Heart and Head: On Dickinson Miller’s Metaethics

Transcript:Heart and Head: On Dickinson Miller’s Metaethics:
Heart and Head: On Dickinson Miller’s Metaethics Teemu Toppinen (teemu.toppinen@tuni.fi) Metaphysical Club 2.0 University of Helsinki 31 October 2024 The plan for today The aim: to highlight and explain Dickinson Miller’s very little known metaethical views from the late 1890s and the early 1900s. These views have anticipated sophisticated, broadly pragmatist, accounts of the meaning of normative (and religious) language, which are usually believed to be much more recent inventions. The structure of the talk: Miller and the pragmatist tradition Metaethics Miller’s non-cognitivism (value as a province of Heart, and not Head) Miller’s quasi-realism (value as satisfaction ”not subjectified”) A puzzle: Miller on evaluative judgment and truth Miller & the pragmatist tradition Miller & the pragmatist tradition Dickinson Miller (1868–1963) studied, e.g., at the University of Pennsylvania, at Harvard (under, for example, William James, Josiah Royce, and George Santayana), and in Berlin and Halle (an abridged version of the Halle dissertation was published in The Philosophical Review in 1893 as “The Meaning of Truth and Error”). He worked at Harvard, Bryn Mawr, and Columbia (with, e.g., John Dewey), and at General Theological Seminary in New York; after retiring from work, Miller spent time also in Europe (attending the meetings of the Vienna Circle, for instance). His academic career appears to have suffered from his mental health problems. Miller is perhaps best known for his influence on William James, who was both influenced by Miller in his development of pragmatism and criticized by the latter (esp. with regard to “The Will to Believe”). (James to Miller: “I always turn to you inwardly as the completest ideal responder whom I have to any strivings of the spirit in myself – and this equally whether the response be agreement or dissent, for you genuinely meet me and others almost always glance side-ways off the surface.”) As for his own writings, Miller may be best known for a paper that he wrote, under the name ‘R. E. Hobart,’ on the topic of free will and determinism (“Free Will as Involving Determination and Inconceivable Without It”, Mind, 1934). metaethics What is Metaethics? Ethics is an attempt to answer questions such as: What is good? How should we live? Why is it good that we have knowledge? Why should we cut down on our greenhouse gas emissions? Metaethics is an attempt to answer a bunch of questions in philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, etc.