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Moral Scepticism and Moral Knowledge
... This does not mean that Aquinas is being inconsistent; rather it means that he does not accept that it is necessary, in order to preserve for the will its freedom, to deny that it is subordinate to thought (cf. Bambrough, 1979: 54-60, 74-77). For he is, in fact, operating here with two senses of good. ...
This book entitled Goodness and Nature is concerned with the question of naturalism in ethics. Naturalism is the view that good and bad, right and wrong, are real matters of fact or knowledge that can in principle be determined by some reference to ‘nature’. This question is among the most important that any student of modern moral philosophy has to face. This book’s search for a solution to its difficulties, however, has required going outside the limits within which that question was originally posed. In fact, it is one of the principal messages of the book that it is these limits themselves that constitute most of the problem.
The effort to think beyond the limits of modern moral philosophy has, in my case at any rate, proved to be also the effort to think back into an ancient tradition of philosophy which flourished for so many centuries beforehand, and which modern philosophers have largely rejected. For this reason this book is an unashamedly ancient book. It might even be called an essay in discarded ideas. There are, of course, differing views about how to approach the problems raised by modern moral philosophy. It is my conviction that a return to ancient ideas is the most helpful and the most fruitful, as will, I hope, become evident from the way my argument develops from the first to the final chapters. The ancient tradition that I am following provides, I contend, just the concepts and distinctions necessary to resolve the puzzles that have gathered themselves about the question of naturalism. These puzzles are genuine and philosophically instructive; that is why they need to be faced and answered squarely. To argue round them, or to dismiss them before getting to grips with them, is to run the risk of hindering philosophical understanding. Accordingly, the early chapters of this book are concerned with writings that appeared and provoked most controversy several decades ago. For this seeming anachronism I make no apology; it is in these writings that the puzzles find their most instructive, not to say classic, expression.
A Supplement to this edition of Goodness and Nature is appended in a separate file. The Supplement that did not appear in the book when it was first published but its addition is meant to provide more of the background and evidence for the argument presented in chapter 5 of the book, the chapter entitled ‘Historical Origins’. That chapter can, to be sure, stand by itself in its place in Goodness and Nature independently of the Supplement. But since it makes claims, and presents a progression of thought, that are relatively controversial within the context of the debate about naturalism in ethics, it may excite an interest and a skepticism that some readers may wish to have more fully satisfied or answered. The Supplement is meant to supply that wish. The chapters and their contents cover the same ground as was covered in chapter 5 of Goodness and Nature but in greater detail, ranging over a fuller review of the important thinkers, and spelling out more of the relevant elements and implications. The Supplement can, therefore, stand by itself too, and need not just be read as an addition to Goodness and Nature (even though it contains several references to that book). In any event, interested readers should find on the Contents page of the Supplement enough information about what the Supplement contains to guide as well as, one hopes, to spark interest.
The book with supplement is also available from my website aristotelophile.com and in print from Createspace.com
... One widely accepted account of moral objectivity is ''reflective equilibrium'' (Goodman 1955;Rawls 1971). Reflective equilibrium represents an attempt to justify moral values by achieving a state of coherence in a dynamic process of reasoning, which involves moving back and forth between, on the one hand, (a) considered moral Footnote 5 continued judgments and (b) relevant background theories (Daniels 1996;Bambrough 1979;DePaul 1993;McMahan 2004). It works back and forth between (a) and (b), making incremental adjustments to existing beliefs about cases and particular principles in the light of background theories, and then moves to the other side, making incremental adjustments to theories in light of moral intuitions. ...
Most management researchers pause at the threshold of objective right and wrong. Their hesitation is understandable. Values imply a “subjective,” personal dimension, one that can invite religious and moral interference in research. The dominant epistemological camps of positivism and subjectivism in management stumble over the notion of moral objectivity. Empirical research can study values in human behavior, but hard-headed scientists should not assume that one value can be objectively better than another. In this article we invite management researchers to rethink this presumption. We show how accepting at least a limited form of moral objectivity, namely, an epistemic orientation that seeks objective moral reasons, can benefit management research by 1. guiding research practice; 2. using patterns of moral objectivity as clues for formulating empirical hypotheses for psychological explanations; and 3. adding prescriptive power to empirical theories.
In this paper I lay out, argue for, and defend ethical Mooreanism. In essence, the view says that some moral propositions are Moorean propositions and thus are epistemically superior to the conjunctions of the premises of skeptical arguments to the contrary. In Sect. 1 I explain Mooreanism and then ethical Mooreanism. In Sect. 2 I argue for ethical Mooreanism by noting a number of important epistemic parities that hold between certain moral truths and standard Moorean facts. In Sect. 3 I defend ethical Mooreanism against the objection that moral propositions are too epistemically dissimilar to standard Moorean facts to count as Moorean truths.
To date philosophical reflections on the Holocaust and Holocaust survivor testimony have come almost exclusively from authors in the so-called “Continental tradition”. This paper is an attempt to contribute to the scholarship on Holocaust survivor testimony using some of the concepts and conceptions of “analytic philosophy”, more precisely, some of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s remarks in On Certainty . The paper uses these remarks to analyse the “linguistic despair” expressed by many Holocaust survivors when trying to put their horrendous experiences into words.
This is the first chapter of the companion manual, which accompanies my book 'Ethics: An Overview'. This chapter supplies summaries, learning objectives, essay titles and reading, which relate to the sections on Aristotle, on Hobbes and Hume, on Kant, and on Mill. The rest of the manual is available from: attfieldr@cardiff.ac.uk . The book itself is available from Bloomsbury of London and New York.
In endorsing a conventionalism about the rules of sport, Morgan fails (according to his critics) to ground the normativity of such rules, especially once the historical specificity of their invention and implementation is granted. But how can normativity be grounded in the contingencies of the sporting practices of particular times and places? In particular, do Morgan’s concerns with dependence on ‘conventions’ flow only from the choice of options apparently on offer: roughly the choice between a realism (to reflect ‘facts of the matter’) and a conventionalism in the ‘norm-based’ version that I urge is misguided. Exploring some of the variety of occasions for the operation of normativity in sporting contexts, and acknowledging their occasion-sensitivity, shows this to be a false dichotomy. In this light, the paper elaborates a Morgan-style conclusion by drawing a parallel with language-use to conclude that rule-following in sport has all the grounding it could get—and that, as with normativity for language-use, this is all the grounding one needs.
Moral intuitionism is a view about how we can be justified in believing, and have knowledge of, moral propositions (see Epistemology, Moral). To be more specific, moral intuitionism is the view that moral intuitions can provide evidence for the truth of moral propositions. To be intuitively justified, the justification must be noninferential and based on intuition, and so not based on some sort of reasoning in which the relevant proposition is the conclusion. In a moment I will say more about the nature of intuitions, but, roughly, a person has an intuition of some proposition just in case that proposition seems obviously true to him and its seeming that way is based solely on his understanding the proposition (for example, the proposition that bachelors are unmarried males).
Philosophers often seek to defend the credentials of one set of disputed claims by comparing them to other claims with which they are said to have important features in common. Some arguments of this kind have a “companions in guilt” form. Companions in guilt arguments are designed to defend the credentials of one set of claims, A, by showing that some of the features of A-claims that are thought to be problematic are shared by another set of claims, B, the credentials of which are less problematic. With respect to these features, A-claims and B-claims are said to be companions in guilt. In other words, if the credentials of A-claims are undermined by possessing these features, then so are the credentials of B-claims, all other things being equal. On the assumption that the credentials of B-claims are not undermined by the fact that they possess these features, then neither are the credentials of A-claims.
Philosophers often seek to defend the credentials of one set of disputed claims by comparing them to other claims with which they are said to have important features in common. Some arguments of this kind have a “companions in guilt” form (Mackie 1977: 39). Companions in guilt arguments are designed to defend the credentials of one set of claims, A, by showing that some of the features of A-claims that are thought to be problematic are shared by another set of claims, B, the credentials of which are less controversial. With respect to these features, A-claims and B-claims are said to be companions in guilt. In other words, if the credentials of A-claims are undermined by possessing these features, then so are the credentials of B-claims, all other things being equal. On the assumption that the credentials of B-claims are not undermined by the fact that they possess these features, then neither are the credentials of A-claims.
Since it is wrong always, everywhere and for everyone to believe anything upon insufficient evidence, religions and religious beliefs are required at the very least to be shown to be not unreasonable, if they are to have any legitimacy. This means, first and foremost, that they must themselves be ethical. There is nothing startling about this, because everyone knows that Aristotle is right when he says that people who are puzzled about honouring the gods – or God – and loving their parents, need punishment, not perception. God is good, as indeed are our parents. What is, however, disconcerting, is that when pronouncements made by religious authorities are ethically examined, they are not infrequently found to be wanting.
Too many children remain at risk of harm, regrettably, in all too many societies. This is despite the almost universal acceptance of the 1990 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Its intention, arguably somewhat naïvely, is to create two state imperatives: to protect children against threats of harm; and to advance their welfare. Governments, however, have evidenced a pragmatic reluctance to meet these challenges, perhaps a product of conflicting community expectations on the appropriate role of the state, combined with a scarcity of public resources. For the state to meet its UNCRC obligations requires it to have three crucial capacities. The first is the governance capacity to be able to take the necessary actions to prevent or correct the harm experienced by children. The second is the organizational capacity to direct sufficient resources to do what needs to be done in a timely manner, in a culturally sensitive way, and without causing them other forms of harm. The third is the epistemological capacity to know when it is in the “best interests” of children for the state, in the “public interest,” to stop particular child practices or to separate particular children from their families in order to provide the care and protection they need. These are the ultimate challenges facing governments if they wish to achieve the vision of the state as the protector and promoter of the best interests of children that is embedded in the UNCRC, to which almost all states have committed.
This paper distinguishes bias from statistical bias (systematic error), and compares two accounts of bias (as an excess of prejudice, and as a lack of consideration of alternatives) against a list of eight criteria. It argues that the latter account is superior.
Observing an impasse within research on “information age” technologies, the paper borrows from current moral philosophy as a basis for reorienting these discussions. Exploration of a contextualist position produces a call for a normative stance that privileges concern for the technological impact upon the conditions of self‐knowledge over concern with conditions of access or choice. An ethnographic, diagnostic approach is advocated for analyzing social meanings associated with contemporary technologies; and a normatively‐based theoretical framework is outlined to guide research into how communications technologies may serve or impede the goals of identity, orientation, self‐knowledge, and community.
A rapprochement between the opposing extremes of the argument over the epistemological functions of rhetoric can be achieved through a theory which suggests that objective reality “exists,” constrains rhetoric, but does not entail objective truths. A bounded network theory of language which accounts for both structural and material components of language provides the basis for such a rapprochement, allows the description of the interaction of rhetoric, objective truths, and objective reality, and allows a re‐cognition of the role of consensus in truth‐seeking.
Case methods of reasoning are persuasive, but we need to address problems of bias in order to use them to reach morally justifiable conclusions. A bias is an unwarranted inclination or a special perspective that disposes us to mistaken or one-sided judgments. The potential for bias arises at each stage of a case method of reasoning including in describing, framing, selecting and comparing of cases and paradigms. A problem of bias occurs because to identify the relevant features for such purposes, we must use general views about what is relevant; but some of our general views are biased, both in the sense of being unwarranted inclinations and in the sense that they are one of many viable perspectives. This reliance upon general views to determine relevancy creates additional difficulties for defenders who maintain that case methods of moral reasoning are not only useful, but more basic, reliable or prior to other forms of moral reasoning. If we cannot identify the case's relevant features and issues independently of our general views or biases, we need further explanation about why a case method or casuistry should be viewed as prior to or more basic or reliable than other forms of moral reasoning. Problems of bias also arise for other methods of reasoning. In medical science, case reviews are regarded as an unreliable way to form generalizations, and methods such as clinical trials are used to address bias.
In his seminal work Moral Notions, Julius Kovesi presents a novel account of concept formation. At the heart of this account is a distinction between what
he terms the material element and the formal element of concepts. This paper elucidates his distinction in detail and contrasts
it with other distinctions such as form-matter, universal-particular, genus-difference, necessary-sufficient, and open texture-closed
texture. We situate Kovesi’s distinction within his general philosophical method, outlining his views on concept formation
in general and explain how his theory of concept formation is applied in moral philosophy.
KeywordsKovesi–Fact–Value–Morality–Concepts–Family resemblance
Our families, communities, and institutions increasingly include people from different cultural groups. Many of us have parents of different religious and ethnic origins. This diversity enhances our lives as we learn the pleasures of different foods, arts, music, and views. Being open-minded about various attitudes and beliefs challenges and benefits us. We do not want to rule out any unexamined options or suppose our preferences are absolute standards. Consequently, openness is a practical way to test what is true or meritorious in our views. Being open to others’ views also shows that we respect and care about the people expressing those views and are interested in what they think and feel ([21], p. 1; [11]). Being receptive to diversity of thought, however, means that different views should be heard and debated on their merits, not that they should all be accepted. Medicine in the last half of the twentieth century has also experienced the benefits and challenges of cultural diversity. In addition to the growing differences within our nation, people from around the world increasingly seek medical care in the United States. While we ought to be respectful and receptive to other customs, some seem wrong. On what basis do we rationally establish that another culture’s practices should be stopped? For example, Abdalla writes a “. . . custom practiced in Southern Yemen and along the Persian Gulf is to put salt into the vagina after childbirth . . . [because practitioners believe this] induces the narrowing of the vagina . . . to restore the vagina to its former shape and size
Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Linguistics and Philosophy, 1983. Supervised by Joshua Cohen. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 240-242).
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