RULE-CIRCULARITY AND THE JUSTIFICATION OF DEDUCTION

I examine Paul Boghossian's recent attempt to argue for scepticism about logical rules. I argue that certain rule-and proof-theoretic considerations can avert such scepticism. Boghossian's 'Tonk Argument' seeks to justify the rule of tonk-introduction by using the rule itself. The argument is subjected here to more detailed proof-theoretic scrutiny than Boghossian undertook. Its sole axiom, the so-called Meaning Postulate for tonk, is shown to be false or devoid of content. It is also shown that the rules of Disquotation and of Semantic Ascent cannot be derived for sentences with tonk dominant. These considerations deprive Boghossian's scepticism of its support.     

COHERENTISM AND THE EPISTEMIC JUSTIFICATION OF MORAL BELIEFS: A CASE STUDY IN HOW TO DO PRACTICAL ETHICS WITHOUT APPEAL TO A MORAL THEORY

This paper defends a coherentist approach to moral epistemology. In “The Immorality of Eating Meat” (2000), I offer a coherentist consistency argument to show that our own beliefs rationally commit us to the immorality of eating meat. Elsewhere, I use our own beliefs as premises to argue that we have positive duties to assist the poor (2004) and to argue that biomedical animal experimentation is wrong (2012). The present paper explores whether this consistency‐based coherentist approach of grounding particular moral judgments on beliefs we already hold, with no appeal to moral theory, is a legitimate way of doing practical ethics. I argue (i) that grounding particular moral judgments on our core moral convictions and other core nonmoral beliefs is a legitimate way to justify moral judgments, (ii) that these moral judgments possess as much epistemic justification and have as much claim to objectivity as moral judgments grounded on particular ethical theories, and (iii) that this internalistic coherentist method of grounding moral judgments is more likely to result in behavioral guidance than traditional theory‐based approaches to practical ethics. By way of illustrating the approach, I briefly recapitulate my consistency‐based argument for ethical vegetarianism. I then defend the coherentist approach implicit in the argument against a number of potentially fatal metatheoretical attacks.     

THE STRUCTURE OF JUSTIFICATION IN POLITICAL CONSTRUCTIVISM

Abstract: In this article the author develops the view, held by some, that political constructivism is best interpreted as a pragmatic enterprise aiming to solve political problems. He argues that this interpretation's structure of justification is best conceived in terms of two separate investigations—one develops a normative solution to a particular political problem by working up into a coherent whole certain moral conceptions of persons and society; and the other is an empirically based analysis of the political problem. The author argues that the empirically based analysis can generate criteria for assessing whether the normative theory successfully works out a solution, thereby developing a functionalist structure of justification. He further argues that this interpretation overcomes a longstanding criticism of constructivism, namely, that the use of substantive moral concepts in the hypothetical choice procedure biases the defense of principles in a particular direction and therefore begs important philosophical questions.     

INTELLECTUAL VIRTUE AND THE JUSTIFICATION OF PERSONS

In this paper, I develop a model of personal justification that is rooted in the intellectual virtues and the concept of epistemic praise. In particular, I show how a character‐based understanding of the virtues gives rise to an important emphasis on agents and how this provides the resources for dealing with several problems in epistemology.     

SCEPTICISM AND THE JUSTIFICATION OF TRANSCENDENTAL IDEALISM

In this paper I explore a justification for transcendental idealism that emerges from the dialogue with philosophical scepticism in which Kant is on and off engaged throughout the Critique of Pure Reason. ¹ 1 References to the Critique of Pure Reason are to the translation by Norman Kemp Smith (London: Macmillan, 1929) of Immanucl Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft. Page references are given in the usual manner, ‘A’ referring to the first (1791) edition and ‘B’ to the second (1787) edition.
Many commentators, most prominently Strawson, have claimed that transcend- ental idealism is an unfortunate addition to the Critique, one that can profitably be excised in the interests of clarity and coherence. ² 2 I In The Bounds of Sense: An Essay on Kant's Critique ofpure Reason (London: Methuen, 1966) P. F. Strawson famously urges that the confused doctrines of transcendental idealism be disentangled from ‘the analytical argument of Kant's positive metaphysics of experience’ (P. 42).
Against this general picture I urge that transcendental idealism is in fact a very natural consequence of some of the central doctrines of the Critical Philosophy. It is in the context of Kant's debate with scepticism that this emerges most clearly. Nonetheless, I argue that Kant's employment of transcendental idealism against the sceptic is seriously compromised by his postulating the existence of unknowable things-in-themselves. As long as he maintains that there are unknowable things-in-themselves which are responsible for our having the experience that we do have, his position seems to collapse into sceptical idealism. In the final section of the paper I suggest that the only possible escape from this difficulty would be to rule out the possibility of affirming that unknowable things-in-themselves exist. I also suggest that an argument to this effect exists in the Critique and that Kant's position would be more consistent had he adhered to it.     

THE MYSTIQUE OF MORAL DILEMMAS

The paper is concerned with the question of the existence of moral dilemmas, conceived of as situations involving a subject in a conflict of non‐overridden moral obligations. I reject some of the presuppositions underlying discussions of this question and argue that certain morally relevant choices cannot be evaluated in relation to an all‐things‐considered moral obligation as permissible or impermissible, right or wrong. In arguing for the inadequacy of our ordinary moral predicates for fully capturing the nature of such choices, I argue that they are, in certain respects, inexpressible.     

THE VALIDITY OF MORAL THEORIES

Abstract. We can usefully draw an analogy between ethics and science, despite the significant differences between them. We can then see the ways in which moral theories can indeed be "tested," not by empirical experience but by moral experience. This can be expected to lead to rival moral theories, but in science also we have rival theories. I argue that we should demand more than coherence of our moral theories, as we do of our scientific theories. I try to show how the "testing" of moral theories can be carried out and how this can allow us to accept some moral theories as valid.     

THE STATUS OF MORAL STATUS

This paper investigates whether moral status talk gets us anywhere in our search for answers to questions in the ethics of marginal cases. I consider the usefulness of moral status talk first on the assumption that an individual's possession of moral status is not a further fact about that individual, and then on the assumption that it is. Finally, I offer an expressivistic interpretation of moral status talk. In each case, I argue that such talk conveys nothing that cannot be conveyed more clearly in other words. My conclusion is that we should stop using moral status and its cognates.