So I want to start a weekly philosophy discussion thread wherein we all discuss a single paper in an in depth manner. I feel hubski offers the perfect environment for this endeavor because of things like the "goodlongreads" tag and the general disposition towards how discussions should be carried out as a whole. I will gladly maintain a list of anybody who would like to be included in this discussion and I will also gladly take suggestions for what we should discuss next week. If the community would like, we could setup a voting thread for what we want to read, or it could just be an arbitrary decision.

Anyway, on to what the title is actually about. If you haven't read Wolf's "Moral Saints" I have a link to the pdf right here. It's not that long, but it does deal with some involved philosophical language (I'm speaking specifically of her reference to Kripke's "killer yellow"), so if anyone has any questions about what terms mean feel free to ask!

As for what the actual discussion will be composed of, I propose we start with a, relatively simple, counter to Wolf's conclusion. I believe that Wolf does not cover the case of intuitionist moral systems. I will specifically be referencing W.D. Ross' Intuitionism as my explicit counter to Wolf. I think that this moral theory is sufficient in contradicting Wolf's conclusion because Ross’ Intuitionism is a moral theory predicated around the concept that there is no singular overarching moral rule. Instead, Ross proposes that morality is determined by (at the least) five prima facie duties (duties that are taken to be fundamental and from which the rest of the theory is built): beneficence, fidelity, reparation, gratitude, and non-maleficence. These duties are not equally weighted. The middle three duties are different from normal moral duties in that they are intrinsically tied to personal relationships; therefore, they form special duties that cannot be generalized. Ross’ Intuitionism states that, while one can look at moral acts in isolation, it is really the surrounding relationships that define wether or not an act is morally justified. Thus a Rossian moral saint would look quite different from either the loving saint or the rational saint that Wolf posits because there is no general idea of what “surrounding relationships” are.

Commence discourse!!