Scanlon’s modal metaphysics

In Being Realistic About Reasons (Oxford University Press, 2014) T. M. Scanlon argues that particular fact about reasons are explained by contingent non-normative facts together with pure normative principles. A question then arises about the modal status of these pure principles. Scanlon maintains that they are necessary in a sense, and suggests that they are ‘metaphysically’ necessary. I argue that the best view for Scanlon to take, given his other commitments, is that these pure normative principles are metaphysically contingent in some cases and necessary only in a weaker sense.     

Ardent realism without referential normativity

ABSTRACT

This paper addresses a central positive claim in Matti Eklund’s Choosing Normative Concepts: that a certain kind of metaphysically ambitious realist about normativity – the ardent realist – is committed to the metasemantic idea that the distinctive inferential role of normative concepts suffices to fix the extension of those concepts. I argue first that commitment to this sort of inferential role metasemantic view does nothing to secure ardent realism. I then show how the ardent realist can address Eklund’s leading challenge without appeal to distinctively metasemantic commitments.     

论坛客观性与网络口碑接收者的态度

研究了论坛客观性如何影响看帖者对帖子所推荐产品的态度, 及其影响的内在机制和边界条件。结果表明：当论坛不客观时, 看帖者对产品的态度较差, 当论坛比较客观时, 看帖者对产品的态度较好;说服知识在此过程中起中介作用;品牌强度、看帖者过去对品牌的满意度、跟帖者与楼主的熟悉程度会调节论坛客观性对看帖者态度的影响, 当品牌强度相对较弱、看帖者过去对品牌相对不满意、跟帖者与楼主不熟悉或跟帖者与楼主的意见不完全一致时, 论坛客观性显著影响看帖者的态度。     

Normative roles,conceptual variance,and ardent realism about normativity

ABSTRACT

In Choosing Normative Concepts, Eklund considers a “variance thesis” about our most fundamental (and seemingly most “authoritative”) normative concepts. This thesis raises the threat of an alarming symmetry between different sets of normative concepts. If this symmetry holds, it would be incompatible with “ardent realism” about normativity. Eklund argues that the ardent realist should appeal to the idea of “referential normativity” in response to this challenge. I argue that, even if Eklund is right in his core arguments on this front, many other important challenges for ardent realism remain that also stem from the issues about possible variance in normative concepts that he considers. Following this, I introduce further issues about conceptual variance. These are issues that arise within the context of the framework that Eklund proposes the ardent realist use to confront the variance theses he considers. In particular, the issues concern what normative role as such is, as well as, relatedly, which roles associated with a concept (or predicate) get to count as part of its normative role. The upshot is that issues about conceptual variance in normative domains might be even more challenging for the ardent realist to deal with than Eklund argues.     

Pragmatic Democracy: Inquiry,Objectivity, and Experience

This essay argues that to understand Dewey's vision of democracy as “epistemic” requires consideration of how experiential and communal aspects of inquiry together produce what is named here “pragmatic objectivity.” Such pragmatic objectivity provides an alternative to absolutism and self‐interested relativism by appealing to certain norms of empirical experimentation. Pragmatic objectivity, it is then argued, can be justified by appeal to Dewey's conception of primary experience. This justification, however, is not without its own complications, which are highlighted with objections regarding “radical pluralism” in political life, and some logical problems that arise due to the supposedly “ineffable” nature of primary experience. The essay concludes by admitting that while Dewey's theory of democracy based on experience cannot answer all of the objections argumentatively, it nevertheless provides potent suggestions for how consensus building can proceed without such philosophical arguments.     

Empathy,Insight and Objectivity: Edith Stein & Bernard Lonergan

ABSTRACT

Edith Stein’s study of empathy has much to offer to the current growth of research into empathy. This article first summarizes her phenomenological account of the complex layers involved in empathy. It then identifies certain gaps in her analyses, and proposes that what Bernard Lonergan called “insight” fills the missing gaps. Conversely, it argues that Lonergan’s account of human subjectivity would be enriched by Stein’s insights about empathy. It concludes by explaining how supplementing Stein’s account with analyses of insights provides an answer to the question of how empathy can be objective knowledge.     

From Gegenstand to Gegenstehenlassen: On the Meanings of Objectivity in Heidegger and Hegel

ABSTRACT

One of Heidegger’s enduring concerns was to develop an original meditation on the meaning of (the presence of) the present. Integral to this attempt is his critique of the understanding of the being of beings in terms of the objectivity of the object. In this paper, I trace Heidegger’s analyses of objectivity, through which Heidegger consistently establishes objectivity as non-primordial and derivative. In order to do this, however, Heidegger had to identify a specific, narrow (spatio-temporalized) conception of objectivity (in terms of Gegenstehenlassen and Vorstellen) as the hallmark of modern philosophy. I show that it is unclear whether that conception is a justified result or rather an unjustified presupposition of his approach. I then suggest what meanings of objectivity might be lost after Heidegger, by pointing to several aspects of Hegel’s notion of objectivity that are incompatible with Heidegger’s account, to wit: the lack of ‘subject-object’-terminology in his definitions of objectivity; the special language of ‘forms of’ objectivity; Hegel’s critique of representation; his notion of Gegenstand as a content with a categorical form, and, finally, that Aristotle’s notion of hypokeimenon might provide a clue as to how Hegel’s notion of object can be understood.     

Revisionary Dispositionalism and Practical Reason

This paper examines the metaphysically modest view that attributionsof normative reasons can be made true in the absence of a responseindependent normative reality. The paper despairs in finding asatisfactory account of normative reasons in metaphysically modestterms.     

What do you mean “This isn’t the question”?

This is a contribution to the symposium on Tim Scanlon’s Being Realistic about Reasons (2014). We have two aims here: First, we ask for more details about Scanlon’s meta-metaphysical view (about his notion of a domain, his criterion of existence, his ambition to remain ontologically thin, and on the role of pragmatic considerations in Scanlon’s picture), showing problems with salient clarifications. And second, we raise independent objections to the view – to its explanatory productivity, its distinctness, and the argumentative support it enjoys.     

Ethical objectivity: The test of time

According to many, evolutionary accounts of ethics undermine the prospects of its objective foundation. By contrast, this paper argues that such evolutionary accounts discredit only the absolutist construal of moral truths as timeless but supports other conceptions of objectivity as tested by time. Insofar as Kantian constructivism addresses the problem of ethical objectivity from the standpoint of temporal rational agents, it is not vulnerable to debunking arguments based on evolutionary explanations. In fact, recent work on evolutionary accounts of reasoning and inferences not only coheres with but it also reinforces the constructivist conception of practical reason as a problem‐solving cooperative device apt to temporal and interdependent rational agents.     

A Davidsonian Reconciliation of Internalism, Objectivity, and the Belief-desire Theory

This paper argues that Donald Davidson's account ofassertions of evaluative judgments contains ahere-to-fore unappreciated strategy forreconciling the meta-ethical ``inconsistenttriad.' The inconsistency is thought to resultbecause within the framework of thebelief-desire theory assertions of moraljudgments must have conceptual connections withboth desires and beliefs. The connection withdesires is necessary to account for theinternal connection between such judgments andmotivation to act, while the connection withbeliefs is necessary to account for theapparent objectivity of such judgments.Arguments abound that no class of utterancescan coherently be understood as having suchconceptual connections to attitudes of bothsorts, hence that an inconsistency results. Buton Davidson's account assertions of evaluativejudgments have just such connections to boththe relevant desire and a belief concerning anevaluative matter of fact. I argue that thisaccount has the resources to respond tostandard objections, and at least meritsconsideration as one among other plausiblealternatives.     

Choosing normative properties: a reply to Eklund’s Choosing Normative Concepts

ABSTRACT

The literature surrounding Horgan and Timmons’s Moral Twin Earth scenarios has focused on whether such scenarios present a metasemantic problem for naturalist realists. But in Choosing Normative Concepts, Eklund uses a similar scenario to illuminate a novel, distinctly metaphysical problem for normative realists of both naturalist and non-naturalist stripes. The problem is that it is not clear what (if anything) would suffice for the sort of ardent realist view that normative realists have in mind – the view that reality itself favors certain ways of acting and valuing. Eklund then offers a metasemantic view that he thinks can provide the best solution to this problem. In this reply to Eklund, I argue that Eklund’s treatment of the problem and his solution re-entangle metaphysical and metasemantic issues that ought to be kept separate. I also argue that there is a purely metaphysical solution to the problem at hand, which Eklund’s own solution seems to implicitly rely upon. While these criticisms do not suggest that Eklund’s positive view is false, they do undermine some of the broader lessons that Eklund hopes to draw from the view.     

From Contracts to Capabilities and Back Again

It has been common for researchers and commentators within the discipline of Social and Public Policy to evoke Rawlsian theories of justice. Yet some now argue that the contractualist tradition cannot adequately incorporate, or account for, relations of care, respect and interdependency. Though contractualism has its flaws this article proposes that we should not reject it. Through a critique of one of its most esteemed critics, Martha Nussbaum, it proposes that contractualism can be defended against the capabilities approach she prefers. The article concludes by suggesting how and why the moral philosophy of Thomas Scanlon offers a basis for reconciling the strengths of a contractualist, egalitarian liberalism with those of Nussbaum’s capabilities approach.

In Defense of Anti‐Archimedean Moral Realism: A Response to Recent Critics

Ronald Dworkin famously argued that many putatively nonmoral metaethical theories can only be understood as being internal to the moral domain. If correct, this position, referred to as anti‐archimedeanism, has profound implications for the methodology of metaethics. This is particularly true for skeptical metaethical theories. This article defends a version of anti‐archimedeanism that is true to the spirit rather than the letter of Dworkin's original thesis from several recent objections. First, it addresses Kenneth Ehrenberg's recent attempt to demonstrate how certain metaethical theories can be understood in a morally neutral manner. It then discusses Charles Pigden's claim that Dworkin begs the question against error theorists and nihilists by assuming a conceptual space that error theorists and nihilists would reject. It concludes that the anti‐archimedean methodology originally proposed by Dworkin is defensible, and can be used to support a robust form of moral realism.     

The meta-ethical significance of experiments about folk moral objectivism

The meta-ethical commitments of folk respondents – specifically their commitment to the objectivity of moral claims – have recently become subject to empirical scrutiny. Experimental findings suggest that people are meta-ethical pluralists: There is both inter- and intrapersonal variation with regard to people’s objectivist commitments. What meta-ethical implications, if any, do these findings have? I point out that current research does not directly address traditional meta-ethical questions: The methods used and distinctions drawn by experimenters do not perfectly match those of meta-ethicists. However, I go on to argue that, in spite of this mismatch, the research findings should be of interest to moral philosophers, including meta-ethicists. Not only do these findings extend the field of moral psychology with new data and hypotheses, but they also provide tentative evidence that touches on the adequacy of theses in moral semantics and moral metaphysics. Specifically, they put pressure on arguments in support of moral realism.     

对“医疗服务商品和市场”存在客观性和必然性的理性思考——兼评《对中国医疗卫生体制改革的评价与建议》

针对国务院发展研究中心课题组发表的《对中国医疗卫生体制改革的评价与建议》提出的卫生改革带来“问题的根源在于商业化、市场化的走向违背了医疗卫生事业发展的基本规律。”提出“医疗服务商品”、“医疗服务市场”的存在是客观的,并通过反驳《评价与建议》提出的四对矛盾,提出“医疗服务商品”、“医疗服务市场”的存在也是必然的,最后分析了所谓“卫生改革失败”的真正原因。     

Promises beyond assurance

Breaking a promise is generally taken to involve committing a certain kind of moral wrong, but what (if anything) explains this wrong? According to one influential theory that has been championed most recently by Scanlon, the wrong involved in breaking a promise is a matter of violating an obligation that one incurs to a promisee in virtue of giving her assurance that one will perform or refrain from performing certain acts. In this paper, we argue that the “Assurance View”, as we call it, is susceptible to two kinds of counterexamples. The first show that giving assurance is not sufficient for incurring the kind of obligation of fulfillment that one violates in breaking a promise. The second show that giving assurance is not necessary. Having shown that the Assurance View fails in these ways, we then very briefly sketch the outline of what we take to be a better view—a view that we claim is not only attractive in its own right and that avoids the earlier counterexamples, but that also affords us a deeper explanation of why the Assurance View seems initially plausible, yet nonetheless turns out to be ultimately inadequate.     

Shareability and Objectivity

The aim of this essay is to work toward a better understanding of the metaphysical status of meaning by critically examining two arguments – one is Plato’s, the second Frege's – along the following lines:

• P1: Meaning is shared in successful communication.
• P2: Successful communication occurs.
• C: Therefore, meaning is objective.

The first two sections are dedicated to expounding and justifying the two premises; the third distinguishes some relevant notions of objectivity. Sections four and five discuss the arguments of Plato and Frege, with a view to paring away some potentially misleading ways of speaking, and avoiding any slippage among distinct senses of ‘objective’. The sixth section analyses the content of the claim that abstract objects exist. I conclude by criticizing some assumptions, and drawing some morals, about the place of meaning in one's metaphysical world‐view.