Kai Nielsen

On human needs and moral appraisals

For a large and important range of cases the connection between ‘X needs y’ and ‘X ought to have y’, though not an entailment, is still non‐contingent. Sentences in which ‘needs’ occurs have several uses) one of which is normative; when such sentences are used to make statements, the statements constitute a good reason for asserting that what is needed ought to be done. It must, however, be recognized that such a reason may not be a sufficient reason for the moral appraisal that what is needed ought to be done. It is not self‐contradictory to assert ‘He needs it but he ought not to have it’, though in moral contexts if it is stated that someone needs something or that something is needed we are entitled to infer that, everything else being equal, he should have it or that it should be done. But often there are countervailing considerations which defeat that initial presumption. I attempt to support these contentions by 1) describing several key uses of “need sentences” and 2) by elucidating the relations ...

On Fixing the Reference Range of ‘God’

If my arguments so far have been near to their mark, the dialogue between belief and unbelief and the concerns of traditional philosophical theology cannot be so easily put aside as certain fideists, and indeed as certain sceptics as well, would have it. Most importantly, there is no sound argument, providing a short way with dissenters, which shows that first-order religious discourse and religion itself are and can be in no conceptual disarray. No such short way with dissenters is rationally justified.

The Intelligibility of God-Talk

There are certain primary religious beliefs which are basic to a whole religious Weltanschauung, for they are the cornerstone of the whole edifice.1 If these beliefs are unintelligible, incoherent, irrational or false the whole-way-of-life, centring around them, is ‘a house of cards’. Certain segments of it may still be seen to have a value when viewed from some other perspective, but if these primary religious beliefs are faulted, the religious Weltanschauung itself has been undermined. If it has been undermined and if people recognise that it has been undermined and still go around believing in it, accepting and acting in accordance with its tenets, they are then being very irrational. And while in humility we should recognise that we all suffer from propensities to irrationality and perhaps in some spheres of our life cannot help being irrational, it is a propensity we should resist, for to be irrational is to do something we ought not to do.

Wittgensteinian Fideism Again: A Reply to Hudson

W. D. Hudsons criticism of some points in my ‘Wittgensteinian Fideism’ are challenging and deserve comment. I remain, however, unconvinced that they require any modification in my assessment of Wittgensteinian Fideism. I shall try to justify this conviction.

Ethical naturalism once again

Like the ghost of Christmas past ethical naturalism keeps returning. I shall try to urge it gently back to its grave. Ethical naturalists have argued that ( 1 ) statements asserting ones approval of some attitude, action or state of affairs are at one and the same time normative and factual, and (2) claims that so and so is good or ought to be done are grounded on these statements of approbation. I shall attack (1) .