Three Tools for Moral First Aid
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/eph.v20i2.63Keywords:
humanism, naturalism, morality, John Dewey, Daniel DennetAbstract
The tension between naturalism and humanism is at its greatest when it comes to ethics and morality. By drawing on the affinity between the evolutionary humanistic philosophies of classical pragmatist John Dewey and contemporary pragmatist Daniel Dennett, I modify Dennett’s ethical technology, Moral First Aid, to include a kit as well as Dennett’s proposed manual. The contents of this kit draw on Dewey’s reconstructed moral genealogy in which three factors, goods, rights, and virtues, become stock parts for the technoscience of ethics. Lacking in Dennett’s account is an adequate ideal by which to measure moral success. I propose that moral first aid take up Dewey’s moral ideal of democracy as the guide for resolving moral exigencies.
References
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Churchland, Patricia S. 2009. “Inference to the Best Decision,” in The Oxford Handbook of Philosophy and Neuroscience, ed. John Bickle (New York: Oxford University Press), pp. 419– 430.
Churchland, Patricia S. 2011. Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Dennett, Daniel C. 1988. “The Moral First Aid Manual,” in Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Vol. VIII, ed. Sterling M. McMurrin (Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press), pp. 120–47.
Dennett, Daniel C. 1991. Consciousness Explained. Boston: Little, Brown.
Dennett, Daniel C. 1993 (1997). “Back from the Drawing Board” in Dennett and His Critics: Demystifying Mind, ed. Bo Dahlbom (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers), pp. 203–235.
Dennett, Daniel C. 1995 (1996). Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Dennett, Daniel C. 2003. Freedom Evolves. New York: Viking.
Dennett, Daniel C. 2006. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. New York: Viking.
Dennett, Daniel C. 2008. “How to Protect Human Dignity from Science,” in Human Dignity and Bioethics: Essays Commissioned by the President’s Council on Bioethics. Available at http://bioethicsprint.bioethics.gov/reports/human_dignity/chapter3.html
Dewey, John. 1981–1991. The Later Works of John Dewey, 1925–1953. 17 vols. Ed. Jo Ann Boydston (Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press).
Dewey, John. 1996. The Collected Works of John Dewey, 1882–1953: The Electronic Edition, ed. Larry A. Hickman (Charlottesville, VA: InteLex Corporation).
Elton, Matthew. 2003. Daniel Dennett: Reconciling Science and Our Self-Conception. Cambridge and Oxford, UK: Polity.
Flanagan, Owen. 1996. “The Moral Network,” in Churchlands and Their Critics, ed. R.N. McCauley (Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell), pp. 192–215.
Gazzaniga, Michael S. 2005. The Ethical Brain. New York: The Dana Press.
Gazzaniga, Michael S. 2011. Who’s In Charge? Free Will and the Science of the Brain. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.
Harris, Sam. 2005. The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Harris, Sam. 2010. The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values. New York: Free Press.
Harris, Sam. 2012. Free Will. New York: Free Press.
Hickman, Larry A. 1990. John Dewey’s Pragmatic Technology. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Hickman, Larry A. 2001a. “Philosophical Tools for Technological Culture,” Philosophy of Education 2001. Urbana, IL: Philosophy of Education Society, 25–35
Hickman, Larry A. 2001b. Philosophical Tools for Technological Culture: Putting Pragmatism to Work, Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Hickman, Larry A. 2007. Pragmatism as Post-Postmodernism: Lessons from John Dewey, New York: Fordham University Press.
Kitcher, Philip. 2011a. “Philosophy, Inside Out,” Metaphilosophy 42, 248–260.
Kitcher, Philip. 2011b. The Ethical Project. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Pappas, Gregory Fernando. 2008. John Dewey’s Ethics: Democracy as Experience. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
Popp, Jerome A. 2007. Evolution’s First Philosopher: John Dewey and the Continuity of Nature. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Popp, Jerome A. 2008. “John Dewey’s Ethical Naturalism,” Contemporary Pragmatism 5:2, 149–163.
Rorty, Richard. 1993 (1997), “Holism, Intrinsicality, and the Ambition of Transcendence,” in Dennett and His Critics: Demystifying Mind, ed. Bo Dahlbom (Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishers), pp. 184–202.
Sellars, Wilfrid. 1963. Science, Perception and Reality. Atascadero, Cal.: Ridgeview Publishing Company.
Slingerland, Edward. 2008. What Science Offers the Humanities: Integrating Body and Culture. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Snow, C. P., 1959 (1998). The Two Cultures. New York: Cambridge University Press.
Solymosi, Tibor. 2011a. “Neuropragmatism, Old and New,” Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences 10:3, 347–368.
Solymosi, Tibor. 2011b. “A Reconstruction of Freedom in the Age of Neuroscience: A View from Neuropragmatism,” Contemporary Pragmatism, 8:1, 153–171.
Sterelny, Kim. 2012. The Evolved Apprentice: How Evolution Made Humans Unique. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
Thompson, David L. 2009. Daniel Dennett. New York: Continuum.
Zawidzki, Tadeusz. 2007. Dennett. Oxford, UK: Oneworld Publishers.
Published
2013-11-06
Issue
Section
Articles
How to Cite
Solymosi, T. (2013). Three Tools for Moral First Aid. Essays in the Philosophy of Humanism, 20(2), 63-80. https://doi.org/10.1558/eph.v20i2.63
