Moral Competence, Moral Blame, and Protest

I argue that wrongdoers may be open to moral blame even if they lacked the capacity to respond to the moral considerations that counted against their behavior. My initial argument turns on the suggestion that even an agent who cannot respond to specific moral considerations may still guide her behavior by her judgments about reasons. I argue that this explanation of a wrongdoer’s behavior can qualify her for blame even if her capacity for moral understanding is impaired. A second argument is based on the observation that even when a blameworthy wrongdoer could have responded to moral considerations, this is often not relevant to her blameworthiness. Finally, I argue against the view that because blame communicates moral demands, only agents who can be reached by such communication are properly blamed. I contend that a person victimized by a wrongdoer with an impaired capacity for moral understanding may protest her victimization in a way that counts as a form of moral blame even though it does not primarily express a moral demand or attempt to initiate moral dialogue.     

从具身视角看道德判断

道德判断是个体对于某类行为的善恶好坏和是非对错所进行的评价及判断。随着具身认知理论的兴起, 道德判断的具身研究随之展开。道德判断具身性的研究主要围绕身体清洁、厌恶, 身体温度及身体动作这3个维度展开。从皮亚杰及维果茨基的心理发展观, 概念隐喻理论和进化心理学3个角度对道德判断具身效应进行了理论解释和探讨。考虑到身体变量会通过情绪、认知因素进而影响道德判断, 今后具身认知视角下的道德判断应与道德判断中已有的理论进行整合, 同时对其与道德直觉的关系需要深入探讨, 并需进一步考察具身效应发生的时效性和动态性问题, 探讨道德判断具身效应的调节变量及个体差异, 同时要对道德判断具身效应进行跨文化比较。     

Practical Intelligibility and Moral Skepticism: Should Realists Worry About Grass‐Counters and Hand‐Claspers?

The focus of this paper is the following claim: as a purely conceptual matter, the moral truths could be pretty much anything, and we should assume this in assessing our reliability at grasping moral truths. This claim, which I call No Content , plays a key role in an important skeptical argument against realist moral knowledge – the Normative Lottery Argument. In this paper, I argue that moral realists can, and should, reject No Content. My argument centers on the idea of practical intelligibility. I explore different aspects of practical intelligibility, and I argue that such intelligibility sets a constraint on the possibilities we should consider when assessing our reliability at grasping moral truths.     

Moral Dilemmas,Collective Responsibility,and Moral Progress

Ruth Marcus has offered an account of moral dilemmas in which the presence of dilemmas acts as a motivating force, pushing us to try to minimize predicaments of moral conflict. In this paper, I defend a Marcus-style account of dilemmas against two objections: first, that if dilemmas are real, we are forced to blame those who have done their best, and second, that in some cases, even a stripped down version of blame seems inappropriate. My account highlights the importance of collective responsibility in understanding dilemmas, and I suggest that it sheds light on understanding moral progress.     

The Moral Dilemmas Debate, Deontic Logic, and the Impotence of Argument

In this paper I argue for modesty concerning what theoretical reason can accomplish in the moral dilemmas debate. Specifically, I contend that philosophers' conclusions for or against moral dilemmas are driven less by rational argument and more by how the moral world intuitively appears to them.I support this thesis by first considering an argument against moral dilemmas, the argument from deontic logic, and showing that its persuasive force depends on one's having already accepted its conclusion. I then make a different, and general, case that any argument in the moral dilemmas debate concerning the defeasibility of conflicting obligations can be marginalized by making not-unreasonable adjustments in the conditions for wrongdoing.These two strands of argument are related by the notion of inescapable wrongdoing. It is our standing intuitions about inescapable wrongdoing which make the relevant deontic logical principles plausible or implausible to us. And whether wrongdoing can be inescapable is central to deciding what the conditions for wrongdoing are. My conclusion is that the arguments in the moral dilemmas debate merely implement whatever standing intuition we have concerning inescapable wrongdoing, and that apart from any such intuition the arguments are unpersuasive.     

What Is Terrorism?

ABSTRACT My aim in this paper is not to try to formulate the meaning the word ‘terrorism’has in ordinary use; the word is used in so many different, even incompatible ways, that such an enterprise would quickly prove futile. My aim is rather to try for a definition that captures the trait, or traits, of terrorism which cause most of us to view it with moral repugnance. I discuss the following questions: Is the historical connection of terrorism with terror to be preserved on the conceptual level, or relegated to the psychology and sociology of terrorism? Does mere infliction of terror qualify as terrorism, so that we can speak of non-violent terrorism? If terrorism is a type of violence, does it have to be against persons, or should violence against property also count? In what sense can terrorism be described as indiscriminate violence? Should we use the word only in a political context? In such a context, can we speak of ‘state terrorism’, or should the word be restricted to actions not sanctioned by law? Is the terrorist necessarily oblivious to moral considerations, as those who define terrorism in terms of antinomianism imply? My answers to these questions lead up to the following definition: terrorism is the deliberate use of violence, or threat of its use, against innocent people, with the aim of intimidating them, or other people, into a course of action they otherwise would not take.     

THE LOCAL NATURE OF MODERN MORAL SKEPTICISM

Abstract:  Julia Annas has affirmed that the kind of modern moral skepticism which denies the existence of objective moral values rests upon a contrast between morality and some other system of beliefs about the world which is not called into doubt. Richard Bett, on the other hand, has argued that the existence of such a contrast is not a necessary condition for espousing that kind of moral skepticism. My purpose in this paper is to show that Bett fails to make a good case against Annas' thesis. To accomplish this, it will be helpful to consider the Pyrrhonean attitude towards morality as expounded in Sextus Empiricus' work.     

AN ARISTOTELIAN ACCOUNT OF VIRTUE ETHICS: AN ESSAY IN MORAL TAXONOMY

Abstract:  I argue that a virtue ethics takes virtue to be more basic than rightness and at least as basic as goodness. My account is Aristotelian because it avoids the excessive inclusivity of Martha Nussbaum's account and the deficient inclusivity of Gary Watson's account. I defend the account against the objection that Aristotle does not have a virtue ethics by its lights, and conclude with some remarks on moral taxonomy.     

Finite Agents,Sublime Feelings: Response to Hanauer

Tom Hanauer's thoughtful discussion of my article “The Pleasures of Contra‐purposiveness: Kant, the Sublime, and Being Human” (2014) puts pressure on two important issues concerning the affective phenomenology of the sublime. My aim in that article was to present an analysis of the sublime that does not suffer from the problems identified by Jane Forsey in “Is a Theory of the Sublime Possible?” (2007). I argued that Kant's notion of reflective judgment can help with this task, because it allows us to capture the experience of failure that characterizes the sublime without committing us to ontologically transcendent items. In a significant departure from Kant, however, my account does not require references to our moral vocation to explain the pleasure we take in the sublime; the pleasure comes from getting the right measure of our agency. For Hanauer, trouble for my analysis comes both from the discursive presentation of the sublime, its focus on judgment, and from the removal of references to our moral vocation.     

The epistemology of evolutionary debunking

Fifteen years ago, Sharon Street and Richard Joyce advanced evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism, which purported to show that the evolutionary history of our moral beliefs makes moral realism untenable. These arguments have since given rise to a flurry of objections; the epistemic principles Street and Joyce relied upon, in particular, have come in for a number of serious challenges. My goal in this paper is to develop a new account of evolutionary debunking which avoids the pitfalls Street and Joyce encountered and responds to the most pressing objections they faced. I begin by presenting a striking thought experiment to serve as an analogy for the evolution of morality; I then show why calibrationist views of higher-order evidence are crucial to the evolutionary debunking project; I outline a new rationale for why finding out that morality was selected to promote cooperation suggests that our moral judgments are unreliable; and I explain why evolutionary debunking arguments do not depend on our having a dedicated faculty for moral cognition. All things considered, I argue, evolutionary debunking arguments against moral realism are on relatively secure footing – provided, at least, that we accept a calibrationist account of higher-order evidence.

     

Moral Mistakes

Is it possible to show that a moral claim is mistaken without taking a moral stand with regard to it? A striking number of contemporary metaethicists suppose that it is. In this paper, I argue against a prominent line of support for this supposition. My goal is to cast suspicion on a general tendency to think that the epistemic standing of moral claims is something that can be assessed from outside the practices of making and critically evaluating moral judgements. I do this by focusing on a widely accepted criterion of competence with regard to the use of moral concepts, the moral supervenience criterion (MSC). This criterion holds that someone who judges two acts or events to be morally different without thinking that he has to identify some non‐particular non‐moral difference between them simply doesn't understand what it is to make a moral judgement. I focus on a paradigmatic example of the sort of mistake in moral judgement that is supposed to support the MSC and argue that it provides no support whatsoever. I then offer my own alternative explanation of this sort of mistake in moral judgement. I conclude with a discussion of why advocates of the MSC are inclined to suppose that it is possible to assess the epistemic standing of a moral claim without oneself taking a moral stand with regard to it.     

ARE MENTAL STATE WELFARISM AND OUR CONCERN FOR NON‐EXPERIENTIAL GOALS INCOMPATIBLE?

Abstract:   The question I address in this paper is whether there is a version of mental state welfarism that can be coherent with the thesis that we have a legitimate concern for non-experiential goals. If there is not, then we should reject mental state welfarism. My thesis is that there is such a version. My argument relies on the distinction between "reality-centered desires" and "experience-centered desires". Mental state welfarism can accommodate our reality-centered desires and our desire that they be objectively satisfied. My general strategy is, at the level of the value theory, somewhat analogous to the strategy that indirect consequentialism applies at the level of moral obligation theory. To test my argument, I appeal to Nozick's well-known example of the Experience Machine.     

Further problems with projectivism

From David Hume onwards, many philosophers have argued that moral thinking is characterised by a tendency to ‘project’ our own mental states onto the world. This metaphor of projection may be understood as involving two empirical claims: the claim that humans experience morality as a realm of objective facts (the experiential hypothesis), and the claim that this moral experience is immediately caused by affective attitudes (the causal hypothesis). Elsewhere I argue in detail against one form of the experiential hypothesis. My main aim in this paper is to show that, considering recent psychological studies about folk metaethics and the relation between moral judgements and emotions, the causal hypothesis must be considered problematic too. First, the most common argument in favour of the causal hypothesis is based on an implausible premise and a dubious assumption. Second, ordinary people's moral experience is influenced by a non-affective factor, namely their openness to divergent moral views. And third, projectivism in general and its causal hypothesis in particular might not even hold true for affective moral judgements. This negative assessment of projectivism is significant both for our understanding of moral cognition as an empirical phenomenon and for metaethics.     

Kant's Conception of Inner Value

Abstract: This article addresses a foundational issue in Kant's moral philosophy, the question of the relation of the Categorical Imperative to value. There is an important movement in current Kant scholarship that argues that there is a value underlying the Categorical Imperative. However, some scholars have raised doubts as to whether Kant has a conception of value that could ground the Categorical Imperative. In this paper I seek to add to these doubts by arguing, first, that value would have to be of a particular kind in order to be the foundation of Kant's moral philosophy. Second, I argue that Kant does not have such a conception of value, and that his arguments rule out that value could ground his moral philosophy. I then outline an alternative reading of how Kant uses ‘inner value’. My conclusion will be that Kant does not derive the Categorical Imperative from an underlying value. While some of his passages could also be read as if value were foundational for Kant, a close look at these passages and his arguments point away from this conclusion.     

Book Review

Abstract

In this article, I respond to questions about, and criticisms of, my article “Toward an African Moral Theory” that have been put forth by Allen Wood, Mogobe Ramose, Douglas Farland and Jason van Niekerk. The major topics I address include: what bearing the objectivity of moral value should have on cross-cultural moral differences between Africans and Westerners; whether a harmonious relationship is a good candidate for having final moral value; whether consequentialism exhausts the proper way to respond to the value of a hannonious relationship; what makes a moral theory count as “African”; how the existing literature on African ethics relates to the aim of analytically developing and defending a single foundational moral principle; whether the intuitions I appeal to ground an African moral theory are pro tanto right-makers or general moral truths; whether the moral theory I defend can capture pro tanto rightness; and whether the best interpretation of African ethics is self-regarding (deeming the only basic moral reason for action to be that it would develop one’s own valuable human nature) or other-regarding (holding that a certain kind of harmonious relationship between individuals could ground a basic moral reason for action).     

Alasdair MacIntyre's Analysis of Tradition

I argue that, in analysing the structure and development of moral traditions, MacIntyre relies primarily on Kuhn's model of scientific tradition, rather than (as is held by at least two influential commentators) on Lakatos' model. I unpack three foci of Kuhn's conception of the sciences, namely: the ‘crisis’ conception of scientific development, what I call the ‘systematic conception’ of scientific paradigms, and the view that successive paradigms are incommensurable. I then show that these three foci are integrated into MacIntyre's account of the development of moral traditions with a surprising degree of faithfulness to Kuhn. And crucially, I argue against the overall cogency of his account, given the disparities I pinpoint between scientific and moral traditions. My overall critique is, however, fundamentally friendly, since nothing I have to say invalidates the very notion of a moral tradition, and all I am calling for are less problematic construals of that notion.     

Moral Enhancement

abstract   Opponents of biomedical enhancement often claim that, even if such enhancement would benefit the enhanced, it would harm others. But this objection looks unpersuasive when the enhancement in question is a moral enhancement — an enhancement that will expectably leave the enhanced person with morally better motives than she had previously. In this article I (1) describe one type of psychological alteration that would plausibly qualify as a moral enhancement, (2) argue that we will, in the medium-term future, probably be able to induce such alterations via biomedical intervention, and (3) defend future engagement in such moral enhancements against possible objections. My aim is to present this kind of moral enhancement as a counter-example to the view that biomedical enhancement is always morally impermissible.     

Some Features of Promises and their Obligations

Promises raise two main philosophical problems, one moral and the other conceptual. The moral problem concerns the normative significance of promising: what is the nature and basis of the obligations and rights to which promises typically give rise? The conceptual problem is to say what a promise is: what is involved in making a promise? In this paper I defend three controversial claims about promising. One is about the moral problem of promising, one is about the conceptual problem, and the last one is about the relationship between my conceptual claim and my moral claim. My conceptual claim is that a speaker makes a promise only if he communicates an intention to undertake an obligation to the hearer. (I refer to this as the “Obligation Conception Thesis.”) My moral claim is that the obligations typically attached to promises are such that they can be acquired only by those who communicate an intention to undertake an obligation. (I refer to this as the “Voluntary Obligation Thesis.”) My third claim is that if the Obligation Conception Thesis is true, the Voluntary Obligation Thesis is true.     

Rehabilitating Warranted Assertibility: Moral Inquiry and the Pragmatic Basis of Objectivity

This article defends a pragmatic conception of objectivity for the moral domain. I begin by contextualizing pragmatic approaches to objectivity and discuss at some length one of the most interesting proposals in this area, Cheryl Misak's conception of pragmatic objectivity. My general argument is that in order to defend a pragmatic approach to objectivity, the pragmatic stance should be interpreted in more radical terms than most contemporary proposals do. I suggest in particular that we should disentangle objectivity from truth, and I claim that moral inquiry is in most cases responsive to a normative standard that is closer to warranted assertibility than to truth. Using an argument that relies partly on Huw Price's account of forms of normative assertion, I will show that a practice‐based account of warranted assertibility does the epistemic work required to defend objectivity while avoiding exposure to the criticisms that are usually addressed against this notion.