The value of solidarity, which is exemplified in noble groups like the Civil Rights Movement along with more mundane teams, families and marriages, is distinctive in part because people are in solidarity over, for or with regard to something, such as common sympathies, interests, values, etc. I use this special feature of solidarity to resolve a longstanding puzzle about enacted social moral rules, which is, aren’t these things just heuristics, rules of thumb or means of coordination that we ‘fetishize’ or (...) ‘worship’ if we stubbornly insist on sticking to them when we can do more good by breaking them? I argue that when we are in a certain kind of solidarity with others, united by social moral rules that we have established among ourselves, the rules we have developed and maintain are a constitutive part of our solidary relationships with one another; and it is part of being in this sort of solidarity with our comrades that we are presumptively required to follow the social moral rules that join us together. Those in the Polish Revolution, for example, were bound by informally enforced rules about publicity, free speech and the use of violence, so following their own rules became a way of standing in a valuable sort of solidarity with one another. I explain why we can have non-instrumental reasons to follow the social moral rules that exist in our own society, improve our rules and even sometimes to break the otherwise good rules that help to unite us. (shrink)

Despite having occupied a peripheral position in contemporary metaethics, moral nonnaturalism has recently experienced a revival of sorts. But what is moral nonnaturalism? And what is there to be said in favor of it? In this article, I address these two questions. In the first place, I offer an account of what moral nonnaturalism is. According to the view I propose, nonnaturalism is better viewed not as a position, but as a theoretical stance. And, second, I critically engage with three (...) recent arguments for moral nonnaturalism offered by Russ Shafer-Landau, Kit Fine, and Jean Hampton, respectively. (shrink)

According to the Humean theory of motivation, a person can only be motivated to act by a desire together with a relevantly related belief. More specifically, a person can only be motivated to ϕ by a desire to ψ together with a belief that ϕ-ing is a means to or a way of ψ-ing. In recent writings, Michael Smith gives what has become a very influential argument in favour of the Humean claim that desire is a necessary part of motivation, (...) and a great deal has been written about Smith's defence of this Humean claim. However, no one has yet identified the fundamental weakness of his defence. The fundamental weakness is that there is no single conception of directions of fit that does all the work Smith needs it to do throughout the various stages of his defence. (shrink)

Cognitive internalism is the view that moral judgments are both cognitive and motivating. Philosophers have found cognitive internalism to be attractive in part because it seems to offer support for the idea that moral reasons are categorical, that is, independent of agents’ desires. In this paper, I argue that it offers no such support.

The idea that moral imperatives are categorical is commonly used to support internalist claims about moral judgment. I argue that the categorical quality of moral requirements shows at most that moral motivation need not flow from a background desire to be moral. It does not show that moral judgments can motivate by themselves, or that amoralism is impossible.

It is more than a half-century since Nelson Goodman [1955] applied what we call the Reflective Equilibrium model of justification to the problem of justifying induction, and more than three decades since Rawls [1971] and Daniels [1979] applied celebrated extensions of this model to the problem of justifying principles of social justice. The resulting Wide Reflective Equilibrium model (WRE) is generally thought to capture an acceptable way to reconcile inconsistency between an intuitively plausible general principle and an intuitively plausible judgment (...) about a particular case. Recently a different model for reconciling moral inconsistency has emerged: Moral Consistency Reasoning [Campbell and Kumar 2012, 2013a; Kumar and Campbell 2012; Campbell 2009: 86?7; Campbell and Woodrow 2003; Wong 2002]. MCR applies when two moral judgments give opposing assessments of (what appear to be) relevantly similar particular cases. Though WRE and MCR are strikingly different, each arguably captures a rationally acceptable method for reconciling moral inconsistency. Moreover, as will be shown, they function in complementary ways. Are they parts of a more comprehensive model of moral reasoning in the face of inconsistency that would explain the attractions of each? This essay first spells out the relevant differences between the models and then formulates a more general model of moral reasoning in the face of inconsistency. ?1 reviews the emergence of Goodman's model that he offers in the spirit of epistemology naturalized, almost a decade before Quine coined the term [1969a]. ?2 analyses six salient features of WRE to be compared with six contrasting features of MCR in ?3. ?4 presents the general model. (shrink)

How many attitudes must be posited at the level of reductive bedrock in order to reductively explain all the rest? Motivational Humeans hold that at least two attitudes are indispensable, belief and desire. Desire-As-Belief theorists beg to differ. They hold that the belief attitude can do the all the work the desire attitude is supposed to do, because desires are in fact nothing but beliefs of a certain kind. If this is correct it has major implications both for the philosophy (...) of mind, with regards the problem of naturalizing the propositional attitudes, and for metaethics, with regards Michael Smith’s ‘moral problem’. This paper defends a version of Desire-As-Belief, and shows that it is immune to several major objections commonly levelled against such theories. (shrink)

In contemporary debates about the nature of bioethics there is a widespread view that bioethical decision making should involve certain knowledge of and respect for cultural diversity of persons to be affected. The aim of this article is to show that this view is untenable and misleading. It is argued that introducing the idea of respect for cultural diversity into bioethics encounters a series of conceptual and empirical constraints. While acknowledging that cultural diversity is something that decision makers in bioethical (...) contexts should try to understand and, when possible, respect, it is argued that this cultural turn ignores the typically normative role of bioethics and thus threatens to undermine its very foundations. (shrink)

Over the last decades the traditional emphasis on moral rules, or principles, has been attacked by particularists like Jonathan Dancy. I argue that particularists are correct in rejecting traditional attempts at moral codification, but that it is still possible to have a rule-oriented approach to morality if we distinguish between different ways in which features can be morally relevant. I suggest that there are first a limited number of features that can serve as basic moral reasons for action, and then (...) a class of relational features that can change the relevance of these features. I then argue that while particularists do well in drawing attention to the fact that sometimes our basic moral duties are put out of play by other relevant features, they fail to make sense of the exceptional nature of such situations. Only a rule-oriented understanding of morality can do this. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that moral objectivism is supported by stable features of moral discourse and thinking. When engaged in moral reasoning and discourse, people behave ‘as if’ objectivism were correct, and the seemingly most straightforward way of making sense of this is to assume that objectivism is correct; this is how we think that such behavior is explained in paradigmatically objectivist domains. By comparison, relativist, error-theoretic or non-cognitivist accounts of this behavior seem contrived and ad hoc. After explaining why this (...) argument should be taken seriously (recent arguments notwithstanding), I argue that it is nevertheless undermined by considerations of moral disagreement. Even if the metaphysical, epistemic and semantic commitments of objectivism provide little or no evidence against it, and even if the alternative explanations of ‘objectivist’ traits of moral discourse and thinking are speculative or contrived, objectivism is itself incapable of making straightforward sense of these traits. Deep and widespread moral disagreement or, rather, the mere appearance of such disagreement, strongly suggests that the explanations operative in paradigmatically objective discourse fail to carry over to the moral case. Since objectivism, no less than relativism, non-cognitivism and error-theories, needs non-trivial explanations of why we behave ‘as if’ objectivism were correct, such behavior does not presently provide reason to accept objectivism. (shrink)

Reviews work on moral judgment motivational internalism from the last two decades.

Moral particularists argue that because reasons for action are irreducibly context-dependent, the traditional quest in ethics for true and exceptionless moral principles is hopelessly misguided. In making this claim, particularists assume a general framework according to which reasons are the ground floor normative units undergirding all other normative properties and relations. They then argue that there is no cashing out in finite terms either (i) when a given non-normative feature gives rise to a reason for or against action, or (ii) (...) how the reasons that are present in a given context play off each other to determine one’s overall duties. However, the conjunction of these two theses leaves particularists without a coherent notion of a reason for action: posit too much irreducible context-dependence in the behavior of reasons, and the reasons-based framework breaks down. One upshot is that the particularists’ challenge to principle-based approaches to ethics has not, at present, been successfully made out; another upshot is that perhaps the best way to formulate that challenge involves renouncing the reasons-based framework all together. (shrink)

Almost everyone allows that conditions can obtain that exempt agents from moral responsibility—that someone is not a morally responsible agent if certain conditions obtain. In his seminal Freedom and Resentment, Peter Strawson denies that the truth of determinism globally exempts agents from moral responsibility. As has been noted elsewhere, Strawson appears committed to the surprising thesis that being an evil person is an exempting condition. Less often noted is the fact that various Strawsonians—philosophers sympathetic with Strawson’s account of moral responsibility—at (...) least appear to have difficulty incorporating evil persons into their accounts of moral responsibility. In what follows, I argue that Strawson is not committed to supposing that being evil is an exempting condition—at least, that he can allow that evil persons are morally responsible agents. (shrink)

In this journal, Luke Russell defends a sophisticated dispositional account of evil personhood according to which a person is evil just in case she is strongly and highly fixedly disposed to perform evil actions in conditions that favour her autonomy. While I am generally sympathetic with this account, I argue that Russell wrongly dismisses the mirror thesis—roughly, the thesis that evil people are the mirror images of the morally best sort of persons—which I have defended elsewhere. Russell’s rejection of the (...) mirror thesis depends upon an independently implausible account of moral sainthood, one that is implausible for reasons that Russell himself suggests in another context. Indeed, an account of moral sainthood that parallels Russell’s account of evil personhood is plausible for the same reasons that his account of evil personhood is, and that suggests that Russell himself is actually committed to the mirror thesis. (shrink)

Atomism is defined as the view that the moral value of any object is ultimately determined by simple features whose contribution to the value of an object is always the same, independently of context. A morally fundamental feature, in a given context, is defined as one whose contribution in that context is determined by no other value fact. Three theses are defended, which together entail atomism: (1) All objects have their moral value ultimately in virtue of morally fundamental features; (2) (...) If a feature is morally fundamental, then its contribution is always the same; (3) Morally fundamental features are simple. (shrink)

In this paper, I use an example from the history of philosophy to show how independently defining each side of a pair of contrary predicates is apt to lead to contradiction. In the Euthyphro, piety is defined as that which is loved by some of the gods while impiety is defined as that which is hated by some of the gods. Socrates points out that since the gods harbor contrary sentiments, some things are both pious and impious. But “pious” and (...) “impious” are contrary predicates; they cannot simultaneously characterize the same thing. Euthyphro changes his definition, but the problem of recognizing emotional ambivalence is only side-stepped. I go on to show how contemporary philosophers run into a similar problem. According to Prinz, something is good if and only if we harbor positive sentiments towards it and bad if and only if we harbor negative sentiments towards it. Thus, if we are ambivalent towards something (if we harbor both positive and negative sentiments towards it), then it is both good and bad. Like “pious” and “impious”, “good” and “bad” are contraries. Next, according to the fitting-attitude theory first elaborated by Brentano and favored by contemporary meta-ethicists like Blackburn, Brandt, Ewing, Garcia, Gibbard, McDowell, and Wiggins, something is good if and only if it is a fitting (appropriate) object of approbation, and something is bad if and only if it is a fitting (appropriate) object of disapprobation. I argue that moral ambivalence is sometimes appropriate, i.e., that the correct response to some things is to both love and hate them. Hence, according to the fitting-attitudes theory, some things are both good and bad. I conclude by discussing a variety of ways in which the problem of ambivalence may be solved, suggesting that attitudes of approbation and disapprobation be further individuated by the reasons for them. (shrink)

It is widely acknowledged that moral principles are not sufficient to guide moral thought and action: they need to be supplemented by a capacity for judgement. However, why can we not rely on this capacity for moral judgement alone? Why do moral principles need to be supplemented, but are not supplanted, by judgement? So-called moral particularists argue that we can, and should, make moral decisions on a case-by-case basis without any principles. According to particularists, the person of moral judgement is (...) a person of empathy, sensibility and virtue, rather than a person of principle. In this paper I argue that this is a false dichotomy. The person of good moral judgement is a person of principle. I propose that we think of moral principles as internalised long-term commitments that form our moral character and sensitivity, and, as such, are constitutive of moral judgement. (shrink)

: Animal ethics has presented convincing arguments for the individual value of animals. Animals are not only valuable instrumentally or indirectly, but in themselves. Less has been written about interest conflicts between humans and other animals, and the use of animals in practice. The motive of this paper is to analyze different approaches to interest conflicts. It concentrates on six models, which are the rights model, the interest model, the mental complexity model, the special relations model, the multi-criteria model, and (...) the contextual model. Of these, the contextual model is the strongest, and carries clear consequences for the practical use of animals. (shrink)

This paper is a survey of the generalism-particularism debate and related issues concerning the relationship between normative reasons and moral principles.

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)

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 International licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. We use evaluative terms and concepts every day. We call actions right and wrong, teachers wise and ignorant, and pictures elegant and grotesque. Philosophers place evaluative concepts into two camps. Thin concepts, such as goodness and badness, and rightness and wrongness (...) have evaluative content, but they supposedly have no or hardly any nonevaluative, descriptive content: they supposedly give little or no specific idea about the character of the person or thing described. In contrast, thick concepts such as kindness, elegance and wisdom supposedly give a more specific idea of people or things. Yet, given typical linguistic conventions, thick concepts also convey evaluation. Kind people are often viewed positively whilst ignorance has negative connotations. The distinction between thin and thick concepts is frequently drawn in philosophy and is central to everyday life. However, very few articles or books discuss the distinction. In this full-length study, Simon Kirchin discusses thin and thick concepts, highlighting key assumptions, questions and arguments, many of which have gone unnoticed. Kirchin focuses in on the debate between 'separationists' and 'nonseparationists'. Thick Evaluation argues for a version of nonseparationism, and in doing so argues both that many concepts are evaluative and also that evaluation is not exhausted by thin positive and negative stances. (shrink)

This collection brings together a selection of my recently published or forthcoming articles. What unites them is their common concern with one of the central ambitions of philosophy, namely to get clearer about our first-personal perspective onto the world and our minds. Three aspects of that perspective are of particular importance: consciousness, intentionality, and rationality. The collected essays address metaphysical and epistemological questions both concerning the nature of each of these aspects and concerning the various connections among them. More generally, (...) given that intentionality and ratio- nality are both normative phenomena, the main theme of the articles is the relationship between consciousness and normativity and the centrality of this relationship to our first-personal perspective. -/- This focus culminates in the defense of two specific views, experiential rationalism and experiential intentionalism. The first is, very roughly, the view that how our mental episodes are given in consciousness reflects their rational role in our mental lives: it is part of what our mental episodes subjectively are like that we phenomenally experience them as providing and/or responding to certain kinds of reasons. The central claim of the second view, on the other hand, is that the intentionality of our mental episodes is essentially linked to consciousness and involves a token-reflexive element: they intentionally present not only the world, but also themselves as being a certain way. -/- Some of the essays also deal with the contrast between our first- and our third-personal perspectives and the — to some extent related — division of labour between philosophy and the empirical sciences. Both perspectives have their limitations and sometimes conflict with each other, raising the question of what the consequences are for accounts of our first-personal knowledge and its internal or external objects. (shrink)

It is highly consensual that we can perceive so-called low-level properties such as shape, color, motion, spatial location, and illumination through vision. But it’s more controversial whether the contents of visual perception can reach beyond the limits of weakness and involve high-level properties as well. By high-level property, it’s meant properties such as natural/artificial/functional kind, causality, dispositional properties, gender, roughness, aesthetic properties, bodily sensations, states of mind, agency features, action features, and moral properties. In this dissertation, setting Susanna Siegel's rich (...) content thesis as a framework and relying on her method of phenomenal contrast as a way of discovering the contents, I am intending to assess an account of perceiving moral properties. I will impose two objections against this model: The first one invokes the ignored role of imagination and recollection in the method and generally targets the method of contrast. The second one invokes the thesis of phenomenal holism and targets specifically the machinery of drawing contrast in the proposed moral pair. Finally, I’ll conclude that this account of moral perception, as well as other phenomenal-contrast-based accounts, is not tenable. -/- . (shrink)

Pour contrer le scepticisme au sujet de la connaissance des valeurs, la plupart soutiennent avec John Rawls qu’une croyance comme celle qu’une action est bonne est justifiée dans la mesure où elle appartient à un ensemble de croyances cohérent, ayant atteint un équilibre réfléchi. Christine Tappolet s’inspire des travaux de Max Scheler et d’Alexius von Meinong pour défendre une conception opposée au cohérentisme. La connaissance des valeurs est affirmée dépendre de nos émotions, ces dernières étant conçues comme des perceptions des (...) valeurs. (shrink)

Desires matter. What are desires? Many believe that desire is a motivational state: desiring is being disposed to act. This conception aligns with the functionalist approach to desire and the standard account of desire's role in explaining action. According to a second influential approach, however, desire is first and foremost an evaluation: desiring is representing something as good. After all, we seem to desire things under the guise of the good. Which understanding of desire is more accurate? Is the guise (...) of the good even right to assume? Should we adopt an alternative picture that emphasizes desire's deontic nature? What do neuroscientific studies suggest? -/- Essays in the first section of the volume are devoted to these questions, and to the puzzle of desire's essence. In the second part of the volume, essays investigate some implications that the various conceptions of desire have on a number of fundamental issues. For example, why are inconsistent desires problematic? What is desire's role in practical deliberation? How do we know what we want? -/- This volume will contribute to the emergence of a fruitful debate on a neglected, albeit crucial, dimension of the mind. (shrink)

The main aim of this thesis is to defend moral realism. In chapter 1, I argue that moral realism is best understood as the view that moral sentences have truth-value, there are moral properties that make some moral sentences true, and moral properties are not reducible to non- moral properties. Realism is contrasted with non-cognitivism, error-theory and reductionism, which, in brief, deny, and, respectively. In the introductory chapter, it is also argued that there are some prima facie reasons to assume (...) that non-cognitivism and error-theory are erroneous. In chapters 2 and 3, I suggest that the two main forms of reductionism, analytic and synthetic reductionism, are mistaken. In chapter 4, I argue that the considerations in the previous chapters in relation to non-cognitivism, error-theory and reductionism provide support to moral realism. It is also suggested that these considerations make it plausible to hypothesise that moral properties depend on non- moral properties in a way I refer to as ‘the realist formula’. The realist formula confirms moral realism since it implies that moral properties are not reducible to non- moral properties. In chapters 5, 6 and 7, I argue that moral realism, much owing to the realist formula, is able to explain significant meta-ethical issues regarding moral disagreement, moral reason and moral motivation. Among other things, externalism concerning moral motivation is defended. The explanatory value of moral realism in relation to these meta-ethical issues is taken to suggest that this view is preferable to non-cognitivism, error-theory and reductionism. Some of the meta-ethical issues discussed in these chapters, particularly moral disagreement and motivation, have been thought to provide support to non-cognitivism and error-theory. I maintain that since realism, unlike reductionism, is able to counter these arguments, it justifies us in upholding the view that moral sentences have truth-value and the view that there are moral properties. In chapter 8, various objections against realism with regard to the dependence of moral properties on non- moral properties are responded to. In chapter 9, I consider an influential argument to the effect that moral properties are not involved in causal explanations. I maintain that this argument fails and that it therefore is reasonable to assume that moral properties are natural properties. However, the discussions in chapters 8 and 9 also suggest that moral realism might face problems that cannot be thoroughly discussed in this thesis. (shrink)

What motivates the benevolent or charitable agent is regard for another’s good or well-being, but talk about regard for others’ good or well- being is simply talk about benevolence or charity in different terms. Yet Hume clearly holds that the regard for another’s good is a motive to produce benevolent acts that is distinct from a sense of their benevolence. So what is the difference? ‘Well’, one might say, ‘intuitively, rights are very different from wellbeing.’ Yes indeed. And that, I (...) shall contend, is Hume’s point. My general contention is that Hume’s discussion of justice is in fact an attack on that concept of rights we think of as having motivated the American and French revolutions, a concept that is still (deplorably in my view) prevalent. I think the very fact that it is so prevalent and so sanctified by its position in the American Constitution has blinded most readers to the power and plausibility of Hume’s attack, which I shall try to defend. (shrink)

Works of science fiction tend to describe hypothetical futures, or counterfactual pasts or presents, to entertain their readers. Philosophical thought experiments tend to describe counterfactual situations to test their readers’ philosophical intuitions. Indeed, works of science fiction can sometimes be read as containing thought experiments. I compare one especially famous thought experiment from Plato’s Republic with what I read as two thought experiments from Isaac Asimov’s Foundation Trilogy. All three thought experiments concern myths used in political contexts, and comparing them (...) permits me to analyze the morality of political mythologizing. (shrink)

This thesis is a defense of (a version of) moral perceptualism. Moral perceptualism (MP), as is generally understood, advocates the bold view that “moral properties can be perceptual content”; its supporters include Audi (2013, 2015), Lord (2018), McNaughton (1988), McBrayer (2010a, 2010b), Cowan (2015), and Werner (2016, 2020b). In support of MP, Werner (2016) bolsters what he calls ‘phenomenal contrast arguments(PCAs)’. According to PCAs, the best explanation for inter-subjective phenomenal contrast between two subjects facing the same moral situation is that (...) one subject has moral perceptual experience(s) of moral properties, whereas the other does not. If PCAs are sound, then MP can be justified (in that one subject does perceive moral properties). However, some powerful counterarguments against MP have been proposed by Väyrynen(2018), Reiland(2021), and Chudnoff(2015); each of them provides competing explanations for inter-subjective phenomenal contrast and argues that their explanations are more reasonable than PCAs. My purposes in this thesis are to ascertain (I) which explanation for inter-subjective phenomenal contrast is more reasonable; (II) (how) could moral perceptualists like Werner (2016, 2020b) properly reply to the counterarguments against MP？ Or is there any better alternative explanation that could support MP？ As regards (I), I will argue that Väyrynen’s(2018), Reiland’s(2021), and Chudnoff's (2015) alternative explanatory models for inter-subjective phenomenal contrast are not to be seen as competing explanations against the one provided by MP; rather, they are complementary to it. As regards (II), I argue that Väyrynen’s(2018), Reiland’s(2021), and Chudnoff's (2015) conterarguments against MP at most demonstrate that certain moral properties (e.g., rightness/ wrongness/goodness/badness) can’t be part of the perceptual content, but their arguments do not (or indeed cannot) rule out the possibility that moral salience can be properly construed as part of the perceptual content. In light of this, I argue that an alternative version of moral perceptualism, or what I call ‘moral salience perceptualism’, according to which “moral salience can be part of the perceptual content”, still remains alive and kicking in face of their counteraguments. Moreover, I argue that moral salience perceptualism is explanatorily superior to Werner’s (2016) version of MP in terms of explaining inter-subjective phenomenal contrast. -/- Keywords： moral perceptualism, phenomenal contrast, moral salience, moral experiences, moral judgments -/- 道德感知主義（moral perceptualism）主張「（至少有一些）道德性質（moral properties）可以是主體感知內容（perceptual content）的一部分」，其中的支持者包含了Audi （2013, 2015）; Lord （2018）; McNaughton （1988）; McBrayer （2010a, 2010b）; Cowan （2015）; Werner （2016, 2020b）。其中，Werner （2016）認為他所提出的「現象對比論證（Phenomenal Contrast Arguments, PCAs）」可以用來證立道德感知主義。此論證強調了某些道德情境中有「跨主體的現象對比」（inter-subjective phenomenal contrast）的存在；換句話說，兩個主體面對同一場景時，其經驗各別顯現出不同的現象特性/現象特徵（phenomenal character）。此論證認為對於「跨主體間的現象對比（inter-subjective phenomenal contrast）」的最佳解釋說明是兩個不同主體在道德感知經驗上有所差異(contrast in moral perceptual experience)。簡言之，根據此論證，跨主體的現象對比的最佳解釋是：某個主體感知到了道德性質，但另一個主體則缺乏這種感知。若此解釋成立，則其蘊含，主體的確可以感知到道德性質 （至少其中一個主體的確感知到了道德性質），也因此，道德感知主義就可以被證立。然而，Werner （2016）所擁護的現象對比論證與道德感知主義，卻遭受許多哲學家的質疑與抨擊，尤以Väyrynen（2018）; Reiland（2021）; Chudnoff（2015）等人為代表。他們也分別提供了各自對於「跨主體間的現象對比」的相競替代解釋方案，並嘗試論證他們的說法相較於Werner （2016）的道德感知主義解釋方案來得更有解釋效力、且更為合理。本篇論文的主要目標是，剖析與回應以下兩個問題：（I）上述質疑者的替代解釋方案是否說得通？它們是否較之道德感知主義的解釋方案來得更好呢？（ II）道德感知主義者是否能恰當回應質疑者的挑戰呢？倘若Werner （2016, 2020b）的說法不足以回應質疑者的話，道德感知主義者是否能夠有其他的解套方案呢？針對問題（I），筆者將論證，Väyrynen（2018）; Reiland（2021）; Chudnoff（2015）等人對於道德感知主義的質疑大致上言之成理，可和Werner （2016）的理論成為具有同等解釋力的相競解釋方案。但針對問題（II），筆者將指出Väyrynen（2018）; Reiland（2021）; Chudnoff（2015）等人頂多只能說明「對錯好壞」這類的整體道德性質（overall moral properties）無法作為感知的內容，但並未排除掉道德主體仍舊可以感知到「道德顯著性」（moral salience）這類初步確定道德性質（pro-tanto moral properties）的可能性。也因此，這並未排除一種本論文所擁護的改良版本的道德感知主義。根據此改良版本的道德感知主義，雖然對錯好壞這類的整體道德性質本身也許無法做為感知的內容，然而道德顯著性仍然可 以是感知內容。筆者將此改良版本稱之為「道德顯著性感知主義」(moral salience perceptualism)。為了突顯此版本的優點，筆者將進一步論述，此改良版的道德感知主義可以恰當地解釋跨主體間的現象對比（inter-subjective phenomenal contrast），並可規避原來Werner （2016）版本所招來的質疑。 -/- 關鍵詞：道德感知主義、現象對比論證、道德顯著性、道德經驗與道德判斷、道德教育 -/- . (shrink)

What is it that we are doing when we make ethical claims and judgments, such as the claim that we morally ought to assist refugees? This dissertation introduces and defends a novel theory of ethical thought and discourse. I begin by identifying the surface features of ethical thought and discourse to be explained, including the realist and cognitivist (i.e. belief-like) appearance of ethical judgments, and the apparent close connection between making a sincere ethical judgment and being motivated to act on (...) it. I examine prominent attempts to explain these features, with a focus on recent ‘hybrid’ theories combining elements of expressivism and cognitivism. Despite their initial promise, I argue that extant hybrid theories are nevertheless committed to problematic semantic, metasemantic, or pragmatic assumptions. I then discuss what I take to be the strongest existing option, ethical neo-expressivism (Bar-On and Chrisman, 2009; Bar-On, Chrisman, and Sias, 2014), and develop it into an explicitly hybrid theory proposing that ethical judgments incorporate both motivationally-charged affective states and moral beliefs. I then supplement this account with a theory of the proper function (following Millikan, 1984) of ethical claims and judgments, arguing that they function simultaneously to track the morally salient features of social situations, and to coordinate our behavior around these features. Finally, I defend one of the cognitivist commitments of the theory – namely, that objective moral knowledge is possible – by applying recent work on the epistemology of fundamental or ‘core’ intellectual commitments (Lynch, 2012; Pritchard, 2016) to the moral realm. (shrink)

In our everyday lives, we confront a host of moral issues. Once we have deliberated and formed judgments about what is right or wrong, good or bad, these judgments tend to have a marked hold on us. Although in the end, we do not always behave as we think we ought, our moral judgments typically motivate us, at least to some degree, to act in accordance with them. When philosophers talk about moral motivation, this is the basic phenomenon they seek (...) to understand. Moral motivation is an instance of a more general phenomenon—what we might call normative motivation—for our other normative judgments also typically have some motivating force. When we make the normative judgment that something is good for us, or that we have a reason to act in a particular way, or that a specific course of action is the rational course, we also tend to be moved. Many philosophers have regarded the motivating force of normative judgments as the key feature that marks them as normative, thereby distinguishing them from the many other judgments we make. In contrast to our normative judgments, our mathematical and empirical judgments, for example, seem to have no intrinsic connection to motivation and action. The belief that an antibiotic will cure a specific infection may move an individual to take the antibiotic, if she also believes that she has the infection, and if she either desires to be cured or judges that she ought to treat the infection for her own good. All on its own, however, an empirical belief like this one appears to carry with it no particular motivational impact; a person can judge that an antibiotic will most effectively cure a specific infection without being moved one way or another. (shrink)

Moral language displays a characteristic duality. On the one hand, moral claims seem to be similar to descriptive claims: To say that an act is right seems to be a matter of making an assertion, thus indicating that the speaker has a moral belief about which she can be correct or mistaken. On the other hand, moral claims seem to be different from descriptive claims: There is a sense in which, by claiming that an act is right, a speaker indicates (...) that she is inclined to perform the act, to want others to perform it, and to react with praise towards those who do it. Hybrid theories maintain that utterances of moral sentences have both a descriptive and a practical linguistic function. In this thesis, I investigate how a hybrid theory can best accommodate the descriptive and the practical aspects of moral language. I evaluate and criticize the way that existing hybrid theories have proposed to explain the duality of moral language. The main arguments against these views are that they either: fail to accommodate the way that the practical or attitudinal import of moral claims vary across different contexts and linguistic environments; or that they fail to show how the practical or attitudinal import is reliably inferred by interlocutors in virtue of general communicative principles. I develop and defend a new hybrid theory called ‘dynamic descriptivism’. This theory accommodates the duality of moral language by appeal to the way that moral utterances affect a dimension of communication which consists of the shared assumptions that interlocutors mutually assume to mutually accept. Moreover, I discuss a problem which has affected a wide range of theories of moral language – including existing hybrid theories – which is the problem of explaining what it is that interlocutors disagree about when they disagree about matters of morality. I argue that that dynamic descriptivism offers new resources for solving this problem. (shrink)

Jude Edeh ABSTRACT: The challenge faced with the proliferation of various kinds of cognitivism is the difficulty of providing a straightforward characterization of moral realism and antirealism. In light of this tension, I identified a problem in Sayre-McCord’s way of specifying the criteria of moral realism. Furthermore, I provided a framework that characterized the moral ….

Telling Stories -Narrative ethicsThe paper attempts to give a systematic survey of different strands and intentions of “narrative ethics” both in philosophy and in theology, and makes a proposal for how to devel-op narrative ethics in the future. This proposal features three different dimensions of the term “moral vision,”, i.e. morally substantial ideas that are embedded in traditions, the appropriation of these ideas by particular historical cultures or individuals and moral perception channelled by Moral Vision 2. Narrative ethics, the paper (...) argues, can describe how traditions can inspire moral thinking and learning without falling prey to traditionalism. Theological ethics is about forming an ethical culture in which we remind each other of the stories that continue to inspire us and in which we tell each other of our moral world-view and commitments, our strong feelings about the good and the bad which are based in our individual and common lives and not derived from grammatical rules or ultimate principles. (shrink)

This work is an investigation into philosophical method and rational argument in moral philosophy. It makes an original contribution to human understanding, by taking some of the tools and techniques that Gordon Baker identifies in the later work of Wittgenstein, and using them as a way of fending for oneself in an area of philosophy that neither Baker, nor Wittgenstein, wrote on. More specifically, a discussion of some different aspects of the contemporary literature on Dancy’s moral particularism is used as (...) a vehicle for illustrating how Baker’s therapeutic conception of philosophy offers alternative possibilities for how we can do philosophy, and what counts as rational argument in moral philosophy. I maintain that, by considering some indicative ways in which Baker’s therapeutic approach to philosophy can dissolve, rather than solve, the kinds of perplexities found in the existing literature on Dancy’s moral particularism, we can liberate ourselves from the traditional/theoretical view of how we ought to do philosophy, and an understanding of rational argument in moral philosophy, to which we need not be committed. (shrink)

Teresa believes in God. Maggie’s wife believes that the Earth is flat, and also that Maggie should be home from work by now. Anouk—a cat—believes it is dinner time. This dissertation is about what believing is: it concerns what, exactly, ordinary people are attributing to Teresa, Maggie’s wife, and Anouk when affirming that they are believers. Part I distinguishes the attitudes of belief that people attribute to each other (and other animals) in ordinary life from the cognitive states of belief (...) theoretically posited by (some) cognitive scientists. Part II defends the view that to have an attitude of belief is to live—to be disposed to act, react, think, and feel—in a pattern that an actual belief attributor identifies with taking the world to be some way. Drawing on scientific, scholarly, and literary sources of evidence, How Beliefs are like Colors provides a framework for research on belief across the humanities and sciences of the mind. (shrink)

Many philosophers think that it is only because we happen to want or care about things that we think some things of value. We start off caring about things, and then project these desires onto the external world. In this chapter, I make a preliminary case for the opposite view, that it is our evaluative thinking that is prior or comes first. On this view, it is only because we think some things of value that we care about or want (...) anything at all. This view is highly explanatory. In particular, it explains (i) the special role that pleasure and pain play in our motivational systems, (ii) why phenomenal consciousness evolved, and (iii) how the two main competing theories of normative reasons for action—i.e., objectivism and subjectivism—can be reconciled. After explaining why this is so, I respond to the most serious objections to this view, including that it cannot account for temptation and willpower, or for the existence and appropriateness of the reactive attitudes. (shrink)

Metaethical absolutism is the view that moral concepts have non-relative satisfaction conditions that are constant across judges and their particular beliefs, attitudes, and cultural embedding. If it is correct, there is an important sense in which parties of moral disputes are concerned to get the same things right, such that their disputes can be settled by the facts. If it is not correct, as various forms of relativism and non-cognitivism imply, such coordination of concerns will be limited. The most influential (...) support for absolutism comes from an argument with two related premises. According to the first premise, moral thinking and moral discourse display a number of features that are characteristically found in paradigmatically absolutist domains, and only partly in uncontroversially non-absolutist domains. According to the second, the best way of making sense of these features is to assume that absolutism is correct. This paper defends the prospect of a non-ad hoc, non-absolutist, explanation of these "absolutist" features, thus calling into question the second premise. But instead of attempting to directly explain why the moral domain displays these features, it attends to how they are partially displayed by paradigmatically non-absolutists judgments about taste and likelihood. Based on this, it proposes independently motivated general accounts of attributions of agreement, disagreement, correctness and incorrectness that can explain both why absolutist domains display all "absolutist" features and why these non-absolutist domains display some. Based on these accounts, it provides preliminary reasons to think that these features of moral discourse can be given a non-absolutist explanation. (shrink)

This thesis comprises a study of the ethical thought of Iris Murdoch with special emphasis, as evidenced by the title, on how morality is intimately connected to self-improvement aiming at perfection and how the study of fiction has an important role to play in our strive towards bettering ourselves within the framework set by Murdoch’s moral philosophy.

El artículo defiende que los compromisos son tanto un tipo de acuerdo como un tipo de decisión. Los principales objetivos son: 1) identificar la estructura formal de las situaciones de compromiso en las que alguna decisión de compromiso es inevitable, incluyendo CDs que ponen en riesgo la integridad del decisor; 2) mediante las nociones de juicio básico y compulsivo propuestas por Amartya Sen, establecer cuándo una CD en una situación de compromiso podría estar moralmente justificada. Se concluye que las CDs (...) justificadas implican una contrición moral que ayuda a salvar la distancia entre deontología y consecuencialismo. (shrink)