Moral Reality
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1 Moral Realism Geoffrey Sayre-Mccord UNC/Chapel Hill
Moral Realism facts that peoples’ moral judgments are true or false, and that the facts being what they are (and so the judgments being true, when they are) is not merely a Geoffrey Sayre-McCord reflection of our thinking the facts are one way or another. That is, moral facts UNC/Chapel Hill are what they are even when we see them incorrectly or not at all. Introduction Moral realists thus all share the view that there are moral facts in light of People come, early and easily, to think in moral terms: to see many things which our moral judgments prove to be true or false. Yet they needn’t, and as good or bad, to view various options as right or wrong, to think of particular don’t, all share any particular view about what those facts are, and they might distributions as fair or unfair, to consider certain people virtuous and others well not be confident of any view at all. When it comes to moral matters, there vicious.[1] What they think, when they are thinking in these terms, often has a is no less disagreement among realists than among people at large and no large impact on their decisions and actions as well as on their responses to what incompatibility between being a realist and thinking oneself not in a good others do. People forego attractive possibilities when they think pursuing them position to know what the facts are. would be wrong, they push themselves to face death if they think it their duty, Furthermore, being a realist is compatible with holding a truly radical view they go to trouble to raise their kids to be virtuous, and they pursue things they of the moral facts. -
Saving Moral Realism: Against Blackburn's Projectivism
City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 5-2015 Saving Moral Realism: Against Blackburn's Projectivism Paul James Cummins Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/895 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] SAVING MORAL REALISM: AGAINST BLACKBURN’S PROJECTIVISM BY PAUL J. CUMMINS A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2015 © 2015 Paul J. Cummins All Rights Reserved ii This manuscript has been read and accepted by the Graduate Faculty in Philosophy in satisfaction of the dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. David M. Rosenthal (Date) Chair of Examining Committee John Greenwood (Date) Executive Officer Steven M. Cahn Stefan Baumrin Rosamond Rhodes Supervisory Committee The City University of New York iii Abstract SAVING MORAL REALISM: AGAINST BLACKBURN’S PROJECTIVISM by Paul J. Cummins Adviser: Professor Steven M. Cahn In the argumentative dialectic between moral realists and non-cognitivist moral antirealists each side in the debate is typically thought to enjoy a different prima facie advantage over its rival. Moral realism gains plausibility from its truth-conditional semantics because it can explain the meaning of moral judgments on the same basis as ordinary propositions. -
When the Kingdom of God Became the Kingdom of Ends: Altruism’S Development Into a Normative Ideal
When the Kingdom of God Became the Kingdom of Ends: Altruism’s Development into a Normative Ideal A Senior Honor Thesis Presented in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with distinction in Political Science in the College of Social and Behavioral Sciences by Benjamin T. Jones The Ohio State University December 10, 2006 Project Advisors: John M. Parrish, Department of Political Science (Loyola Marymount University) Michael A. Neblo, Department of Political Science (The Ohio State University) Table of Contents Abstract ii Acknowledgements iii Introduction 1 The Paradox at the Heart of Altruism 4 Defining Altruism and Normativity 6 What Are We Looking For? 11 Roadmap of What’s to Come 14 Part I Towards a Problem: The Ancient Debate over Public Life 17 Eudaimonia and Ancient Ethics 18 Plato and Aristotle 24 Epicurus and the Stoics 40 A Solution from an Unlikely Source 47 Augustine’s Reconciliation of the Two Cities 55 Conclusion 63 Part II Self-Love’s Fall from Grace: How Normative Altruism Developed out of the Augustinian Tradition 65 Entangled in Self-love: Augustine’s Normative Argument 67 Augustine Goes Secular 75 Kant’s Problematic Solution 83 Reworking Kant—And Altruism 89 Conclusion 91 Part III The Problems with Normative Altruism 93 Two Conceptions of Altruism 93 Evidence for Altruism on a Descriptive Level 95 Motivational Barriers to Normative Altruism 113 Changing the Way We Talk About Altruism 121 Conclusion 126 Bibliography 131 i Abstract In contemporary moral philosophy, altruism holds a place of prominence. Although a complex idea, the term seeps into everyday discourse, by no means confined to the esoteric language of philosophers and psychologists. -
From Neural 'Is' to Moral 'Ought'
PERSPECTIVES 34. Churchland, P. S. Brain-wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy Acknowledgements usual Humean and Moorean reasons. (MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002). I thank P. M. Churchland and P. S. Churchland for their close 35. Churchland, P. M. Towards a cognitive neurobiology of reading of the manuscript and invaluable advice about its struc- Contemporary proponents of naturalized the moral virtues. Topoi 17, 83–96 (1998). ture and content. In addition, J. Greene’s sceptical remarks were ethics are aware of these objections, but in my 36. Wallis, J. D., Anderson, K. C. & Miller, E. K. Single extremely helpful. J. Moll also provided useful preprints of his neurons in prefrontal cortex encode abstract rules. team’s work in this area. opinion their theories do not adequately meet Nature 411, 953–956 (2001). them. Casebeer, for example, examines recent 37. Casebeer, W. D. & Churchland, P. S. The neural mechanisms of moral cognition: a multiple-aspect Online links work in neuroscientific moral psychology and approach to moral judgment and decision-making. Biol. finds that actual moral decision-making looks Philos. 18, 169–194 (2003). FURTHER INFORMATION 8 38. Moreno, J. D. Neuroethics: an agenda for neuroscience MIT Encyclopedia of Cognitive Sciences: more like what Aristotle recommends and and society. Nature Rev. Neurosci. 4, 149–153 (2003). http://cognet.mit.edu/MITECS/ less like what Kant9 and Mill10 recommend. 39. Cacioppo, J. T. et al. (eds) Foundations in Social Neuro- limbic system | moral psychology | social cognition | theory of science (MIT Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2002). mind From this he concludes that the available 40. Rachels, J. -
David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and the Possibility of an Inclusive Moral Dialogue
[Intellectual History Archive 7, 2018] Comez, Inclusive moral dialogue DAVID HUME, IMMANUEL KANT, AND THE POSSIBILITY OF AN INCLUSIVE MORAL DIALOGUE Çağlar Çömez1 Boğaziçi University I. Introduction Immanuel Kant and David Hume developed moral theories that diverged from each other in many respects. Hume famously claimed that reason is the slave of passions and it cannot provide a motive for the human will to attain an end. Kant explicitly rejected this claim and equally famously argued that pure reason by itself can be practical and determine the will independently of our passions. Besides the power reason has to determine the will, the two philosophers also disagreed about the nature of moral judgment. Hume believed that our moral judgments arise from feelings of approbation and disapproval. According to him, when a moral agent reflects on an action, she develops certain sentiments about the moral value of the action and makes a moral judgment. Kant, however, believed that because there is a moral law we can appeal to regardless of our inclinations in order to identify the moral value of an action, we can make moral judgments that do not reflect our sentiments. My first main aim in this paper is to show that Hume’s anti-rationalist sentimentalist account of moral judgment faces an important problem. Hume’s account leads us to a point where a moral dialogue in which moral agents with conflicting sentiments about a morally significant situation can be included is impossible. I argue that Hume’s sentiment-based theory of moral judgment fails to lay the basis for an inclusive moral dialogue for moral agents who do not share the same set of sentiments with respect to a moral issue due to differences about the social contexts of their upbringing and education. -
Moral Realism in Spinoza's Ethics
Moral Realism in Spinoza’s Ethics Colin Marshall University of Washington One of Spinoza’s apparent goals in the Ethics is to revise commonsense morality. This raises a question: do Spinoza’s revisions show that he thought morality was somehow unreal? In this chapter I argue that, despite his revisionism, Spinoza's metaethical views in the Ethics are a form of moral realism, even though they contain anti-realist elements.1 In so arguing, I hope to bring Spinoza’s commentators and contemporary metaethicists into better conversation with each other. The terms “moral realism” and “moral anti-realism” entered the standard philosophical vocabulary only in the late 20th century, and many interpretive issues about Spinoza can be adequately discussed without using any contemporary metaethical categories. I hope to show, however, that attempting to classify Spinoza metaethically both raises important interpretive questions and shows that Spinoza’s views bear on various general metaethical issues. Many commentators, I believe, could benefit from closer attention to the details of contemporary metaethics, but contemporary metaethicists could also benefit from closer attention to the complexities of Spinoza's metaethics. Metaethicists use the moral realism/anti-realist distinction to characterize a debate that supposedly goes back at least to Plato. I begin, therefore, by discussing the contemporary understanding of that distinction (§1), which has received limited attention from Spinoza scholars. I then survey common reasons for anti-realist readings of Spinoza (§2), before describing the moral realist elements of his views (§3). I then consider the metaethical significance of his revisionism (§4), and conclude by saying why, all things considered, Spinoza is best classified as a moral realist (§5). -
Moral Realism and Arbitrariness Moral Realism Is Extremely Attractive. It
Moral Realism and Arbitrariness (published in Southern Journal of Philosophy 43 (1):109-129 (2005); http://www.blackwell-synergy.com/doi/abs/10.1111/j.2041-6962.2005.tb01946.x) Moral realism is extremely attractive. It seems to capture several of our important moral intuitions. It provides for the cognitivism which seems implicit in most commonsense moral discourse. It allows for genuine moral disagreement. Perhaps its most attractive feature is that it appears to offer us a way for us to say that (e.g.) the Nazis were objectively wrong - not just from our culture's perspective, or because of typical human emotional responses, but truly wrong. They are out of accord with the facts of the world. We can show them that they are wrong, and that if they came to understand the universe properly they would see that their actions are immoral and, further, that this gives them reason to stop performing them. They would be just as mistaken as if they declared that 2+2=5, that water is HCL, or that whales have gills. In this paper I argue that the appeal of moral realism, particularly with respect to this last virtue, is largely illusory. I focus on moral realism, but intend the arguments raised to apply equally to other normative realisms. I argue (i) that choosing to abide by such normative facts would be as arbitrary as choosing to abide by the mere preferences of a God (a difficulty akin to the Euthyphro dilemma raised for divine command theorists); in both cases we would lack reason to prefer these standards to alternative codes of conduct. -
An Ontological Proof of Moral Realism Michael Huemer
[Published in Social Philosophy & Policy 30 (2013): 259-79. Official version: https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/social-philosophy- and-policy/article/an-ontological-proof-of-moral- realism/8D2E2B9D45901C5E6AED29B888747A45.] An Ontological Proof of Moral Realism Michael Huemer While there is no general agreement on whether moral realism is true, there is general agreement on at least some of the objective moral obligations that we have if moral realism is true. Given that moral realism might be true, and given that we know some of the things we ought to do if it is true, we have a reason to do those things. Furthermore, this reason is itself an objective moral reason. Thus, we have at least one objective moral reason. In the following sections, I elaborate on the preceding argument. I begin by clarifying the conceptions of moral realism, practical reasons, and probability used in the argument, after which I set out the argument in more detail, offering support for each premise. I then address a series of potential objections. Ultimately, we shall see that, given that moral realism might be true, it is true. 1. Conceptual Background 1.1. Practical Reasons: First Person vs. Third Person Practical reasons are considerations that count for or against behaving in a particular way. To say that there is a reason to perform an action is not to say that the action would be reasonable all things considered; it is only to say that there is at least some consideration in favor of the act. This consideration might well be outweighed by other considerations. -
Moral Mental States: Four Methods in Metaethics
City University of New York (CUNY) CUNY Academic Works All Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects 2011 Moral Mental States: Four Methods in Metaethics Christopher Alen Sula The Graduate Center, City University of New York How does access to this work benefit ou?y Let us know! More information about this work at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu/gc_etds/1484 Discover additional works at: https://academicworks.cuny.edu This work is made publicly available by the City University of New York (CUNY). Contact: [email protected] i Moral Mental States Four Methods in Metaethics Christopher Alen Sula A dissertation submitted to the Graduate Faculty in Philosophy in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, The City University of New York 2011 ii © 2011 CHRISTOPHER ALEN SULA All Rights Reserved iii This manuscript has been read and accepted for the Graduate Faculty in Philosophy in satisfaction of the Dissertation requirement for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. David M. Rosenthal ___________________ _____________________________________________ Date Chair of Examining Committee Iakovos Vasiliou ___________________ _____________________________________________ Date Executive Officer Catherine Wilson (advisor) . Stefan Bernard Baumrin ______ Samir Chopra , Douglas Lackey . Supervisory Committee THE CITY UNIVERSITY OF NEW YORK iv Abstract Moral Mental States: Four Methods in Metaethics Christopher Alen Sula Advisor: Catherine Wilson Metaethics has traditionally focused on the meaning of moral statements, the referents of moral terms, and the justification of moral claims. This dissertation focuses on the thoughts in virtue of which our moral statements have their meaning and our moral claims have their content. These “moral mental states,” as I call them, are best understood as having both intentional and volitional aspects and, corresponding to each aspect, as having satisfaction conditions involving both correctness and success in action. -
Railton's Reductive Moral Realism
RAILTON’S REDUCTIVE MORAL REALISM A thesis submitted to Kent State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts By Garrett Rauckhorst May 2013 Thesis written by Garrett Rauckhorst B.A., Hiram College, 2007 M.A., Kent State University, 2013 Approved by Michael Byron_______________________________, Advisor David Odell-Scott____________________________, Chair, Department of Philosophy Raymond Craig______________________________, Assoc. Dean, College of Arts and Sciences ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ................................................................................................................ v CHAPTER 0.INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................... 1 0.1 Metaethics ................................................................................................................... 1 0.2 The Outline .................................................................................................................. 2 0.3 Purpose ....................................................................................................................... 3 1. RAILTON’S REDUCTIVE MORAL REALISM ............................................................................ 5 1.1 The Fact/Value Distinction ........................................................................................... 5 1.1.1 The Argument from Rational Determinability ........................................................... -
"Realism, Moral" In: the International Encyclopedia of Ethics
1 Realism, Moral Geoffrey Sayre-McCord Introduction Moral realists maintain (1) that in making moral judgments – for instance, that cruelty is wrong or generosity required or justice a virtue – people are purporting to report moral facts (and not just expressing their tastes or preferences) and (2) that there are such facts to report, so that some such claims are actually true and the world is, really, in those cases as claimed. In taking this stand, moral realists see themselves as capturing and defending common sense. Indeed, it is fair to say that many, and perhaps most, people think moral realism is obviously the correct position, even as they recognize that people regularly disagree deeply about just what the moral facts are (see properties, moral; truth in ethics). Yet there are substantial reasons for suspecting that, in fact, common sense and common conviction are misguided or, alternatively, misunderstood by moral realists. In particular, there are reasons to suspect both that if moral claims do purport to report moral facts they fail, because there are no such facts (as error theorists argue) (see error theory) and that moral claims do not actually purport to report facts at all but rather express attitudes or commitments (as non-cognitivists argue) (see non-cognitivism; emotivism). The Error Theory According to error theorists, though our moral judgments purport to report moral facts they all fail, because there are no such facts to report. A frequent theme in their arguments is that a clear-eyed appreciation of what gets valorized as “moral,” and of why it is given this status, reveals non-moral (and often dark) forces. -
Moral Realism Is Moral Relativism
Moral Realism is Moral Relativism Gilbert Harman Princeton University June 25, 2012 Abstract Moral relativism, as I have come to understand it in the light of Cornell Moral Realism, is the claim that there is not a single objec- tively true morality but only many different moralities, just as there is not a single true language but only many different languages. Different people may have different moralities as reflected in the way they act and the ways they react to the actions of others and there is no objec- tive way to show that one of these moralities is the only correct one. An account of what a morality is and what it is to have a particular morality might resemble David Lewis’ account of what a language is and what it is to have a language. Moral theory might emulate cur- rent linguistic theory in various ways. However, moral relativism is not a semantic claim about how to understand moral judgments. For example, it is not the view that a moral judgments is implicitly rela- tional with a hidden parameter representing the morality in relation to which the judgment is made. To repeat: moral relativism is the claim that that there is not a single objectively true morality but only many different moralities. In this paper, I explain my understanding of moral relativism and indicate why I reject certain objections to it. I mention considerations 1 that I take to support it, but I do not suppose that these considerations will be persuasive to all of those who do not already accept it.