Moral properties and truths

2021 ◽  
pp. 160-180
Author(s):  
Susana Nuccetelli
Keyword(s):  
Moral Properties

The Puzzle of Pure Moral Motivation

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adam Lerner
Keyword(s):  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Moral Property ◽  
Moral Inquiry ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
State Of Affairs

People engage in pure moral inquiry whenever they inquire into the moral features of some act, agent, or state of affairs without inquiring into the non-moral features of that act, agent, or state of affairs. The first section of this chapter argues that ordinary people act rationally when they engage in pure moral inquiry, and so any adequate view in metaethics ought to be able to explain this fact. The Puzzle of Pure Moral Motivation is to provide such an explanation. The remaining sections of the chapter argue that each of the standard views in metaethics has trouble providing such an explanation. A metaethical view can provide such an explanation only if it meets two constraints: it allows ordinary moral inquirers to know the essences of moral properties, and the essence of each moral property makes it rational to care for its own sake whether that property is instantiated.

Reality and Morality

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Billy Dunaway
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Language ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Realist View

This book develops and defends a framework for moral realism. It defends the idea that moral properties are metaphysically elite, or privileged parts of reality. It argues that realists can hold that this makes them highly eligible as the referents for our moral terms, an application of a thesis sometimes called reference magnetism. And it elaborates on these theses by introducing some natural claims about how we can know about morality, by having beliefs that are free from a kind of risk of error. This package of theses in metaphysics, meta-semantics, and epistemology is motivated with a view to an explanation of possible moral disagreements. Many writers have emphasized the scope of moral disagreement, and have given compelling examples of possible users of moral language who appear to be genuinely disagreeing, rather than talking past one another, with their use of moral language. What has gone unnoticed is that there are limits to these possible disagreements, and not all possible users of moral language are naturally interpreted as capable of genuine disagreement. The realist view developed in this book can explain both the extent of, and the limits to, moral disagreement, and thereby has explanatory power that counts significantly in its favor.

Alternatives

2020 ◽  
pp. 112-138
Author(s):  
Holly M. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Action Theory ◽  
Human Action ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Future Work

Consequentialists have long debated (as deontologists should) how to define an agent’s alternatives, given that (a) at any particular time an agent performs numerous “versions” of actions, (b) an agent may perform several independent co-temporal actions, and (c) an agent may perform sequences of actions. We need a robust theory of human action to provide an account of alternatives that avoids previously debated problems. After outlining Alvin Goldman’s action theory (which takes a fine-grained approach to act individuation) and showing that the agent’s alternatives must remain invariant across different normative theories, I address issue (a) by arguing that an alternative for an agent at a time is an entire “act tree” performable by her, rather than any individual act token. I argue further that both tokens and trees must possess moral properties, and I suggest principles governing how these are inherited among trees and tokens. These proposals open a path for future work addressing issues (b) and (c).

scholarly journals There Are No Easy Counterexamples to Legal Anti-Positivism

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emad H. Atiq
Keyword(s):  
General Theory ◽  
Social Philosophy ◽  
Social Practices ◽  
Legal Rule ◽  
False Negatives ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Theory Of Law ◽  
Inclusive Form ◽  
Moral Facts

Journal of Ethics & Social Philosophy, ForthcomingLegal anti-positivism is widely believed to be a general theory of law that generates far too many false negatives. If anti-positivism is true, certain rules bearing all the hallmarks of legality are not in fact legal. This impression, fostered by both positivists and anti-positivists, stems from an overly narrow conception of the kinds of moral facts that ground legal facts: roughly, facts about what is morally optimific — morally best or morally justified or morally obligatory given our social practices. A less restrictive view of the kinds of moral properties that ground legality results in a form of anti-positivism that can accommodate any legal rule consistent with positivism, including the alleged counterexamples. I articulate an ‘inclusive’ form of anti-positivism that is not just invulnerable to extensional challenge from the positivist. It is the only account that withstands extensional objections, while incorporating, on purely conceptual grounds, a large part of the content of morality into law.

Moral Perception: Causal, Phenomenological, and Epistemological Elements

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Belief ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Perception ◽  
Perceptual Knowledge ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Do So

This chapter analyzes how perception is a kind of experiential information-bearing relation between the perceiver and the object perceived. It argues that even if moral properties are not themselves causal, they can be perceptible. But the dependence of moral perception on non-moral perception does not imply an inferential dependence of all moral belief or moral judgment on non-moral belief or judgment. This kind of grounding explains how a moral belief arising in perception can constitute perceptual knowledge and can do so on grounds that are publicly accessible and, though not a guarantee of it, a basis for ethical agreement. The chapter also shows how perceptual moral knowledge is connected not only with other moral knowledge but also with intuition and emotion.

Chimeras, Superchimps, and Post-persons

2021 ◽  
pp. 197-214
Author(s):  
Sarah Chan
Keyword(s):  
Moral Status ◽  
Transition Process ◽  
Biological Species ◽  
Species Boundaries ◽  
Human Species ◽  
The World ◽  
Species Boundary ◽  
The Creation ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Status Enhancement

In the world of contemporary biotechnology, our thinking about species and moral status is being challenged in new ways. First, the creation of interspecies chimeras, in disrupting the human/non-human species boundary, forces us also to go beyond species boundaries in considering how to determine the moral status of these new beings. Second, the possibility of moral status enhancement (or at least enhancing the capacities that on some accounts give rise to moral status), both for non-human animals and for humans, may lead to members of existing biological species having new moral properties, or perhaps even the creation of new ‘moral species’. This chapter explores normative and conceptual challenges raised by the prospect of crossing both biological and moral ‘species boundaries’. It examines the implications of species transitions in relation to identity, obligations towards existing beings and beings that might be created via the species transition process; and reflects on how this might advance our thinking about moral status.

Error Theory and Naturalism

2020 ◽  
pp. 39-66
Author(s):  
Simon Robertson
Keyword(s):  
Error Theory ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
Moral Properties

This is the first of two chapters examining Nietzsche’s attacks on morality’s foundational presuppositions. Presenting him as an error theorist about morality and its categoricity, the chapter distinguish two approaches to arguing for it: ‘metaphysical’ and ‘conceptual’. The rest of the present chapter considers his metaphysical arguments. These comprise naturalistically motivated arguments from queerness and best explanation against the existence of metaphysically robust, categoricity-conferring, moral properties. Such arguments are standard antirealist fare; but they face significant problems. This motivates the need for an alternative approach, pursued in Ch.4. Nonetheless, the chapter shows that we can redeploy some of the same resources used in the earlier arguments to generate a series of challenges that together make it incumbent on the moralist to show there actually are categorical requirements.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 213-218
Author(s):  
Christopher Cowie
Keyword(s):  
Error Theory ◽  
Reasons For Action ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Moral Error Theory ◽  
Moral Error ◽  
Epistemic Consequentialism ◽  
Argument From Analogy ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Categorical Reasons

The views outlined in earlier chapters are systematically presented. These include: the truth of epistemic institutionalism and falsity of analogous institutionalist views in morality; the challenges facing categorical reasons for action that do not apply to categorial reasons for belief; the reducible nature of epistemic properties and relations—including the defensibility of this view in light of concerns with the normativity of probability and the falsity of both veritism and epistemic consequentialism—in contrast to the irreducible nature of moral properties and relations, and the possibility of ‘the puzzling combination’. It is concluded that the argument from analogy fails and that the moral error theory may yet be true, but that it would be illegitimate to conclude that it is true.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document