You’re welcome.

“Hopefully any prospective readers will see my earlier post, or this chapter summary helpfully linked by AesopFan…[ ] …and can view them as an outline or checklist to organize the wandering or tentative prose to which MacIntyre sometimes succumbs.”

Yeah, it’s not the kind of philosophizing I’m used to reading. There is more ground-laying, and it seems to me justifying of, that preliminary work, going on than there needs to be. But then that may be in the nature of the poli-sci and ethics beasts.

Obviously MacIntyre believed, and probably rightly at the time he wrote, that the problem he was addressing was not obvious to all those in the academic community who might subject his book to, and react with, possibly unsympathetic scrutiny.

What he has written seems to me then, almost as much in the way of historically rooted or contextualized political philosophy and critique, as it does logical analysis or argument.

And if one is expecting to go straight into something like you might find in Russell, or Austin, or Ryle, or even Gilson or some classical scholastic, and as radically different as they are all from one another, you won’t see anything of that kind … Or at least I did not. And I can put up with a lot: Heidegger, for example.

I’ve been trying to think of a book that reads somewhat like it, and all I can think of if Strauss’s “The Political Philosophy of Hobbes: Its Basis and Its Genesis.

That was another landmark book which I became kind of impatient with.

But, that’s my shortcoming, not theirs. And given the sociopolitical context and period in which these books came out, the manner of presentation makes sense.

Sometimes you have to show there is a problem before you can argue your case. I guess.

I haven’t read Adler’s Ten Philosophical Mistakes; I should look into that.

DNW, I entirely agree with your statement that, “I suspect though that [After Virtue] would be a pretty challenging read for someone who’s not already had some class room time in on this very subject. And I think the way [MacIntyre] tends to frame some of his conclusions, stating them as what seemed to me to be probably necessary inferences rather than inescapable deductions, pointing rather than commanding, reflects the [as I see it] academic and investigative, and a bit discursive tone, of some passages in the work.”

Hopefully any prospective readers will see my earlier post, or this chapter summary helpfully linked by AesopFan…
https://www.thenewatlantis.com/doclib/20120203_aftervirtuechaptersummary.pdf
…and can view them as an outline or checklist to organize the wandering or tentative prose to which MacIntyre sometimes succumbs.

I have not read MacIntyre’s other books, yet. Wikipedia says that they are:
– Whose Justice? Which Rationality? (1988)
– Three Rival Versions of Moral Inquiry (1990)
– Dependent Rational Animals (1999)

Has anyone else here done so?

Your PC hardware may be a quad core cpu, but if it is still running only DOS or Win 3.1…. well, good luck on the slow lane.

If your PC hardware is pretty old with a dual core, but it has Windows 7 on it…. that’s better than the above.

The funny thing about NASA is that they don’t obey this principle. Their computers during Apollo were primitive beyond belief but could make it to the moon and transmit 250,000+ miles across a vacuum with no signal distortion, bandwidth loss, or power issues. Meanwhile our single smartphone have more computational ability combined than all of NASA’s apollo computers combined, but they now can’t get out of Low Earth Orbit, let alone landing on the Moon.

What difference would it make if a couple of fatal heart attacks come not through a natural event, but because some impatient heir had induced them with an obscure drug introduced into their food? Should we suddenly treat them differently? The fact that they arose through choice and not chance is morally irrelevant.

https://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/ethics/bibliography/

https://epistemh.pbworks.com/f/4.+Macintyre.pdf

This certainly sounds like the POV that undergirds: Democrats and abortion for the convenience of the pregnant person (because, like, some men have wombs now); Democrats championing admission to women’s sports for transgender persons who are biologically male — and have the concomitant physical advantages; Democrats who are college snowflakes with their safe spaces; Democrats and the electorate who are obliged to elect them regardless of personal preferences; Democrats and illegal aliens; Democrats and the welfare system;…
Hmm. I’m sensing a pattern here.

I’ve copied his comment to my desktop, and I expect that it’ll lead to ordering a few books from the library.

Much appreciated.

“lightning on May 7, 2019 at 12:00 pm at 12:00 pm said:
I am no philosopher and greatly appreciate RC’s information, but I have one question: Where does the consideration of consequences come in? The modern thinkers don’t seem to consider how others are impacted by the action taken. “

Good point. It’s good, because that is a theme similar to the one I launched off on in my misfired comment last night. LOL

And here I am not referring to consequentialism as a type of moral theory, but consequences as an overlooked implication in a reciprocal system of moral exchange.

For example, Savulescu argues – developing a form of equivocation or ambiguity – that deliberate cloning is no different in kind from the natural production of a twin in utero. (That’s not true but we can leave it for now.)

As such his language seems to go from focusing on the process of intentional production initially, to a consideration of what entitlements the specific being produced might expect; and to then asserting that as the being is analogous to a naturally produced twin, it should be treated no differently.

He tries to argue from an analogy of kind which is dubious, to a supposed justification of intent, which does not follow at all.

It is this implied premise justification of intent, i.e., that the act of cloning is no different morally from the natural production of a twin that fails spectacularly.

And this is because of the consequences for those others, who, in granting the clone producer solidarity and social support on the basis of the principle of reciprocity in the first place, are deeply affected by his breach of the tacit terms of the associative contract.

He, the clone producer, uses them – his ostensible allies – as a field in which to realize his project and plant his clones. The principle of reciprocity is violated.

There is no admission that he is acting through artificial means to take advantage of the social benefit he received on the original basis of being recognized as a natural peer, in order to subvert or manipulate the entire system of social reproduction on the basis of some whim or perceived advantage to himself.

On Savulescu’s announced view then [at least in the article] , the clone maker apparently has no obligation to consider his effect on (or consequences for) the system members whom he seeks to use to his advantage. He effectively grants himself title to change the terms – to “evolve” through biological engineering – the nature of the very population of “the original alliance” : without regard to the obvious consequences; which seem invisible to him on any moral level.

This is actually fairly typical of modern liberal or utilitarian thinking: wherein they simply presume that others “exist for” them and for their use; without taking into consideration that reciprocity of claims and obligations are an intrinsic part of any rational or just system of association worth preserving in the first place. The clone master steps outside that system morally, while taking advantage of it in practice.

There is a half-assed argument that some liberals use to justify this view, which reads like a joke in a logic book.

all men must tolerate some men in order to have a society,
because X, as obnoxious as X is, is some man,
X must must therefore be tolerated

Like I said: their reasoning reads like a bad joke.