In presenting this philosophical examination of the range of decisions we all encounter as we live our lives
Questions of Value
This 24-lecture series with Professor Patrick Grim is for anyone who wants to fine-tune their ability to see how deeper questions of ethics and values apply to the choices that make up their lives.
01: Questions of Value
This lecture explains the basic structure of the course and its approaches to ethical, aesthetic, pragmatic, religious, and cultural values.
33 min
02: Facts and Values
This lecture focuses on the fundamental contrast between questions of value and questions of fact, drawing from sources both literary and philosophical, including Kierkegaard, Hume, Searle, and Jose Luis Borges.
30 min
03: Lives to Envy, Lives to Admire
"What makes a life a good life?" is a question too rarely asked. This lecture emphasizes that question against the background of Plato's "Republic," Plato's "Philebus," and Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics," examining the basic tension that separates two very different approaches to the answer.
31 min
04: Foundations of Ethics—Theories of the Good
Ethical evaluation is more complicated than simple judgments of "right" and "wrong." This lecture explores ethical theories based on the concept of the good as opposed to the right, emphasizing the approach set forth by Utilitarian philosophers like Bentham, Mill, and Moore.
30 min
05: Foundations of Ethics—Theories of the Right
Continuing the examination of ethical evaluation begun in Lecture 4, this lecture introduces the idea of a pure right-based theory, exemplified by the work of Immanuel Kant.
31 min
06: Thoughts on Religion and Values
This lecture explains why most contemporary philosophers think that values not only "can" be talked about independently of religion, but "should" be, examining an argument from Plato's "Euthyphro" that remains forceful against any Divine Command theory of ethics.
31 min
07: Life’s Priorities
This lecture introduces a simple method for examining one's own priorities in life, as well as drawing upon both Plato's "Philebus" and Aristotle's "Nicomachean Ethics" to enrich that examination.
30 min
08: The Cash Value of a Life
How much is a human life really worth? This lecture explores some of the abstract questions raised by the Ford Pinto case and then moves on to examine whether there are things worth dying for.
31 min
09: How Do We Know Right from Wrong?
This lecture examines a range of positions in the attempt to construct a better theory of ethical knowledge, including the Skeptic's gambit, A. J. Ayer's theory of Emotivism, and Plato's view of ethical perception.
32 min
10: Cultures and Values—Questions of Relativism
This lecture begins a two-lecture examination of cultures and values by asking whether values are culturally relative and introducing three theories of relativism: descriptive, ethical, and prescriptive.
30 min
11: Cultures and Values—Hopi, Navajo, and Ik
Do different cultures have fundamentally different ethical values? This lecture examines three famous anthropological studies in trying to arrive at an answer.
31 min
12: Evolution, Ethics, and Game Theory
This lecture examines two areas of research that promise us a better understanding of social ethics: sociobiology, introduced by E. O. Wilson and further developed by Richard Dawkins, and game theory, as it is applied to questions of social dynamics.
31 min
13: The Objective Side of Value
Are values purely a matter of subjectivity, or is there an objective side to value? Do subjective states give the whole story about value, or is there something important beyond them? A provocative "thought experiment" is but one of the ways this lecture looks for answers.
31 min
14: Better Off Dead
Can someone really be "better off dead?" Ideas drawn from Epicurus and Lucretius began our examination, which concludes with a provocative consideration of the rationality of suicide.
31 min
15: A Picture of Justice
What, exactly, is "justice?" This lecture draws on philosophers like Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Rawls, and Nozick in the attempt to paint a picture of what justice really demands; what a truly just society would have to be like.
29 min
16: Life’s Horrors
Life is filled with many arbitrary and freakish horrors, including natural evils like earthquakes, floods, and disease and man-made evils like rape, slaughter, torture, and war. This lecture examines the different lessons drawn from them by two different traditions - the religious and the anti-religious.
31 min
17: A Genealogy of My Morals
Why do we hold the ethical positions that we do? Knowledge of the history of our ethical conceptions can make us rethink and reevaluate our own moral views and may thereby lead us to change them.
32 min
18: Theories of Punishment
What justification is there for the death penalty? What justification is there for punishment in general? This lecture focuses on the ethical issues that lie beneath the legal controversies, examining two competing ideas regarding the justification of punishment: retributive theory and deterrence theory.
29 min
19: Choice and Chance
Two people may have precisely the same motives and intentions: to kill someone. One succeeds and is found guilty of murder. The other misses the targeted victim or has a gun that misfires and is found guilty only of attempted murder. Their sentences end up being very different. Can that be just? We examine the contemporary debate over the role of "moral luck."
30 min
20: Free Will and Determinism
Everything we do seems to be determined by two factors: (1) our biological makeup, for which we are not responsible, and (2) our environment, for which we are not responsible. How then can we be held responsible for the things we do?
31 min
21: Images of Immortality
Would you like to be immortal? If so, under what conditions? In examining the question, this lecture draws on sources as diverse as novelists Charles Dickens, Peter S. Beagle, and Anne Rice, and philosophers Derek Parfit and Bernard Williams.
31 min
22: Ethical Knowledge, Rationality, and Rules
Is ethics essentially a matter of rules, or is it something else? If there are reasons why one consideration outweighs another, can those be made explicit? Our search for answers involves Piaget, Kohlberg, Ross, Aristotle, and Nagel, as well as analogies from linguistics and computer science.
30 min
23: Moralities in Conflict and in Change
If two moral worldviews are in conflict, how is any resolution between them possible? This lecture examines the question using John Ford's classic western, "The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance," and also looks at comparisons between changes in scientific and moral worldviews.
31 min
24: Summing Up
This lecture summarizes the course in terms of overarching themes, sources, philosophical methodologies and techniques, and conclusions about values and their roles in our lives.
30 min
Overview Course No. 4433
About
Dr. Patrick Grim is Distinguished Teaching Professor of Philosophy at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. He graduated with highest honors in anthropology and philosophy from the University of California, Santa Cruz. He was named a Fulbright Fellow to the University of St. Andrews, Scotland, from which he earned his B.Phil. He earned his Ph.D. from Boston University. Professor Grim is the recipient of several honors and awards. In addition to being named SUNY Distinguished Teaching Professor, Dr. Grim has been awarded the President and Chancellor's awards for excellence in teaching and was elected to the Academy of Teachers and Scholars. The Weinberg Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of Michigan in 2006, Professor Grim has also held visiting fellowships at the Center for Complex Systems at Michigan and at the Center for Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh. Professor Grim, author of The Incomplete Universe: Totality, Knowledge, and Truth; coauthor of The Philosophical Computer: Exploratory Essays in Philosophical Computer Modeling; and editor of the forthcoming Mind and Consciousness: 5 Questions, is widely published in scholarly journals. He is the founder and coeditor of 25 volumes of The Philosopher's Annual, an anthology of the best articles published in philosophy each year.
