really one criteria for anything to be ethical. Utilitarian reasons sound good, so they should be part of our standard. Some deontology doesn't sound entirely wrong. It's good that things are "fitting." It's good for their to be more benefit than harm. It's bad when disastrous outcomes occur. It's good when an action meets our intuitions about what is ethical. And so on. All of these things sound pretty good to me, and we shouldn't insist on just one of these as the "ultimate" or "best" or "right" sort of ethics. I think it might depend on circumstance, setting, background conditions, and so on. But that's for another post.

Instead, I want to show you two comic strips from a series done up by David Faraci. I think they're pretty funny, and he promises they will be a regular feature of our blog.

So here they are:


And: