DOCSLIB.ORG

Moral Disagreement and Shared Meaning

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Moral Disagreement and Shared Meaning MORAL DISAGREEMENT AND SHARED MEANING DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of the Ohio State University By David Allen Merli, MA * * * * * The Ohio State University 2003 Dissertation Committee: Approved by Professor Justin D’Arms, Adviser Professor Don Hubin ________________________ Professor Dan Farrell Adviser Department of Philosophy ABSTRACT In order to have genuine disagreement, interlocutors must share terms, meanings, and concepts. Without this, their dispute is merely verbal; it rests on linguistic confusion. This is true of all conversation, but many philosophers have thought that the univocity of moral discourse poses special problems. Disputes seem intractable, disputants have radically different standards for applying moral terms, and communities lack the sorts of authority and deference relations that are typical in straightforward empirical disagreement. These and other features of our moralizing yield a potent philosophical puzzle: how is it that moral evaluators can share a subject matter while thinking such different things? Traditionally, the need to ensure the univocity of moral conversation has provided one of the central motivations for noncognitivist theories of moral discourse. If, as noncognitivists suggest, moral utterances serve to evince sentiment or prescribe action, then substantive differences in normative commitment between speakers do not undermine their disagreement. We can clash in attitude despite our different standards. On the other hand, if moral terms express real properties, it’s hard to see how diverse speakers are connected, in the relevant ways, to the same properties. I examine noncognitivist attempts to make sense of disagreement, and I argue that they fail. The noncognitivist (or expressivist) is obliged to provide an account of the ii mental states at work in moral discourse. Either this account fails to identify a distinct species of moral evaluation, or it cannot provide for genuine incompatibility between competing moral judgments, or it collapses into circularity. Thus, one of the most important motivations for noncognitivist accounts is undermined. I show how naturalistic moral realism can be defended from popular arguments that challenge its ability to make sense of univocity. This criticism, most famously associated with R.M. Hare, has been revived in recent work by Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons. I develop three objections to their so-called ‘Moral Twin Earth’ argument and conclude that it has no force against moral realism. I then show that naturalistic realism faces a different problem accounting for univocity. The semantic resources that feature prominently in contemporary realist accounts are unable to save shared meaning. This is because the path of moral inquiry is underdetermined: there is no fact of the matter about the referents of speakers’ terms. I argue that common realistic appeals to the resolution of moral dispute are not sufficient, because they fail to note a distinction between different readings of the convergence claim. The most plausible ways of understanding that claim are of no help to the realist’s semantic requirements. Finally, I consider a rejoinder suggested by recent work in the philosophy of language. Though not compatible with realism’s moral semantics, this rejoinder suggests that moral and non-moral language are on a par. I offer some reasons for doubting this claim and suggest that moralizing poses unique interpretive challenges. iii Dedicated to my mother and the memory of my father iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank my adviser, Justin D’Arms. I owe him a great intellectual debt for his philosophical acumen and his encouragement. He has provided an exemplary model of how to do philosophy, and this project has improved immeasurably under his guidance. I thank Don Hubin. Since the very beginning of my graduate career, Don has provided philosophical insight, sharp criticism, and good cheer. I thank Dan Farrell. Dan is a superb philosophical interlocutor, and I have benefited from his deep understanding of moral theory and his kindness in offering it. I thank William Taschek for countless discussions of all sorts of philosophical issues, for healthy skepticism, and for good- natured chiding. I owe a special debt to Nick Sturgeon. Nick’s enormous generosity, both personal and professional, has been a great help over the last few years. I am grateful for this, and for his lucid, insightful comments and discussions. I am grateful for the friendship and encouragement of many of my fellow graduate students, particularly Andrew Arlig, Jack Arnold, Sondra Bacharach, Emily Beck, Zac Cogley, Julian Cole, Roy Cook, David Eng, Lee Franklin, Rick Groshong, Carol Hay, Eric Heining, John Jakala, Nick Jones, Jose Martin, William Melanson, Ryan Nichols, Brian Stone, and Cathal Woods. I am particularly indebted to Jon Cogburn and Tyler Hower for their intellectual and moral support. I thank Pamela Hieronymi and v Julie Tannenbaum for their kindness and for their friendly disdain toward my philosophical outlook. I thank Amy Ball, Eben Friedman, Bill and Traci Lepicki, David Levy, Maureen Neary, and Joe Pirone, for their encouragement and understanding. I am grateful to my early teachers, particularly Bill and Stacey Edgar, Dennis Bradford, and Walt Soffer. I am particularly indebted to George Mickus, who first inspired me to study philosophy. Finally, I thank Kelly Ball for her support and tolerance. Without her involvement, this project might have been finished earlier, or not at all. vi VITA December 22, 1972………………………Born—Queens, New York 1994………………………………………BA, Philosophy and English, SUNY-Geneseo 1999………………………………………MA, Philosophy, The Ohio State University 1997-2003………………………………..Graduate Teaching Associate, The Ohio State University 2003-present…………………….………..Instructor, Franklin and Marshall College PUBLICATIONS 1. “Return to Moral Twin Earth,” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 32(2): 207- 240. FIELDS OF STUDY Major Field: Philosophy vii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page Abstract................................................................................................................................ii Dedication...........................................................................................................................iv Acknowledgments................................................................................................................v Vita....................................................................................................................................vii Chapters: 1. Introduction.....................................................................................................................1 2. The Failure of Expressivism...........................................................................................7 2.1 Two arguments involving disagreement..................................................................7 2.2 Ogden and Richards.................................................................................................9 2.3 Duncan-Jones.........................................................................................................11 2.4 Barnes.....................................................................................................................12 2.4.1 Barnes’ second attempt.................................................................................16 2.5 Ayer........................................................................................................................20 2.6 Stevenson................................................................................................................32 2.7 Hare........................................................................................................................58 2.8 Taking Stock...........................................................................................................71 2.9 Gibbard...................................................................................................................76 2.10 Blackburn.............................................................................................................98 2.11 Some Conclusions..............................................................................................128 3. Return to Moral Twin Earth........................................................................................129 3.1 Introduction..........................................................................................................129 3.2 The Moral Twin Earth Argument.........................................................................132 3.3 Copp’s First Response..........................................................................................138 3.4 Copp’s Second Response.....................................................................................140 3.5 Disagreement, Here and Elsewhere......................................................................147 viii 3.6 The Second Argument: Revising Our Intuitions..................................................162 3.7 Preserving (Nonmoral) Disagreement..................................................................170 3.8 Concluding Remarks............................................................................................182 4. Moral Realism’s Semantic Problem...........................................................................184 4.1 Introduction..........................................................................................................184
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Noncognitivism and Autonomy Eamonn Callan
    Document generated on 09/23/2021 5:34 p.m. Philosophical Inquiry in Education Noncognitivism and Autonomy Eamonn Callan Volume 23, Number 2, 2016 URI: https://id.erudit.org/iderudit/1070470ar DOI: https://doi.org/10.7202/1070470ar See table of contents Publisher(s) Canadian Philosophy of Education Society ISSN 2369-8659 (digital) Explore this journal Cite this document Callan, E. (2016). Noncognitivism and Autonomy. Philosophical Inquiry in Education, 23(2). https://doi.org/10.7202/1070470ar Copyright ©, 2016 Eamonn Callan This document is protected by copyright law. Use of the services of Érudit (including reproduction) is subject to its terms and conditions, which can be viewed online. https://apropos.erudit.org/en/users/policy-on-use/ This article is disseminated and preserved by Érudit. Érudit is a non-profit inter-university consortium of the Université de Montréal, Université Laval, and the Université du Québec à Montréal. Its mission is to promote and disseminate research. https://www.erudit.org/en/ Noncognitivism and Autonomy Eamonn Callan, University of Alberta The supposed failure of ethical cognitivism is the beginning of one com­ mon argument for the ideal of personal autonomy and its supporting social practices. The argument can be summarized as follows. There is no ethical knowledge that could conceivably be available to us, or at least all current claims to such knowledge are doubtful to a degree that makes them untenable. Therefore, experts to whose authority we should defer regarding ethical deci­ sions simply do not exist. That is tantamount to saying we should act autonomously in making ethical decisions and, if we are to grant the capacity and liberty to make such decisions to others, we need to develop educational and other social practices that nurture the relevant capacity and bestow the necessary liberty.
    [Show full text]
  • Infinite Ethics
    INFINITE ETHICS Nick Bostrom Faculty of Philosophy Oxford University [Published in Analysis and Metaphysics, Vol. 10 (2011): pp. 9-59] [This is the final version. Earlier versions: 2003, 2005, 2008, 2009] www.nickbostrom.com ABSTRACT Aggregative consequentialism and several other popular moral theories are threatened with paralysis: when coupled with some plausible assumptions, they seem to imply that it is always ethically indifferent what you do. Modern cosmology teaches that the world might well contain an infinite number of happy and sad people and other candidate value-bearing locations. Aggregative ethics implies that such a world contains an infinite amount of positive value and an infinite amount of negative value. You can affect only a finite amount of good or bad. In standard cardinal arithmetic, an infinite quantity is unchanged by the addition or subtraction of any finite quantity. So it appears you cannot change the value of the world. Modifications of aggregationism aimed at resolving the paralysis are only partially effective and cause severe side effects, including problems of “fanaticism”, “distortion”, and erosion of the intuitions that originally motivated the theory. Is the infinitarian challenge fatal? 1. The challenge 1.1. The threat of infinitarian paralysis When we gaze at the starry sky at night and try to think of humanity from a “cosmic point of view”, we feel small. Human history, with all its earnest strivings, triumphs, and tragedies can remind us of a colony of ants, laboring frantically to rearrange the needles of their little ephemeral stack. We brush such late-night rumination aside in our daily life and analytic 1 philosophy.
    [Show full text]
  • Some Strands of Wittgenstein's Normative Pragmatism
    Some Strands of Wittgenstein’s Normative Pragmatism, and Some Strains of his Semantic Nihilism ROBERT B. BRANDOM ABSTRACT WORK TYPE In this reflection I address one of the critical questions this monograph is Article about: How to justify proposing yet another semantic theory in the light of Wittgenstein’s strong warnings against it. I see two clear motives for ARTICLE HISTORY Wittgenstein’s semantic nihilism. The first one is the view that philosophical Received: problems arise from postulating hypothetical entities such as ‘meanings’. To 27–January–2018 dissolve the philosophical problems rather than create new ones, Wittgenstein Accepted: suggests substituting ‘meaning’ with ‘use’ and avoiding scientism in philosophy 3–March–2018 together with the urge to penetrate in one's investigation to unobservable depths. I believe this first motive constitutes only a weak motive for ARTICLE LANGUAGE Wittgenstein’s quietism, because there are substantial differences between English empirical theories in natural sciences and semantic theories in philosophy that KEYWORDS leave Wittgenstein’s assimilation of both open to criticism. But Wittgenstein is Meaning and Use right, on the second motive, that given the dynamic character of linguistic Hypothetical Entities practice, the classical project of semantic theory is a disease that can be Antiscientism removed or ameliorated only by heeding the advice to replace concern with Semantic Nihilism meaning by concern with use. On my view, this does not preclude, however, a Linguistic Dynamism different kind of theoretical approach to meaning that avoids the pitfalls of the Procrustean enterprise Wittgenstein complained about. © Studia Humanitatis – Universidad de Salamanca 2019 R. Brandom (✉) Disputatio. Philosophical Research Bulletin University of Pittsburgh, USA Vol.
    [Show full text]
  • A Priori Rules: Wittgenstein on the Normativity of Logic
    A Priori Rules: Wittgenstein on the Normativity of Logic Peter Railton The University of Michigan Introduction Like many, I have long been uneasy with the category of the a priori. Perhaps I have simply misunderstood it. It has seemed to me, at any rate, that asserting a claim or principle as a priori is tantamount to claiming that we would be justified in ruling out alternatives in advance, no matter what the future course of experience might hold. Yet in my own case, I have felt it would be mere bluffing were I to lodge such a claim. I certainly could not discover in myself any sense of the requisite authority, nor even any clear idea of where to look for guidance in forming it. Contemplating widely-used examples of "propositions true a priori" did not remove my worry. For a start, there was the shadow of history. A claim like "logical truth is a priori" or "the attribution of rationality is a priori in intentional explanation" kept sounding, to my ears, as if they echoed "the Euclidean geometry of space is a priori" or "the principle of sufficient reason is a priori in physical explanation". And these echoes awakened just sort of the worry that had initially unsettled me: I would pronouce myself satisfied that certain claims, at least, were safe from the threat of contrary experience, just on the eve of developments in our on-going view of the world that would lead a sensible person to want to reopen the question. So I would emerge looking like the (perhaps apocryphal) fellow who claimed, in the wake of the great inventions of the nineteenth century, that the US Patent Office could now be closed, since all the really new ideas had been used up.
    [Show full text]
  • Other Moral Theories : Subjectivism, Relativism, Emotivism, Intuitionism, Etc
    INTRODUCTION TO ETHICS 30 Other Moral Theories: Subjectivism, Relativism, Emotivism, Intuitionism, etc. 1 Jan Franciszek Jacko Metaethics includes moral theories that contain assumptions which answer some metaphysical and epistemological questions about moral goods and values. The metaphysical questions (such as What are, and how do moral goods and values exist?) are about the nature and existence of moral goods and values. Epistemological questions (such as Can we know moral goods and values? If so, what are the sources of knowledge about them?) regard sources of knowledge about moral goods, values and criteria of moral evaluations.2 Assumptions of ethical subjectivism, relativism, decisionism, emotivism and intuitionism are exemplary answers to these questions. We call their answers “normative assumptions.” There are at least three good reasons to ask and answer such questions. First, without answering them, moral judgments remain ambiguous. For example, if I say, “Action X is wrong,” the judgement has several meanings. To specify its sense, I should clarify my normative assumptions. For example, I can assume metaphysical subjectivism (anti-realism) or realism in metaethics. According to the former assumption, my above judgment about X is not about reality; it is about my or someone’s opinion. In this case, the exact meaning of this judgement is: someone evaluates X as morally wrong. If I assume the counter-assumption of metaphysical realism (anti-subjectivism), I mean that it is true that X has the property of moral wrongness. Second, these assumptions are conductive to peculiar practices. To specify the practice, which follows from moral judgments, one has to determine some normative assumptions.
    [Show full text]
  • Moral Theories Course Leader
    PHIL 101: Conceptual Foundations of Bioethics: Moral Theories Course Leader: Stavroula Tsinorema Semester: 1st (7 ECTS) Course Type: Required Objectives: The aims of this course unit are (a) to bring students in contact with the theoretical basis of Bioethics, through training in the methodologies and analytical tools of moral reasoning, (b) to provide them with the basic categories which show the conceptual links between the frameworks of moral philosophy and normative bioethical reasoning, (c) to equip them with the appropriate theoretical frameworks in order to be able to investigate critically and, where possible, to resolve specific moral problems deriving in biomedical research, its application in clinical contexts, health care and environmental policy. The overall aim is to enable students to develop core skills for the conduct of normative analysis and reasoning in Bioethics. Content: The normative resources for moral argument and justification in Bioethics are found in moral philosophy and philosophical theories of ethics. This course unit will survey some of the principle philosophical approaches in addressing a number of bioethical controversies and bring appropriate perspectives from ethical theories to bear on case studies in Bioethics. Topics include: 1) Philosophical ethics and its relation to Bioethics. 2) Classical approaches. Ethics and metaphysics. Ontological approaches to ethics. 3) Modern classical approaches to ethics. Theories of Scottish Enlightenment. Moral sentiments and the ethics of work: David Hume and Adam Smith. 4) Immanuel Kant: The ethics of form. 5) Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill. Utilitarianism. 6) Contemporary moral theories: - Contractarian and constructivist theories. John Rawls, Jurgen Habermas, Onora O’ Neill Postgraduate Prospectus 17 - Virtue ethics, ethics of care, feminism, communitarianism 7) Theories of a deflatory kind and moral scepticism.
    [Show full text]
  • A Brief Look at Mathematics and Theology Philip J
    Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal Issue 27 Article 14 Winter 1-1-2004 A Brief Look at Mathematics and Theology Philip J. Davis Brown University Follow this and additional works at: http://scholarship.claremont.edu/hmnj Part of the Logic and Foundations of Mathematics Commons, Mathematics Commons, and the Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons Recommended Citation Davis, Philip J. (2004) "A Brief Look at Mathematics and Theology," Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal: Iss. 27, Article 14. Available at: http://scholarship.claremont.edu/hmnj/vol1/iss27/14 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at Claremont at Scholarship @ Claremont. It has been accepted for inclusion in Humanistic Mathematics Network Journal by an authorized administrator of Scholarship @ Claremont. For more information, please contact [email protected]. 1 A Brief Look at Mathematics and Theology Philip J. Davis "Such a really remarkable discovery. I wanted your opinion on it. You know the formula m over naught equals infinity, m being any positive number? [m/0 = ]. Well, why not reduce the equation to a simpler form by multiplying both sides by naught? In which case you have m equals infinity times naught [m = x 0]. That is to say, a positive number is the product of zero and infinity. Doesn't that demonstrate the creation of the Universe by an infinite power out of nothing? Doesn't it?" Aldous Huxley, Point Counter Point, (1928), Chapter XI. I Introduction We are living in a mathematical age. Our lives, from the personal to the communal, from the communal to the international, from the biological and physical to the economic and even to the ethical, are increasingly mathematicized.
    [Show full text]
  • Unit 13 Emotivism: Charles Stevenson*
    Emotivism: Charles UNIT 13 EMOTIVISM: CHARLES Stevenson STEVENSON* Structure 13.0 Objectives 13.1 Introduction 13.2 Definition 13.3 The Significance of Emotivism in Moral Philosophy 13.4 Philosophical Views 13.5 Let Us Sum Up 13.6 Key Words 13.7 Further Readings and References 13.8 Answers to Check Your Progress 13.0 OBJECTIVES This unit provides: An introductory understanding and significance of emotivism in moral and ethical philosophy. Many aspects of emotivism have been explored by philosophers in the history of modern philosophy but this unit focuses Charles Stevenson’s version of emotivism. 13.1 INTRODUCTION Emotivism is a meta-ethical theory in moral philosophy, which was developed by the American philosopher Charles Stevenson (1908-1978). He was born and raised in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1908. He studied philosophy under G E Moore and Ludwig Wittgenstein, and was most influenced by the latter. From 1933 onwards, and continuing after the war, he developed the emotive theory of ethics at the University of Harvard. Stevenson’s contributions were largely in the area of meta-ethics. Post-war debates in the field of ethics were charceterised by ‘the linguistic turn’ in philosophy, and the increasing emphasis of scientific knowledge on philosophy, especially under the influence of the school of Logical Positivism. Questions such as, do ‘scientific facts’ play a role in ethical considerations? how far feelings and emotions influence our understanding of morality?, became significant. Therefore, to respond to these and related issues, philosophers developed different ethical theories. Stevenson was one of the philosophers who developed the theory of emotivism against this backdrop, and defended his theory to justify how feelings and non-cognitive attributes constitute our understanding of morality and moral judgments.
    [Show full text]
  • RICHARD HARE 07 Hare 1226 15/11/2004 10:29 Page 117
    07 Hare 1226 15/11/2004 10:29 Page 116 RICHARD HARE 07 Hare 1226 15/11/2004 10:29 Page 117 Richard Mervyn Hare 1919–2002 RICHARD HARE left behind at his death a long essay titled ‘APhilosophical Autobiography’, which has since been published.1 Its opening is striking: I had a strange dream, or half-waking vision, not long ago. I found myself at the top of a mountain in the mist, feeling very pleased with myself, not just for having climbed the mountain, but for having achieved my life’s ambition, to find a way of answering moral questions rationally. But as I was preening myself on this achievement, the mist began to clear, and I saw that I was surrounded on the mountain top by the graves of all those other philosophers, great and small, who had had the same ambition, and thought they had achieved it. And I have come to see, reflecting on my dream, that, ever since, the hard-working philo- sophical worms had been nibbling away at their systems and showing that the achievement was an illusion. Yet his imagination could also be less modest: a gaggle of moral philoso- phers is trapped beneath the earth in a smoke-filled chamber; they talk at cross purposes, and refuse to take the way out into the open air that he alone has discovered. It was his ambition to have united elements from Aristotle, Kant, and Mill in a logically cogent way that solved the funda- mental problems of ethics (though with unfinished business); and he usu- ally believed himself to have achieved this.
    [Show full text]
  • ARISTOTLE and the IMPORTANCE of VIRTUE in the CONTEXT of the POLITICS and the NICOMACHEAN ETHICS and ITS RELATION to TODAY Kyle Brandon Anthony Bucknell University
    Bucknell University Bucknell Digital Commons Honors Theses Student Theses 2010 ARISTOTLE AND THE IMPORTANCE OF VIRTUE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE POLITICS AND THE NICOMACHEAN ETHICS AND ITS RELATION TO TODAY Kyle Brandon Anthony Bucknell University Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/honors_theses Part of the Philosophy Commons Recommended Citation Anthony, Kyle Brandon, "ARISTOTLE AND THE IMPORTANCE OF VIRTUE IN THE CONTEXT OF THE POLITICS AND THE NICOMACHEAN ETHICS AND ITS RELATION TO TODAY" (2010). Honors Theses. 21. https://digitalcommons.bucknell.edu/honors_theses/21 This Honors Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Student Theses at Bucknell Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in Honors Theses by an authorized administrator of Bucknell Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1 What does it mean to live a good life? 7 The virtuous life 8 Ethical virtue 13 Bravery as an ethical virtue 20 Justice 22 Chapter 2 The Politics and the ideal polis 28 Development of a polis 29 Features of an ideal polis 32 What does it mean to be a citizen of a polis? 40 Aristotle’s views on education 42 Social groups in a polis who are not recognized as citizens 45 Non-ideal political systems 51 Chapter 3 Connections between the Politics and the Ethics 57 Chapter 4 Difficulties in applying Aristotle’s theories to a modern setting 68 Conclusion Where do we go from here? 87 Bibliography 89 iv Acknowledgements First off, I have to thank God, as He helped me endure this project and gave me the courage to press on when I became frustrated, angry, and ready to quit.
    [Show full text]
  • The Theory of Justice
    Syllabus of the course: The Theory of Justice Утверждена Академическим советом ООП Протокол № 1от «31» августа 2018 г. Pre-requisites This course is based on knowledge and competences which were provided by the following disciplines: ● History of Philosophy ● General Ethics ● Analytic Ethics ● Political Philosophy ● Political Science Course Type: Elective Learning Objectives The objective of the course make the students familiar with the major contemporary theories of justice and the development of the necessary analytic skills of evaluation of any normative conception of justice as well as the capacity to participate in the public discourse on justice, which is about to emerge. Course Plan Ethics, Morality, Justice Language, Logic and Meaning of Justice Utilitarian Theory of Justice The Theory of Justice of John Rawls The Justice of Political Liberalism Libertarian Theory of Justice by Robert Nozick Justice by Agreement by David Gauthier Marxism as a Theory of Justice Feminism and Justice Communitarian Critique of Justice Just War Theory The Russian Historical Discourse of Justice 1. Ethics, Morality, Justice Ethics. The meaning of Ethics and Morality. Ethical Theory, General Ethics and Individual Ethics. The History of Morality. The Sociology of Morality. The Psychology of Morality. The stages of moral growth. Moralism, Immoralism, Amoralism. Human nature. Ethical skepticism. Metaethics. Theories of Metaethics. Naturalism. Emotivism. Universal Prescriptivism. Intuitivism. The nature of moral concepts. Good and Evil. Moral Relativism. Sentimentalism. Normative Morals. Moral Theory. Egoism. Psychological Egoism. Religious Ethics. Convention. Particularism. Teleological Ethics. Consequentialism. Utilitarianism. Hedonism. Deontology. Kant’s categorical imperative. Virtue Ethics. Morality and Rationality. Negative versus Politive Rights and Duties. Elitism. Applied Ethics.
    [Show full text]
  • Ethical Realism/Moral Realism Ethical Propositions That Refer to Objective Features May Be True If They Are Free of Subjectivis
    Metaethics: Cognitivism Metaethics: What is morality, or “right”? Normative (prescriptive) ethics: How should people act? Descriptive ethics: What do people think is right? Applied ethics: Putting moral ideas into practice Thin moral concepts Thick moral concepts more general: good, bad, right, and wrong more specic: courageous, inequitable, just, or dishonest Centralism- thin concepts are antecedent to the thick ones Non-centralism- thick concepts are a sucient starting point for understanding thin ones because thin and thick concepts are equal. Normativity is a non-excisable aspect of language and there is no way of analyzing thick moral concepts into a purely descriptive element attached to a thin moral evaluation, thus undermining any fundamental division between facts and norms. Cognitivism ethical propositions are truth-apt (can be true or false), unlike questions or commands Ethical subjectivism/moral anti-realism Ethical realism/moral realism True ethical propositions are a function of subjective features Ethical propositions that refer to objective features may be true if they are free of subjectivism Moral relativism Moral universalism/ Robust and Minimal Robust moral objectivism/ nobody is objectively right or wrong universal morality 1. Semantic thesis: moral predicates 3. Metaphysical thesis: the facts in regards to diagreements about are to refer to moral properties so and properties of #1 are robust-- moral questions a system of ethics, or a universal ethic, moral statements represent moral their metaphysical status is not applies universally to "all" facts, and express propositions that relevantly dierent from ordinary are true or false non-moral facts and properties Cultural relativism not all forms of moral universalism 2.
    [Show full text]