Thanks for explaining your thinking Mark. Agree about the phenomenology but disagree that it replaces ethical theory. Sometimes inauthentic actions are the right ones and authentic wrong and you need some grounds to make such judgments. Whether or not Mogensen is right about authenticity - ThreadSky

annaalexandrova.bsky.social • 34 days ago

Thanks for explaining your thinking Mark. Agree about the phenomenology but disagree that it replaces ethical theory. Sometimes inauthentic actions are the right ones and authentic wrong and you need some grounds to make such judgments. Whether or not Mogensen is right about authenticity

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markfabian.bsky.social•34 days ago

I didn't mean to suggest that it replaces ethical theory, just that there are analogous lines of reasoning for dealing with moral error theory. Also that it has a central role to play in understanding the lived experience of morality, and that analytical philosophy says too little about that.

markfabian.bsky.social•34 days ago

Most of analytical philosophy is motivationally naïve. The goodness & rightness of things is determined in a rational realm. But the things required for sustained moral behaviour are mostly non-rational - emotion, motivation, intuition in the form of bad feelings in the gut, guilt felt in the body

annaalexandrova.bsky.social•34 days ago

Maybe once it was like this, but I am not quite recognising this stereotype for present day, Mark. Modern moral psychology is all about emotion (work by Nomy Arpaly, Cheshire Calhoun, and many more). The bigger problem is failure to grapple with cultural and historical variations.

markfabian.bsky.social•34 days ago

You're right of course, but I'm someone whose done a degree in phil and been around it for a long time and I've found vanishingly little of what I'm talking about. I read the handbook of moral psych and Valerie's book on moral psych and didn't see it. They only see in psych what fits phil.

markfabian.bsky.social•34 days ago

And the wider philosophy space is dominated by something quite different - the approach of people like Singer, Parfit, the Kantians, Rawls. Lots of talk of reasons and choices, very little of motives, feelings, wellbeing in an organismic sense.

markfabian.bsky.social•34 days ago

I suspect this is a bit like evolutionary game theory in economics. It's there, and Ostrom even won a Nobel. But until you're quite deep in the weeds of the discipline you don't come across it, and it's still dressed up in loads of math which makes it hard for non-PhDs in econ to see and digest.

markfabian.bsky.social•34 days ago

There is this attitude that we have to put all this messy non-rational stuff aside so that we can penetrate to the truth of the matter using cold logic. That seems mostly wrong to me, certainly too extreme.

markfabian.bsky.social•34 days ago

Returning to authentic values, I don't think most people can make their way to being moral agents in a sustainable way if they begin in the realm of reason because they'll end up with a huge bag of extrinsically motivated values. Their "moral" behaviour will make them unwell.

markfabian.bsky.social•34 days ago

I treat morality and authenticity separately in the book, but hopefully explain how they are intimately linked. I have not come across anybody speaking about either in the 'motivational' and 'wellbeing' way that I do, which is why philosophy (even continental) was unsatisfying for me.

markfabian.bsky.social•34 days ago

One other thing I just remembered while washing the dishes...

(In)authenticity shouldn't be understood as binary. We have multiple selves that are complex & time consuming to harmonise. We can autonomously choose introjectedly motivated things, and may want to be rid of our intrinsic motivations.

recombobulating.bsky.social•34 days ago

The idea that the complexity of human subjectivity and uncertainty make reasoning impossible is an odd one when you come from a background in physics.

chrisschuck.bsky.social•34 days ago

For what it's worth, I have always thought of authenticity as morality-adjacent and sometimes overlapping with ethics but not inherently ethical in itself. Perhaps it's best viewed in terms of discerning the real reasons for doing what you do or valuing what you value, as opposed to "right" reasons.

markfabian.bsky.social•34 days ago

That sounds about right. Authenticity is also about being able to sustain your values and find them a source of wellbeing for you, rather than a massive burden.

chrisschuck.bsky.social•34 days ago

In that sense it has instrumental value, I suppose. It's interesting how it tends to get conflated with honesty. Or even self-honesty. But authenticity seems a bit different; as much existential as epistemic or virtue. Perhaps bc we continue to "become who we are." Looking forward to your book!

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