I don't think any of my desires or beliefs or other mental states are external to me. Many people will occasionally feel… — Nomy Arpaly Copy Share Image
A very tall man once asked a question after my talk. Before beginning his question, he explained that the reason he was… — Nomy Arpaly Copy Share Image
Moral virtues and intellectual virtues are very different from each other, and moral virtue has to do with motivation, not cognition. Moral… — Nomy Arpaly Copy Share Image
Suppose whether or not someone tells me a lie depends only on whether he wants to, but he is morally indifferent, he… — Nomy Arpaly Copy Share Image
Characters in Hollywood movies encounter a lot of car chases. Characters in novels rarely wash their hands or do their laundry. And… — Nomy Arpaly Copy Share Image
I am an atheist. I don't think there's anything divine. Beautiful, impressive, awe-inspiring - sure, but not divine. — Nomy Arpaly Copy Share Image
Other things being equal, ill will is worse than moral indifference (as in causing suffering for money vs causing suffering to cause suffering), though… — Nomy Arpaly Copy Share Image
Duties concern things that are voluntary. I do think that if you have a moral duty to bring me back the book you borrowed, that implies, roughly, that your doing so depends on your wanting to do so: if you want to bring me the book, you will. This is not the case if you are stuck at some airport… — Nomy Arpaly Copy Share
Sometimes I suspect that there are two prototypes of philosophers who write about humans - I call them "celestials" and "terrestrials", without implying that celestials have their heads in the clouds or that terrestrials have theirs buried in the ground. The difference between these two types is not so much in their theories but in whether or not they would… — Nomy Arpaly Copy Share
When you find yourself reluctant to sit on a chair because it had unexpectedly collapsed in the past you might shake your head and… — Nomy Arpaly Copy Share Image
If I make a stupid decision but don't execute it because I'm, say, lazy, then I'm lucky, not rational. However, at other times a person acts for good reasons just as she does what she thinks she shouldn't do, not knowing that they are good reasons. Just like sometimes we are a lot less rational than we think we are,… — Nomy Arpaly Copy Share
If I am told my loving you had to happen because of some Freudian stuff about my childhood, that might be degrading or deflationary,… — Nomy Arpaly Copy Share Image
I am not committed in any way to the traditional concept of character - the concept of "character trait" as involving predictable behavior. I… — Nomy Arpaly Copy Share Image
I don't think any of my desires or beliefs or other mental states are external to me. Many people will occasionally feel alienated from… — Nomy Arpaly Copy Share Image
Incompatibilists will tell you that a work of art has no meaning unless the artists could have chosen to create a different one, but… — Nomy Arpaly Copy Share Image
Though we think intrinsic desires tend to be pretty stable, we do not think they imply anything like the amount of predictability in behavior… — Nomy Arpaly Copy Share Image
Suppose a student of mine writes in her exam that "morality is completely relative to culture, so nothing is absolutely right or wrong. Because… — Nomy Arpaly Copy Share Image
