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The Independence of Moral Theory
... [14][15][16][17] Accordingly, empirical studies reasonably play some role for the justification of principles for priority setting. i [18][19][20][21][22][23] Drawing on the notion of reflective equilibrium [24][25][26][27][28] we discuss the relevance and roles that empirical studies may plausibly have for the justification of principles for priority setting. The aim for this paper is to develop a framework that can articulate these different roles in relation to empirical studies of public values and make explicit how different empirical results may have different implications for justification. ...
... The second step is to formulate ethical principles that can account for the considered judgements. These principles may vary in their degree of specificity, 26 they may be of the general kind such as 'euthanasia is wrong' or more specified such as 'euthanasia is wrong when offered to patients who are not terminally ill'. Note that the considered moral judgements may also vary in their degree of specificity. ...
... supportive and explanatory. [24][25][26][27][28] Since such support and explanatory power reasonably come in matters of degree it seems right to assume that it is not the case that some moral judgements are justified and some are not; rather, moral justification is a matter of degree, see also Tersman. 27 There is a general tendency among coherence theorists to believe that large justificatory circles are better than small ones. ...
How should scarce healthcare resources be distributed? This is a contentious issue that became especially pressing during the pandemic. It is often emphasised that studies exploring public views about this question provide valuable input to the issue of healthcare priority setting. While there has been a vast number of such studies it is rarely articulated, more specifically, what the results from these studies would mean for the justification of principles for priority setting. On the one hand, it seems unreasonable that public values would straightforwardly decide the ethical question of how resources should be distributed. On the other hand, in a democratic society, it seems equally unreasonable that they would be considered irrelevant for this question. In this paper we draw on the notion of reflective equilibrium and discuss the relevance and roles that empirical studies may plausibly have for justification in priority setting ethics. We develop a framework for analysing how different kinds of empirical results may have different kinds of implications for justification.
... It involves a process of continuous refinement and adjustment in which moral beliefs and general principles are tested against one another to an acceptable coherence among them. The moral beliefs and principles range from abstract level of normative theories to the case-specific level of considered judgments (Doorn & Taebi, 2018;Norman, 2020;Rawls, 1974;Schroeter, 2004;Van de Poel, 2016). Wide reflective equilibrium differs from narrow reflective equilibrium in the sense that, according to Rawls (1971), "whether one is to be presented with all possible descriptions to which one might plausibly conform one's judgments together with all relevant philosophical arguments for them" (p. ...
... Some guidelines include a set of documents like the AI & Data Topical Guide Series from Policy Action Network and People & AI Partnership Guidebook from Google. Since 11 documents were in its original language in German and French, such as 10 Ethical 2 According to Rawls (1974), considered judgments refer to the judgments "in which our moral capacities are most likely to be displayed without distortion" (p. 8). ...
As Artificial Intelligence (AI) technologies continue to advance at a rapid pace,
ethical considerations become increasingly important, such as information privacy
concerns, biases, intellectual property rights, disinformation and fake news. The
potential risks and challenges of AI systems have prompted companies, organizations,
and governments to develop AI Ethics policies to address these concerns. Analyzing
these policies through content analysis can provide valuable insights into the ethical
principles and values underlying AI development and use, therefore, this research
uses AI-aided content analysis approach to explore the current practice of the AI
Ethics policies with the moral philosophy lens of wide reflective equilibrium, and
compares how different countries enact their own policies, and how different
industries and sectors respond to the new wave of challenges. This approach involves combining human and machine coding from DiVoMiner® to analyze the policy
documents, to identify and analyze trends and themes in AI Ethics policies across
different organizations, sectors, and countries, with the intention to contributing to
understanding AI Ethics from a moral philosophy perspective.
... We applied normative ethics when formulating the research questions and to guide the scoping review to assess how the existing literature incorporates ethical theories in their evaluation of ethical decision-making in policing. Normative ethics is the branch of philosophy that studies moral conceptions of right, value, and moral worth and focuses on the major theoretical approaches to moral structure, grammar, and evaluation [11,12]. ...
... [ [1][2][3][4][5][6][11][12][13] What are the virtues of law enforcement agents or police officers? ...
Decision-making in uncertain and stressful environments combined with the high-profile cases of police violence in the United States has generated substantial debates about policing and created challenges to maintaining public confidence and trust in law enforcement. However, despite the manifestations of reactions across the ideological spectrum, it is unclear what information is available in the literature about the convergence between ethical decision-making and policing. Therefore, an interdisciplinary scoping review was conducted to map the nature and extent of research evidence, identify existing gaps in knowledge, and discuss future implications for ethical decision-making in law enforcement. This review investigates the interaction between the job complexities of policing (psychological and normative factors) and aspects of ethical decision-making, synthesizing three distinct themes: (1) socio-moral dimensions impact the job complexities of police work, (2) lethal means and moral injury influence intuitive and rational decision-making, and (3) police wellness and interventions are critical to sustaining police readiness. Gaps in recruiting, training, and leadership and managerial practices can be broadly transformed to fundamentally emphasize officer wellness and a holistic approach to ethical practices, enabling police officers to uphold the rule of law, promote public safety, and protect the communities they serve.
... RE is commonly understood as a method of justification. It was popularized by John Rawls in A Theory of Justice and his subsequent works (Rawls 1974(Rawls , 1999(Rawls , 2001(Rawls , 2005. RE aims to achieve beliefs (or other doxastic states) that are justified for an epistemic agent. ...
It is commonly agreed that so-called echo chambers and epistemic bubbles, associated with social media, are detrimental to liberal democracies. Drawing on John Rawls’s political liberalism, we offer a novel explanation of why social media platforms amplifying echo chambers and epistemic bubbles are likely contributing to the violation of the democratic norms connected to the ideal of public reason. These norms are clarified with reference to the method of (full) reflective equilibrium, which we argue should be cultivated as a civic virtue in the context of political justification. The paper demonstrates how epistemic bubbles and echo chambers are likely to be detrimental to the disposition to follow the method of reflective equilibrium in the political context. Based on this diagnosis the paper highlights the need for interventions that help cultivate reflective equilibrium as a civic virtue and the need for corresponding interdisciplinary research.
... If we define MRE in terms of these four rules, this definition captures paradigmatic MRE conceptions, such as those proposed by Rawls (1999Rawls ( , 1974Rawls ( , 2001, Daniels (1996), DePaul (1993 or Elgin (1996Elgin ( , 2017. All these conceptions implicitly or explicitly include the four rules outlined here, at least according to some reasonable interpretation, and thus can be regarded as MRE conceptions according to our working definition. ...
The method of reflective equilibrium (MRE) is a method of justification popularized by John Rawls and further developed by Norman Daniels, Michael DePaul, Folke Tersman, and Catherine Z. Elgin, among others. The basic idea is that epistemic agents have justified beliefs if they have succeeded in forming their beliefs into a harmonious system of beliefs which they reflectively judge to be the most plausible. Despite the common reference to MRE as a method, its mechanisms or rules are typically expressed in a metaphorical or simplified manner and are therefore criticized as too vague. Recent efforts to counter this criticism have been directed towards the attempt to provide formal explications of MRE. This paper aims to supplement these efforts by providing an informal working definition of MRE. This approach challenges the view that MRE can adequately be characterized only in the negative as a set of anti-essentialisms. I argue that epistemic agents follow MRE iff they follow four interconnected rules, which are concerned with a minimalistic form of foundationalism, a minimalistic form of fallibilism, a moderate form of holism, and a minimalistic form of rationality. In the critical spirit of MRE, the corresponding working definition is, of course, provisional and revisable. In general, the aim is to contribute to a reflective equilibrium (RE) concerning MRE. If it is successful, this working definition provides a better grasp of the most basic elements of the method and thereby enhances our understanding of it.
... Trade-offs between the various desiderata may then compromise RE's truth-conduciveness. Worries of this kind may be fuelled by the fact that prominent defenders of RE such as Rawls (1975; and Elgin (1996; have distanced RE from truth. ...
The goal of this paper is to re-assess reflective equilibrium (“RE”). We ask whether there is a conception of RE that can be defended against the various objections that have been raised against RE in the literature. To answer this question, we provide a systematic overview of the main objections, and for each objection, we investigate why it looks plausible, on what standard or expectation it is based, how it can be answered and which features RE must have to meet the objection. We find that there is a conception of RE that promises to withstand all objections. However, this conception has some features that may be unexpected: it aims at a justification that is tailored to understanding and it is neither tied to intuitions nor does it imply coherentism. We conclude by pointing out a cluster of questions we think RE theorists should pay more attention to.
... Popularised by Rawls (1951Rawls ( , 1974Rawls ( , 2005a, and thus forever guaranteeing its favour amongst liberal theorists, reflective equilibrium (RE) is generally considered the leading methodological tool in contemporary political philosophy (List & Valentini, 2016, p. 542). It has even been called "the" method of philosophy tout court (Lewis, 1983, p. x). ...
Reflective equilibrium is overdue a twenty-first century update. Despite its apparent popularity, there is scant evidence that theorists ever thoroughly implement the method, and fewer still openly and transparently publish their attempts to do so in print—stymying its supposed justificatory value. This paper proposes digitising reflective equilibrium as a solution. Inspired by the global open science movement, it advocates for coupling a novel, digital implementation of the equilibrating process with new publication norms that can capitalise on the inherent reproducibility of digital data. The argument is structured around three main claims: that digitising will make it easier to (a) methodically construct, (b) widely disseminate, and (c) thoroughly critique reflective equilibria. Practical guidance is also provided throughout. Altogether, it is argued that digitisation will not only help theorists to better realise reflective equilibrium’s latent theoretical potential, but also greatly extend its value as a justificatory device in contemporary academic discourses.
... (When actions are right, it is because they have certain descriptive properties, e.g., being an instance of helping someone in need.) This check is commonly performed in several ways: (1) by forming first-order moral judgments about which actions are right, and then looking to see if the right actions have d, (2) by forming a direct judgement about whether d is morally relevant (this happens when we judge, for instance, that an action's effect on overall happiness is a morally relevant property-though perhaps not the only one), 9 or (3) by forming moral judgments at various levels of generality and pursuing reflective equilibrium with them (Rawls 1974(Rawls , 1999, which delivers an output about whether d is morally relevant. We make no claim that the methods of checking we've identified in fact confer justification on our moral beliefs. ...
Moral metasemantic theories explain how our moral thought and talk are about certain properties. Given the connection between what our moral terms are about and which moral claims are true, it might be thought that metasemantic theorising can justify first-order ethical conclusions, thus providing a novel way of doing moral epistemology. In this paper, we spell out one kind of argument from metasemantic theories to normative ethical conclusions, and argue that it fails to transmit justification from premises to conclusion. We give three reasons for this transmission failure, which together pose a serious challenge to such metasemantic arguments.
... Once we concretely describe what exactly conceptual engineers are doing, and once we separate the practice of engineering from the practice of assessing the engineering, the resulting picture becomes very close to a re-description of what ethicists of AI are doing anyway-perhaps implicitly. First, finding a reflective equilibrium is clearly not a novel method in ethics (e.g., [36,37]). Second, designing and assessing possible criteria and consequences of the application of words does not seem to be new either. ...
Can a machine be a person? Can a robot think, be our friend or colleague? These familiar questions in the ethics of AI have recently become much more urgent than many philosophers anticipated. However, they also seem as intractable as ever. For this reason, several philosophers of AI have recently turned their attention to an arguably new method: conceptual engineering. The idea is to stop searching for the real essence of friendship or our ordinary concept of the person. Instead, ethicists of AI should engineer concepts of friend or person we should apply. But what exactly is this method? There is currently no consensus on what the target object of conceptual engineers is or should be. In this paper, I reject a number of popular options and then argue for a pragmatist way of thinking about the target object of conceptual engineering in the ethics of AI. I conclude that in this pragmatist picture, conceptual engineering is probably what we have been doing all along. So, is it all just hype? No, the idea that the ethics of AI has been dominated by conceptual engineers all along constitutes an important meta-philosophical insight. We can build on this insight to develop a more rigorous and thorough methodology in the ethics of AI.
... On this point, it is worth noting two recent developments, though. First, following Rawls (1974), contemporary contractarians have tried to dismiss Hume's objection and re-evaluate normative analysis from the epistemic limbo into which empirical positivists wanted to relegate it (Norman 1998). At the same time, they have sought to reconcile morality and rationality, so as to avoid making political obligations dependent on unsupportable supererogatory claims (Kavka 1985). ...
This is a preprint of my new book on deliberative democracy. Feedback will be much appreciated
... which requires principles to be tested for coherence and consistency with other intuitions and principles (Rawls 1975). The methodological requirement of WRE helps to show that our intuitions are presumptively credible not because they have some special property, but due to the good evidence that if they survive in a state of wide reflective equilibrium they are not relying in ethically irrelevant claims/principles/intuitions, for the latter would have exposed and eliminated discreditable criteria of assessment (Lillehammer 2011, 188-189 However, we shall bear in mind, before presenting such concern, that the self-evidence of moral intuitions does not entail infallibility, incorrigibility, or indubitability. ...
This paper straightforwardly addresses one of the strongest, from an ethical perspective,
objections presented to the duty to die, the one concerned with the lack of a normative theory to support it, offered by Seay in his paper Can there be a “duty to die” without a normative theory? The aim of the paper is to provide strong metaethical grounds to support the duty to die without the need of a moral normative theory. First, the definition and main argument for the duty to die will be presented. Second, Seay’s objection will be described and clearly explained. Third, our metaphysical assumptions and a preliminary metaethical discussion will be offered to situate and understand the context. Finally, we will show how the duty to die can be integrated within the metaethical approach previously presented, defending that there is no need of a normative theory to provide good justification and strong ethical grounds for the duty to die, because they will have already been provided by our metaethical argument.
... A wide reflective equilibrium, that results if all relevant commitments and arguments have successfully been taken into account, can have considerable revisionary force. Only a wide reflective equilibrium provides justification according to Rawls (Daniels, 1979;Rawls, 1999, p. 43;1974). ...
In this paper, we focus on one controversial element of the method of reflective equilibrium, namely Rawls’ idea that the commitments that enter the justificatory procedure should be pre-selected or filtered: According to him, only considered judgements should be taken into account in moral philosophy. There are two camps of critics of this filtering process: 1) Critics of reflective equilibrium: They reject the Rawlsian filtering process as too weak and seek a more reliable one, which would actually constitute a distinct epistemic method. 2) Proponents of reflective equilibrium: They reject the Rawlsian filtering process as too exclusionary. We defend RE against its critics, arguing that the method can secure reasonable commitments without depending on a strong external filtering process. However, we side with the critical proponents of reflective equilibrium and argue that without the Rawlsian weak filtering process, RE is more plausible both as a general method as well as in the context of moral philosophy.
The motivating question of this chapter is: ‘How are our beliefs in the theorems of mathematics justified?’ This is distinguished from the question ‘How are our mathematical beliefs reliably true?’ We examine an influential answer, outlined by Russell, championed by Gödel, and developed by those searching for new axioms to settle undecidables, that our mathematical beliefs are justified by ‘intuitions’, as our scientific beliefs are justified by observations. In this view, axioms are analogous to laws of nature. They are postulated to best systematize the data to be explained. We argue that there is a decisive difference between the cases. There is agreement on the data to be systematized in the scientific case that has no analog in the mathematical one. There is virtual consensus over observations, but conspicuous dispute over intuitions. In this respect, mathematics more closely resembles stereotypical philosophy. We conclude by distinguishing two ideas that have long been associated—realism (the idea that there is an independent reality) and objectivity (the idea that in a disagreement, only one of us can be right). We argue that, while realism is true of mathematics and philosophy, typical claims from these domains fail to be objective. One upshot of the discussion is that even many questions of fundamental physics fail to be objective in roughly the sense that the question, ‘Is the Parallel Postulate true?’, understood as one of pure mathematics, fails to be. Another is a kind of pragmatism. Factual questions in mathematics, modality, logic, and evaluative areas go proxy for non-factual practical ones.
The past few decades have witnessed an intense focus on the notion of normativity. We orientate ourselves to think about normativity by asking a range of questions. There are ways we act and think, and ways in which the world is. But as well as what there is and what we do, what should or ought we to do? What reasons are there for acting and thinking? What values do certain ways of being have? What authority is had by the norms and standards that govern our behaviour and thought? These questions have been discussed for several years now. At the heart of these debates are other questions. How should we characterize normative notions such as reason and value? What are the relations between them? Are they all properly normative? Most fundamentally, people have considered what normativity itself is. These questions gain additional colour and point by being considered within different areas of our lives, such as the areas concerned with ethics, aesthetics, and epistemology. Further issues then come to the fore. Reasons and obligations in some areas seem to have more authority than in others, but why and how? Is there a ‘unity of normativity’ across different areas? This is now a time to reflect: to consider familiar questions afresh and to introduce new questions and topics. The Future of Normativity brings together works by a set of leading philosophers to consider what the future of normative thought could and should be.
Este trabajo tiene como finalidad analizar la obra de John Rawls, repensar la cuestión del contractualismo e intentar esbozar una conclusión tendiente a reforzar la idea de que se puede trabajar en función de un acuerdo social. Se trata especialmente especialmente el primer texto de Rawls, Teoría de la Justicia. Se presentan algunas críticas que surgen dentro de los que se autodenominan rawlsianos: Ronald Dworkin, Amartya Sen, Martha Nussbaum y Norman Daniels.
In normative ethics, a small number of moral theories, such as Kantianism or consequentialism, take centre stage. Conventional wisdom has it that these individual theories posit very different ways of looking at the world. In this book Marius Baumann develops the idea that just as scientific theories can be underdetermined by data, so can moral theories be underdetermined by our considered judgments about particular cases. Baumann goes on to ask whether moral theories from different traditions might arrive at the same verdicts while remaining explanatorily incompatible. He applies this idea to recent projects in normative ethics, such as Derek Parfit's On What Matters and so-called consequentializing and deontologizing, and outlines its important implications for our understanding of the relationship between the main moral traditions as well as the moral realism debate. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.
Henry Sidgwick's The Methods of Ethics is one of the most important and influential works in the history of moral philosophy. The Methods of Ethics clarifies and tackles some of the most enduring and difficult problems of morality. It offers readers a high-calibre example of analytical moral philosophy. This Element interprets and critically evaluates select positions and arguments in Sidgwick's The Methods of Ethics. It focuses specifically on Sidgwick's moral epistemology, his argument against common-sense morality, his argument for utilitarianism, his argument for rational egoism, and his argument for what he calls 'the dualism of practical reason', the thesis that utilitarianism and rational egoism are coordinate but conflicting requirements of rationality. Sidgwick's Ethics attempts to acquaint readers with the scholarly and theoretical debates relating to Sidgwick's theses, while providing readers with a greater appreciation of the depth and sophistication of Sidgwick's masterpiece.
In a short span, this Element will delineate the general nature of legal and moral rights and the general nature of the holding of rights, and it will also sketch the justificatory foundations of rights. Hence, the Element will treat of some major topics within legal, political, and moral philosophy as it combines analytical theses and ethical theses in a complex pattern.
Taking inspiration from Hume, I advance a conception of the part of morality concerned with right and wrong, rooted in the actual moral rules established and followed within our society. Elsewhere, I have argued this approach provides a way of thinking about how we are genuinely “bound in a moral way” to keep our moral obligations that it is both ethically attractive and psychologically realistic. Here, I focus on some implications for our evaluation and criticism of actions, which some may initially find peculiar. Sometimes we should judge of an action that it was (unqualifiedly) right, and the result of flawless reasoning by the agent; and yet, we may also have cause to regard that same action as, in other respects, deeply morally deficient. Using Nomy Arpaly's conception of “responsiveness to right‐making moral reasons” as a foil, I argue that this unorthodox implication leads to more subtle and helpful evaluations of actions—especially actions undertaken in the context of wicked social institutions. The conception also encourages us to take a more conflicted, less confident, attitude toward many of our own righteous and rational actions—and perhaps even toward our capacity for living together by moral rules itself.
Born as an attempt to move beyond the models of democracy which dominated public and academic discourses during the second postwar period, the deliberative turn has over the years promoted several other turnings, yielding a highly complex and disorienting theoretical landscape—a conceptual spaghetti junction. Following the main deliberative turn we can also count: an ‘epistemic’ turn (Jörke. Critical Policy Studies, 3(3–4), 440–446, 2010), and an ‘empirical’ turn (Thompson. Annual Review of Political Science, 11, 497–520, 2008), a ‘systemic’ turn (Parkinson & Mansbridge. Deliberative systems. Cambridge University Press, 2012) and even a ‘democratic’ turn (Barker et al. Democratizing deliberation: a political theory anthology. Kettering Foundation Press, 2012). The end result of these twists and turns is a plurality of deliberative democratic models reproposing many analytical features which used to characterise those employed in the past (i.e. procedural, aggregative and participatory models of democracy), and which deliberative theorists wanted to transcend. The revitalisation of democracy theory promoted by the deliberative turn has thus made the theoretical landscape extremely intricate and impervious, making even those acquainted with it likely to lose their way. The present work aims to be a rough analytical guide to deliberative democracy (DD) for those who are keen to explore this uneven terrain on their own. As a guide, its goal is twofold: to single out some landmarks to follow along the way, and to indicate which dwelling stations to use in order to make the journey worthwhile. However, its main substantive goal is to understand what practical solutions this speculative activity is envisaging as possible remedies for the legitimacy crisis affecting existing liberal democracies. In keeping with the first goal, this introduction follows a topographical approach, intending to arrive at a conceptual map of DD models. A general assessment of DD’s contribution to the revitalisation of democratic politics will be carried out in Chap. 6.
What exactly is the role of empirical beliefs in moral reflective equilibrium (RE)? And if they have a part to play, can changes in our empirical beliefs effectuate changes in the moral principles we adopt? Conversely, can empirical beliefs be adjusted in light of certain moral convictions? While it is generally accepted that empirical background theory is of importance to the method of wide reflective equilibrium (WRE), this article focuses on a different aspect, namely the role of empirical beliefs that is intrinsic to the coherence relation of moral beliefs in any (narrow or wide) conception of RE. First, it is shown that in the application of RE, empirical beliefs are crucial to the procedure of matching principles to considered judgments. Changes in our empirical beliefs may therefore upset the relevant coherence relation and motivate changes in the moral principles we adopt. This more detailed account of the interplay between empirical and moral beliefs can help evaluate the overall philosophical appeal of RE. Finally, it is argued that, at least in WRE, the relation between empirical and moral beliefs need not be a one-way street, that is, moral convictions can provide us with some epistemic means of adjudicating between competing empirical descriptions of the world.
The wide reflective equilibrium (WRE) is considered the most important method of ethical justification and is intensively discussed in the scientific community. However, it is unclear to what extent it is actually applied in the ethical literature. The objective of this paper is to fill this gap by providing a critical overview of its explicit applications. Explicit application refers to studies that, following Daniels’ definition, contain three levels, name their elements, and provide a connection between the levels. Philosophers Index, ProQuest, PubMed, Web of Science, and Scopus were searched for studies that explicitly used the WRE method and were written in German or English. All topics, disciplines, and publication forms were considered. Nineteen studies were found in which the WRE was applied 23 times. In the 23 applications, 50 equilibria were discussed, and 19 times it was reported that an equilibrium state was reached. The authors applied the WRE in various disciplines, for different purposes, and to diverse topics. The applications themselves differed considerably regarding the application procedure and the scope. Differences can be seen in particular with regard to the presentation of the adjustment process and the WRE criteria used. The results indicate that the WRE can be successfully applied, but the number of explicit applications is still very low. Further research is needed to develop the WRE into an established method of justification. In particular, standards are needed for adjustment and for WRE criteria.
This essay challenges widespread talk about morality's ‘normativity’. My principal target is not any specific claim or thesis in the burgeoning literature on ‘normativity’, however. Rather, I aim to discourage the use of the word among moral philosophers altogether and to reject a claim to intradisciplinary authority that is both reflected in and reinforced by the role the word has come to play in the discipline. My hope is to persuade other philosophers who, like me, persist in being interested in long-standing questions about our morals to be considerably more suspicious about the word's actual value for us and to see those studying ‘normativity’ itself as having little to offer us when it comes to posing our questions about morals and debating the answers to them.
Contemporary political philosophers often take for granted that for political purposes all humans are to be considered of equal worth. The difficulty, as Bernard Williams observed, is to find an interpretation of this claim that does not collapse into absurdity or triviality. I show that the principal attempts to solve this problem all beg the question against an Aristotelian proponent of natural hierarchy. I then explore existing proposals for dissolving the problem of basic equality, whether by denying the need for justification altogether or by reframing justification in either ostensive or coherentist fashion, showing that each fails to account for our sense that basic equality is objectively true. In response, I outline a Hegelian approach that treats the commitment to basic equality as a social fact that constrains philosophical reasoning in contemporary liberal democracies. By itself that might suggest complacent conservatism or cultural relativism, but I argue that practices and institutions that reflect and foster a commitment to basic equality have a distinct value in permitting reciprocal recognition and thereby enabling us to make a distinct class of normative claims on one another. This Hegelian resolution of the problem is dialectically superior to its rivals and therefore warrants further development.
The main aim of this paper is to propose the inclusion of the expertise of a prudent agent within the procedure of reflective equilibrium by adding a disposition for identifying reasonable beliefs. This can be seen as the starting point of the method, and would safeguard against the criticism of conservatism and subjectivism. In order to do this, I will begin by analyzing the core characteristics of the method and its main weaknesses. I will then investigate the characteristics of prudence as a disposition for identifying an adequate means for achieving a good end. With this in mind, I will apply prudence to the procedure which is carried out by an agent who deliberates well and can identify reasonable moral beliefs. These beliefs must be justified according to their consistency with ethical principles and with the factual beliefs of relevant scientific theories. Finally, I will argue that this deliberative process is consistent with ethical pluralism and democracy, and can be interpreted as a kind of moral knowledge.
There is a recurrent sort of skeptical character in philosophical debates who believes that some social practice must be abolished because it involves a false presupposition about how things ‘really’ are. I examine this style of skeptical argument, using the moral responsibility skeptic as my main illustration. I excavate two unstated and un‐argued for premises that it requires (which I call Undistorted Truth and Privileged Conception). This exposes the full extent of the argumentative burdens that such a skeptic must discharge. I aim to make progress by offering skeptics and anti‐skeptics alike a way forward: the skeptic is provided a clear agenda, while the anti‐skeptic is provided a diagnostic tool to assess this style of skeptical arguments at key junctures.
Normative behaviourism says that the measure of political principles is how we respond to them in practice, not how they appear to us in theory, but is that a sustainable distinction? Does normative behaviourism end up relying on mentalism, or even utilitarianism? Does it assume too much of the data we either have now or could ever have? Does it bind us to the status quo or presume the end of history? All these are plausible worries, though perhaps not fatal ones, provided one remembers at least two things: first, that we judge this approach by comparing it to the alternatives; second, that we keep on experimenting, both in politics and philosophy alike, including with normative behaviourism itself.
Ιn this MPhil dissertation, we will attempt to find a connection (or to build a combinatorial metaethical theory) between Moral Realism, Moral Anti-realism and Meta-ethical Quietism in order to support Moderate Moral Realism. To provide a universal idea of the following subject (or to briefly describe the following methodology), we will explain some of the meta-ethical perspectives as derived from Rawls’s, Nozick’s, Nagel’s, Dworkin’s, Popper’s, Formosa’s, Bagnoli’s, Habermas’s, Kant’s, Virvidakis’s and Anapolitanos’s philosophical theories. More specifically, in this philosophical context, we will strategically utilize, among others, some meta-ethical arguments which generally support the importance of Rationalism, Moral Intuitionism and Moral Sentiments. Finally, we will use some focal and vital platonic thoughts based on Philosophy of Mathematics.
Cornell realism (CR), a prominent meta-ethical position that has emerged since the last decades of the twentieth century, proposes a non-reductionist naturalistic account of moral properties and facts. This paper argues that the best version of CR’s chosen methodology for arriving at justified moral beliefs must be seen as a variant of reflective equilibrium. In comparison to the traditional versions, our proposal offers a ‘social’ reinterpretation of reflective equilibrium in delineating CR’s epistemology. We argue that it satisfactorily accounts for objectivity and calls for the inclusion of the social nature of both moral and scientific inquiries. Emphasising the social dimension of their epistemological account also nudges debates in metaethics into incorporating the much-needed social dimension while dealing with questions of moral beliefs and facts that have been of CR’s concern.
Resumo: O objetivo central deste artigo é propor a inclusão da expertise de um agente prudente no procedimento do equilíbrio reflexivo, adicionando uma disposição para identificar crenças razoáveis que seriam vistas como o ponto de partida do método, o que poderia evitar as críticas de conservadorismo e subjetivismo. Para tanto, inicia-se pela análise das características centrais do método e suas principais fraquezas. Após, investigam-se as características da prudência como uma disposição para identificar os meios adequados para realizar um fim bom. De posse disso, aplica-se a prudência no procedimento, de forma que ele será executado por um agente que bem delibera, identificando crenças morais razoáveis e, depois, deve-se justificá-las com base em sua coerência com os princípios éticos e com as crenças factuais de teorias científicas relevantes. Por fim, defende-se que esse processo deliberativo é consistente com o pluralismo ético e com a democracia, podendo ser tomado como um tipo de conhecimento moral.
This chapter introduces the Rawlsian paradigm of political legitimacy and pays special attention to the strictly political version of liberalism that Rawls defends in Political Liberalism. My goal is to highlight the ambiguities of his model and to propose a justificatory strategy for a strictly political conception of liberalism that reaches beyond the path envisaged by Rawls himself. My strategy revolves around the attempt to properly spell out the implicit epistemic assumptions of the Rawlsian justificatory approach. I argue, pace Rawls, that political liberalism cannot be robust vis-à-vis different theories of justification, because it is required that, as theorists, we take a stance regarding the epistemological framework we employ while developing a specific theory of political legitimacy. My proposal is that a modest approach in political epistemology expresses the best scheme available to us − as moral agents constrained by the limits of our rationality − for establishing a normatively binding, and yet realistic, procedure of justification for political institutions and practices.
Recent years have seen a certain impatience with John Rawls's approach to political philosophy and calls for the discipline to move beyond it. One source of dissatisfaction is Rawls's idea of a well-ordered society. In a recent article, Alex Schaefer has tried to give further impetus to this movement away from Rawlsian theorizing by pursuing a question about well-ordered societies that he thinks other critics have not thought to ask. He poses that question in the title of his article: “Is Justice a Fixed Point?.” Though Schaefer is critical of Rawlsian political theorizing, I shall contend that his arguments also suggest two paths forward for those who would follow the Rawlsian approach. First, the intellectual devices Schaefer deploys help those who would continue the Rawlsian project to see, and precisely to chart, the next step that that project needs to take—a step necessitated by a concession Rawls himself made late in the development of political liberalism. Second, the clarity and economy with which Schaefer lays out his alternative to the Rawlsian approach make it possible to state some fundamental Rawlsian challenges to a form of theorizing that has considerable appeal to many critics of that approach.
The paper will address the role of choice and positive liberty in light of the utilitarian ideal of 'greatest happiness for the greatest number'. It would also explore how utilitarianism leads towards restriction of choices that leads to paternalism. Sceptics have often criticized egalitarian liberalism as propounded by John Rawls. Rationality demands that person is subjected to the fewer restraints possible and more choice in their decisions, and that institutions be developed that benefit both the individual and the society as a whole. The dilemma of uncontrolled individualism, how a society suffers when one of its members is stripped off the virtue of making choices that concern her, and how to make the person a part of community will be discussed, with special references to American philosopher Martha Nasbaum's 'Capabilities Approach' and choice The significance of each community member to the community's progress and well-being, as well as the community's and institutions' roles in improving the lives of its people. The paper adopts a qualitative approach which focuses on both theoretical and doctrinal methods. The paper seeks a normative approach with the Grundnorm being individual liberty and individual choice in the determination of an individual’s course of life. Keywords: Individualism, Utilitarianism, Liberty, Choice, Capabilities Approach.
The discussion develops the view that public justification in Rawls's political liberalism, in one of its roles, is actualist in fully enfranchising actual reasonable citizens and fundamental in political liberalism's order of justification. I anchor this reading in the political role Rawls accords to general reflective equilibrium, and examine in its light the relationship between public justification, pro tanto justification, political values, full justification, the wide view of public political culture and salient public reason intuitions. This leaves us with the question of how a more plausible, post-Rawlsian political liberalism should understand the commitment to discursive respect and robust discursive equality that is reflected in its view of actualist and fundamental public justification.
One can often hear that intuitions are standardly “appealed to”, “relied on”, “accounted for”, or “used as evidence” in ethics. How should we interpret these claims? I argue that the typical understanding is what Bernard Molyneux calls “descriptive evidentialism”: the idea that intuition-states are treated as evidence of their propositional contents in the context of justification. I then argue that descriptive evidentialism is false- on any account of what intuitions are. That said, I admit that ethicists frequently rely on intuitions to clarify, persuade, discover, or to support things other than the intuitions’ contents. The contents of intuitions are also commonly used as starting premises of philosophical arguments. However claims about these practices need to be sharply distinguished from the prevalent dogma.
The chapter examines the spatial justice in urban design processes that are responsible for the production of built environments of cities in developing countries. Cities in developing countries are rapidly urbanizing, creating urgent needs for the design of public spaces that are responsive to the needs of the citizens. Among the many needs of citizens, literature shows that not all needs have received the same attention. Some needs continue to get more design attention, while others are excluded from design solutions and are usually seriously regulated and controlled. Street vending in public space is one such use that, despite receiving scholarly attention, has received very little design attention. The chapter uses secondary sources in the form of books, journals, and reports to gather data on spatial justice, urban design, and street vending. Findings show that urban design as a process is controlled by elite interests with the power to influence design outcomes against street vending. Street vendors face challenges of marginalization and exclusion from design processes and outcomes which ultimately affects their livelihoods. The chapter recommends co-production, participatory design strategies, review of the legal framework, and inclusive design strategies as solutions to ensure spatial justice in the design of public spaces in the city of the future.
Se presenta aquí brevemente la teoría de la justicia elaborada por Rawls, primeramente sobre una base moral, y luego (en el llamado segundo Rawls) la teoría de justicia desde una perspectiva política, con la que Rawls intenta justificar también la existencia del Estado, mediante un contrato social. Se analizan después las primeras críticas realizadas a su teoría. Se sostiene la tesis de que la conveniencia se convierte, sin desearlo, en utilidad, en Rawls, y ésta se convierte en sinónimo de justicia. Se critica esta concepción dado que la elección hecha por la mayoría, para la conveniencia de la mayoría, no hace a una ley justa. Se advierte, además, que la idea de la igualdad considerada, sin más, sinónimo de justicia social, requiere una profunda reflexión. Se realiza, pues, un análisis de los presupuestos de la idea de justicia rawlsiana en cuanto parece identificarse con la idea de utilidad general y distorsionándose la misma idea de justicia.
This interdisciplinary volume explores the relationship between history and a range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences: economics, political science, political theory, international relations, sociology, philosophy, law, literature and anthropology. The relevance of historical approaches within these disciplines has shifted over the centuries. Many of them, like law and economics, originally depended on self-consciously historical procedures. These included the marshalling of evidence from past experience, philological techniques and source criticism. Between the late nineteenth and the middle of the twentieth century, the influence of new methods of research, many indebted to models favoured by the natural sciences, such as statistical, analytical or empirical approaches, secured an expanding intellectual authority while the hegemony of historical methods declined in relative terms. In the aftermath of this change, the essays collected in History in the Humanities and Social Sciences reflect from a variety of angles on the relevance of historical concerns to representative disciplines as they are configured today.
Crashes involving self-driving cars at least superficially resemble trolley dilemmas. This article discusses what lessons machine ethicists working on the ethics of self-driving cars can learn from trolleyology. The article proceeds by providing an account of the trolley problem as a paradox and by distinguishing two types of solutions to the trolley problem. According to an optimistic solution, our case intuitions about trolley dilemmas are responding to morally relevant differences. The pessimistic solution denies that this is the case. An optimistic solution would yield first-order moral insights for the ethics of self-driving cars, but such a solution is difficult to come by. More plausible is the pessimistic solution, and it teaches us a methodological lesson. The lesson is that machine ethicists should discount case intuitions and instead rely on intuitions and judgments at a higher level of generality.
The precautionary principle (PP) is an influential principle for making decisions when facing uncertain, but potentially severe, harm. However, there is a persistent disagreement about what the principle entails, exactly. It exists in a multitude of formulations and has potentially conflicting ideas associated with it. Is there even such a thing as ‘the precautionary principle’? This paper analyses the debate between unificationists and pluralists about ‘the PP’, arguing that the debate is hindered by neglecting the question of justification. It introduces reflective equilibrium as a method of justification, and sketches how it could be applied to justify a PP.
My aim in this essay is to reorient our understanding of the Kantian ethical project, especially in relation to its assumed rivals. I do this by considering Kant's relation to eudaimonism, especially in its Aristotelian form. I argue for two points. First, once we understand what Kant and Aristotle mean by happiness , we can see that not only is it the case that, by Kant's lights, Aristotle is not a eudaimonist. We can also see that, by Aristotle's lights, Kant is a eudaimonist. Second, we can see that this agreement on eudaimonism actually reflects a deeper, more fundamental agreement on the nature of ethics as a distinctively practical philosophy. This is an important result, not just for the history of moral philosophy but for moral philosophy as well. For it suggests that both Kantians and Aristotelians may well have more argumentative resources available to them than is commonly thought.
This paper defends views like rule consequentialism by distinguishing between two sorts of ideal world objections. It aims to show that one of those sorts of objections is question-begging. Its success would open up a path forward for such views.
According to a diverse and widely popular family of moral theories, there is a class of individuals – typically humans or persons – who have the very same, full moral status. Individuals not falling into that class count for less, or not at all, morally speaking. In this article, I identify two problems for such theories, the mapping problem and the problem of misgrounded value, and argue that they are serious enough to be decisive. I will then propose an alternative account of full and equal moral status that avoids those problems. In grounding full moral status in phenomenal consciousness, it preserves the idea that you and I are equal, but at the same time radically expands the community of moral equals. I conclude by discussing some practical implications of my proposal.
This chapter describes the theoretical foundations of the conception of reflective equilibrium that I adopt for the purpose of this book. According to this conception, reflective equilibrium is an imperfect procedural epistemology which is weakly foundationalist. I argue that there are six criteria that need to be met by an epistemic position to a sufficient degree in order to be in a state of reflective equilibrium.
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