HeyJaredEclectic Inquiries
Publishing articles about my myriad interests, which include philosophy, religion, psychology, evolution, and neuroscience.
- Indexed issues, last 90 days
- 4
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- Sep 28, 2026
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- Jul 7, 2026
Latest issues
A Realistic Liberalism for the Human Mess (opens the original)
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What is justice? What are human rights and where do they come from? What makes a government legitimate? In my last article, I explored John Rawls’ theory of political liberalism, which was his attempt to answer these questions. Liberalism is a political perspective founded in the belief that governments are legitimate to the extent that they protect human rights, like the rights to express yourself freely, to participate in politics, and to have a f
John Rawls Vs. Human Nature (opens the original)
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In my last essay, I argued that utilitarianism and virtue ethics don’t offer a credible account of ethical motivation. Utilitarianism requires us to act from universal benevolence, but evolutionary theory raises doubts over whether it is realistic to expect people to have that kind of motivation. Evolution favors what I called “Darwinian egoism”: people evolve to maximize their inclusive fitness, or the reproductive success of themselves and their relatives. Anyone who practiced unive
Moral Realism is Incompatible with Darwinism (opens the original)
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Virtually all ethical theories are theories about human motivation. Ethical theories tell us how we ought to be motivated: we ought to be motivated to do things that are right and unmotivated to do things that are wrong.A problem with many ethical theories is that they rest on unrealistic assumptions about human motivation. Psychologists have formulated detailed theories of human motivation that are rooted in evolutionary theory. Evolutionary theory explores how motivations evolve in animals and
Virtue Ethics and the Human Mess (opens the original)
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Is it objectively right to always be virtuous? Or is it okay to be vicious sometimes? In On Virtue Ethics, Rosalind Hursthouse makes a case for the objective rightness of practicing the virtues. Her book is generally considered to be a strong defense of Aristotelian virtue ethics, an approach to ethics that emerged in the mid-20th century in the work of philosophers like Elizabeth Anscombe, Philippa Foot, and Alasdair MacIntyre.Aristotelian virtue ethics, or just virtue ethics from now on, gaine
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