A certain moral philosopher I respect delivered a characteristically lively talk at the Anselm Müller conference this morning, in which he combined arguments about quantifying-in with his own brand of literary oddity to mount a convincing (to me) takedown of game theory-style philosophy of action. In the midst of logical fugue, he broke cadence to appeal to our “philosopher’s taste”, our sense of reality. It was the most apt description of dissatisfaction with modern moral philosophy that I have heard in some time, and to my untrained ear it makes excellent poetry. Here are his words, wrested out of their original paragraph and reshaped as a poem.
We soft-minded romantic types,
we are distracted
by the ugliness of it all,
the unreality,
the unfamiliar mental state pileup,
the tall
stacks
of doxastic
pancakes.
Think of it as found art, from a Powerpoint slide.
