Brown, Faculty Advisor, Charlotte

Porter, Bill

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Illinois Wesleyan UniversityDigital Commons @ IWUJohn Wesley Powell Student ResearchConference 2005, 16th Annual JWP ConferenceApr 16th, 11:00 AM - 12:00 PMHume, Blackburn, and Korsgaard on the SensibleKnaveBill PorterIllinois Wesleyan UniversityCharlotte Brown, Faculty AdvisorIllinois Wesleyan UniversityFollow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/jwprcThis Event is brought to you for free and open access by The Ames Library, the Andrew W. Mellon Center for Curricular and FacultyDevelopment, the Office of the Provost and the Office of the President. It has been accepted for inclusion in Digital Commons @ IWU bythe faculty at Illinois Wesleyan University. For more information, please contact digitalcommons@iwu.edu.©Copyright is owned by the author of this document.Bill Porter and Charlotte Brown, Faculty Advisor, "Hume, Blackburn, and Korsgaard on the Sensible Knave" (April 16,2005). John Wesley Powell Student Research Conference. Paper 1.http://digitalcommons.iwu.edu/jwprc/2005/oralpres4/1THE JOHN WESLEY POWELL STUDENT RESEARCH CONFERENCE - APRIL 2005 Oral Presentation 04. 1 HUME, BLACKBURN, AND KORSGAARD ON THE SENSIBLE KNAVE Bill Porter and Charlotte Brown* Philosophy Department, Illinois Wesleyan University In "Ruling Passions," Simon Blackburn advances an ethical theory that welds Blackburn's quasi-realism to a Humean-Smithean theory of moral sentiments. This paper concerns the latter Humean side of Blackburn's theory, specifi.cally Blackburn's treatment of Hume's famous problem of the sensible knave. I have two tasks. My first task is to examine Hume's original formulation of, and reply to, the problem posed by the sensible knave. Also, I will deal with two complexities in Hume's picture: a prima facie circularity problem, and the threat posed by a variation or descendant of the original sensible knave. My more ambitious second task is an examination of the knave-related contemporary controversy between Blackburn and Christine Korsgaard. Blackburn's Humean defense consists especially in his repudiation of criticism levelled against Humean theories by Korsgaard in "The Sources of Normativity." I hope to show that Blackburn fails to escape Korsgaard's argument that Humean theories generally fail, in the case of the knave, to fulfill a requirement of transparency. 

Hume, Blackburn, and Korsgaard on the Sensible Knave

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Hume, Blackburn, and Korsgaard on the Sensible Knave

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