Is there any moral obligation to improve oneself, to foster and develop various capacities in oneself? From a broadly Kantian point of view, Self-Improvement defends the view that there is such an obligation and that it is an obligation that each person owes to him or herself. The defence addresses a range of arguments philosophers have mobilized against this idea, including the argument that it is impossible to owe anything to yourself, and the view that an obligation to improve onself (...) is overly 'moralistic'. Robert N. Johnson argues against Kantian universalization arguments for the duty of self-improvement, as well as arguments that bottom out in a supposed value humanity has. At the same time, he defends a position based on the notion that self- and other-respecting agents would, under the right circumstances, accept the principle of self-improvement and would leave it up to each to be the person to whom this duty is owed. (shrink)

It is a widely held view in moral philosophy that reasons for action are based on desires. This view should be rejected. Reasons for action are never provided by desires. Desires provide us with motives, whereas reasons for action are based on valuable facts which obtain independently of our desires. The recognition of these reasons does not necessarily motivate us. Motives depend on desires, for instance the motive for moral actions on the desire to do the morally right thing.

Naturalism, as Binmore understands the term, is characterized by a scientific stance on moral behavior. Binmore claims that a naturalistic account of morality necessarily goes with the conviction “that only hypothetical imperatives make any sense”. In this paper it is argued that this claim is mistaken. First, as Hume’s theory of promising shows, naturalism in the sense of Binmore is very well compatible with acknowledging the importance of categorical imperatives in moral practice. Moreover, second, if Binmore’s own theory of moral (...) practice and its evolution is correct, then the actual moral practice does-and in fact must-incorporate norms, which have the form of a categorical imperative. Categorical imperatives are part of social reality and, therefore, any (normative) moral theory that adequately reflects moral practice must also include categorical imperatives. (shrink)

The relation between morality and rationality is a prominent theme in moral philosophy. D. Gauthier's account of this relation is an extraordinarily impressive one. He attempts to demonstrate a general co-incidence between rationality and morality. His approach is discussed in what follows, and it will be shown that most of his 'coincidence claims' are exaggerated.

Elizabeth Anscombe is well-known for her insistence that there are absolutely prohibited actions, though she is somewhat obscure about why this is so. Nonetheless, I contend in this paper that Anscombe is more concerned with the epistemology of absolute prohibitions, and that her thought on connatural moral knowledge - which resembles moral intuition - is key to understanding her thought on moral prohibitions. I shall identify key features of Anscombe's moral epistemology before turning to investigate its sources, examining the roots (...) of connaturality in Aquinas and comparing it with rationalist ethical intuitionism, which Anscombe differs from in rejecting "good" as a simple, non-natural property. I then develop a two-stage argument about absolute prohibition: The first will be loosely Thomistic, while the second will suggest how Anscombe's absolute prohibitions can be seen as a continuation of Wittgenstein's anti-scepticism in On Certainty. I develop an account of absolute prohibitions as a form of Wittgensteinian hinge proposition - they are not the conclusions of deductive arguments, but the foundations for intelligibility in action. (shrink)

Este artigo visa compreender o estado da arte do naturalismo contemporâneo a partir da discussão com posições não naturalistas, em especial as de Moore e Rawls. Parte-se da análise do argumento central destas abordagens no contexto formal da metaética contemporânea, buscando aferir a validade da falácia naturalista no contexto atual, bem como de seus limites na aplicação contra o naturalismo moral. Apresenta-se a discussão entre o naturalismo e o não-naturalismo moral como, respectivamente, estandartes das perspectivas descritivas e prescritivas da moralidade. (...) O objetivo com esta comparação é apresentar algumas posições em metaética a fim de melhor entender a situação contemporânea do debate moral no que tange à naturalização da ética, contrastando teorias da ação e do valor quanto ao tema da motivação e da normatividade morais. (shrink)

Das Thema des Beitrages bildet der „neue“ Non-Naturalismus, welcher exemplarisch am metaethischen Ansatz von Derek Parfit untersucht wird. Parfits Ansatz zeichnet sich durch das Ziel aus, eine neue Theorienoption zu ermöglichen, die einerseits von der Existenz normativer Tatsachen ausgeht, ohne jedoch andererseits auf die ontologischen Verpflichtungen der klassischen Vertreter des Non-Naturalismus festgelegt zu sein. Hierfür wird der Begriff der „nicht-ontologischen Existenz“ eingeführt und von robusten ontologischen Existenzweisen unterschieden. In diesem Beitrag wird dafür argumentiert, dass Parfit bisher nur Explikationen dieses zentralen (...) Begriffs geliefert hat, die a.) uninformativ sind, b.) mit dem Ziel der Ausgangstheorie in Konkurrenz geraten oder c.) den eigenen Absatz bereits unter der Hand aufgeben. Darüber hinaus werden die dialektischen Möglichkeiten durchgespielt, die Parfit bleiben, um auf diese Diagnose zu reagieren. In der Konsequenz wird aber auch diesbezüglich aufgezeigt, dass mit Blick auf deren Erfolgsaussichten eine gewisse Skepsis angebracht ist. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue for a new normative theory of rational choice under risk, namely expected comparative utility (ECU) theory. I first show that for any choice option, a, and for any state of the world, G, the measure of the choiceworthiness of a in G is the comparative utility (CU) of a in G—that is, the difference in utility, in G, between a and whichever alternative to a carries the greatest utility in G. On the basis of this (...) principle, I then argue that for any agent, S, faced with any decision under risk, S should rank his or her decision options (in terms of how choiceworthy they are) according to their comparative expected comparative utility (CECU) and should choose whichever option carries the greatest CECU. For any option, a, a’s CECU is the difference between its ECU and that of whichever alternative to a carries the greatest ECU, where a’s ECU is a probability‐weighted sum of a’s CUs across the various possible states of the world. I lastly demonstrate that in some ordinary decisions under risk, ECU theory delivers different verdicts from those of standard decision theory. (shrink)

Drawing on Anscombe, in this essay I argue that we should not take Aristotle to be a moral philosopher, nor a virtue ethicist. This is because contemporary virtue ethics has little to do with Aristotelian ethics. While contemporary virtue ethics (or aretaic moral theory, as one may call it) operates on the level of moral and thus categorical norms, Aristotelian ethics—an aretaic life ethics—is primarily concerned with pragmatic norms. The main question for Aristotle is what a good general conduct of (...) life is. The major concern of aretaic moral theory, on the other hand, is to provide a criterion of morally right action and hence to define the concepts of the morally right, the impermissible and moral duty in aretaic terms. This shows that contemporary authors assume a primacy of virtue, while Aristotle assumes a primacy of eudaimonia. I illustrate this distinction by addressing the question of how the virtues benefit their possessor. (shrink)

Is the history of philosophy primarily a contribution to PHILOSOPHY or primarily a contribution to HISTORY? This paper is primarily contribution to history (specifically the history of New Zealand) but although the history of philosophy has been big in New Zealand, most NZ philosophers with a historical bent are primarily interested in the history of philosophy as a contribution to philosophy. My essay focuses on two questions: 1) How did New Zealand philosophy get to be so good? And why, given (...) that is so good (a point I am at pains to establish), has it apparently had so slight a cultural impact within New Zealand itself? Did we get the wrong Anderson – the uninspiring William, who was Professor at Auckland, rather than his talented younger brother John, who had such a huge cultural influence as Professor of Philosophy at Sydney? Perhaps but that can only be part of the story since we managed to attract even bigger stars, (notably Karl Popper) as well as breeding bigger talents of our own (Prior, Baier, Bennett, Mulgan, Hursthouse, Waldron and many more). Do we export our best talent? Sometimes – but the stars that stay and the stars who arrive don’t seem to have much impact in New Zealand itself however brightly they shine in the international philosophical firmament. Is it too esoteric? Perhaps, but esoteric philosophy can still have a cultural impact, witness, Moore, Popper and the younger Anderson. Is it, like many of New Zealand’s cultural products (from romance novels to movies), primarily intended for an international audience? That’s a large part of the answer but only a part. Another part of the answer is that philosophy HAS had a cultural impact but that impact is not readily apparent. For NZ philosophers have been less keen to push their ideological barrows and more keen to produce critical thinkers, and critical thinkers don’t all think alike. The logician George Hughes was apparently a life-changing teacher not because he had a nostrum but because he taught people to think. As one of his students said ‘the only ism you believe in is the syllogism’. On the whole the history of New Zealand Philosphy is a ‘From Log Cabin to White House’ tale, ‘From colonial obscurity through struggle and adversity to philosophical excellence’. But there are shadows in the picture. Some departments have nearly come to grief through bureaucratic and political misadventures, and it is hard to resist the suspicion that there is often an element of hostility to philosophers on the part of both university bureaucrats and fellow-academics. I speculate as to why this is the case (we are too argumentative and don’t confine our argumentative tendencies to the cloister) but conclude with some upbeat reflections. on the future of New Zealand Philosophy. (shrink)

In this paper, I will present and advocate a view about what we are doing when we attribute delusion, namely, say that someone is delusional. It is an “expressivist” view, roughly analogous to expressivism in meta-ethics. Just as meta-ethical expressivism accounts for certain key features of moral discourse, so does this expressivism account for certain key features of delusion attribution. And just as meta-ethical expressivism undermines factualism about moral properties, so does this expressivism, if correct, show that certain attempts to (...) objectively define delusion are misguided. I proceed as follows. I start by examining different attempts at defining delusion, separating broadly psychiatric attempts from epistemic ones. I then present a change of approach, according to which we question whether the term “delusion” is in the business of (merely) describing reality. I then support this proposal, first, by borrowing standard lines of argument from meta-ethics (including ontological reluctance, intrinsic motivation, and deep disagreement) but also, by inference to the best explanation of some the features we see when we try to theorise about delusion (namely that it is hard to define, and that our delusion attributions are elicited by a plurality of norms). (shrink)

In this paper, we propose a defence of Value Realism that relies on the unusual combination of Values Realism with Sentimentalism. What this account, which we call “Sentimental Realism”, holds, in a nutshell, is that what makes evaluative facts special is their relationship to emotions. More precisely, Sentimental Realism claims that evaluative facts are fully objective facts, but that such facts are picked out by concepts that are response-dependent, in the sense that they are essentially tied to emotions. Our plan (...) is as follows. We shall start with a presentation of Sentimental Realism and a discussion of its main virtues. On the basis of this, we shall discuss an objection to Value Realism that draws on evolutionary considerations, the Evolutionary Debunking Argument. We shall argue that Sentimental Realism safely escapes from this dilemma. (shrink)

What is mathematics about? And if it is about some sort of mathematical reality, how can we have access to it? This is the problem raised by Plato, which still today is the subject of lively philosophical disputes. This book traces the history of the problem, from its origins to its contemporary treatment. It discusses the answers given by Aristotle, Proclus and Kant, through Frege's and Russell's versions of logicism, Hilbert's formalism, Gödel's platonism, up to the the current debate on (...) Benacerraf's dilemma and the indispensability argument. Through the considerations of themes in the philosophy of language, ontology, and the philosophy of science, the book aims at offering an historically-informed introduction to the philosophy of mathematics, approached through the lenses of its most fundamental problem. (shrink)

Fictionalists propose that some apparently fact-stating discourses do not aim to convey factual information about the world, but rather allow us to engage in a fiction or pretense without incurring ontological commitments. Some philosophers have suggested that using mathematical, modal, or moral discourse, for example, need not commit us to the existence of mathematical objects, possible worlds, or moral facts. The mental fictionalist applies this reasoning to our mental discourse, suggesting that we can use ‘belief’ and ‘desire’ talk without committing (...) to the existence of beliefs and desires as mental entities. Most arguments for mental fictionalism are based on two key suppositions: first, that there are ontological concerns about mental entities; and second, that these ontological concerns justify a fictionalist interpretation of mental discourse. This paper challenges both suppositions and argues that the standard arguments for mental fictionalism are substantially weaker than arguments for other forms of fictionalism in the philosophical literature. (shrink)

Many hope that our values, purged of messy human contingency, could aspire to correspond with mind-independent, rationally obligatory, and eternal ethical facts. But if the arguments of this thesis are on the right track, we should reject the search for non-natural and mind-independent moral truths.

Morality is demanding; this is a platitude. It is thus no surprise when we find that moral theories too, when we look into what they require, turn out to be demanding. However, there is at least one moral theory – consequentialism – that is said to be beset by this demandingness problem. This calls for an explanation: Why only consequentialism? This then leads to related questions: What is the demandingness problematic about? What exactly does it claim? Finally, there is the (...) question of what we do if we accept that there is a demandingness problem for consequentialism: How can consequentialists respond? The present chapter sets out to answer these questions (or at least point to how they could be answered). (shrink)

After criticizing some recent writings typical of the different forms of ethical objectivism, that is, intuitionism, naturalism (including the ideal observation theory and supervenience), and rationalism, I gave my reasons for siding with ethical subjectivism. I hope to demonstrate that this alternative meta‐ethical theory does not consider moral judgements meaningless nor arbitrary, and that it is compatible with empiricism in science and with serious moral commitment. Objectivists, on the other hand, tend to take a parochial view of ethics, identifying morality (...) with a particular moral point of view, nowadays liberalism and the common good, while ignoring rival moral principles which are politically important. (shrink)

The fact that debunkers can turn to the argument from disagreement for help is ofcourse not a surprise. After all, both types of challenge basically pursue the same,skeptical conclusion. What I have tried to show, however, is that they are related in amore intimate way.

It has often been suggested that people's ordinary understanding of morality involves a belief in objective moral truths and a rejection of moral relativism. The results of six studies call this claim into question. Participants did offer apparently objectivist moral intuitions when considering individuals from their own culture, but they offered increasingly relativist intuitions considering individuals from increasingly different cultures or ways of life. The authors hypothesize that people do not have a fixed commitment to moral objectivism but instead tend (...) to adopt different views depending on the degree to which they consider radically different perspectives on moral questions. (shrink)

If someone disagrees with my moral views, or more generally if I’m in a group of n people who all disagree with each other, but I don’t have any special evidence or basis for my epistemic superiority, then it’s at best a 1-in-n chance that my views are correct. The skeptical threat from disagreement is thus a kind of moral lottery, to adapt a similar metaphor from Sharon Street. Her own genealogical debunking argument, as I discuss, relies on a premise (...) of such disagreement among evolutionary counterparts. -/- In this paper, I resist the threat from disagreement by showing that, on some of the most influential and most attractive theories of content determination, the premise of moral disagreement cannot serve any skeptical or revisionary purposes. I examine and criticize attempts, made by Gilbert Harman and Sharon Street, to argue from disagreement to relativism by relying on a theory of content determination that involves a principle that, within certain constraints, maximizes the attribution to us of true beliefs. And I examine and criticize Robert Williams’s attempt to show there is moral disagreement by relying on a theory of content determination that involves a principle that instead maximizes the attribution to us of rationality. My overall aim is to defend commonsense moral realism via a careful look at the theory of content and concepts. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on the connection between moral disagreement and moral relativism. Moral relativists, generally speaking, think both (i) that there is no unique objectively correct moral standard and (ii) that the rightness and wrongness of an action depends in some way on a moral standard accepted by some group or an individual. This chapter will first consider the metaphysical and epistemic arguments for moral relativism that begin from the premise that there is considerable amount of moral disagreement both within (...) individual societies and between them. The second half of the chapter, by contrast, focuses on the objection that moral relativism threatens to make us unable to have moral disagreements because it seems to make us speak past one another. This part of the chapter also evaluates relativist responses to this disagreement problem that rely on semantic opacity, disagreement in attitude, metalinguistic negotiations, and truth relativism. The chapter finally concludes by considering future directions of research in this area. (shrink)

This essay explores some of the similarities and differences between the views of several Western and Chinese thinkers on the metaphysical status of moral qualities and how we come to perceive and appreciate them. It then uses this comparative analysis to identify and address some remaining problems in regard to these two issues. The essay offers a brief sketch of and introduction to the history of the study of moral qualities and moral perception in modern Western philosophy and takes the (...) views of John McDowell, W ang Yangming, and Mencius as the primary focus of its comparative component. It seeks to understand the views of these thinkers by a careful examination of the metaphors as well as the arguments they employ. (shrink)

Sense-perception—the awareness or apprehension of things by sight, hearing, touch, smell and taste—has long been a preoccupation of philosophers. One pervasive and traditional problem, sometimes called “the problem of perception”, is created by the phenomena of perceptual illusion and hallucination: if these kinds of error are possible, how can perception be what it intuitively seems to be, a direct and immediate access to reality? The present entry is about how these possibilities of error challenge the intelligibility of the phenomenon of (...) perception, and how the major theories of perception in the last century are best understood as responses to this challenge. (shrink)

One form of scepticism about the possibility ofmoral theorydoes not deny that there is something describable as ‘the conduct of life’, but it argues that there is no special ethical account to be given of this since conduct has no identifiablymoraldimension. Here I explore the possibility that the problem of identifying distinctively moral aspects of action is explained by the thesis that the moral is ubiquitous; thateveryhuman actionis– not ‘may be’ – morally significant. To say, however, that morality is all (...) pervasive is not to say anything about howdemandingmoral considerations may be. Reasons for action ultimately relate to promoting or protecting the human good, and their relative strength and urgency derives from the manner, extent and immediacy of their bearing upon this end and not from belonging to some logically distinct category. (shrink)

In this paper I distinguish two ways of raising a sceptical problem of others' minds: via a problem concerning the possibility of error or via a problem concerning sources of knowledge. I give some reason to think that the second problem raises a more interesting problem in accounting for our knowledge of others’ minds and consider proposed solutions to the problem.

This article gives an overview of some recent debates about the relationship between reasons and rational requirements of coherence - e.g. the requirements to be consistent in our beliefs and intentions, and to intend what we take to be the necessary means to our ends.

This chapter focuses exclusively on normative reasons. Normative reasons count in favor of actions and attitudes like beliefs, desires, feelings, and emotions. Section 11.2 explores the common ground concerning the metaphysics of reasons. We shall see that the really controversial metaphysical issues in metanormative theorizing about reasons arise with respect to the metaphysics of the reason relation. The two subsequent sections therefore go beyond the common ground and consider competing accounts of the reason relation. Robust and quietist versions of non-naturalism (...) are considered in section 11.3 and naturalism is considered in section 11.4. Section 11.5 summarizes and gives a brief comparative assessment of the accounts considered. (shrink)

In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird eine normative Analyse und Verteidigung der Erbschaftssteuer unternommen. Zunächst wird eine egalitaristische Argumentation für die Steuer entfaltet. Aufgrund ihrer progressiven Struktur ist die Erbschaftssteuer ein geeignetes Instrument, um der wachsenden ökonomischen Ungleichheit entgegenzuwirken und letztlich verschiedene egalitäre Ideale (politische Gleichheit, Chancengleicheit etc.) zu befördern. Anschließend wird untersucht, wie aus normativer Perspektive zu beurteilen ist, dass der Erblasser bei Erhebung der Steuer nicht mehr lebt. Die restliche Arbeit besteht in einer Auseinandersetzung mit den wichtigsten Einwänden gegen (...) die Erbschaftssteuer. So wird oft behauptet, diese verletze die natürlichen Eigentumsrechte des Erblassers bzw. des Erben und sie ignoriere zudem die Verdienstansprüche des Erblassers. Schließlich sei die Steuer aus diversen "familien-basierten" Erwägungen abzulehnen. Nicht nur werden diese Einwände erfolgreich zurückgewiesen; ferner wird gezeigt, dass einige der, diesen Argumenten zugrundeliegenden, Prinzipien selbst zur Verteidigung einer egalitären Erbschaftssteuer (also einer Erbschaftssteuer, die aus egalitären Prinzipien folgt) herangezogen werden können. (shrink)

Suppose someone is brought up as an orthodox Jew, and so only eats kosher, is very conservative sexually, etc. Suppose they then find out that this Judaism stuff is just all a big mistake. If they then regret all the shrimp they could have eaten, all the sex!, this makes perfect sense. Not so, however, if someone finds out that moral realism is false, and they now regret all the fun they could have had hurting people’s feeling, etc. Even if (...) this does make sense, there’s a strong disanalogy between the moral and the religious case. This asymmetry, on a realist picture of morality, calls for explanation. This chapter tries to explain it. The discussion engages some topics familiar from objections to Robust realism—the why-be-moral challenge, the status of de-dicto moral motivation, and whether and why we should care about the moral properties, robustly realistically understood. (shrink)

Error theories have been proposed and defended in several different areas of philosophy. In addition to ethics, there are error theories about numbers, color, free will, and personal identity. Moral error theories differ in scope. Theories at one end of the spectrum take normative judgments in general—of which moral judgments are a subclass—to be uniformly false, whereas theories at the other end of the spectrum take only a subclass of moral judgments—example those concerning duty and obligation, but not those concerning (...) virtue and vice—to be uniformly false. Moral error theorists typically join forces with non-naturalist realists, against naturalism and non-cognitivism. Facts that are normative in the reason-implying sense are irreducibly normative, and they are very different. Many non-naturalist realists and error theorists maintain that it is impossible to give a plausible naturalistic account of moral facts, precisely because they are irreducibly normative; moral naturalism therefore falls prey to the "normativity objection". (shrink)

This paper explores the concept of moral expertise in the contemporary philosophical debate, with a focus on three accounts discussed across moral epistemology, bioethics, and virtue ethics: an epistemic authority account, a skilled agent account, and a hybrid model sharing key features of the two. It is argued that there are no convincing reasons to defend a monistic approach that reduces moral expertise to only one of these models. A pluralist view is outlined in the attempt to reorient the discussion (...) about moral expertise. (shrink)

: Radical meta-normative skepticism is the view that no standard, norm, or principle has objective authority or normative force. It does not deny that there are norms, standards of correctness, and principles of various kinds that render it possible that we succeed or fail in measuring up to their prerogatives. Rather, it denies that any norm has the status of commanding with objective authority, of giving rise to normative reasons to take seriously and follow its demands. Two powerful transcendental arguments (...) challenge this view. First, skepticism is said to be self-defeating: Settling what to accept, and in particular whether to accept skepticism, appears to be a reason-guided enterprise. How can skeptics coherently support their view by citing reasons in their favor after they just rejected them throughout? Second, there is the practical-deliberative version, most recently developed by David Enoch: We are essentially deliberative creatures. Yet deliberation appears to require that there are correct answers in the form of normative reasons to our practical questions. Thus confidence in the sensible nature of deliberation should inspire confidence in reasons. The essay undermines both transcendental arguments by demonstrating, first, how to support skepticism without deserting its tenets, and, second, how to deliberate in skeptical fashion. (shrink)

Elizabeth Anscombe is well-known for her insistence that there are absolutely prohibited actions, though she is somewhat obscure about why this is so. Nonetheless, I contend in this paper that Anscombe is more concerned with the epistemology of absolute prohibitions, and that her thought on connatural moral knowledge – which resembles moral intuition – is key to understanding her thought on moral prohibitions. I shall identify key features of Anscombe’s moral epistemology before turning to investigate its sources, examining the roots (...) of connaturality in Aquinas and comparing it with rationalist ethical intuitionism, which Anscombe differs from in rejecting “good” as a simple, non-natural property. I then develop a two-stage argument about absolute prohibition: The first will be loosely Thomistic, while the second will suggest how Anscombe’s absolute prohibitions can be seen as a continuation of Wittgenstein’s anti-scepticism in On Certainty. I develop an account of absolute prohibitions as a form of Wittgensteinian hinge proposition – they are not the conclusions of deductive arguments, but the foundations for intelligibility in action. (shrink)

We think of logic as objective. We also think that we are reliable about logic. These views jointly generate a puzzle: How is it that we are reliable about logic? How is it that our logical beliefs match an objective domain of logical fact? This is an instance of a more general challenge to explain our reliability about a priori domains. In this paper, I argue that the nature of this challenge has not been properly understood. I explicate the challenge (...) both in general and for the particular case of logic. I also argue that two seemingly attractive responses – appealing to a faculty of rational insight or to the nature of concept possession – are incapable of answering the challenge. (shrink)

According to a widely held view, epistemic reasons are normative reasons for belief – much like prudential or moral reasons are normative reasons for action. In recent years, however, an increasing number of authors have questioned the assumption that epistemic reasons are normative. In this article, I discuss an important challenge for anti-normativism about epistemic reasons and present a number of arguments in support of normativism. The challenge for anti-normativism is to say what kind of reasons epistemic reasons are if (...) they are not normative reasons. I discuss various answers to this challenge and find them all wanting. The arguments for normativism each stress a certain analogy between epistemic reasons and normative reasons for action. Just like normative reasons for action, epistemic reasons provide partial justification; they provide premises for correct reasoning; they constitute good bases for the responses they are reasons for; and they are reasons for which agents can show these responses without committing a mistake. In each case, I argue that the relevant condition is plausibly sufficient for the normativity of a reason, and that normativism is in any case in a much better position to explain the analogy than anti-normativism. (shrink)

Philosophy and Literature is an internationally renowned refereed journal founded by Denis Dutton at the University of Canterbury, Christchurch. It is now published by the Johns Hopkins University Press. Since its inception in 1976, Philosophy and Literature has been concerned with the relation between literary and philosophical studies, publishing articles on the philosophical interpretation of literature as well as the literary treatment of philosophy. Philosophy and Literature has sometimes been regarded as iconoclastic, in the sense that it repudiates academic pretensions, (...) insidious jargon and institutional vogue. Dutton, who remains the editor, still writes a regular column. A distinctive feature of Philosophy and Literature was the annual Bad Writing Contest, held from 1995–98, which sought to identify (and publish) the ‘most stylistically lamentable passages’ of academic prose, often to great amusement. (shrink)

The dominant theory of the evolution of moral cognition across a variety of fields is that moral cognition is a biological adaptation to foster social cooperation. This chapter argues, to the contrary, that moral cognition is likely an evolutionary exaptation: a form of cognition where neurobiological capacities selected for in our evolutionary history for a variety of different reasons—many unrelated to social cooperation—were put to a new, prosocial use after the fact through individual rationality, learning, and the development and transmission (...) of social norms. This chapter begins with a brief overview of the emerging behavioral neuroscience of moral cognition. It then outlines a novel theory of moral cognition that I have previously argued explains these findings better than alternatives. Finally, it shows how the evidence for this theory of moral cognition and human evolutionary history together suggest that moral cognition is likely not a biological adaptation. Instead, like reading sheet music or riding a bicycle, moral cognition is something that individuals learn to do—in this case, in response to sociocultural norms created in our ancestral history and passed down through the ages to enable cooperative living. (shrink)

This chapter discusses epistemic objections to non-naturalist moral realism. The goal of the chapter is to determine which objections are pressing and which objections can safely be dismissed. The chapter examines five families of objections: (i) one involving necessary conditions on knowledge, (ii) one involving the idea that the causal history of our moral beliefs reflects the significant impact of irrelevant influences, (iii) one relying on the idea that moral truths do not play a role in explaining our moral beliefs, (...) (iv) one involving the claim that if moral realism is true then our moral beliefs are unlikely to be reliable, and (v) one involving the claim that moral realism is incompatible with there being a plausible explanation of our reliability about morality. The overall conclusion of the chapter is that the final objection is by far the most pressing. (shrink)

The Clarke/Rowe version of the Cosmological Argument is sound only if the Principle of Sufficient Reason is true, but many philosophers, including Rowe, think that there is not adequate evidence for the principle of sufficient reason. I argue that there may be indirect evidence for PSR on the grounds that if we do not accept it, we lose our best justification for an important principle of metaethics, namely, the Principle of Universalizability. To show this, I argue that all the other (...) justifications of the Principle of Universalizability on offer, including Richard Hare's, are inadequate. (shrink)

We need to understand the impossible. Francesco Berto and Mark Jago start by considering what the concepts of meaning, information, knowledge, belief, fiction, conditionality, and counterfactual supposition have in common. They are all concepts which divide the world up more finely than logic does. Logically equivalent sentences may carry different meanings and information and may differ in how they're believed. Fictions can be inconsistent yet meaningful. We can suppose impossible things without collapsing into total incoherence. Yet for the leading philosophical (...) theories of meaning, these phenomena are an unfathomable mystery. To understand these concepts, we need a metaphysical, logical, and conceptual grasp of situations that could not possibly exist: Impossible Worlds. This book discusses the metaphysics of impossible worlds and applies the concept to a range of central topics and open issues in logic, semantics, and philosophy. It considers problems in the logic of knowledge, the meaning of alternative logics, models of imagination and mental simulation, the theory of information, truth in fiction, the meaning of conditional statements, and reasoning about the impossible. In all these cases, impossible worlds have an essential role to play. (shrink)

Moral nihilism is the view that there are no moral facts or moral truths. It is the ontological component of moral error theory, which is the best-known and most comprehensive metaethical theory that involves moral nihilism. My main aim is to discuss some consequences of endorsing moral error theory or believing to some degree that moral error theory is true. In §2, I consider the implications for ordinary moral thought and discourse and the epistemological consequences for moral theorizing. In §3, (...) I consider a recent challenge, according to which moral judgments do not have the epistemic profile that moral error theory alleges. I shall argue in §3–5 that the challenge can be met and that there is evidence that moral error theory is in fact correct about the epistemic profile of moral judgments. (shrink)

In this article we defend a moral conception of cosmopolitanism and its relevance for moral education. Our moral conception of cosmopolitanism presumes that persons possess an inherent dignity in the Kantian sense and therefore they should be recognised as ends‐in‐themselves. We argue that cosmopolitan ideals can inspire moral educators to awaken and cultivate in their pupils an orientation and inclination to struggle against injustice. Moral cosmopolitanism, in other words, should more explicitly inform the work that moral educators do. Real‐world constraints (...) on moral action and the need to prioritise one’s sometimes conflicting responsibilities will often qualify cosmopolitan justice as supererogatory. This fact does not absolve persons from aspiring to see themselves as having the moral obligation to help others in need, while recognising that their factual obligations are more modest in being bound by what they are actually able to do. (shrink)