One of philosophy's jobs is to ask if we can be better. That is, it asks about how we live, our patterns.
People who do not want to ask those questions look for ways to evade them. One of the most handy is to retreat to some scientific explanation of behavior.
And believe me, any behavior at all can be justified by some finding somewhere.
Even a developmental necessity for Santa Claus!
Philosophers are VERY well aware of the human tendency to avoid the truth. No one needs social science to tell us that we are devoted to our illusions.
I believe that my own research (in our own class) shows that few of you would accept, as an excuse for your partner's cheating, a social-scientific justification.
Even if social science (psychology? neuroscience? sociology? sociobiology???) tells you that we are bound to cheat, you are likely to think that there's a moral issue, a betrayal, a dishonesty, a hurtful and selfish choice, etc.
So my point is that a social scientific answer can't (easily) help with a moral phenomenon. It takes courage to ask a challenging moral question without retreating to some comfortable generalization.
But that's our job here, for about seven more weeks.
Read 353-356. Short but grim. I don't need a summary. But I am likely to quiz you on it.
actually, I don't think sheeting always fall into the moral issue or selfish choice. The thing is when we think of sheeting, our mind often jump to the more stereotypical scenario: a man sheeting on his loving wife, etc. The first example wouldn't often be a lonely and isolated wife sheeting on her abusive husband because that is the only thing she can do to get some company. In that case, we would probably not say that her action is selfish, although I know it could get complicated when it comes to morality. This might be a total tangent but it's just what I thought.
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