Test: which moral philosophy is yours (even if you don't know it)

[Ben Kenobi]

Kudos to Agathon for the test

I have heard of all of them, except for Ockham and Spinoza.

Can you tell me more about Ockham?

What is Prescriptivism? That seems to rank fairly high.

1. St. Augustine (100%)
2. Aquinas (84%)
3. Ockham (78%)
4. Kant (69%)
5. Spinoza (69%)
6. Plato (64%)
7. Prescriptivism (64%)
8. John Stuart Mill (48%)
9. Aristotle (41%)
10. Ayn Rand (41%)
11. Jean-Paul Sartre (41%)
12. David Hume (37%)
13. Jeremy Bentham (36%)
14. Nel Noddings (34%)
15. Nietzsche (32%)
16. Stoics (25%)
17. Cynics (24%)
18. Epicureans (12%)
19. Thomas Hobbes (12%)


Hobbes is my last?

Seems I am quite close to Rogan Josh.

[vovan]

Well, like some folks above, never read anything by / about Sartre, but everyone else on top of the list is about right. Not many surprises there.

1. Jean-Paul Sartre
2. Nietzsche
3. David Hume
4. Spinoza
5. Thomas Hobbes

[DinoDoc]

1. Kant
2. John Stuart Mill
3. Prescriptivism
4. Ayn Rand

[cinch]

1. Kant- 100%
2. Spinoza- 100%
3. Aquinas- 94%
4. Stoics- 88%

And then a relatively large drop-off.

Go Kant and/or Spinoza!

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Berzerker
Agathon -

For someone who constantly trumpets their superior critical thinking, you sure do have problems figuring out the obvious. I was poking fun at yet another of your claims of brilliance...Doh!

What claim????

You seem to think you know more about me than I do... well, what can I say.

Anyway it looks like this test has been highly revealing. Who would have thought that so many rightists would be exposed as welfare liberals. And who would have thought so many people were existentialists.

[Agathon]

Where's Ming, MtG, Rah and the rest. Surely they owe us a look at the colours they fly.

[Ben Kenobi]

Hey Aggie:

Aren't you going to answer my questions?

[Shi Huangdi]

Had one of the religious guys the last time, this time Ayn Rand. I still don't put much credence in these tests though...

[Agathon]

Originally posted by obiwan18
Kudos to Agathon for the test

I have heard of all of them, except for Ockham and Spinoza.

Can you tell me more about Ockham?

What is Prescriptivism? That seems to rank fairly high.

Sorry. I didn't even notice that MtG had taken the test when I'd accused the mods of running scared (been playing civ all day). Interested to see what Ming comes up with though.

Ockham was one of the great mediaeval philosophers. I don't really know anything about him as late medieval philosophy is something I've never studied (a shameful hole in my knowledge, actually). I have a friend who is writing a thesis on him though.

Here's some stuff on him

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/o/ockham.htm

Spinoza is probably the greatest Jewish philosopher of all time. I don't know a great deal about him due to the prejudices of English speaking philosphy departments. He's a rationalist (believes that the fundamental truths of the universe can be learned by reason independently of experience) and a monist (believes that there is only one kind of substance). He's a well regarded thinker, but well out of my areas of interest.

http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/s/spinoza.htm

Prescriptivism I do know a fair bit about. It is the theory of Richard M Hare, who died not long ago. The main idea is that ethical statements don't describe anything but are correctly understood as prescriptions. So for example the statement "Abortion is wrong" doesn't attribute the property of being wrong to abortion, but is correcty analysed as "We ought not to permit abortion" which prescribes rather than describing.

Someone who disagreed with Hare would say that ought-statements are only correct because a certain is-statement is correct. Hare has it round the other way. One reason for being a prescriptivist is that you don't have to account for moral properties in the world (which would be weird things and not detectable by science).

Hare goes on to say that moral words like ought have a special feature - they are universalisable (this is based on what moral words mean - that's what makes them universalisable).

So if I say "you ought not to kill" I am committed to universalizing the proposition so that it is wrong for anyone, including myself, to kill. It's easy to see that this entails the Golden Rule. In Hare's view this is a function of the meaning of moral words - the notion of the Golden rule is built into our moral vocabulary. So for example if someone said it was morally permissible for him to kill but no one else, Hare would say that he didn't understand the meaning of the term "morally permissible".

It's a pretty respectable view among professional philosophers. Far more respectable than Platonism.

[Agathon]

Originally posted by Shi Huangdi
Had one of the religious guys the last time, this time Ayn Rand. I still don't put much credence in these tests though...

This is a good one Shi. The result doesn't mean that you agree with them about everything, just that you agree with them about the nature of morality. That's why so many people who don't believe in God are getting Aquinas - it isn't that they believe in God; rather they agree with him one some issues about the nature of moral reasoning.

For example Aristotle and Rand agree that morality is based upon human nature rather than agreement or God - but they'd hate each other's guts if they ever met because they believe that different things follow from the belief.

[Ben Kenobi]

Interesting.

I could see why Prescriptivism would score fairly high for me.

prescriptivist is that you don't have to account for moral properties in the world (which would be weird things and not detectable by science).

Seems fairly straightforward to me. Science cannot tell you whether something is 'right' or 'wrong.'

What's the background of Richard Hare?

Much thanks for the links.

[Agathon]

This is his obituary from last year. I think it does him an injustice, there are still many prescriptivists.

http://books.guardian.co.uk/news/articles/0,6109,643093,00.html

I was very sad when I heard that he'd died as I enjoyed reading his work.

[Ben Kenobi]

Hare himself did work in the latter field, especially in bio-ethics,

Of great concern to myself at this point.

BTW

Ockham

"A Christian is not bound to believe, as necessary to salvation, anything which is neither contained in the Bible nor may be plainly and of necessity inferred from what is contained there." It is true that he does not realize how far this principle might lead, or how far it was one day going to lead Luther.

Very interesting coming from a Catholic.

Thanks again.

[Urban Ranger]

1. Bentham
2. Sartre
3. Spinoza
4. Hobbes
5. Aristotle

[Berzerker]

Agathon -

What claim????

Geez, how many times have you announced your expertise in critical thinking, logic, teaching, blah blah blah, when your arguments were challenged? And you started this thread off with, "In fact as someone who does professional philosophy I think it is one of the better tests I've seen online". I have yet to see you in a debate where you didn't start touting your alleged credentials as a superior thinker.

You seem to think you know more about me than I do... well, what can I say.

How about sticking with facts instead of what I seem to think?

Anyway it looks like this test has been highly revealing. Who would have thought that so many rightists would be exposed as welfare liberals.

Sounds like an indictment of the test makers, not the test takers. When I took it, I got 100% for Rand and 94% for Mill, and yet, some here claim Mill was a socialist. Maybe you can explain how a socialist would be so close to Rand. And while you're at it, explain which question on the test revealed a desire for the welfare state. Let's see some of that critical thinking in action for a change.