Sublime
An inspiration engine for ideas
One of the most robust findings in criminology is that increasing the severity of punishment has little deterrent effect. People simply aren’t as sensitive to the potential costs of crime as the rational-choice model predicts they should be, and so efforts to reduce it by cracking down have failed to justify the immense fiscal and social costs of
... See moreSocrates—who, like Adam Smith, argued that people are generally good even without enforcement.
Stephen J. Dubner • Freakonomics
But perhaps the sociobiological account undermines, not the truth of our moral beliefs, but our justification for holding such beliefs.
William Lane Craig • On Guard
In the Treatise Hume posed the question why, if such rules as those of justice and of promise-keeping were to be kept because and only because they served our long-term interests, we should not be justified in breaking them whenever they did not serve our interests and the breach would have no further ill consequences.
Alasdair MacIntyre • After Virtue
Bentham’s
Alasdair MacIntyre • After Virtue
Hume’s pluralist, sentimentalist, and naturalist approach to ethics is more promising than utilitarianism or deontology for modern moral psychology. As a first step in resuming Hume’s project, we should try to identify the taste receptors of the righteous mind.
Jonathan Haidt • The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion
All men are moral. Only their neighbors are not.