13 found
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  1. The function of morality.Nicholas Smyth - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (5):1127-1144.
    What is the function of morality? On this question, something approaching a consensus has recently emerged. Impressed by developments in evolutionary theory, many philosophers now tell us that the function of morality is to reduce social tensions, and to thereby enable a society to efficiently promote the well-being of its members. In this paper, I subject this consensus to rigorous scrutiny, arguing that the functional hypothesis in question is not well supported. In particular, I attack the supposed evidential relation between (...)
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  2. Purity and Practical Reason: On Pragmatic Genealogy.Nicholas Smyth - 2023 - Ergo: An Open Access Journal of Philosophy 10 (37):1057-1081.
    Pragmatic Genealogy involves constructing fictional, quasi-historical models in order to discover what might explain and justify our concepts, ideas or practices. It arguably originated with Hume, but its most prominent practitioners are Edward Craig, Bernard Williams and Mathieu Queloz. Its defenders allege that the method allows us to understand “what the concept does for us, what its role in our life might be” (Craig, 1990), and that this in turn can ground practical reasons to preserve or further a conceptual practice. (...)
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  3. Moral disagreement and non-moral ignorance.Nicholas Smyth - 2019 - Synthese 198 (2):1089-1108.
    The existence of deep and persistent moral disagreement poses a problem for a defender of moral knowledge. It seems particularly clear that a philosopher who thinks that we know a great many moral truths should explain how human populations have failed to converge on those truths. In this paper, I do two things. First, I show that the problem is more difficult than it is often taken to be, and second, I criticize a popular response, which involves claiming that many (...)
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  4. Moral Knowledge and the Genealogy of Error.Nicholas Smyth - 2017 - Journal of Value Inquiry 51 (3):455-474.
    In this paper, I argue that in order to explain our own moral reliability, we must provide a theory of error for those who disagree with us. Any story that seeks to vindicate our own reliability must also explain how so many others have gone wrong, otherwise it is not actually a vindicatory story. Thus, we cannot claim to have vindicated our own moral reliability unless we can explain the unreliability of those who hold contrary beliefs. This, I show, requires (...)
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  5. Nothing Personal: On the Limits of the Impersonal Temperament in Ethics.Nicholas Smyth - 2022 - Journal of Value Inquiry 56 (1):67-83.
    David Benatar has argued both for anti-natalism and for a certain pessimism about life's meaning. In this paper, I propose that these positions are expressions of a deeply impersonal philosophical temperament. This is not a problem on its own; we all have our philosophical instincts. The problem is that this particular temperament, I argue, leads Benatar astray, since it prevents him from answering a question that any moral philosopher must answer. This is the question of rational authority, which requires the (...)
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  6. What Is the Question to which Anti-Natalism Is the Answer?Nicholas Smyth - 2020 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 23 (1):1-17.
    The ethics of biological procreation has received a great deal of attention in recent years. Yet, as I show in this paper, much of what has come to be called procreative ethics is conducted in a strangely abstract, impersonal mode, one which stands little chance of speaking to the practical perspectives of any prospective parent. In short, the field appears to be flirting with a strange sort of practical irrelevance, wherein its verdicts are answers to questions that no-one is asking. (...)
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  7. Socratic reductionism in ethics.Nicholas Smyth - 2020 - European Journal of Philosophy 28 (4):970-985.
    In this paper, I clarify and defend a provocative hypothesis offered by Bernard Williams, namely, that modern people are much more likely to speak in terms of master-concepts like “good” or “right,” and correspondingly less likely to think and speak in the pluralistic terms favored by certain Ancient societies. By conducting a close reading of the Platonic dialogues Charmides and Laches, I show that the figure of Socrates plays a key historical role in this conceptual shift. Once we understand that (...)
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  8. Integration and authority: rescuing the ‘one thought too many’ problem.Nicholas Smyth - 2018 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 48 (6):812-830.
    Four decades ago, Bernard Williams accused Kantian moral theory of providing agents with ‘one thought too many’. The general consensus among contemporary Kantians is that this objection has been decisively answered. In this paper, I reconstruct the problem, showing that Williams was not principally concerned with how agents are to think in emergency situations, but rather with how moral theories are to be integrated into recognizably human lives. I show that various Kantian responses to Williams provide inadequate materials for solving (...)
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  9. A moral critique of psychological debunking.Nicholas Smyth - 2021 - Journal of Social Philosophy 53 (2):255-272.
    Journal of Social Philosophy, Volume 53, Issue 2, Page 255-272, Summer 2022.
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  10. There Is No Such Thing as a Political Conservative.Nicholas Smyth - forthcoming - European Journal of Political Theory.
    In this paper, I try to pin down the essence of conservative political theory. I then show that no-one really believes this theory, because all of us embrace progressive values and principles under the right circumstances. This doesn't mean that there aren't such things as conservative political reasons, and I offer an account of such reasons here. But in my view no-one really thinks that such reasons are the sole or even the primary political reasons.
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  11. When does self‐interest distort moral belief?Nicholas Smyth - 2022 - Wiley: Analytic Philosophy 2 (4):392-408.
    In this paper, I critically analyze the notion that self-interest distorts moral belief-formation. This belief is widely shared among modern moral epistemologists, and in this paper, I seek to undermine this near consensus. I then offer a principle which can help us to sort cases in which self-interest distorts moral belief from cases in which it does not. As it turns out, we cannot determine whether such distortion has occurred from the armchair; rather, we must inquire into mechanisms of social (...)
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  12. The Hesitant Empiricist: Why Moral Epistemology Needs Real History.Nicholas Smyth - 2022 - Analysis 82 (1):190-200.
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  13. Structural Injustice and the Emotions.Nicholas Smyth - 2021 - Res Publica 27 (4):577-592.
    A structural harm results from countless apparently innocuous interactions between a great many individuals in a social system, and not from any agent’s intentionally producing the harm. Iris Young has influentially articulated a model of individual moral responsibility for such harms, and several other philosophers have taken it as their starting point for dealing with the phenomenon of structural injustice. In this paper, I argue that this social connection model is far less realistic and socially effective than it aims to (...)
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