Reviews for Eros Turannos

The average rating for Eros Turannos based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-03-11 00:00:00 Sean Nelson This is a very detailed and fresh defense of moral realism - the position that there is a moral reality that people are trying to represent when they issue judgments about right, wrong, good, bad, etc., and is stance-independent, i.e., truths that obtain independently of a preferred perspective. Stated another way, there are moral truths that are true independent of what anyone happens to think of them. Shafer-Landau offers some very good critiques of various non-realist positions and also a popular realist position - ethical naturalism (moral facts are just like, in kind, all other kinds of facts). Shafer-Landau defends ethical non-naturalism, i.e., moral facts are different in kind from natural facts (e.g., the rock is heavy). Ethical principles have a normativity about them such that they cannot be reduced to natural facts. Shafer-Landau discusses moral metaphysics and looks at various arguments that purport to show that non-naturalism is metaphysically problematic. That is, the universe doesn't contain that kind of furniture. He also discusses moral motivation and the argument that only desires can motivate so ethics must be in some sense subjective. He also argues that moral obligations provide us with reasons for action, and he argues against the claim that this commits us to relativism since you can't divorce the reasons from commitments. He concludes with looking into how we can have knowledge of moral truths. He combines a view of moral truths as self-evident with a reliabilist epistemology in order to formulate an ethical epistemology whereby we can know what morality obligates us to do and not to do. This book is not for beginners. I definitely need to give it another read or two. But I think Shafer-Landau advances very good arguments against non-cognitivist (i.e., we can't have knowledge of moral facts because there are no moral facts to be known). As well as good arguments against constructionists (i.e., various forms of relativism, for example). He interacts (briefly) with arguments that moral realism commits him to the existence of God, the law-giver. His main rebuttal to this is that those who reason this way are assuming the premise: [P] Laws require a law-giver. His says that when it comes to laws of nature, no one reasons this way there. Well, perhaps the non-cogs who proffer this argument don't, but there is a tradition within theism that makes this argument (cf. John Foster, The Divine Law Maker, for an argument that laws of nature require or presuppose the existence of something like the Judeo-Christian God). He also thinks the Euthyphro dilemma a good reason to reject a view where God is required for morality. He briefly tosses this out there and no theist will be impressed with his claims. His goal wasn't to interact with theism here and so his inadequacies can be ignored for the most part. As I said, this is a good book and a valuable addition to the broader literature, but it is definitely not for the beginner.

Review # 2 was written on 2008-08-16 00:00:00 Robert Clemmer If there is an aspect to contemporary metaethics whose prospects are especially hopeless and unconvincing, and if you want to read a book that can help you to make a conclusion about the antecedent of that opening conditional, then you should read this book. Shafer-Landau's defense of moral realism is as flaccid as the moral realism he tries to defend. The many deep wounds I received from reading this book are still too fresh to allow me to face them in too much detail here, but the primary grounds for his defense of the truth of moral realism are by way of an analogy to the contemporary philosophy of mind; Shafer-Landau's real moral properties are ontologically analogous to consciousness. And if that dubious enterprise isn't enough to fill you with the kind of total despair that you've been searching for, then by all means, dive into this sea of argumentative retreat yourself, for I can assure you that your thirst can be slaked many times over in these 302 pages of delicate and sophisticated maneuvering. The two most prominently disagreeable features of this book, for me, are these. First, aware of the profound (if not even disturbing, I would add) difficulties that arguing in favor of moral realism's realism entails, Shafer-Landau opts for the far less satisfying strategy of insisting on the difficulties of proving moral realism false. Did you hear that? Instead of squarely arguing for the truth of his moral beliefs, much of the book is devoted to undermining arguments against moral realism: thus, moral realism could be true because it's hard to prove that it's false. One wonders: why doesn't he simply face the facts? Second, although he says early on "that [he] came to these views by way of argument, rather than (as is usual) by way of rationalizing preexisting convictions..." (8-9), don't believe him. The entire work is an obvious rationalization of preexisting convictions. This book is a manifest example of the theological nature of (at least) some of modern philosophy. Nietzsche's conviction that modern philosophy has'despite its profession to the contrary'inherited basic elements of Christianity will find strong support in this book.