Moral Philosophy and What To Aim For In Your Life
Our moral philosophy determines what we care about and what we don’t care about.
I have an imaginary friend, whom I’ll call John.
John wants to know how he should live.
In particular, he wants to know what kind of life he has most reason to aim for. He keeps asking me:
“Which life do I have the strongest reasons to try to have?”
The source of reasons
That’s already deep stuff, but to have a shot at answering John’s question we need to descend deeper down the philosophical rabbit hole:
In virtue of what could someone have the strongest reasons to want to have some life? What provides these reasons?
Reasons are provided by facts.
Facts give us reasons when they count in favor of doing something.
For instance, the fact that calling an ambulance would save someone’s life counts in favor of calling an ambulance.
The million-dollar question, then, is which facts are the ones that count in favor of living a certain life.
