Thanks! You might like the Jo Wolff podcast as well, tilts a bit more public policy. Also if ever in London, come to an EV meet-up / we should catch coffee.
Smart, focused people are also good at losing context and justifying their instinctual beliefs. I like and admire Parfit, but I don't accept him blindly just because he was smarter and thought more deeply about a few topics than I have (I still think Sidgwick makes more sense, something Parfit might well agree with).
Excellent! Thanks! It really *does* seem like Williams is making a claim similar to mine and, apparently, so have others. It looks like I am not alone in having this reaction. And Williams is hardly peripheral to the field.
You might like this podcast with David Edmonds on the book. https://www.thendobetter.com/arts/2023/7/2/david-edmonds-derek-parfit-future-selves-paradox-effective-altruism-philosophy-podcast
Thanks, I’ll check it out. Unrelated, but I enjoyed watching your conversation with temkin.
Thanks! You might like the Jo Wolff podcast as well, tilts a bit more public policy. Also if ever in London, come to an EV meet-up / we should catch coffee.
Wild do!
As a counter to the idea that "Those who become truly obsessed with a topic, who eat sleep, and breathe that topic tend to be the most successful and clearest thinkers on the topic" check out the book Range by David Epstein. My notes are here: https://howtolivetherestofyourlife.wordpress.com/2021/09/22/notes-on-range-by-david-epstein/
Smart, focused people are also good at losing context and justifying their instinctual beliefs. I like and admire Parfit, but I don't accept him blindly just because he was smarter and thought more deeply about a few topics than I have (I still think Sidgwick makes more sense, something Parfit might well agree with).
Does Williams explicitly claim to find Parfit's conception of a reason to be unintelligible? And if so, is this anywhere in print?
Yes, I could find the exact quote if you're really interested.
Yes, if you don't mind. I'm actively looking into gathering information on those may have had views similar to my own.
Here's a quote from Parfit in on what matters.
"When Williams argues that there are no such reasons, his main claim is
that Externalists cannot explain what it could mean to say that we have
some external reason. I admit that, when I say that we have some reason, or
that we should or ought to act in a certain way, what I mean cannot be
helpfully explained in other terms. I could say that, when some fact gives us
a reason to act in some way, this fact counts in favour of this act. But this
claim adds little, since ‘counts in favour of’ means, roughly, ‘gives a reason
for’. Williams suggests that the phrase ‘has a reason’ does not have any
such intelligible, irreducibly normative external sense. When he discusses
statements about such external reasons, Williams calls these statements
‘mysterious’ and ‘obscure’, and suggests that they mean nothing. Several
other writers make similar claims."
Parfit later says
"Williams also writes that, if there were such intrinsic goods, these would be
things
whose goodness was to be explained in advance of any human
valuation.
Such goodness, he remarks, would be ‘inexplicable’. In the phrase just
quoted, Williams means that, if certain things were intrinsically good, we
could not explain the goodness of these things by claiming that we valued
them, or by referring to any of our other values. Our explanation would
have to be the other way round. We would have to claim that we valued
these things because of the ways in which they were good."
Excellent! Thanks! It really *does* seem like Williams is making a claim similar to mine and, apparently, so have others. It looks like I am not alone in having this reaction. And Williams is hardly peripheral to the field.