Sumários

Philosophical Analysis

25 Novembro 2025, 11:00 • David Yates

This week we will introduce the topic of philosophical analysis, focusing on G. E. Moore's paradox of analysis, accordign to which every philosophical analysis is either trivially true or false. We will also examine as a case study the analysis of knowledge. Reading for this week is chapter 2 of Chris Daly's book An Introduction to Philosophical Methods.

Second written test

21 Novembro 2025, 11:00 • David Yates

Temas e Técnicas de Filosofia: Segunto teste escrito

DURAÇÃO: 1:30
PODE SER RESPONDIDO EM PORTUGUÊS OU INGLÊS
OS NÚMEROS APÓS CADA QUESTÃO INDICAM O VALOR DESSA QUESTÃO 

LEIA O TEXTO A SEGUIR COM ATENÇÃO
RESPONDA A TODAS AS QUESTÕES 1-3, JUSTIFICANDO AS SUAS RESPOSTAS

 

Há os que defendem que as experiências mentais não são fontes de conhecimento nem de justificação epistémica, sendo dependente das nossas intuições sobre situações imaginadas que são, na melhor das hipóteses, implausíveis, e na pior, fisicamente ou até metafisicamente impossíveis.

Há outros que defendem que, pelo contrário, as experiências mentais são fontes de conhecimento e/ou de justificação, e que sendo assim, as nossas intuições sobre tais casos são, pelo menos nalguns casos, um método confiável de investigar o nosso mundo.

Mas quem é que tem razão?

  1. Defenda o primeiro parecer quanto às experiências mentais, referindo a pelo menos uma das experiências mentais abordadas nas aulas (8)

  2. Defenda o segundo parecer quanto às experiências mentais, referindo a pelo menos uma das experiências mentais abordadas nas aulas (8)

  3. Qual é o seu parecer sobre a utilidade de experiências mentais? (4)

 

 Revision:

Revision session

18 Novembro 2025, 11:00 • David Yates

Preparation for Friday test

Discussion

14 Novembro 2025, 11:00 • David Yates

Key questions arising from the Friday discussion:

  • Is it permissible to allow the drowning child to die? Most people respond that it is not, even thought saving them will cost us 100€.
  • Is it permissible not to donate 100€ to save a starving child in Africa? Most people respond that it is, but then what is the difference between this case and that of the drowning child?

 

The rest of the class was about the conditions under which abortion is morally permissible. The violinist case is supposed to show that  at least in certain circumstances, abortion is permissible. This is true, according to Judith Jarvis Thompson, even if we allow that the foetus is a human being with the right to life. The violinist is also a human being with the right to life, so if you do not have a moral obligation to stay plugged into the machine that is saving his life, then a pregnant mother (at least in analogous circumstances) is not morally obliged to carry the baby to term. But what are the circumstances?

  • It depends on the details of the thought experiment! The nice thing about the violinist case is that these details can be varied to investigate how small changes in the scenario alter our moral intuitions. 
  • In the original violinist case, you are kidnapped and connected to the machine against your will. This seems to be analogous to cases of rape, in which case the thought experiment seems to show that abortion is permitted at least in those cases. But are there other circumstances in which it is permissible?
  • The people seeds case seems to be analogous to accidental pregnancy during consensual and protected sex. If you are not obliged to let the people-plant grow in your house, then once again a pregnant mother is not obliged to carry the baby to term if the pregnancy results from a failure of the contraceptive used.
  • We can also vary the original case. Suppose that instead of being kidnapped, you go to an amazing party completely paid for by the music lovers' society. You eat lobster, drink Barca Velha, etc. The only condition is that there is a 5% chance you will be taken from your bed that night to a hospital, where you will be attached to a violinist for 9 months. You will still have the option of disconnecting, but you are informed in advance that this will cause the death of the violinist. This case seems to be analogous to pregnancy by consensual unprotected sex.
  • What are your intuitions about this final case, and what (if anything) do they show us about the permissibility of abortion?
  • Do your intuitions change if we vary the percentage? What if it is 10%? How about 0,1%?
  • Having taken the risk of being attached to the violinist, do you then have a moral duty to help keep him alive? Does it make a difference that if you do not go to the party, someone else would end up attached to the violinist?

Here is an article by Pedro Galvão, in Portuguese, with discussion of the violinist case that we talked about in the Friday class: https://compendioemlinha.letras.ulisboa.pt/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/aborto.pdf. Section 3 of this article contains a list of possible responses to the violinist case, including those we discussed in the lecture (see end of lecture slides).

Thought experiments in ethics

11 Novembro 2025, 11:00 • David Yates

This weeks' topics are some very influential thought experiments from the domain of practical ethics, including:

  • The Trolley Problem
  • The Transplant Case
  • The Drowning Child
  • The Violinist
  • The People Seeds

The trolley problem is a thought experiment that raises an ethical dilemma: should you allow 5 people to die, or pull the lever and change the direction of the train, saving the 5 people but causing one person to die on the other track? The main questions we need to ask in this case are:

  1. Do we have a moral obligation to pull the lever?
  2. Is it permissible to do nothing at all, allowingh the 5 people to die?

These questions seem to be, in a sense, equivalent: if we have a moral obligation to pull the lever, then it is not permissible to do nothing; conversely, if it is permissible to do nothing, then there cannot be a moral obligataion to pull the lever. However, it is also possible that the trolley problem represents an ethical dilemma, in which we have a genuine moral obligation to pull the lever, despite the fact that it is not morally wrong to do nothing.

Many people respond to the trolley problem by saying there is no obligation to pull the lever, but that it is permissible to do so (and permissible not to do so). This, if true, has some profound consequences:

  • It entails that some versions of utilitarianism are false. Suppose the greatest happiness is secured by pulling the lever. We can imagine that the 5 people all have young families whereas the 1 person does not; that hte one person is very unhappy and leads a life which, as far as they are concerned, has no purpose, whereas the 5 are happy and fulfilled; and so on. If morally good actions are defined as those that bring about the greatest happiness for the greatest number, then according to utilitarianism, we do have a moral obligation  to pull the lever. The trolley problem may then be seen as an experiment that shows that utilitarianism is false.
  • It raises the distinction betwen killing and letting die. If it is permissible to allow the 5 to die, then letting people die must be distinguished from killing them, which is not generally permissible.
  • But then what is it that we do to the one person, if we do pull the lever? If it is permissible to pull the lever, then it seems it must be permissible to kill one person to save 5. But the transplant case seems to show that this is not the case - it is surely not ok to harvest the organs of 1 person against their will to save 5! Why is it permissible to cause the death of the 1 person on the track but not to harvest the organs of 1 person to save 5? Surely the two situations are morally equivalent?
  • Related to the above point: why does it not seem permissible to push a fat man onto the track, stopping the train and causing his death, in order to save the 5, whereas it does seem permissible to pull the lever? What is the difference?

In the fat man and transplant cases, there are at least two things that seem different:

  1. In both cases, if we act to save the 5, it involves causing the death of 1 person to save 5, but there is a difference between them. If Kant is correct that it is never permissible to treat persons purely as means, then that would explain why we judge the fat man and transplant situations differently to pulling the lever to save the 5. When we pull the lever, we do not treat the 1 person whose death we cause as a means to save the 5, even though we know that our action will cause their death.
  2. In the fat man and transplant cases, it seems we intend to kill the person whose death we cause. In the fat man case, we deliberately push him onto the track, knowing that his death is needed to save the 5; in the transplant case, we deliberately kill the organ donor in order to save the 5. The lever case seems to be different: in that case, we deliberately pull the lever to divert the train. The death of the 1 person on the other track is an unintended (but foreseen) consequence of our action.

What this seems to show is that we cannot always be held morally responsible for consequences of our actions, even if those conseqences are completely predictable from our point of view. What matters is not the consequences, but the intention with which we perform the action. This once again seems to lead us towards a Kantian ethical theory known as the deontological approach. So it seems that trolley problems and their variations may be able to teach us quite a lot about ethics!

In the Friday class, we will consider the drowning child, the violinist and the people seeds.