Fourth Ex.phil. lecture

Today I have given the fourth lecture in Ex.phil. this Autumn, at University of Stavanger´s Department of social studies. The course is part of the bachelor in psychology as well as the year-long study in psychology. Today´s topics were metaethics and virtue ethics.

Fourth Ex.phil. lecture

Today I have given the fourth lecture in Ex.Phil. this term, as part of the University of Stavanger´s bachelor degree in psychology. The topics were metaethics and virtue ethics.

4 hours of teching in ethics September 23rd 2013

On September 23rd last autumn I taught for 4 hours in Examen Philosophicum at University of Stavanger's Department of health studies. The topic was ethical theory including research ethics and metaethics. 

"Beyond sentience" book chapter finished

Today Jonathan Beever and I have finished the book chapter "Beyond sentience: Biosemiotics as foundation for animal and environmental ethics" (see previous posts) - ca. 8.000 words.

Contents:

1. Introduction
2. Biosemiotics
3. Umwelt Theory
4. Sentience as Morally Relevant
5. Sentience and Umwelt
6. Variants of Biosemiotic Ethics
7. On the Notion of Semiotic Agency
8. Attribution of Moral Status at Various Levels of Biological Organization
9. Conclusion

"Beyond sentience" article in progress; follow-up discussed

The writing of "Beyond sentience: Biosemiotics as foundation for animal and environmental ethics", co-authored by Jonathan Beever and myself, continues. As reported in January the abstract for this text has been submitted to a prospective anthology in metaethics to be edited by John Hadley and Elisa Aaltola. The last we heard from the editors was that it is not completely certain that this book project will materialise, due to a lack of submissions. At any rate the deadline will only be at the end of the year.

Yesterday Jonathan and I talked via Skype to discuss our further collaboration on this piece. We agreed that we will write this text whether or not the mentioned book project materialises (and secondarily submit it to an ethics journal), becase this is a text that it is important to both of us to develop. We further sketched a time plan, divided into phases of thinking - reading - writing (completing by the end of the year), and discussed possible topical developments. It is quite likely that we will end up making this article primarily metaethical and a follow-up more normative.