Neil Sinhababu
Biographic Data
| ID | 1242777 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Neil Sinhababu |
| GIVEN NAMES | Neil |
| FAMILY NAME | Sinhababu |
| SIGNATURE | SINHABABU N |
| AFFILIATIONS | National University of Singapore |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1726-3750 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 16 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 25 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2024 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Pleasure is Goodness; Morality is Universal
The Reliable Route from Nonmoral Evidence to Moral Conclusions
Moral Worth in Gettier Cases
This paper presents a counterexample to the view that moral knowledge is necessary for moral worth. Justified true beliefs that an action is right confer the same degree of moral worth, whether or not they constitute knowledge. This is demonstrated with an example called Texting the Rabbi in which two people receive answers to moral questions—one from a wise rabbi, the other from a thief who stole the rabbi's phone and gives the same answer as th…
Heidegger's argument for fascism
Heidegger's ontological theories, his observations about liberalism and fascism, and his evaluation of Being are three premises of an argument for fascism. The ontological premise is that integrated wholes and instruments or objects of will are ontologically superior, as Being and Time suggests in discussing Being‐a‐whole and using tools. The social premise is that fascist societies are wholes integrated by dictatorial will, while liberal societi…
Qualia share their correlates’ locations
Nietzsche's Pragmatism
Pietro Gori dedicates Nietzsche's Pragmatism “To the wanderers and Good Europeans,” and Anglophone wanderers into Sarah de Sanctis's translation will indeed find good European Nietzsche scholarship. The table of contents is a helpful map of the book, with five chapters consisting of twenty-eight sections on a sequence of philosophical and interpretive topics. Perspectival thought, addressed in the subtitle, is the explicit topic of the third chap…
Loving the Eternal Recurrence
We explore how one might respond emotionally to the eternal recurrence. Zarathustra himself serves as our central case study. First we clarify the idea of eternal recurrence and its role in Nietzsche's philosophy, explaining why the eternal recurrence has the emotional consequences Nietzsche describes when he first introduces the idea in The Gay Science. Then we describe Zarathustra's emotional journey from horror at the eternal recurrence to lov…
Ethical Reductionism
Ethical reductionism is the best version of naturalistic moral realism. Reductionists regard moral properties as identical to properties appearing in successful scientific theories. Nonreductionists, including many of the Cornell Realists, argue that moral properties instead supervene on scientific properties without identity. I respond to two arguments for nonreductionism. First, nonreductionists argue that the multiple realizability of moral pr…
Humean Nature
"Neil Sinhababu defends the Humean Theory of Motivation, according to which desire drives all human action and practical reasoning. Desire motivates us to pursue its object. It makes thoughts of its object pleasant or unpleasant. It focuses attention on its object. Its effects are amplified by vivid representations of its object. These aspects of desire explain why motivation usually accompanies moral belief, how intentions shape our planning, ho…
Nietzschean Pragmatism
Nietzschean pragmatism is the view that one should believe whatever best promotes life, even things that are untrue because they fail to correspond to reality. Nietzsche expresses this view in early sections of Beyond Good and Evil. While he rejects all objective value including that of truth, his view that passions can give their objects subjective value suggests valuing beliefs that promote life. The second essay of the Untimely Meditations app…
Zarathustra's metaethics
Nietzsche takes moral judgments to be false beliefs, and encourages us to pursue subjective nonmoral value arising from our passions. His view that strong and unified passions make one virtuous is mathematically derivable from this subjectivism and a conceptual analysis of virtue, explaining his evaluations of character and the nature of the Overman
Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality
Of the fourteen essays in Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality, several are excellent, several are pretty good, and only one is substandard. That's a good score, and Simon May deserves credit for assembling a volume that will advance our understanding of the Genealogy.The first essay is Raymond Geuss's “The Future of Evil.” Geuss sees evil as “a structural feature of all vices” (14) and considers how our use of the concept of evil might chang…
Unequal Vividness and Double Effect
I argue that the Doctrine of Double Effect is accepted because of unreliable processes of belief-formation, making it unacceptably likely to be mistaken. We accept the doctrine because we more vividly imagine intended consequences of our actions than merely foreseen ones, making our aversions to the intended harms more violent, and making us judge that producing the intended harms is morally worse. This explanation fits psychological evidence fro…
The Humean Theory of Practical Irrationality
Christine Korsgaard has argued that Humean views about action and practical rationality jointly imply the impossibility of irrational action. According to the Humean theory of action, agents do what maximizes expected desire-satisfaction. According to the Humean theory of rationality, it is rational for agents to do what maximizes expected desire-satisfaction. Thus Humeans are committed to the impossibility of practical irrationality—an unaccepta…
The Humean Theory of Motivation Reformulated and Defended
This essay defends a strong version of the Humean theory of motivation on which desire is necessary both for motivation and for reasoning that changes our desires. Those who hold that moral judgments are beliefs with intrinsic motivational force need to oppose this view, and many of them have proposed counterexamples to it. Using a novel account of desire, this essay handles the proposed counterexamples in a way that shows the superiority of the …
Nietzsche and morality
The Humean Theory of Motivation Reformulated and Defended
This essay defends a strong version of the Humean theory of motivation on which desire is necessary both for motivation and for reasoning that changes our desires. Those who hold that moral judgments are beliefs with intrinsic motivational force need to oppose this view, and many of them have proposed counterexamples to it. Using a novel account of desire, this essay handles the proposed counterexamples in a way that shows the superiority of the …
Zarathustra's metaethics
Nietzsche takes moral judgments to be false beliefs, and encourages us to pursue subjective nonmoral value arising from our passions. His view that strong and unified passions make one virtuous is mathematically derivable from this subjectivism and a conceptual analysis of virtue, explaining his evaluations of character and the nature of the Overman
Nietzschean Pragmatism
Nietzschean pragmatism is the view that one should believe whatever best promotes life, even things that are untrue because they fail to correspond to reality. Nietzsche expresses this view in early sections of Beyond Good and Evil. While he rejects all objective value including that of truth, his view that passions can give their objects subjective value suggests valuing beliefs that promote life. The second essay of the Untimely Meditations app…
Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality
Of the fourteen essays in Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality, several are excellent, several are pretty good, and only one is substandard. That's a good score, and Simon May deserves credit for assembling a volume that will advance our understanding of the Genealogy.The first essay is Raymond Geuss's “The Future of Evil.” Geuss sees evil as “a structural feature of all vices” (14) and considers how our use of the concept of evil might chang…
Unequal Vividness and Double Effect
I argue that the Doctrine of Double Effect is accepted because of unreliable processes of belief-formation, making it unacceptably likely to be mistaken. We accept the doctrine because we more vividly imagine intended consequences of our actions than merely foreseen ones, making our aversions to the intended harms more violent, and making us judge that producing the intended harms is morally worse. This explanation fits psychological evidence fro…
Nietzsche and morality
The Humean Theory of Motivation Reformulated and Defended
This essay defends a strong version of the Humean theory of motivation on which desire is necessary both for motivation and for reasoning that changes our desires. Those who hold that moral judgments are beliefs with intrinsic motivational force need to oppose this view, and many of them have proposed counterexamples to it. Using a novel account of desire, this essay handles the proposed counterexamples in a way that shows the superiority of the …
The Humean Theory of Practical Irrationality
Christine Korsgaard has argued that Humean views about action and practical rationality jointly imply the impossibility of irrational action. According to the Humean theory of action, agents do what maximizes expected desire-satisfaction. According to the Humean theory of rationality, it is rational for agents to do what maximizes expected desire-satisfaction. Thus Humeans are committed to the impossibility of practical irrationality—an unaccepta…
Unequal Vividness and Double Effect
I argue that the Doctrine of Double Effect is accepted because of unreliable processes of belief-formation, making it unacceptably likely to be mistaken. We accept the doctrine because we more vividly imagine intended consequences of our actions than merely foreseen ones, making our aversions to the intended harms more violent, and making us judge that producing the intended harms is morally worse. This explanation fits psychological evidence fro…
Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality
Of the fourteen essays in Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morality, several are excellent, several are pretty good, and only one is substandard. That's a good score, and Simon May deserves credit for assembling a volume that will advance our understanding of the Genealogy.The first essay is Raymond Geuss's “The Future of Evil.” Geuss sees evil as “a structural feature of all vices” (14) and considers how our use of the concept of evil might chang…
Zarathustra's metaethics
Nietzsche takes moral judgments to be false beliefs, and encourages us to pursue subjective nonmoral value arising from our passions. His view that strong and unified passions make one virtuous is mathematically derivable from this subjectivism and a conceptual analysis of virtue, explaining his evaluations of character and the nature of the Overman
Humean Nature
"Neil Sinhababu defends the Humean Theory of Motivation, according to which desire drives all human action and practical reasoning. Desire motivates us to pursue its object. It makes thoughts of its object pleasant or unpleasant. It focuses attention on its object. Its effects are amplified by vivid representations of its object. These aspects of desire explain why motivation usually accompanies moral belief, how intentions shape our planning, ho…
Nietzschean Pragmatism
Nietzschean pragmatism is the view that one should believe whatever best promotes life, even things that are untrue because they fail to correspond to reality. Nietzsche expresses this view in early sections of Beyond Good and Evil. While he rejects all objective value including that of truth, his view that passions can give their objects subjective value suggests valuing beliefs that promote life. The second essay of the Untimely Meditations app…
Ethical Reductionism
Ethical reductionism is the best version of naturalistic moral realism. Reductionists regard moral properties as identical to properties appearing in successful scientific theories. Nonreductionists, including many of the Cornell Realists, argue that moral properties instead supervene on scientific properties without identity. I respond to two arguments for nonreductionism. First, nonreductionists argue that the multiple realizability of moral pr…
Loving the Eternal Recurrence
We explore how one might respond emotionally to the eternal recurrence. Zarathustra himself serves as our central case study. First we clarify the idea of eternal recurrence and its role in Nietzsche's philosophy, explaining why the eternal recurrence has the emotional consequences Nietzsche describes when he first introduces the idea in The Gay Science. Then we describe Zarathustra's emotional journey from horror at the eternal recurrence to lov…
Nietzsche's Pragmatism
Pietro Gori dedicates Nietzsche's Pragmatism “To the wanderers and Good Europeans,” and Anglophone wanderers into Sarah de Sanctis's translation will indeed find good European Nietzsche scholarship. The table of contents is a helpful map of the book, with five chapters consisting of twenty-eight sections on a sequence of philosophical and interpretive topics. Perspectival thought, addressed in the subtitle, is the explicit topic of the third chap…
Qualia share their correlates’ locations
Pleasure is Goodness; Morality is Universal
The Reliable Route from Nonmoral Evidence to Moral Conclusions
Moral Worth in Gettier Cases
This paper presents a counterexample to the view that moral knowledge is necessary for moral worth. Justified true beliefs that an action is right confer the same degree of moral worth, whether or not they constitute knowledge. This is demonstrated with an example called Texting the Rabbi in which two people receive answers to moral questions—one from a wise rabbi, the other from a thief who stole the rabbi's phone and gives the same answer as th…
Heidegger's argument for fascism
Heidegger's ontological theories, his observations about liberalism and fascism, and his evaluation of Being are three premises of an argument for fascism. The ontological premise is that integrated wholes and instruments or objects of will are ontologically superior, as Being and Time suggests in discussing Being‐a‐whole and using tools. The social premise is that fascist societies are wholes integrated by dictatorial will, while liberal societi…
Epistemology (16 works) · Philosophy (15 works) · Psychology (9 works) · Philosophy (8 works) · Nietzsche, Schopenhauer, and Hegel (5 works) · Philosophical Ethics and Theory (5 works) · Social Psychology (5 works) · Law (4 works) · Psychology of Moral and Emotional Judgment (4 works) · Free Will and Agency (3 works)