Charles Pigden

From Philosopedia

Charles Pigden (25 November 1956 - )

Pigden, who was born in Kingston-upon-Thames, England, United Kingdom, attended Dunstable Grammar/Manshead Upper School. His brother Tim is Managing Director, Optrack, UK.

Contents 1 Professional 2 Research 3 Publications 4 Personal

Professional

Now a citizen of New Zealand, United Kingdom, Dr. Pigden is a professor of philosophy at the University of Otago. In 1983 he received his M.A. at the University of Cambridge, and in 1985 his Ph. D. at La Trobe University in Australia.

After graduating from Kings College, Cambridge, in 1979, Pigden spent five years studying in Australia before first coming to Otago as a postdoctoral fellow in 1986. After a brief stint teaching at Massey University, he returned to Otago as a lecturer in 1988.

Pigden has published on a wide range of subjects from the analytic/synthetic distinction through conspiracy theories to the existence (or otherwise) of abstract objects. A Bertrand Russell scholar, he edited Russell on Ethics (1999, a work that won the Bertrand Russell Society book Award for 2000). Also, he contributed the chapter on ethics to the Cambridge Companion to Bertrand Russell.

His chief interest, according to the Otago website, is in ethics, particularly metaethics. He is a defender of the error-theory with a special interest in Hume and the Is/Ought Question. He has three papers on conspiracy theories, one 'Complots of Mischief', a philosophical dialogue in blank verse featuring Shakespeare's hero Coriolanus, who defends his conspiracy theory against all comers. His central claim is that though many conspiracy theories are silly, since people frequently conspire, there is nothing wrong with conspiracy theories as such.

Pigden organised a successful conference on "Hume, Motivation, 'Is' and 'Ought' " held at Otago University, Dunedin, New Zealand, from 19-24 January 2003. He currently is editing two books, Hume 'Is' and 'Ought' and Hume, Motivation and Virtue, based upon this conference.

Also, he is the compiler of the Otago supplement to the Philosopher's Lexicon and the author of the Karens Sketch (a supplement to Monty Python's famous Bruces Sketch).

Research

Prof. Pigden has described his interests in philosophy:

Hume's famous No-Ought-From-Is passage is one of the most talked-about single paragraphs in the entire history of philosophy and continues to be the focus for metaethical debate right down to the present day. Some think it expresses a profound truth; some think it is true but not profound; and some think that it cannot be profound because it is not true. Like Thomas Reid, I am a member of the true-but-not-profound party, though, in my view, its non-profundity is itself profound in the sense that it is a quite important point that nothing of any meta-ethical consequence follows from [my version of] No-Ought-From-Is. (When appropriately modified, No-Ought-From-Is is simply an instance of the conservativeness of logic, the thesis that in a valid deductive argument, you cannot get out what you have not put in; hence it provides no support whatsoever for non-cognitivism or even non-naturalism.)

My opponents include Arthur Prior, who argued in a famous paper that No-Ought-From-Is is not profound because not true, and Gerhard Schurz, who disputes my presupposition that there is no special logic of the moral concepts but defends a different and potentially more profound version of No-Ought-From-Is. The forthcoming Hume 'Is' and 'Ought' addresses these issues, advancing the debate between Schurz and myself, and includes two completely new proofs of No-Ought-From-Is, one by Greg Restall and Gillian Russell and the other by Ed Mares. Research on these issues (including a debate between Annette Baier and myself about the meaning of 'deduction' in eighteenth Century English) has led to further work on early modern logical theory, specifically the lecture notes of Colin Drummond, who was Hume's logic professor at Edinburgh.

Hume's 'Motivation Argument' is, if anything, even more discussed than No-Ought-From-Is. I contend that although an argument for non-cognitivism can be extracted from Hume's text, this is not the argument that Hume intended. What he was actually arguing for was the thesis that moral truths are not arrived at by reasoning but are the products of a moral sense. However both the argument that can be extracted from his text and the argument he intended are abject failures. If I am right about this, and right about No-Ought-From-Is, this rather leaves non-cognitivism in the lurch. However, these are contentious matters and are discussed at length by myself and others in the forthcoming Hume, Motivation and Virtue.

My work on Russell is dedicated to the proposition that Russell was an important ethical thinker, a major influence on Moore and a pioneer of both emotivism and the error-theory. Future work will emphasise his influence on Moore.

My long-term project is to write a defense of the error-theory (The Reluctant Nihilist) and a companion volume (Living the Noble Lie) arguing that morality is a necessary illusion. To that end I hope to explore the theme of amoralism in literature, touching on Dostoevsky, Laclos' Les Liaisons Dangereuses and the figure of Falstaff in Shakespeare's Henry IV plays.

Publications

Publications include the following:

2007 (forthcoming)

'Conspiracy Theories and the Conventional Wisdom', Epistime: the Journal of Social Cognition

'Desiring to Desire: Russell, Lewis and G.E. Moore', in Susanna Nuccatelli and Gary Seay eds, Themes from G. E. Moore: New Essays in Epistemology and Ethics, Oxford University Press, pp. 244-269.

2007

'Hume, Motivation and "the Moral Problem"' in New Essays on David Hume, edited by Emilio Mazza and Emanuele Ronchetti, Milano: Franco Angeli, 2007 [volume series: "Filosofia e scienza nell'età moderna" - ISBN number 978-88-464-8336-2], pp. 199-221.

2006

'Popper Revisited or What is Wrong With Conspiracy Theories?' ch. 3 of Coady, David ed. Conspiracy Theories: the Philosophical Debate, London: Ashgate, 2006, pp. 17-47. Slightly revised reprint of Pigden, C.R., 'Popper Revisited or What is Wrong With Conspiracy Theories?' The Philosophy of the Social Sciences, vol. 25, no. 1. pp. 3-34. (1995).

'Complots of Mischief' ch. 12 of Coady, David ed. Conspiracy Theories: the Philosophical Debate, London, Ashgate, pp. 147-173.

Pigden, C.R. and Cheyne, C. 'Negative Truths from Positive Facts', special David Armstrong edition of the Australasian Journal of Philosophy, vol. 84:2, pp. 249-65.

2004

Review of G.E.Moore's Ethical Theory by Brian Hutchinson, International Philosophical Quarterly, pp. 543-547.

2003

'Owed to Uncle Joe' (a Review of Martin Amis's Koba the Dread) in The New Zealand Political Review, vol. 12, no. 1, pp. 43-45.

'Bertrand Russell: Moral Philosopher or Unphilosophical Moralist?' in Griffin, N. ed. The Cambridge Companion to Russell, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 475-506.

2001

Review of Schurz, Gerhard, The Is-Ought Problem: An Investigation in Philosophical Logic, Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997.

1996

Pigden, C.R. and Cheyne, C. 'Pythagorean Powers or A Challenge to Platonism', Australasian Journal of Philosophy. 74, pp. 639-645.

1991

'Naturalism' in P. Singer (ed.) A Companion to Ethics, Oxford: Blackwell, pp. 421-431.

1990

'Geach on 'Good', Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 40, No. 159, pp. 129-154.

1989

'Logic and the Autonomy of Ethics', Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 67, pp. 127-151.

1988

'Anscombe on "Ought', Philosophical Quarterly, vol. 38, No. 1, pp. 20-41.

1987 '

'Two Dogmatists', Inquiry, vol. 30. No. 1, pp. 173-93.

Personal

Pigden is married to Zena Pigden, a social worker and cat breeder, and their grown children are Guy, Jemima, and Abigail. An atheist, he has described his general philosophical position as that of a naturalist/scientific realist. In meta-ethics, he is an error-theorist (morality a necessary fiction); in normative ethics, he is a mitigated consequentialist; and in politics he is a left-wing social democrat and intermittent human rights activist. He is concerned that the big issue facing humankind is that of global warming (mitigation and adaptation).

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