Book

A summary of Chapter 10 Naturalism for Rational Animals. What Difference Does Our Rationality Make? Unlike animals, it is primarily our actions from reason that we are ethically good or bad human beings. In ethical naturalism, rationality makes a big difference. And adding rationality does not need to add the fifth end to the four other describe in the previous chapter. What characteristics do human have? Comparing to animals, it is hard to summarize. We enjoy and suffer from so many different things. So it seems that naturalism cannot work for humans. ...

A summary of Chapter 08 The Virtues Benefit Their Possessor. Can we objectively justify which character traits are the virtues? We can only do this from some already acquired ethical framework, instead from some external neutral point of view. Doing so risk just rationalize what we already believe. But if we think critically, little by little we many radically change our entire ethical outlook. The philosopher’s task was well compared by Neurath to that of a mariner who must rebuild his ship on the open sea. We can improve our conceptual scheme, our philosophy, bit by bit, while continuing to depend on it for support; but we cannot detach ourselves from it and compare it objectively with an unconceptualized reality. ...

A summary of Chapter 09 Naturalism. This chapter is about the 2nd Plato’s requirements of virtue in the last chapter – The virtues make their possessor a good human being. Virtue ethics is a type of ethical naturalism, i.e., basing ethics on considerations of human nature, or on what is involved in being a good human. The objective of such an approach is that an account of human nature may be too broad for making moral judgement, or too strong to the extend that it is just a restatement of our ethics. Gary Watson asks ...

Strangers Drowning : Impossible Idealism, Drastic Choices, and the Urge to Help by Larissa MacFarquhar is a deeply inspiring and thought-provoking book. It is mostly a collection of profiles for do-gooders who go to extreme length to help strangers. To various extent, they all have chosen to save “drowning strangers” instead of their own family, which may be unsettling for many people. Thus the book also discusses attacks mounted against do-gooders throughout history. ...

This is a very informative and inspiring book on addressing climate change. It is written by Canadian economist Mark Jaccard, who has advised many regional and national governments on energy policies. The book is freely available online. When people who care enough about humanity look into climate change, it is easy to feel despair. Popular books sounding alarms on climate emergency such as The Uninhabitable Earth and Our Final Warning tell us an apocalyptic future will come soon if there is no dramatic green house gases (GHG) emissions in the next ten years. However, decades after climate scientists have reached consensus on the causality between human activity and global temperature rising, we are still on a path of emitting more and more GHG. It is difficult to see how things can change in the very limited time left. ...

Peter Singer is an Australian moral philosopher, currently a professor at Princeton University. He has written 17 books by himself, several of which I read since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. It is not an exaggeration to say that some of these books have changed my life for better. How Are We to Live? I am a mathematician, and a large part of my job is to write and publish research papers on mathematics. This was a child-dream of mine and I do like studying and solving mathematics problems. However, after publishing enough papers, I came to realize that despite the large effort I put into them, there are very few people who have read what I wrote. So, I had to ask myself, what is the point for all this, especially when the world is deeply in trouble? ...

(Spoiler Alert. Don’t read this if you have not read the book.) Last week, I finished a 1989 novel The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro, which I found both captivating and thoughtful. A film adaption, staring Anthony Hopkins and Emma Thompson, is also worth watching. The protagonist Stevens is a butler (a servant who manges a big house). From 1930s to 1950s, he works in a mansion in England, serving Lord Darlington, an influential British politician during the 30s. The main reason that I like the book is that the story of Stevens offers both great inspirations and stern warnings regarding how one should live a life. ...

Flowers for Algernon is a classic science-fiction novel by Daniel Keyes published in 1966. I finished reading it last week and was greatly impressed. The story is touching and the characters are likable. But most importantly, many issues raised by the book, such as how we should treat people with mental problems, are still quite important after more than half a century. The main character, Charlie Gordon, is 32 years old with an IQ of only 68. He receives an experimental treatment which turns him into a genius. However, becoming smart does not always make Charlie happy as he expected. At some point, he asks ...