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The Moral Philosophy of Bernard Williams The Moral Philosophy of Bernard Williams The Moral Philosophy of Bernard Williams Edited by Alexandra Perry and Chris Herrera The Moral Philosophy of Bernard Williams, Edited by Alexandra Perry and Chris Herrera This book first published 2013 Cambridge Scholars Publishing 12 Back Chapman Street, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE6 2XX, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2013 by Alexandra Perry and Chris Herrera and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-4438-4790-9, ISBN (13): 978-1-4438-4790-2 CONTENTS Acknowledgments ..................................................................................... vii Introduction ................................................................................................. 1 So Much for Ethics C.D. Herrera Chapter One ............................................................................................... 18 Bernard Williams: A Reminiscence Jeff McMahan Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 26 Reflection and the Individual in Williams’ Humanistic Philosophy Lorenzo Greco Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 40 Practical Necessity and the Constitution of Character Roman Altshuler Chapter Four .............................................................................................. 54 Ethical Consistency and the Logic of Ought, With Some Thoughts on the Use and Limits of Formal Methods Mathieu Beirlaen Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 71 Everyday Normative Reasoning and Philosophical Ethics Nancy Matchett Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 88 One Thought Too Many about Bernard Williams? Jonathan Dancy Chapter Seven ............................................................................................ 93 Is Williams a Dancian Particularist? Jennifer Flynn vi Contents Chapter Eight ........................................................................................... 103 Response to Dancy’s “One Thought Too Many about Bernard Williams?” James Kellenberger Chapter Nine ............................................................................................ 107 Bernard Williams, Republicanism, and the Liberalism of Fear: Problems and Prospects Thom Brooks Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 114 On The Liberalism of Fear: A Reply to Brooks Robert Talisse Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 119 Bernard Williams and R.G. Collingwood: A Difference in Philosophical Method Stephen Leach and Esther Abin Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 130 Darwall and Williams: Moral Reasoning, Priority and the Second-Person Standpoint Sarah Pawlett Chapter Thirteen ...................................................................................... 151 The Priority of Autonomy Owen Ware Chapter Fourteen ..................................................................................... 157 Bernard Williams on Pluralism, Liberalism, and History Colin Koopman Chapter Fifteen ........................................................................................ 174 Internal Justification and Relativism Jonathan Sands-Wise Notes ........................................................................................................ 185 Contributors ............................................................................................. 197 Index ........................................................................................................ 199 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Earlier versions of some of the essays in this volume were published in a special issue of Theoretical & Applied Ethics in 2011. The essays which have been previously published have been substantially revised, and where possible, include responses from the authors to critical comments that were also first published in that same issue. We are grateful for the chance to highlight the work of these scholars, and appreciate the opportunity to add to the growing body of literature devoted to Williams's own contributions in ethics. Spring, 2013 —C. D. Herrera and Alexandra Perry, Society for Moral Inquiry INTRODUCTION SO MUCH FOR ETHICS C.D. HERRERA "A true philosophy must accept and justify every side of human nature, including itself. Like other things it has its place in that system where at once every place and no place is supreme. The mastery of that system of thought, however far we carry it, leaves philosophy still the servant of an order which it accepts and could never have made." —F. H. Bradley, 1914, p. 14 "Ethical life is not a unitary given thing, and there are many different possibilities within it for education, social decision, even perhaps for personal regeneration. Within the kind of ethical life we find ourselves in, there are diversities, incoherences, and instruments of self-criticism.” —Bernard Williams, 1985, p. 4 Overview If I was to declare my skepticism towards religion, I would in the process hand you a number of assumptions about what I believe and how you should interpret my behavior. You might then think that you know how to read my actions if, say, you saw me leaving a church. Having heard me claim to be a religious skeptic, you could assume that I must have been at a friend's wedding. Were you to believe in things like god or an afterlife yourself, you might even have some sense of how you could try to bring me around. You might think that you could at least provide reasons for the superiority of your own beliefs. Would this kind of response be possible if I had announced that I am a moral skeptic instead? We can imagine an ethicist answering that it would not be. That is because, the ethicist might say, moral skeptics can appear to not understand what is, or needs to be, going on when we judge behavior or beliefs. As a result, they give us, instead of meaningful discussion of ethical issues and concepts, a confused account of how our moral systems 2 Introduction work. There are also, the ethicist might add, inherent ambiguities in the idea of moral skepticism that, on some interpretations, make it sound self- refuting or incoherent. One of the best reasons to devote an anthology to the work of Bernard Williams is that he seemed, among moral skeptics, to see most clearly what he was up against. For several decades, Williams wrote as one who knew that the skeptic's message will often sound this way, more intriguing than worrisome, and sometimes more confused than anything else. In this Introduction, I will try to say a bit about this perception, and where Williams might have said that ethics can go after, and in spite of, moral skepticism.1 The Credibility Gap In the religion example, there might be no real question of what the skeptic remains unconvinced by. We might also think that it would be easy, along these same lines, to get at least a rough idea of which beliefs the religious skeptic might try to get the theist to discard. Of course, in actual cases, this characterization might seem optimistic; beliefs can be more complicated, as can the process of clarifying them. But the analogy does at least get at an important point that arises in the discussion of moral skepticism. Given the variety of moral beliefs that we encounter, and the moral problems that we at least think that we can solve, it can seem that moral skepticism ought to be taken seriously. Yet there are ethicists who can seem unmoved, if not a little disappointed with the warnings about the difficulty in proving a moral point or showing how moral judgments relate to empirical facts. It is still common to observe ethicists who nod approvingly when they hear these skeptical thoughts, mumble something about the complexity of it all, and go on doing ethics. Why would this be so? An ethicist might contend that if moral skeptics face a credibility problem, it is not one very different from what epistemic or metaphysical skeptics encounter. How many of us even pretend to care, the ethicist might ask, that we could be dreaming or that the sidewalk on the way home might not be real? If we do bother at all to address the skeptic who raises such warnings, we might claim to be at a loss when it comes to knowing how the warnings are supposed to apply to us. We might offer a few quick references to David Hume and backgammon, and be on our way.2 The ethicist might say that we are justified in expressing puzzlement, sometimes in response to the epistemic skeptic's derision, when we hear the message. Short of constantly re-inspecting the sidewalks and the rest of the world around us, what would the epistemic skeptic have us do differently? So Much for Ethics 3 So it is with moral skepticism, the ethicist might claim. But I think that this analogy is misleading on several fronts. On one hand, moral skeptics raise a number of interesting philosophical issues, so should be willing to explain this error in reasoning
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