The Importance of Clarity in Morality

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I'm increasingly of the opinion that the formula for how we should act in all these different Circumstances doesn't exist. And even when there is a formula, it's not clear that you necessarily have to use it I mean, let me give you an example. If you go to a drinks party and you're thinking well We don't want to stay too long. But the hosts get annoyed with us but equally we don't wants to leave too early because we don't wanting to be rude Right? So then you imagine saying to your partner. How many minutes do we need to stay? For it to be the right number of minutes now that would be a kind of really stupid

All of us have been wrong about things from time to time. But sometimes it was a simple, forgivable mistake, while other times we really should have been correct. Properties that systematically prevent us from being correct, and for which we can legitimately be blamed, are “intellectual vices.” Examples might include closed-mindedness, wishful thinking, overconfidence, selective attention, and so on. Quassim Cassam is a philosopher who studies knowledge in various forms, and who has recently written a book Vices of the Mind: From the Intellectual to the Political. We talk about the nature of intellectual vices, how they manifest in people and in organizations, and what we can possibly do to correct them in ourselves.

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Quassim Cassam received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Oxford University. He is currently Professor of Philosophy at the University of Warwick. He previously held faculty positions at Cambridge University and University College London. He has served as the president of the Aristotelian Society, and was awarded a Leadership Fellowship by the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK.

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