PHIL 502S Lecture Notes - Lecture 9: Meta-Ethics, Nicomachean Ethics, Stoicism
9 May 2018
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PHIL 502 Comparative Ethics Notes
Moral Psychology of Anger
- Anger and fitness
o Disposition to anger is a biological adaptation because it enhanced fitness
o Phenomenal and cognitive anger
o Pg i: Dari hpothesized that huas eoled to ore or less
automatically express the intersection of the somatic, phenomenal, and
ehaioral properties of ager ad the other asi eotios o our faes.
o Adaptationist view provides a causal history but does not explain any more than
that
o Anger should not be conflated with aggression
- Semantics of anger
- Modern anger
Books: The Moral Psychology of Anger
Lecture
- 60s and 70s – purposeful anger in response to racism and sexism
- Modern times – the anger worked into other realms of life
- Emotivism is a meta-ethical view that claims that ethical sentences do not express
propositions but emotional attitudes.
- Should anger be sublimated or metabolized?
- Almost every type of anger is normalized
- Uses comparative method
- What’s the possiilit spae of ager?
- Vast majority of the psychological studies are done with North American college
students
- Tibetan Buddhists believed that anger, resentment and the whole suite of those
emotions were unwholesome
- Western moral education seems to suggest that righteous anger is okay or even morally
required
- Hitler thought experiment – would you kill Hitler – they respond yes, but with
compassion and love because if the world had unfolded in a different way, you or
someone you love could have been Hitler
o Seems to be a result of their metaphysical system
o Everything is impermanent, nothing has intrinsic meaning and meaning lies the
relationships, everything has a necessary and sufficient cause
o Not the same sense of agency, no conception of free will, basically entirely way
of world-making
- Anger/angry feelings – pheoeal ager
o Phenomenology of how we feel it is not universal across cultures
- Angry behavior – does not necessarily come as a result of phenomenal anger
- Anger norms – culturally okay conditions in which you can be angry
o Statistical norms – what we general do around here
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
60s and 70s purposeful anger in response to racism and sexism. Modern times the anger worked into other realms of life. Emotivism is a meta-ethical view that claims that ethical sentences do not express propositions but emotional attitudes. Almost every type of anger is normalized. Vast majority of the psychological studies are done with north american college students. Tibetan buddhists believed that anger, resentment and the whole suite of those emotions were unwholesome. Western moral education seems to suggest that righteous anger is okay or even morally required. Anger/angry feelings (cid:862)phe(cid:374)o(cid:373)e(cid:374)al a(cid:374)ger(cid:863: phenomenology of how we feel it is not universal across cultures. Angry behavior does not necessarily come as a result of phenomenal anger. Anger norms culturally okay conditions in which you can be angry: statistical norms what we general do around here, norms apt feelings, morally certified. Anger scripts the thi(cid:374)gs that (cid:455)ou do (cid:449)he(cid:374) (cid:455)ou"re a(cid:374)gr(cid:455) (cid:894)(cid:449)ho is per(cid:373)itted to get a(cid:374)gr(cid:455)
