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A commonly held presupposition is that a person can be blameworthy only for acts that are considered morally wrong. I’ll refer to this as the ‘blameworthiness requires wrongness’ (BW) principle. Recently, a few philosophers began denying this principle citing cases where it is morally permissible to act in a certain way even though such acts […]
November 19, 2012 by Justin Caouette
Recent Psychological studies suggest that babies have an innate moral sense. On October 18th, CBS aired “The Baby Lab” ( it’s worth the 13 minutes for anyone interested in the Origins of Morality)where they interviewed Psychologists Paul Bloom and Karen Wynn. Both claim that their studies are telling of the “the origins of morality“. This suggests […]
July 24, 2012 by Justin Caouette
In a recent blog post in Scientific American the author, Larry Geenemeier, suggests that the accused Colorado Shooter was lacking cognitive control and points specifically to one’s cognitive ability in order to try to make sense of the actions in Aurora, Colorado and other recent events by similarly profiled assailants. Though I agree that we […]
July 10, 2012 by Justin Caouette
By now, nearly everyone with access to this blog knows that SCOTUS has upheld the Obamacare bill. This has caused an uproar with Libertarian folks as well as those who might not call themselves Libertarians but who think gov’t telling them what they must buy is inappropriate. I’ll be discussing the objections levied by the […]
June 21, 2012 by Justin Caouette
Antony Davies has recently given a really brief pod cast as to how the student loan crisis is similar and even worse to the housing bubble that popped a few years back (it’s worth a look, only 4 minutes long). I think he’s right that this is a major problem. He suggests (as do many […]
June 19, 2012 by Justin Caouette
Many of those that believe a woman should have a right to choose (whether to abort or keep her baby) also believe that men should have to pay child support, but, is holding both of these statements consistent? Fairly recently, feminist philosopher Elizabeth Brake (2005) has argued that it’s inconsistent and unfair to hold that […]
June 12, 2012 by Justin Caouette
In this short post I’ll be asking two important and related questions regarding organ procurement as it is currently practiced: (1) Are the currently policies surrounding organ transplantation fair? And, (2) Is it practical to make changes to the current policies? Here I’ll deal mostly with question (1) and offer only some brief remarks with […]
June 6, 2012 by Justin Caouette
Yesterday, while watching game 5 of the NBA Eastern Conference Finals I witnessed a flop in the 4th quarter by Boston Celtics player Ray Allen. Watching him flop (by flop I am referring to acting as if a player was fouled when in fact the player wasn’t in an attempt to convince the refs that […]
June 2, 2012 by Justin Caouette
Do stereo typical meat eaters value the lives of animals more than plants? As stated in an earlier post, I think that they do. If this is the case, then it seems that when making food selections it would be inconsistent for the meat-eater to choose animal meat over the vegetarian option assuming that they […]
June 1, 2012 by Justin Caouette
We all must eat to survive, this statement is uncontroversial. With that said, we are all forced to answer a question; (a) what should we eat? When trying to answer (a) should certain foods be off-limits? In other words, should our choices be limited by ethical concerns? I think so, and I’m sure that almost […]
May 29, 2012 by Justin Caouette
Since becoming a vegetarian two years ago I’ve come across various justifications for why I should see eating meat as morally permissible. I have yet to be convinced that any of these proposals are morally acceptable. Here, I focus on three main justifications for eating meat and offer some responses as to why I do […]
May 24, 2012 by Justin Caouette
In April I gave a talk at a Free Will/ Moral Responsibility conference near my hometown in Massachusetts on the culpability of psychopaths. There, I argued that psychopaths are morally responsible for their actions because they have the necessary cognitive mechanisms one needs to properly judge an action as morally right or morally wrong. Now […]
May 22, 2012 by Justin Caouette
According to Rosalind Hursthouse, an action is right (from a Virtue Ethical perspective) if and only if it is what the virtuous agent would do in the same circumstances. Now, let us consider the case of pregnancy. When considering if one should abort or keep their child, and, under the guise of the above mentioned […]
February 11, 2013 by Justin Caouette
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