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DTSTAMP:20160121T213000Z
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CATEGORIES:Conferences / Seminars / Lectures
DTSTART:20160121T213000Z
DTEND:20160121T225000Z
SUMMARY:Morality Naturalized in La Mettrie's Machine Man (and Violated by Sade)
DESCRIPTION:
 Presented by Dr. John Grey (Philosophy)\n
 Materialism 
 had a bad reputation in eighteenth century 
 Europe. Many held that materialist philosophy 
 would, via the slipperiest of slopes, lead 
 its proponents into degenerate, immoral, 
 and irreligious behavior. Materialist authors 
 in this tradition responded to such criticism 
 by developing naturalistic moral theories; 
 typically, these were theories according to which 
 humans are by nature inclined toward some 
 canonical moral virtues, and by nature averse 
 to some moral vices. Materialists who pursued 
 this strategy, like Julien Offray de la Mettrie, 
 had a nice reply to their critics' moralizing: 
 there are purely natural forces causing 
 humans to tend toward virtue and away from 
 vice, so recognizing that humans are merely 
 biological machines will not lead to moral 
 decay. But this argumentative strategy has an 
 interesting flaw. It requires us to draw a line 
 between those passions that nature dictates 
 we act on and those that nature dictates we 
 resist. Yet (as the writings of the Marquis 
 de Sade suggest) philosophical naturalism, drawn 
 to its logical conclusion, makes it difficult 
 to draw such a line in any non-arbitrary 
 way.\n
 Cosponsored by: Romance and Classical 
 Studies, The Laurence Porter Colloquium Series\n
 \n\n
 Price: free\n
 Sponsor: Administration\n
 Sponsor's Homepage: http://www.lib.msu.edu\n
 Contact name: Holly Flynn\n
 Contact phone: 517-884-0901\n
 Contact email: flynnhol@msu.edu\n
LOCATION:MSU Main Library, Green Room (4W)
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