DOCSLIB.ORG

MORAL OBJECTIVITY and the PSYCHOLOGY of MOTIVATION by Jude Ndubuisi Edeh a DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfilment Of

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
MORAL OBJECTIVITY and the PSYCHOLOGY of MOTIVATION by Jude Ndubuisi Edeh a DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfilment Of Philosophy MORAL OBJECTIVITY AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF MOTIVATION By Jude Ndubuisi Edeh A DISSERTATION Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy (Dr.phil) University of Münster Münster, Germany 2017 Dekan:Prof. Dr. Thomas Großbölting Erstgutachter: PD. Dr. Michael Kühler Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Reinold Schmücker Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 04.10.2018 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I am immensely grateful to Michael Kühler and Reinold Schmücker, my supervisors, for their generosity with their time, energy and support. It’s not always a given that you find people who are both interested in your project and believe you can handle it, especially at its budding stage. I benefited tremendously from your constructive criticisms and helpful comments, without which the completion of this project would not have been successful. I owe, in addition, a significant debt of gratitude to Nadine Elzein for supervising this project during my research stay at the King’s College, University of London. Nadine, your enthusiasm, philosophical insight and suggestions are invaluable. I owe special thanks also to Lukas Meyer for hosting me in August 2015 at the Institute of Philosophy, University of Graz. This project would not have been possible without the friendship, support, and insight of a good many people. In particular, I owe a significant debt of gratitude to: Nnaemeka’s family, Anthony Anih’s family, Anthony C. Ajah, Uzoma Emenogu, Vitus Egwu. I will always remain indebted to my family for their undying care and love. I would never have made it this far without your encouragement and support. ii ABSTRACT This dissertation provides a solution to the tension of specifying and reconciling the relationship between moral judgement and motivation. I defend motivational externalism against realist motivational internalism, the view that moral belief is not only a genuine belief, but also, it necessarily motivates. I argue that by making moral motivation analytically dependent on moral judgement, the realist internalist removes the moral person from the landscape of moral agency. Precisely, the conceptual intuition on which realist internalism rests is insufficient. For it saddles the burden of explaining away, for example, the crucial roles of agents’ desires, self, traits and identity in moral motivation. To fill this gap, I develop a realist externalist account of moral motivation. My core argument is that motives for acting on moral judgements are based on independent desires, and the desire for being faithful to the moral-self is one of them. Given that morality has two aspects, namely theoretical feature and practical feature, I proceed by arguing that noncognitivism; precisely moral expressivism fails to capture our intuition about the theoretical feature of morality as well as moral objectivity. Then, I characterize and defend the version of moral realism relevant for the purposes of this work. Having taken a metaethical standpoint, I spend the rest of the dissertation addressing the practical feature of morality. First, I argue that the phenomenon of moral indifference threatens the motivational efficacy claim of robust internalism. In addition, I contend that Smith’s Arguments from Rationalism and Practicality Requirement do not give us sufficient grounds to abandon motivational externalism. Second, I argue that motivational externalism has better resources for analysing the psychology of moral motivation. To defend motivational externalism, (1) I provide a conceptual framework; and (2) drawing on Harry Frankfurt’s “Second-Order Volitions” and Augusto Blasi’s “Moral-Self”, I propose an externalist account of a widespread connection between moral judgement and motivation. On this view, motivation is based on moral identity. I argue that moral care, moral-self and moral desires are essential to moral motivation. Moral motivation does not stem directly from moral judgements; rather from an independent desire, namely, a moral desire for realizing the moral values we care about, that is, the desire to be faithful to one’s moral-self. Finally, I argue that externalism is not condemned to explaining the motivation of virtuous persons in terms of desire de dicto as Smith alleges. In fact, it is possible, on the externalist construal, to account for a reliable connection between moral judgement and motivation in terms of de re desires. iii Moral Objectivity and the Psychology of Motivation Die Objektivität der Moral und die psychologische Frage nach der Motivation zu moralischem Handeln Zusammenfassung Die Arbeit widmet sich einer zentralen und umstrittenen Frage innerhalb der Metaethik und Moralpsychologie: Wie kann die Vorstellung, dass unsere moralischen Urteile wahrheitsfähige Aussagen darstellen, mit dem Anspruch vereinbart werden, dass diese Urteile uns zugleich zu einem entsprechenden Handeln zu motivieren vermögen? Um dieses Spannungsverhältnis zwischen moralischem Urteil und Motivation aufzulösen, verteidige ich eine externalistische Variante moralischer Motivation gegenüber einem motivationalen Internalismus. Die Analyse der Motivation zu moralischem Handeln erfolgt zwar in beiden Fällen auf der Basis eines moralischen Realismus, d.h. der Vorstellung, dass moralische Urteile wahrheitsfähig sind. Im kritischen Durchgang durch einschlägige internalistische Positionen argumentiere ich jedoch dafür, dass diese nicht überzeugend zeigen können, wie wahrheitsfähige moralische Urteile uns zugleich zu einem entsprechenden Handeln zu motivieren vermögen. Der Kern meiner Kritik besteht darin, dass der realistische Internalismus die Bedeutung der Person in der Analyse moralischer Motivation verkennt, d.h. die Bedeutung der Rolle von Wünschen und eines praktischen Selbstverständnisses, d.h. der Identität des Akteurs. Bezieht man dies hingegen mit ein, so ergibt sich ein realistischer Externalismus mit Blick auf die Motivationskraft moralischer Urteile. Diese bleiben also auf den von ihnen unabhängigen Wunsch des Akteurs angewiesen, sich in einem umfassenden Sinne als moralische Person zu verstehen und diesem Selbstverständnis im Handeln treu bleiben zu wollen. Erst vermittelt durch ein solches praktisches Selbstverständnis vermögen uns moralische Urteile folglich zu einem moralischen Handeln zu motivieren. iv CONTENT Chapter One: The Problem of Moral Motivation 1 Chapter Two: Noncognitivism 37 Chapter Three: Moral Realism 95 Chapter Four: Motivational Internalism 139 Chapter Five: The Moral Problem: Smith’s Solutions? 178 Chapter Six: Objections against Externalism and Replies 221 Chapter Seven: A Defence of Externalist Moral Motivation 250 Conclusion 293 References 296 v CONTENT Acknowledgments ii Abstract iii Zusammenfassung iv CHAPTER 1: THE PROBLEM OF MORAL MOTIVATION 1.0. Introduction 1 1.1. Theoretical Feature of Morality 3 1.2. Practical Feature of Morality 7 1.3. Olivia’s Case is Metaethical 8 1.4. From the Mind to Moral Psychology 11 1.5. Tension 17 PART ONE: Moral Objectivity CHAPTER 2: NONCOGNITIVISM 2.0. Introduction 24 2.1. Moral Knowledge and Scepticism 26 2.2. Moral Expressivism 32 Emotivism Ayer’s Emotivism Stevenson’s Emotivism Moral Disagreement Hybrid Expressivism and Mind-Independency 2.3. Conclusion 59 CHAPTER 3: MORAL REALISM 3.0. Introduction 61 3.1. What is Moral Realism? 61 vi 3.2. Not Morally Realistic Enough 63 3.3. Moral Objectivity qua Mind-Independency 68 Weak Moral Mind-Independency Robust Moral Mind-Independency 3.4. One Castle, Two Towers: Naturalism and Non-Naturalism 78 Moral Naturalism Reductive Naturalism Non-Reductive Naturalism 3.5. Conclusion 85 PART TWO: Psychology of moral motivation CHAPTER 4: MOTIVATIONAL INTERNALISM 4.0. Introduction 88 4.1. Motivational Internalism 91 4.2. From Judgement to Judgement Internalism 96 4.3. Internality and Conceptuality 101 4.4. Robust Realist Motivational Internalism 103 4.5. Olivia’s Case: An Argument against Robust Internalism 104 4.6. Explaining Olivia’s Behaviour 107 4.7. Conclusion 111 CHAPTER 5: THE MORAL PROBLEM: SMITH’S SOLUTION? 5.0. Introduction 112 5.1. Moral Rationalism 115 5.2. Smith’s Notion of Normative Reason 116 5.3. Smith’s Argument from Rationalism 120 5.4. Philippa Foot: Argument against Categorical Imperatives 126 vii 5.5. Smith’s Argument from Practicality Requirement 130 5.6. The Fetishist Argument 132 5.7. Conclusion 138 CHAPTER 6: OBJECTIONS AGAINST EXTERNALISM AND REPLIES 6.0. Introduction 139 6.1. Objection from Moral Intuition 139 6.2. Objection from Action-Guiding and Motive-Giving 144 6.3. Objection from Off-Colour Moral Terms Usage 146 6.4. Objection from Amoralism 152 CHAPTER 7: A Defence OF EXTERNALIST MORAL MOTIVATION 7.0. Introduction 157 7.1. Framework for Externalist Motivation 159 7.2. Personal Identity as Moral Identity 163 7.3. Moral Identity 168 The Kantian- Kohlbergian Perspective Blasian Perspective 7.4. Moral Identity-Based Motivation 171 Moral-Self Care and Moral Motivation 7.5. Motivational Externalism and Widespread Motivation 177 7.6. Moral Fetishization: When Moral Desire becomes Bad 179 7.7. Conclusion 183 CONCLUSION 184 References 186 viii Chapter 1 The Problem of Moral Motivation “I’m good! Why, then be moral? Do you mean, I’ve reasons to? I see it not, I don’t see why I’ve to be moral. I’m good!” Culled from Olivia, unpublished Poem 1.0. Introduction There is a belief about the practical implications of moral thoughts and language: an idea based on our moral intuition. It is believed that morality has two basic features, namely, the theoretical and practical features (Brink 1989; Smith
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Mark Schroeder [email protected] 3709 Trousdale Parkway Markschroeder.Net
    ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ USC School of Philosophy 323.632.8757 (mobile) Mudd Hall of Philosophy Mark Schroeder [email protected] 3709 Trousdale Parkway markschroeder.net Los Angeles, CA 90089-0451 Curriculum Vitae philosophy.academy ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ EDUCATION Ph.D., Philosophy, Princeton University, November 2004, supervised by Gideon Rosen M.A., Philosophy, Princeton University, November 2002 B.A., magna cum laude, Philosophy, Mathematics, and Economics, Carleton College, June 2000 EMPLOYMENT University of Southern California, Professor since December 2011 previously Assistant Professor 8/06 – 4/08, Associate Professor with tenure 4/08 – 12/11 University of Maryland at College Park, Instructor 8/04 – 1/05, Assistant Professor 1/05 – 6/06 ___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ RESEARCH INTERESTS My research has focused primarily on metaethics, practical reason, and related areas, particularly including normative ethics, philosophy of language, epistemology, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, the philosophy of action, agency, and responsibility, and the history of ethics. HONORS AND AWARDS Elected to USC chapter of Phi Kappa Phi, 2020; 2017 Phi Kappa Phi Faculty
    [Show full text]
  • David Hume and the Origin of Modern Rationalism Donald Livingston Emory University
    A Symposium: Morality Reconsidered David Hume and the Origin of Modern Rationalism Donald Livingston Emory University In “How Desperate Should We Be?” Claes Ryn argues that “morality” in modern societies is generally understood to be a form of moral rationalism, a matter of applying preconceived moral principles to particular situations in much the same way one talks of “pure” and “applied” geometry. Ryn finds a num- ber of pernicious consequences to follow from this rationalist model of morals. First, the purity of the principles, untainted by the particularities of tradition, creates a great distance between what the principles demand and what is possible in actual experience. The iridescent beauty and demands of the moral ideal distract the mind from what is before experience.1 The practical barriers to idealistically demanded change are oc- cluded from perception, and what realistically can and ought to be done is dismissed as insufficient. And “moral indignation is deemed sufficient”2 to carry the day in disputes over policy. Further, the destruction wrought by misplaced idealistic change is not acknowledged to be the result of bad policy but is ascribed to insufficient effort or to wicked persons or groups who have derailed it. A special point Ryn wants to make is that, “One of the dangers of moral rationalism and idealism is DONAL D LIVINGSTON is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at Emory Univer- sity. 1 Claes Ryn, “How Desperate Should We Be?” Humanitas, Vol. XXVIII, Nos. 1 & 2 (2015), 9. 2 Ibid., 18. 44 • Volume XXVIII, Nos. 1 and 2, 2015 Donald Livingston that they set human beings up for desperation.
    [Show full text]
  • The John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought 1
    The John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought 1 The John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought Department Website: http://socialthought.uchicago.edu Chair • Robert Pippin Professors • Lorraine Daston • Wendy Doniger • Joel Isaac • Hans Joas • Gabriel Lear • Jonathan Lear • Jonathan Levy • Jean Luc Marion • Heinrich Meier • Glenn W. Most • David Nirenberg • Thomas Pavel • Mark Payne • Robert B. Pippin • Jennifer Pitts • Andrei Pop • Haun Saussy • Laura Slatkin • Nathan Tarcov • Rosanna Warren • David Wellbery Emeriti • Wendy Doniger • Leon Kass • Joel Kraemer • Ralph Lerner • James M. Redfield • David Tracy About the Committee The John U. Nef Committee on Social Thought was established as a degree granting body in 1941 by the historian John U. Nef (1899-1988), with the assistance of the economist Frank Knight, the anthropologist Robert Redfield, and Robert M. Hutchins, then President of the University. The Committee is a group of diverse scholars sharing a common concern for the unity of the human sciences. Their premises were that the serious study of any academic topic, or of any philosophical or literary work, is best prepared for by a wide and deep acquaintance with the fundamental issues presupposed in all such studies, that students should learn about these issues by acquainting themselves with a select number of classic ancient and modern texts in an inter- disciplinary atmosphere, and should only then concentrate on a specific dissertation topic. It accepts qualified graduate students seeking to pursue their particular studies within this broader context, and aims both to teach precision of scholarship and to foster awareness of the permanent questions at the origin of all learned inquiry.
    [Show full text]
  • Expressivism About Making and Truth -Making
    EXPRESSIVISM ABOUT MAKING AND TRUTH-MAKING EL EXPRESIVISMO ACERCA DE LAS DECISIONES Y LA VERDAD EN LA TOMA DE DECISIONES STEPHEN BARKER University of Nottingham, UK. [email protected] RECIBIDO EL 25 DE MARZO DE 2014 Y APROBADO EL 25 DE JUNIO DE 2014 RESUMEN ABSTRACT El objetivo es iluminar la verdad acerca My goal is to illuminate truth-making de la toma de decisiones a modo de dar by way of illuminating the relation of luces sobre la relación de las decisiones. making. My strategy is not to ask what La estrategia no es preguntar lo qué es una making is; in the hope of a metaphysi- decisión; con la esperanza de una teoría cal theory about is nature. It’s rather to metafísica sobre lo que la naturaleza es. look first to the language of making. The Es, más bien, observar primero el lenguaje metaphor behind making refers to agency. de las decisiones. La metáfora detrás de la It would be absurd to suggest that claims toma de decisiones se remite a la agencia. about making are claims about agency. It No es absurdo, sin embargo, proponer is not absurd, however, to propose that que el concepto de toma de decisiones the concept of making somehow emerges de alguna manera se desprende de una from some feature to do with agency. característica que tiene que ver con la That’s the contention to be explored in agencia. Esta es la afirmación que explora this paper. The way to do this is through este trabajo. La manera de hacerlo es a expressivism.
    [Show full text]
  • Metaethical Expressivism
    5 Metaethical Expressivism Elisabeth Camp Expressivism is the view that certain kinds of language have the function of expressing states of mind rather than representing facts. So according to expressivists, when I say “Murder is wrong!” I don’t describe a state of affairs, but avow or display or advocate a negative attitude toward murder. More specifically, expressivism holds that words like ‘ought’ or ‘wrong’ conventionally function to express non-cognitive attitudes: attitudes other than straightforward belief, such as emotions or intentions. It holds that these non- cognitive attitudes explain those words’ meanings rather than just happening to be fre- quently correlated with their use. And it holds that the meaning and function of these words differ in a fundamental way from ordinary description. Different expressivists tar- get different kinds of language, associate them with different attitudes, and locate the contrast with description in different ways, producing a diverse family of views. Although expressivism is a view about linguistic meaning, it is natural to assume that language and psychology operate in parallel, especially if one takes the job of language to be communicating thoughts, as many do. As a result, expressivism is naturally allied to non-cognitivism, which is a view about the basic psychology of engagement with a topic, paradigmatically ethics. For both, the core idea is that we distort the shape of ethical inquiry, commitment, and disagreement if we treat ethical thought and talk in descriptiv- ist terms, as a matter of exchanging information about how the world is. Metaphysically, a descriptivist model threatens to commit us to ‘spooky’, non-natural facts: abstract prop- erties like being wrong that are unanchored to time, place, or particular social practices.
    [Show full text]
  • Expressivism, Truth, Ingly Similar, Whereas in Their Sophisticated Forms They Are Strikingly Dissimilar
    Philosophers’ volume 9, no. 3 may 2009 Imprint I. Introduction There are two interestingly similar but also notably different theories that go under the moniker ‘expressivism’. Each kind of expressivism has a crude original form that has been supplanted by more and more sophisticated versions. In their crude forms, the theories are strik- Expressivism, Truth, ingly similar, whereas in their sophisticated forms they are strikingly dissimilar. Ethical expressivism is, at least originally, the view that ordinary ethical statements — such as statements about what is ethically right and (Self-) Knowledge or wrong1 — express not beliefs but some pro- or con-attitudes.2 The 1. A point of terminology that will become clearer as we move along: unfortu- nately there is no uniform usage of the terms ‘statement’ and ‘sentence’ in ordinary discourse or in the metaethical literature. A rough way to distin- guish these terms that I think good enough for present purposes is as follows: a statement is a speech-act that involves the tokening of an unembedded declarative sentence; a sentence is an abstract form of words, which obeys syntax rules and has semantic value recursively explicable in terms of the se- mantic values and concatenations of its parts. When one makes a statement, we can say that one has produced a token of a declarative sentence. In light of this distinction, we can say that semantics attempts to explain the semantic value of sentences and their parts, while pragmatics attempts to explain the norms of proper use of sentences and their parts to perform speech-acts like making statements.
    [Show full text]
  • Download Xunzi 1St Edition Free Ebook
    XUNZI 1ST EDITION DOWNLOAD FREE BOOK Burton Watson | --- | --- | --- | 9780231521314 | --- | --- Xunzi: A Translation and Study of the Complete Works: —Vol. I, Books 1-6 Escape the Present with These 24 Historical Romances. These creations are not part of one's nature, but rather stem from a departure from nature. Why, poses Xunzi, should music be renounced if created Xunzi 1st edition the sage kings to create order in expression, or if it brings people into unity and harmony and soldiers into order for example, via war dances? Confucian churches and sects:. Portrait of Xunzi. We observe regulations concerning funerary ceremonies and grave goods, for example, in order to learn how to avoid incivility and miserliness Human nature at birth, he maintained, consists of instinctual drives which, left to themselves, are selfish, anarchic, and antisocial. Thus when societies fail and Xunzi 1st edition Way is lost, it is not the work of Heaven. Views Read Xunzi 1st edition View history. Thanks for telling us about the problem. When a wound is colossal, its duration is long; when pain is profound, the recovery is slow. And if we achieve any goodness, it must be because of our artifice: whereas. Subscribe today. The rectification of names is an important one considering the Xunzi 1st edition of Chinese philosophy Xunzi 1st edition this era. Undoing Fixation. The year of his death is unknown, [10] [11] though if he lived to see the ministership of his supposed student Li Sias recounted, he would have lived into his nineties, dying shortly after BC. Dave Sammath marked it as to-read Jul 07, When music is centered and balanced, the people are harmonious and not dissipated.
    [Show full text]
  • Liberal Cosmopolitan Ideas, History, and Modern China
    Liberal Cosmopolitan Ideas, History, and Modern China Edited by Ban Wang, Stanford University Wang Hui, Tsinghua University Geremie Barmé, Australian National University VOLUME 3 Liberal Cosmopolitan Lin Yutang and Middling Chinese Modernity By Qian Suoqiao（钱锁桥） LEIDEN • BOSTON 2011 This book is printed on acid-free paper. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Qian, Suoqiao. Liberal cosmopolitan : Lin Yutang and middling Chinese modernity / Qian Suoqiao. p. cm. — (Ideas, history, and modern China, ISSN 1875-9394 ; v. 3) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-90-04-19213-3 (hardback : alk. paper) 1. Lin, Yutang, 1895–1976—Criticism and interpretation. 2. Lin, Yutang, 1895–1976—Political and social views. 3. Cosmopolitanism—China—History. 4. China—Intellectual life—20th century. I. Title. II. Series. PL2781.N2Z815 2010 895.1’85109—dc22 2010033348 ISSN 1875-9394 ISBN 978 90 04 19213 3 © Copyright 2011 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands. Koninklijke Brill NV incorporates the imprints Brill, Hotei Publishing, IDC Publishers, Martinus Nijhoff Publishers and VSP All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Koninklijke Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910, Danvers, MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. To my daughter Qian Simei Emily CONTENTS Acknowledgments ........................................................................ ix Chapter One Introduction: Re-Discovering Lin Yutang in the Post-Mao Era ..........................................................................
    [Show full text]
  • The Problem of Ethical Vagueness for Expressivism
    Ethic Theory Moral Prac (2014) 17:593–605 DOI 10.1007/s10677-014-9493-0 The Problem of Ethical Vagueness for Expressivism Nicholas Baima Accepted: 15 January 2014 / Published online: 14 February 2014 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2014 Abstract Ethical vagueness has garnered little attention. This is rather surprising since many philosophers have remarked that the science of ethics lacks the precision that other fields of inquiry have. Of the few philosophers who have discussed ethical vagueness the majority have focused on the implications of vagueness for moral realism. Because the relevance of ethical vagueness for other metaethical positions has been underexplored, my aim in this paper is to investigate the ramifications of ethical vagueness for expressivism. Ultimately, I shall argue that expressivism does not have the resources to adequately account for ethical vagueness, while cognitivism does. This demonstrates an advantage that cognitivism holds over expressivism. Keywords Ethics . Meta-ethics . Vagueness . Expressivism . Non-cognitivism . Uncertainty Ethical vagueness has garnered little attention. This is rather surprising since many philoso- phers have remarked that the science of ethics lacks the precision that other fields of inquiry have.1 Of the few philosophers who have discussed ethical vagueness the majority have focused on the implications of vagueness for moral realism.2 Because the relevance of ethical vagueness for other metaethical positions has been underexplored, my aim in this paper is to investigate the ramifications of ethical vagueness for expressivism.3 Ultimately, I shall argue that expressivism does not have the resources to adequately account for ethical vagueness, while cognitivism does. This demonstrates an advantage that cognitivism holds over expressivism.
    [Show full text]
  • Divine Hoorays: Some Parallels Between Expressivism and Religious Ethics
    Divine Hoorays: Some Parallels between Expressivism and Religious Ethics NICHOLAS UNWIN University of Bolton (Accepted for publication by Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , c. 2008) Divine law theories of metaethics claim that moral rightness is grounded in God’s commands, wishes and so forth. Expressivist theories, by contrast, claim that to call something morally right is to express our own attitudes, not to report on God’s. Ostensibly, such views are incompatible. However, we shall argue that a rapprochement is possible and beneficial to both sides. Expressivists need to explain the difference between reporting and expressing an attitude, and to address the Frege-Geach problem. Divine law theorists need to get past the Euthyphro dilemma, and to avoid moral externalism. This paper shows how a combined theory helps us to achieve this. 1 DIVINE LAW THEORIES AND THE EUTHYPHRO DILEMMA It is widely held that morality cannot be grounded in religious authority. Even if God exists, and even if divine commands are always right, this (it is often argued) does not establish the relevant kind of authority. The main problem was originally formulated by Plato in the Euthyphro , and it takes the form of a dilemma. If we are to equate the following: (1) It morally ought to be the case that p 1 (2) God commands that p then we must ask whether (1) is true because of (2), or vice versa. If the former, then God’s authority is arbitrary, and therefore morally objectionable; but if the latter, then it becomes irrelevant since the moral situation has to obtain in advance and independently of it.
    [Show full text]
  • Pope Francis' Reparative Vision: a Postmodern Hermeneutic of Catholic Uncertainty
    Durham E-Theses POPE FRANCIS' REPARATIVE VISION: A POSTMODERN HERMENEUTIC OF CATHOLIC UNCERTAINTY BURBACH, NICOLETE,MARGARET,NATALYA How to cite: BURBACH, NICOLETE,MARGARET,NATALYA (2020) POPE FRANCIS' REPARATIVE VISION: A POSTMODERN HERMENEUTIC OF CATHOLIC UNCERTAINTY, Durham theses, Durham University. Available at Durham E-Theses Online: http://etheses.dur.ac.uk/13509/ Use policy The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that: • a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in Durham E-Theses • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders. Please consult the full Durham E-Theses policy for further details. Academic Support Oce, Durham University, University Oce, Old Elvet, Durham DH1 3HP e-mail: [email protected] Tel: +44 0191 334 6107 http://etheses.dur.ac.uk 2 POPE FRANCIS’ REPARATIVE VISION: A POSTMODERN HERMENEUTIC OF CATHOLIC UNCERTAINTY Nicolete Burbach ABSTRACT Various readers of Pope Francis identify in his papal texts a striking openness to uncertainty, embodied in a rejection of fear and an embracing of alterity. These themes are united to a program of reform touching on doctrinal, ecclesiological, and pastoral matters; as well as attendant wider theological, philosophical, and affective issues. However, the general unsystematicity of both these readings and Francis’ texts themselves makes it difficult to receive those texts in a way that integrates these various themes.
    [Show full text]
  • Kantian Intuitionism
    An Intuitionist Response to Moral Scepticism A critique of Mackie's scepticism, and an alternative proposal combining Ross's intuitionism with a Kantian epistemology by Simon John Duffy PhD The University of Edinburgh 2001 PhD Thesis: An Intuitionist Response to Moral Scepticism - Page 1 CONTENTS ABSTRACT .................................................................................................................................................................... 4 DECLARATION .................................................................................................................................................................... 5 INTRODUCTION .................................................................................................................................................................... 6 1 .................................................................................................................................................................... OUR BELIEFS ABOUT MORALITY .................................................................................................................................................................... 11 1.1 WHAT DO WE OWE COMMON-SENSE? .11 1.2 OUR EVERYDAY CONCEPTION OF ETHICS .17 1.3 THE CENTRALITY OF DUTY .24 1.4 THE IMPLICATIONS OF DUTY .32 2 .................................................................................................................................................................... THE SCEPTICAL ATTACK ...................................................................................................................................................................
    [Show full text]