Claims like 'Slavery is wrong' are not fully common-sensical, so they must be at least partly theoretical. - Catherine Wilson

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Football, that's just athletics. But in the business world - doing everything - people are competing. So you need good work ethics, and I think it helped me to develop good work ethics, being in a small town.

Catherine Wilson

Claims like 'Slavery is wrong' are not fully common-sensical, so they must be at least partly theoretical.

Claims, Common, Partly, Slavery, Theoretical

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We are now returning to the 18th century empirical approach with the new interest in the evolutionary basis of ethics, with 'experimental' moral philosophy and moral psychology. As a result, we understand better why moral formulas are experienced as ineluctable commands, even if there is no commander and even if the notion of an inescapable obligation is just superstition. So moral philosophy has made huge progress.

Century, Philosophy, Progress, Psychology, Understand

We call 'Slavery is wrong' a moral truth because there is a specific history of theoretical investigation of a particular kind of slavery. We discussed it for centuries in metaphysical, economic, biological, and philosophical terms; we listened to all the arguments pro and con, we read all the testimonies of slaves and witnesses, and we decided. Though this 'we" is not everybody on earth, or even most people, who've never thought about slavery much.

People, Philosophical, Slavery, Specific, Terms, Truth

About 70% of what I've written about is centered on the clashes and conformities between the emerging life and physical sciences and older metaphysical frameworks in the 17th and 18th centuries. The other 30% consists of one-off essays or researches into other intriguing contemporary topics such as visual experience, aesthetics, social justice issues, and the epistemology of moral knowledge.

Consists, Intriguing, Issues, Justice, Physical, Topics

Gentlemanly, principled, helpful behaviour by older men vis-a-vis young women goes unnoticed, but it deserves real moral credit, and we could use more first-person testimony from the beneficiaries and practitioners about that too.

Deserves, Firsts, Men, Moral, Real

There is no single test or formula for producing moral progress anymore than there is for generating scientific truths. It is a process involving theoreticians, fact-gatherers, protestors, martyrs for the cause, authors of first- person narratives who change the way we see and evaluate the distribution of harms and benefits.

Causes, Firsts, Martyrs, Progress, Single, Way

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