AMA Announcement: Tuesday 8/30 1PM EST - Caspar Hare (MIT) on ethics,
rationality and edX intro to philosophy MOOC
Abstract
As previously announced, /r/philosophy is hosting an AMA series this
fall semester which kicks off this upcoming Tuesday August 30th, 1PM
EST. Caspar Hare, Professor of Philosophy at MIT, will be joining us to
answer questions about his work on ethics, rationality and a special edX
course he is running called “Introduction to Philosophy: God, Knowledge
and Consciousness”. Professor Hare has published two books, The Limits
of Kindness and On Myself, and Other, Less Important Subjects. You can
read free online reviews of those books here and here respectively. He
has also published a number of papers, all of which are available online
at his website for free. Check out some blurbs for his books below: The
Limits of Kindness Caspar Hare presents a novel approach to questions of
what we ought to do, and why we ought to do it. The traditional way to
approach this subject is to begin by supposing a foundational principle,
and then work out its implications. Consequentialists say that we ought
to make the world impersonally better, for instance, while Kantian
deontologists say that we ought to act on universalizable maxims. And
contractualists say that we ought to act in accordance with the terms of
certain hypothetical contracts. These principles are all grand and
controversial. The motivating idea behind The Limits of Kindness is that
we can tackle some of the most difficult problems in normative ethics by
starting with a principle that is humble and uncontroversial. Being
moral involves wanting particular other people to be better off. From
these innocuous beginnings, Hare leads us to surprising conclusions
about how we ought to resolve conflicts of interest, whether we ought to
create some people rather than others, what we ought to want in an
infinite world, when we ought to make sacrifices for the sake of needy
strangers, and why we cannot, on pain of irrationality, attribute great
importance to the boundaries between people. On Myself, and Other, Less
Important Subjects Caspar Hare makes an original and compelling case for
“egocentric presentism,” a view about the nature of first-person
experience, about what happens when we see things from our own
particular point of view. A natural thought about our first-person
experience is that “all and only the things of which I am aware are
present to me.” Hare, however, goes one step further and claims,
counterintuitively, that the thought should instead be that “all and
only the things of which I am aware are present.” There is, in other
words, something unique about me and the things of which I am aware. On
Myself and Other, Less Important Subjects represents a new take on an
old view, known as solipsism, which maintains that people’s experiences
give them grounds for believing that they have a special, distinguished
place in the world–for example, believing that only they exist or that
other people do not have conscious minds like their own. Few
contemporary thinkers have taken solipsism seriously. But Hare maintains
that the version of solipsism he argues for is in indeed defensible, and
that it is uniquely capable of resolving some seemingly intractable
philosophical problems–both in metaphysics and ethics–concerning
personal identity over time, as well as the tension between
self-interest and the greater good. Professor Hare is teaching a free
online MOOC this semester called Introduction to Philosophy: God,
Knowledge and Consciousness. You can read an article about the MOOC by
MIT News here. This iteration of 24.00x is (to our knowledge) the first
philosophy MOOC in history to offer instructor grading of, and comments
on, your work. Basically you get to do philosophy for real, with
individual instruction, for a small fraction of the cost of taking the
course at MIT. The blurb for the course is as follows: This philosophy
course has two goals. The first goal is to introduce you to the things
that philosophers think about. We will look at some perennial
philosophical problems: Is there a God? What is knowledge, and how do we
get it? What is the place of our consciousness in the physical world? Do
we have free will? How do we persist over time, as our bodily and
psychological traits change? The second goal is to get you thinking
philosophically yourself. This will help you develop your critical
reasoning and argumentative skills more generally. Along the way we will
draw from late, great classical authors and influential contemporary
figures. AMA Professor Hare will join us this Tuesday for a couple hours
of live Q&A on his work and teaching, as well as philosophy and
education more generally. Please feel free to post questions for
Professor Hare here. He will look at this thread before he starts and
begin with some questions from here while the initial questions in the
new thread come in. Please join me in welcoming Professor Hare to our
community!