In this essay both the facts/values and facticity/normativity divides are considered from the perspective of global semiotics and with specific regard to the relationships between legal meaning and spatial scope of law’s experience. Through an examination of the inner and genetic projective significance of categorization, I will analyze the semantic dynamics of the descriptive parts comprising legal sentences in order to show the intermingling of factual and axiological/teleological categorizations in the unfolding of legal experience. Subsequently, I will emphasize the translational (...) and enactive cognitive disposition underlying the construction of the second premise of the so-called judiciary syllogism and thereby the untenability of the idea that ‘law makes its facts.’ Hence, I will try to bring to the fore the cultural pre-assumptions encapsulated in the positivistic and therefore also formalistic or analytical approaches to legal experience and the loss of their inner consistency when legal experience confronts the phases and major changes of global semiotics. Finally, I will strive to relativize the opposition between the positivist and non-positivistic theories of law in view of an understanding of legal experience focused not only, or at least not primarily, on what ‘law is’ but also on ‘how’ it unwinds through, and _in spite of_, environmental and semantic transformations. (shrink)

ZusammenfassungDer Beitrag entfaltet eine grundsätzliche Kritik an konsequenzialistischen Ethiken. Unsere Kritik zielt auf den Nachweis, dass konsequenzialistische Ansätze einer methodischen Anforderung bei der Begründung eines Moralprinzips nicht gerecht werden, weil sie einen Begriff des Guten voraussetzen, ohne auf seinen epistemischen Status zu reflektieren. Es gelingt ihnen daher nicht, einen Begriff des Guten zu entwickeln, der gleichermaßen sowohl die Erkenntnis einer logischen Notwendigkeit als auch einer praktischen Relevanz zum Ausdruck bringen kann. Aus methodischen Gründen muss daher unklar bleiben, warum das, was (...) als „gut“ gesetzt und erkannt wird, auch realisiert werden muss.Wir gehen in vier Schritten vor: In einem ersten Schritt greifen wir mit dem Ziel der Verschärfung des Problems mit dem so genannten deontologischen Paradox eine der größten Herausforderungen für deontologische Ethiken auf. Wir wollen aber zeigen, dass dieses Paradox überhaupt nur formuliert werden kann, wenn bereits von einem Prinzip des Guten ausgegangen wird, ohne es in ein Verhältnis zur praktischen Vernunft des Handelnden zu setzen. Dazu rekonstruieren wir in einem zweiten Schritt Mills Beweis für das Nützlichkeitsprinzip des Utilitarismus, weil sich daran das methodische Problem einer Erkenntnis des Guten besonders gut herausarbeiten lässt. Im dritten Schritt entwickeln wir unter Rückgriff auf methodologische Überlegungen Kants aus der Kritik der praktischen Vernunft ein Argument, das zeigen soll, dass in keiner moralphilosophischen Argumentation ein Begriff des Guten einfach vorausgesetzt werden kann, ohne logisch primär die durch das Prädikat „gut“ erkannte praktische Notwendigkeit in ein Verhältnis zum Handelnden zu setzen. Das, was überhaupt als gut erkannt werden kann, ist daher durch reflexive Urteile über den Modus des praktischen Erkennens zu bestimmen. Mit diesem Ergebnis wird in einem vierten Schritt das deontologische Paradox aufgelöst. (shrink)

Monism about being says that there is one way to be. Pluralism about being says that there are many ways to be. Recently, Trenton Merricks and David Builes have offered arguments against Pluralism. In this paper, I show how Pluralists who appeal to the relative naturalness of quantifiers can respond to these arguments.

The financial crisis that began in the US real-estate market in 2007 and culminated in a global economic slump showed bluntly how wrong financial risk models can be. This state of affairs has triggered a number of reactions and observations at the level of the specification and use of models and at a more conceptual/fundamental level. This article focuses on the epistemic features of such models – namely the nature, source, conditions of validity, structure and limits of the knowledge that (...) ‘well-specified’ models generate – so as to assess models in a balanced way, giving due weight to the fundamental determinants of their output and warning against overestimation of their possibilities; clarify the conditions under which models can be validly applied to economic and social relationships; render intelligible why the degree of accuracy that successful models would require is intrinsically unattainable; better understand models’ failure as evidenced by the crisis; and comment on the policy steps being undertaken to prevent similar financial crisis in the future. The analysis applies the principal tenets of critical realism to the daily preoccupations of risk management professionals and financial regulators alike. It is not intended as an intervention into critical realism. It draws on the works of Tony Lawson and Roy Bhaskar, and revisits relevant aspects of John Maynard Keynes’s work, connecting dots amongst them and marrying economic and philosophical analysis with day-to-day financial risk management and regulatory issues. Content Type Journal Article Category Article Pages 462-486 DOI 10.1558/jcr.v11i4.462 Authors Mattia L. Rattaggi, UBS/Cambridge Social Ontology Group Journal Journal of Critical Realism Online ISSN 1572-5138 Print ISSN 1476-7430 Journal Volume Volume 11 Journal Issue Volume 11, Number 4 / 2012. (shrink)

In a series of publications Burgess, Plunkett and Sundell have developed a metalinguistic negotiation view that they call ‘Conceptual Ethics.’ I argue that their position adequately captures our intuition that some cases of value disputes are metalinguistic, but that they reverse the direction of justification when they state that speakers ‘negotiate’ the best use of a term or concept on the basis of its prior social role. Borrowing ideas from Putnam, I instead suggest distinguishing two meanings of general terms and (...) value predicates. Core meaning represents the lowest common denominator between speakers and is primarily based on our needs to coordinate behavior. In contrast to this, the noumenal meaning of a general term or value predicate is intended to capture an aspect of reality and represents what a term really means. Like many other disputes about theoretical terms, terms for abstract objects, and predicates, metalinguistic value disputes are about noumenal meaning on the basis of a shared core meaning. This direction towards reality is what sets the account apart from mere metalinguistic negotiation. (shrink)

According to the orthodox account of meaning and translation in the literature, meaning is a property of expressions of a language, and translation is a matching of synonymous expressions across languages. This linguistic account of translation gives rise to well-known skeptical conclusions about translation, objectivity, meaning and truth, but it does not conform to our best translational practices. In contrast, I argue for a textual account of meaning based on the concept of a TEXT-TYPE that does conform to our best (...) translational practices. With their semantic function in view, text-types are Archimedean points for their respective disciplines. The text-type of philosophy is no exception. Culture-transcendent conceptual analysis can proceed on firm footing without having to deny the reality of radical cultural and linguistic difference by treating components of text-types as the concepts to be analyzed. Analyses of central philosophical concepts are provided as a means of adjudicating philosophical controversy. (shrink)

I defend these claims: (1) 'Pleasure' has exactly one English antonym: 'unpleasure.' (2) Pleasure is the most convincing example of an organic unity. (3) The hedonic calculus is a joke. (4) An important type of pleasure is background pleasure. (5) Pleasures in bad company are still good. (6) Higher pleasures aren't pleasures (and if they were, they wouldn't be higher). Thesis (1) merely concerns terminology, but theses (2)-(6) are substantive, evaluative claims.

I aim to show that (i) there are good ways to argue about what has intrinsic value; and (ii) good ethical arguments needn't make ethical assumptions. I support (i) and(ii) by rebutting direct attacks, by discussing nine plausible ways to argue about intrinsic value, and by arguing for pains intrinsic badness without making ethical assumptions. If (i) and (ii) are correct, then ethical theory has more resources than many philosophers have thought: empirical evidence, and evidence bearing on intrinsic value. With (...) more resources, we can hope to base all of our moral beliefs on evidence rather than on, say, emotion or mere intuition. (shrink)

In Reasons and Persons, Derek Parfit cannot find a theory of well-being that solves the Non-Identity Problem, the Repugnant Conclusion, the Absurd Conclusion, and all forms of the Mere Addition Paradox. I describe a “Quasi-Maximizing” theory that solves them. This theory includes (i) the denial that being better than is transitive and (ii) the “Conflation Principle,” according to which alternative B is hedonically better than alternative C if it would be better for someone to have all the B-experiences. (i) entails (...) that Quasi-Maximization is not a maximizing theory, but (ii) ensures that its evaluations will often coincide with such theories. (shrink)

The papers focuses on pragmatic arguments for various rationality constraints on a decision maker’s state of mind: on her beliefs or preferences. An argument of this kind typically targets constraint violations. It purports to show that a violator of a given constraint can be confronted with a decision problem in which she will act to her guaranteed disadvantage. Dramatically put, she can be exploited by a clever bookie who doesn’t know more than the agent herself. Examples of pragmatic arguments of (...) this kind are synchronic Dutch Books, for the standard probability axioms, diachronic Dutch Books, for the more controversial principles of reflection and conditionalization, and Money Pumps, for the acyclicity requirement on preferences. The paper suggests that the proposed exploitation set-ups share a common feature. If the violator of a given constraint is logically and mathematically competent, and if she prefers to be better off rather than worse off, she can be exploited only if she is disunified in her decision-making, i.e. only if she makes decisions on various issues she faces separately rather than jointly. Unification in decision making is relatively unproblematic in synchronic contexts, but it may be costly and inconvenient diachronically. On this view, therefore, pragmatic arguments should be seen as delivering conditional recommendations: If you want to afford disunification, then you’d better satisfy these constraints. They identify safeguards of a disunified mind. Isaac Levi’s position on these matters is diametrically different. According to Levi, only synchronic pragmatic arguments are valid. The diachronic ones, he argues, lack any validity at all. This line of reasoning is questioned in the paper. (shrink)

This paper argues for the view that moral realism is irrelevant to ethics. It recalls Aristotle's claim that the Platonic Form of the Good is irrelevant because it is not the sort of thing we can desire or pursue. Moore's account of ethics in relation to conduct and of the Ideal is woefully inadequate as a morality to live by. Peter Railton's moral realism also involves a very weak first-order moral theory. These failures are due, I claim, to the fact (...) that Plato, Moore and Railton regard morality as a science; it is not a science, it is an art. (shrink)

David Papineau’s model of scientific reduction, contrary to his intent, appears to enable a naturalist realist account of the primitive normativity involved in a biological adaptation’s being “for” this or that (say the eye’s being for seeing). By disabling the crucial anti-naturalist arguments against any such reduction, his model would support a cognitivist semantics for normative claims like “The heart is for pumping blood, and defective if it doesn’t.” No moral claim would follow, certainly. Nonetheless, by thus “pressing from below” (...) we may learn something about moral normativity. For instance, suppose non-cognitivists like Mackie are right that the semantics of normative claims should be “unified”: if the semantics of moral claims is non-cognitivist, so too is that of all normative claims. Then, assuming that a naturalist reduction does yield a sound cognitivist account of the primitive normativity, it would follow that our semantics of moral claims is cognitivist as well. (shrink)

Severity of Test (SoT) is an alternative to Popper's logical falsification that solves a number of problems of the logical view. It was presented by Popper himself in 1963. SoT is a less sophisticated probabilistic model of hypothesis testing than Oaksford & Chater's (O&C's) information gain model, but it has a number of striking similarities. Moreover, it captures the intuition of everyday hypothesis testing.

G. E. Moore argues that goodness is an intrinsic non-natural property that supervenes irreducibly on the intrinsic natural properties of its bearers. Accordingly, it is often supposed that “Moorean” supervenience is incompatible with physicalism, a naturalistic thesis. In this paper I argue that Moorean supervenience is not in itself incompatible with physicalism, Moore’s ethical non-naturalism notwithstanding. Understanding why will help us to better appreciate the full range of resources available to physicalists.

In “How Facts Make Law” and other recent work, Mark Greenberg argues that legal positivists cannot develop a viable constitutive account of law that meets what he calls the “the rational-relation requirement.” He argues that this gives us reason to reject positivism in favor of antipositivism. In this paper, I argue that Greenberg is wrong: positivists can in fact develop a viable constitutive account of law that meets the rational-relation requirement. I make this argument in two stages. First, I offer (...) an account of the rational-relation requirement. Second, I put forward a viable positivist account of law that I argue meets this requirement. The account that I propose is a version of Scott Shapiro’s Planning Theory of Law. The version of Shapiro’s account that I propose combines (1) the account of concepts and conceptual analysis put forward by David Chalmers and Frank Jackson with (2) the account of the concept LEGAL INSTITUTION (and its conceptual connections to the concept LEGAL NORM) that we get from a certain reading of Shapiro’s Planning Theory. In addition to providing a compelling response to Greenberg’s argument in “How Facts Make Law,” I argue that the explanation for why my response to Greenberg works underscores one of the central problems facing legal antipositivism: namely, its lack of a convincing account of the nature of legal institutions. (shrink)

In On Certainty, Wittgenstein’s reflections bring into view the phenomenon of basic certainty. He explores this phenomenon mostly in relation to our certainty with regard to empirical states of affairs. Drawing on these seminal observations and reflections, I extend the inquiry into what I call “basic moral certainty”, arguing that the latter plays the same kind of foundational role in our moral practices and judgements as basic empirical certainty does in our epistemic practices and judgements. I illustrate the nature and (...) significance of basic moral certainty via critical examination of contemporary philosophical “explanations” of the wrongness of killing. These pseudo explanations, as I show them to be, will be seen to founder in a similar manner to Moore’s “Proof” of an external world, that is, in a manner that discloses the phenomenon of basic (moral) certainty. (shrink)

Alice Crary claims that “the standard view of the bearing of Wittgenstein's philosophy on ethics” is dominated by “inviolability interpretations”, which often underlie conservative readings of Wittgenstein. Crary says that such interpretations are “especially marked in connection with On Certainty”, where Wittgenstein is represented as holding that “our linguistic practices are immune to rational criticism, or inviolable”. Crary's own conception of the bearing of Wittgenstein's philosophy on ethics, which I call the “intrinsically-ethical reading”, derives from the influential New Wittgenstein school (...) of exegesis, and is also espoused by James Edwards, Cora Diamond, and Stephen Mulhall. To my eyes, intrinsically-ethical readings present a peculiar picture of ethics, which I endeavour to expose in Part I of the paper. In Part II I present a reading of On Certainty that Crary would call an “inviolability interpretation”, defend it against New Wittgensteinian critiques, and show that this kind of reading has nothing to do with ethical or political conservatism. I go on to show how Wittgenstein's observations on the manner in which we can neither question nor affirm certain states of affairs that are fundamental to our epistemic practices can be fruitfully extended to ethics. Doing so sheds light on the phenomenon that I call “basic moral certainty”, which constitutes the foundation of our ethical practices, and the scaffolding or framework of moral perception, inquiry, and judgement. The nature and significance of basic moral certainty will be illustrated through consideration of the strangeness of philosophers' attempts at explaining the wrongness of killing. (shrink)

The Analytic Tradition in Philosophy is an excellent successor to an excellent book : It is a fine an example of the necromantic style in the history of philosophy where the object of the exercise is to resurrect the mighty dead in order to get into an argument with them, either because we think them importantly right or instructively wrong. However what was a pardonable a simplification and a reasonable omission in the earlier book has now metamorphosed into a sin (...) of omission and an oversimplification in its successor—the book lacks is an adequate discussion of the Ramified Theory of Types and Russell’s reasons for adopting it. I conclude with a brief meditation on Open Question Arguments and the threats that they pose to some of the analyses proposed by Russell and Moore themselves. (shrink)

The relationship between ethics and science has been discussed within the framework of continuity versus discontinuity theories, each of which can take several forms. Continuity theorists claim that ethics is a science or at least that it has deep similarities with the modus operandi of science. Discontinuity theorists reject such equivalency, while at the same time many of them claim that ethics does deal with objective truths and universalizable statements, just not in the same sense as science does. I propose (...) here a third view of quasi-continuity (or, equivalently, quasi-discontinuity) that integrates ethics and science as equal partners toward the uncovering of new knowledge. In this third way, a program envisioned by William James but made practicable only by contemporary scientific advancement, science can and must inform ethics at a deep level, and ethical theory— while going beyond science—cannot do without it. In particular, I identify four areas of ethics-science collaboration: neurobiological research into the basis of moral judgment, comparative anthropol- ogy, comparative evolutionary biology of primates, and game-theo- retical modeling. I provide examples within each of these fields to show how they link to ethical theories (including prescriptive work) and questions. The essay concludes with a brief discussion of the light that a scientifically informed ethics can shed on some classical problems in moral theory, such as the relationships between rational- ity and selfishness, egoism and altruism, as well as the concept of social contract. A joint research program involving both philosophers and scientists is called for if we wish to move ethical theory into the twenty-first century. (shrink)

The paper reconstructs Moore's Open Question Argument (OQA) and discusses its rise and fall. There are three basic objections to the OQA: Geach's point, that Moore presupposes that ?good? is a predicative adjective (whereas it is in fact attributive); Lewy's point, that it leads straight to the Paradox of Analysis; and Durrant's point that even if 'good' is not synonymous with any naturalistic predicate, goodness might be synthetically identical with a naturalistic property. As against Geach, I argue that 'good' has (...) both predicative and attributive uses and that in moral contexts it is difficult to give a naturalistic account of the attributive 'good'. To deal with Lewy, I reformulate the OQA. But the bulk of the paper is devoted to Durrant's objection. I argue that the post-Moorean programme of looking for synthetic identities between moral and naturalistic properties is either redundant or impossible. For it can be carried through only if 'good' expresses an empirical concept, in which case it is redundant since naturalism is true. But 'good' does not express an empirical concept (a point proved by the reformulated OQA). Hence synthetic naturalism is impossible. I discuss direct reference as a possible way out for the synthetic naturalist and conclude that it will not work. The OQA may be a bit battered but it works after a fashion. (shrink)

My first paper on the Is/Ought issue. The young Arthur Prior endorsed the Autonomy of Ethics, in the form of Hume’s No-Ought-From-Is (NOFI) but the later Prior developed a seemingly devastating counter-argument. I defend Prior's earlier logical thesis (albeit in a modified form) against his later self. However it is important to distinguish between three versions of the Autonomy of Ethics: Ontological, Semantic and Ontological. Ontological Autonomy is the thesis that moral judgments, to be true, must answer to a realm (...) of sui generis non-natural PROPERTIES. Semantic autonomy insists on a realm of sui generis non-natural PREDICATES which do not mean the same as any natural counterparts. Logical Autonomy maintains that moral conclusions cannot be derived from non-moral premises.-moral premises with the aid of logic alone. Logical Autonomy does not entail Semantic Autonomy and Semantic Autonomy does not entail Ontological Autonomy. But, given some plausible assumptions Ontological Autonomy entails Semantic Autonomy and given the conservativeness of logic – the idea that in a valid argument you don’t get out what you haven’t put in – Semantic Autonomy entails Logical Autonomy. So if Logical Autonomy is false – as Prior appears to prove – then Semantic and Ontological Autonomy would appear to be false too! I develop a version of Logical Autonomy (or NOFI) and vindicate it against Prior’s counterexamples, which are also counterexamples to the conservativeness of logic as traditionally conceived. The key concept here is an idea derived in part from Quine - that of INFERENCE-RELATIVE VACUITY. I prove that you cannot derive conclusions in which the moral terms appear non-vacuously from premises from which they are absent. But this is because you cannot derive conclusions in which ANY (non-logical) terms appear non-vacuously from premises from which they are absent Thus NOFI or Logical Autonomy comes out as an instance of the conservativeness of logic. This means that the reverse entailment that I have suggested turns out to be a mistake. The falsehood of Logical Autonomy would not entail either the falsehood Semantic Autonomy or the falsehood of Ontological Autonomy, since Semantic Autonomy only entails Logical Autonomy with the aid of the conservativeness of logic of which Logical Autonomy is simply an instance. Thus NOFI or Logical Autonomy is vindicated, but it turns out to be a less world-shattering thesis than some have supposed. It provides no support for either non-cognitivism or non-naturalism. (shrink)

n ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’ Anscombe argues that the moral ‘ought’ should be abandoned as the senseless survivor from a defunct conceptual scheme. I argue 1) That even if the moral ‘ought’ derives its meaning from a Divine Law conception of ethics it does not follow that it cannot sensibly survive the Death of God. 2) That anyway Anscombe is mistaken since ancestors of the emphatic moral ‘ought’ predate the system of Christian Divine Law from which the moral ‘ought’ supposedly derives (...) its meaning (Cicero in particular subscribed to something like the modern conception of a duty which seems to be a generalization of the duties attendant on particular roles). 3) That if the moral ‘ought’ derived its meaning from embodying Gods’ commands then the two should have been equated in the minds of true believers. This was not the case. 4) That Anscombe is absurdly wrong in supposing that Protestant moralists had abandoned a Divine Law conception of ethics. 5) That the virtue-based ought-free Aristotelian alternative suggested by Anscombe is unworkable since the basic idea is that it pays in terms of human flourishing to be good (which means inter alia being just). Since it is pretty obvious that there are plenty of good people who don’t flourish and flourishing people who are not good, the neo-Aristotelian program has gradually undergone a degenerating problem-shift: either the pay-off is deferred to the hereafter or being good is incorporated into the pay-off. 6) That there is a certain amount of sophistry in selling the neo-Aristotelian virtues. Since the unjust person is simply somebody who is NOT systematically just, you cannot prove that it pays to be just by arguing that it is a mistake to be systematically UNjust. So too for many of the other virtues. (shrink)

When one finds a philosopher inspiring, it is all too easy to adopt an uncritical reading. This would be to treat the author as an exception. The hallmark of such arguments from reverence is that they often start with ‘As so-and-so said…’ and appear as the final statement on the matter. Friedrich Nietzsche is subject to such reverential treatment at the hand of undergraduate and A-Level devotees. I hope in the course of this brief survey to suggest some worthwhile criticisms (...) of Nietzsche while at the same time point to criticisms that are ineffective. First, popular criticisms that I deem unsuccessful. (shrink)

This article explores the limits of social constructionism and criticizes the `demiurgic conception of society' associated with it. It contemplates the possibility of sociological realism by investigating the intrinsic and objective properties of action, cognition and morality. The incorporation of intrinsic meanings and intentions in social actions, the objective information supporting cognitive processes and human sensitivity to pleasure and pain as well as the normative rejection of undue suffering, delineate the objective core of social facts, which can be interpreted or (...) influenced, but not arbitrarily or capriciously constructed or manipulated. This general argument is supported by various illustrations drawn from the semantics of social actions and classical puzzles of interpretative sociology such as the meaning of suicide or the morality of social sanctions. (shrink)

The mental realm seems different to the physical realm; the mental is thought to be dependent on, yet distinct from the physical. But how, exactly, are the two realms supposed to be different, and what, exactly, creates the seemingly insurmountable juxtaposition between the mental and the physical? This review identifies and discusses five marks of the mental, features that set characteristically mental phenomena apart from the characteristically physical phenomena. These five marks (intentionality, consciousness, free will, teleology, and normativity) are not (...) presented as a set of features that define mentality. Rather, each of them is something we seem to associate with phenomena we consider mental, and each of them seems to be in tension with the physical view of reality in its own particular way. It is thus suggested how there is no single mind-body problem, but a set of distinct but interconnected problems. Each of these separate problems is analyzed, and their differences, similarities and connections are identified. This provides a useful basis for future theoretical work on psychology and philosophy of mind, that until now has too often suffered from unclarities, inadequacies, and conflations. (shrink)

I introduce a new formulation of rule consequentialism, defended as an improvement on traditional formulations. My new formulation cleanly avoids what Parfit calls “ideal world” objections. I suggest that those objections arise because traditional formulations incorporate counterfactual comparisons about how things could go differently. My new formulation eliminates those counterfactual comparisons. Part of the interest of the new formulation is as a model of how to reformulate structurally similar views, including various kinds of contractualism.

Since our moral and legal judgments are focused on our decisions and actions, one would expect information about the neural underpinnings of human decision-making and action-production to have a significant bearing on those judgments. However, despite the wealth of empirical data, and the public attention it has attracted in the past few decades, the results of neuroscientific research have had relatively little influence on legal practice. It is here argued that this is due, at least partly, to the discussion on (...) the relationship of the neurosciences and law mixing up a number of separate issues that have different relevance on our moral and legal judgments. The approach here is hierarchical; more and less feasible ways in which neuroscientific data could inform such judgments are separated from each other. The neurosciences and other physical views on human behavior and decision-making do have the potential to have an impact on our legal reasoning. However, this happens in various different ways, and too often appeal to any neural data is assumed to be automatically relevant to shaping our moral and legal judgments. Our physicalist intuitions easily favor neural-level explanations to mental-level ones. But even if you were to subscribe to some reductionist variant of physicalism, it would not follow that all neural data should be automatically relevant to our moral and legal reasoning. However, the neurosciences can give us indirect evidence for reductive physicalism, which can then lead us to challenge the very idea of free will. Such a development can, ultimately, also have repercussions on law and legal practice. (shrink)

This paper develops an argument that, if rule consequentialism is true, it’s not possible to defend it as the outcome of reflective equilibrium. Ordinary agents like you and me are ignorant of too many empirical facts. Our ignorance is a defeater for our moral intuitions. Even worse, there aren’t enough undefeated intuitions left to defend rule consequentialism. The problem I’ll describe won’t be specific to rule consequentialists, but it will be especially sharp for them.

This paper exposits and makes steps towards solving a puzzle about epistemic value. The puzzle is that several principles about the epistemic value of true beliefs and epistemic disvalue of false beliefs are, individually, plausible but, collectively, contradictory. My solution claims that sometimes false beliefs are epistemically valuable. I nonetheless show how my solution is not in deep tension with the Jamesian idea that true beliefs are epistemically valuable and false beliefs are epistemically disvaluable. I conclude by indicating how the (...) results here are relevant to formulating and defending Veritism. (shrink)

Someone who knew everything about the world’s physical nature could, apparently, suffer from ignorance about various aspects of conscious experience. Someone who knew everything about the world’s physical and mental nature could, apparently, suffer from moral ignorance. Does it follow that there are ways the world is, over and above the way it is physically or psychophysically? This paper defends a negative answer, based on a distinction between knowing the fact that p and knowing that p. This distinction is made (...) intelligible by reference to criterial connections between the possession of moral or phenomenal knowledge, and the satisfaction of cognitively neutral conditions of desire and experiential history. The existence of such connections in the moral case makes for an efficient dissolution of the so-called moral problem. (shrink)

It is generally assumed that if it is possible to believe that p without believing that q, then there is some difference between the object of the thought that p and the object of the thought that q. This assumption is challenged in the present paper, opening the way to an account of epistemic opacity that improves on existing accounts, not least because it casts doubt on various arguments that attempt to derive startling ontological conclusions from seemingly innocent epistemic premises.

The paper looks at an impasse with respect to the role of rights as reasons for action which afflicts contemporary legal and political debates. Adopting a meta‐ethical approach, it moves on to argue that the impasse arises from a philosophical confusion surrounding the role of rights as normative reasons. In dispelling the confusion, an account of reasons is put forward that attempts to capture their normativity by relating them to a reflexive public practice. Two key outcomes are identified as a (...) result of this explication: first, that normative practices are instances of rule‐following; and second, that agents partaking of normative practices possess absolute value (i.e., acquire the status of persons). In light of this explication, rights acquire the status of the most general reasons that purport to guarantee the content of personhood by specifying and safeguarding conditions which enable agents to participate in public practices of universalisation. (shrink)

Different philosophers tried ways to restore the role of reason in ethics. This shift in the philosophical climate was influenced by--or was at least in accordance with--the thought of the later Wittgenstein. In particular, this article will consider the relevance of Wittgenstein for cognitivist views, such as that of S. Toulmin, relativist like G. Harman, and British moral realists like S. Lovibond and J. McDowell. In fact, Wittgenstein is one of the founding fathers of antifoundationalism. He gives us the hopeful (...) insight that the end of foundationalism does not necessarily imply the end of moral philosophy but must be considered a new start of it. (edited). (shrink)

This paper consists principally of selections from a much longer work on the semantics of English. It discusses some problems concerning how to represent grammatical modifiers (e.g. slowly in x drives slowly) in a logically perspicuous notation. A proposal of Reichenbach's is given and criticized; then a new theory (apparently discovered independently by myself, Romain Clark, and Richard Montague and Hans Kamp) is given, in which grammatical modifiers are represented by operators added to a first-order predicate calculus. Finally some problems (...) concerning applications of adjectives to that-clauses and gerundive-clauses are discussed. (shrink)

Over several decades, ethics and law have been applied to medical education and practice in a way that reflects the continuation during the twentieth century of the strong distinction between facts and values. We explain the development of applied ethics and applied medical law and report selected results that reflect this applied model from an empirical project examining doctors’ decisions on withdrawing/withholding treatment from patients who lack decision-making capacity. The model is critiqued, and an alternative “constitutive” model is supported on (...) the basis that medicine, medical law, and medical ethics exemplify the inevitable entanglement of facts and values. The model requires that ethics and law be taught across the medical education curriculum and integrated with the basic and clinical sciences and that they be perceived as an integral component of medical evidence and practice. Law, in particular, would rank as equal in normative authority to the relevant clinical scientific “facts” of the case, with graduating doctors having as strong a basic command of each category as the other. The normalization of legal knowledge as part of the clinician’s evidence base to be utilized in practice may provide adequate consolation for clinicians who may initially resent further perceived incursions on their traditional independence and discretion. (shrink)

This essay examines the Brazilian deforestation debate to explicate the beginnings of a post-modern theory of argumentation. Modernist argumentation reflects two distinct approaches, found in the deforestation controversy. The first approach, ‘universal minimilization,’ presumes that the survival of humanity is sufficient grounds upon which to base argument. The alternative, ‘strategic manipulation,’ results in argument being employed as a technical device to advance one's interest. In place of the modernist approach, we offer an ecocentric theory of argumentation. This conception calls for (...) individuals to set aside differences in values to sustain humanity but at the same time to be sensitive to differences in costs and benefits that accrue from common efforts to persons differently situated. Additionally, this view operates with a tacit working assumption that environmental questions are not discrete entities to be evaluated separately. Rather, people must act collectively on a range of interconnected issues to ensure survival. (shrink)

The primary appeal of stakeholder theory in business ethics derives from its promise to help solve two large and often morally difficult problems: (1) how to manage people fairly and efficiently and (2) how to determine the extent of a firm's moral responsibilities beyond its obligations to enhance its profits and economic value. This article investigates a variety of conceptual quandaries that stakeholder theory faces in addressing these two general problems. It argues that these quandaries pose intractable obstacles for stakeholder (...) theory which prevent it from delivering on its large promises. Acknowledging that various versions of stakeholder theory have made a contribution in elucidating the complex nature of firms and business decision making, the article argues that it is time to move on. More precise explications of the nature of modern firms focusing on the application of basic moral principles to different business contexts and situations are likely to prove more accurate and useful. (shrink)

W. D. Ross is commonly considered to be a generalist about prima facie duty but a particularist about absolute duty. That is, many philosophers hold that Ross accepts that there are true moral principles involving prima facie duty but denies that there are any true moral principles involving absolute duty. I agree with the former claim: Ross surely accepts prima facie moral principles. However, in this paper, I challenge the latter claim. Ross, I argue, is no more a particularist about (...) absolute duty than a utilitarian or a Kantian is. While this conclusion is interesting in its own right, it is also important, I argue, because it prevents us from overlooking Ross's criterion of moral obligation and because it may have implications on the broader debate between particularists and generalists. (shrink)

Several proponents of the 'buck-passing' account of value have recently attributed to G. E. Moore the implausible view that goodness is reason-providing. I argue that this attribution is unjustified. In addition to its historical significance, the discussion has an important implication for the contemporary value-theoretical debate: the plausible observation that goodness is not reason-providing does not give decisive support to the buck-passing account over its Moorean rivals. The final section of the paper is a survey of what can be said (...) for and against the buck-passing account and Moore's views about goodness and reasons. (shrink)

According to ‘Fitting Attitude’ (FA) analyses of value, for an object to be valuable is for that object to have properties—other than its being valuable—that make it a fitting object of certain responses. In short, if an object is positively valuable it is fitting to favour it; if an object is negatively valuable it is fitting to disfavour it. There are several variants of FA analyses. Some hold that for an object to be valuable is for it to be such (...) that it ought to be favoured; others hold that value is analyzable in terms of reasons or requirements to favour. All these variants of the FA analysis are subject to a partiality challenge : there are circumstances in which some agents have reasons to favour or disfavour some object—due to the personal relations in which they stand to the object—without this having any bearing on the value of the object. A. C. Ewing was one of the first philosophers to draw attention to the partiality challenge for FA analyses. In this paper I explain the challenge and consider Ewing's responses, one of which is preferable to the other, but none of which is entirely satisfactory. I go on to develop an alternative Brentano-inspired response that Ewing could have offered and that may well be preferable to the responses Ewing actually did offer. (shrink)

According to T.M. Scanlon's buck-passing account of value, to be valuable is not to possess intrinsic value as a simple and unanalysable property, but rather to have other properties that provide reasons to take up an attitude in favour of their owner or against it. The 'wrong kind of reasons' objection to this view is that we may have reasons to respond for or against something without this having any bearing on its value. The challenge is to explain why such (...) reasons are of the wrong kind. This is what I set out to do, after illustrating the objection more thoroughly. (shrink)

This paper defends a novel account of how to determine the intrinsic value of possible worlds. Section 1 argues that a highly intuitive and widely accepted account leads to undesirable consequences. Section 2 takes the first of two steps towards a novel account by clarifying and defending a view about value-contribution that is based on some of W. D. Ross’ claims about the value of pleasure. Section 3 takes the second step by clarifying and defending a view about value-suppression that (...) is based on Ross’ claims about the interplay between prima-facie duties. Section 4 states and defends the account that I call Rossian Totalism. According to this account, the atoms of intrinsic value within a world only sometimes contribute their intrinsic value to the value of that world. (shrink)