It has often been suggested that people's ordinary understanding of morality involves a belief in objective moral truths and a rejection of moral relativism. The results of six studies call this claim into question. Participants did offer apparently objectivist moral intuitions when considering individuals from their own culture, but they offered increasingly relativist intuitions considering individuals from increasingly different cultures or ways of life. The authors hypothesize that people do not have a fixed commitment to moral objectivism but instead tend (...) to adopt different views depending on the degree to which they consider radically different perspectives on moral questions. (shrink)

If someone disagrees with my moral views, or more generally if I’m in a group of n people who all disagree with each other, but I don’t have any special evidence or basis for my epistemic superiority, then it’s at best a 1-in-n chance that my views are correct. The skeptical threat from disagreement is thus a kind of moral lottery, to adapt a similar metaphor from Sharon Street. Her own genealogical debunking argument, as I discuss, relies on a premise (...) of such disagreement among evolutionary counterparts. -/- In this paper, I resist the threat from disagreement by showing that, on some of the most influential and most attractive theories of content determination, the premise of moral disagreement cannot serve any skeptical or revisionary purposes. I examine and criticize attempts, made by Gilbert Harman and Sharon Street, to argue from disagreement to relativism by relying on a theory of content determination that involves a principle that, within certain constraints, maximizes the attribution to us of true beliefs. And I examine and criticize Robert Williams’s attempt to show there is moral disagreement by relying on a theory of content determination that involves a principle that instead maximizes the attribution to us of rationality. My overall aim is to defend commonsense moral realism via a careful look at the theory of content and concepts. (shrink)

This paper discusses varieties of normative phenomena, ranging from morality, to epistemic justification, to the rules of chess. It canvases a number of distinctions among these different normative phenomena. The most significant distinction is between formal and authoritative normativity. The prior is the normativity exhibited by any standard one can meet or fail to meet. The latter is the sort of normativity associated with phenomena like the "all-things-considered" ought. The paper ends with a brief discussion of reasons for skepticism about (...) authoritative normativity. (shrink)

The prevailing theoretical framework for theorising about representation construes all representation as involving objective representational contents. This classic framework has tended to drive philosophers either to claim that evaluative judgements are representations and therefore objective, or else to claim that evaluative judgements are not really representations, because they are not objective. However, a more general, already well-explored framework is available, which will allow theorists to treat evaluative judgements as full-fledged representations while leaving open whether they are objective. Such a more (...) general conception of representational content is exemplified, e.g. by Lewis's ‘centred contents’ and Gibbard's framework of ‘contents of judgement’, thus it is not new. I shall start in §1 by introducing the more general framework of perspectival contents and then illustrate in §2 how awareness of it can help expose the fallaciousness of certain widely used forms of argumentation in metaethics. (shrink)

Consider the following facts about the average, philosophically untrained moral relativist: (1.1) The average moral relativist denies the existence of “absolute moral truths.” (1.2) The average moral relativist often expresses her commitment to moral relativism with slogans like ‘What’s true (or right) for you may not be what’s true (or right) for me’ or ‘What’s true (or right) for your culture may not be what’s true (or right) for my culture.’ (1.3) The average moral relativist endorses relativistic views of morality (...) without endorsing relativistic views about science or mathematics. (1.4) The average moral relativist takes moral relativism to be non-relatively true and does not think there is anything contradictory about doing so. (1.5) The average moral relativist adopts an egalitarian attitude toward a wide range of moral values, practices and beliefs, claiming they are all equally legitimate or correct. (1.6) The average moral relativist often admonishes others to be more tolerant of those who engage in alternative ethical practices and to refrain from making negative moral judgments about them. (1.7) The average moral relativist sometimes makes negative moral judgments about the behavior of others—e.g., by harshly judging moral absolutists to be intolerant—but is less inclined to do so when the relativist’s metaethical views are salient in a context of judgment. (1.8) The average moral relativist takes anthropological evidence concerning the worldwide diversity of ethical views and practices to support moral relativism. (shrink)

Mathematical knowledge and moral knowledge (or normative knowledge more generally) can seem intuitively puzzling in similar ways. For example, taking apparent human knowledge of either domain at face value can seem to require accepting that we benefited from some massive and mysterious coincidence. In the mathematical case, a pluralist partial response to access worries has been widely popular. In this paper, I will develop and address a worry, suggested by some works in the recent literature like (Clarke-Doane, 2020), that connections (...) between ought facts and action prevent us from giving a similarly pluralist response to moral access worries. (shrink)

Recent empirical work on folk moral objectivism has attempted to examine the extent to which folk morality presumes that moral judgments are objectively true or false. Some researchers report findings that they take to indicate folk commitment to objectivism (Goodwin & Darley, 2008, 2010, 2012; Nichols & Folds-Bennett, 2003; Wainryb et al., 2004), while others report findings that may reveal a more variable commitment to objectivism (Beebe, 2014; Beebe et al., 2015; Beebe & Sackris, 2016; Sarkissian, et al., 2011; Wright, (...) 2018; Wright, Grandjean, & McWhite, 2013; Wright, McWhite, & Grandjean, 2014). However, the various probes that have been used to examine folk moral objectivism almost always fail to be good direct measures of objectivism. Some critics (Beebe, 2015; Pölzler, 2017, 2018) have suggested that the problems with existing probes are serious enough that they should be viewed as largely incapable of shedding any light on folk metaethical commitments. Building upon the work of Justin Khoo and Joshua Knobe (2018), I argue that many of the existing probes can be seen as good measures of the extent to which people think that the truth of one moral judgment excludes the possibility that a judgment made by a disagreeing party is also true and that the best explanation of the findings obtained using these measures is significant folk support for indexical moral relativism—the view that the content of moral judgments is context-sensitive. If my thesis is correct, many contemporary moral philosophers are deeply mistaken about the metaethical contours of folk morality in one very important respect. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between naturalism and morality and to assess their compatibility. Naturalism is defined as respect for science, for its methods and results. From this respect for science, one can infer two distinct philosophical naturalisms: the methodological and the metaphysical. The relationship between these forms of naturalism and morality depends on the correct conception of morality. This paper differentiates between objectively realistic conception and all other conceptions and argues that while other conceptions (...) can easily fit morality into a naturalistic worldview, objectively realistic conception faces theoretical challenges, including the challenge of explaining how moral facts and concepts play an explanatory role and the challenge of bridging the is/ought gap. The paper focuses on Railton's ethical naturalism as a prominent naturalistic theory of morality and evaluates its ability to overcome these challenges. The conclusion is that, so long as we consider a theory like Railton's, naturalism and realistically conceived morality are incompatible. (shrink)

John MacFarlane explores how we might make sense of the idea that truth is relative. He provides new, satisfying accounts of parts of our thought and talk that have resisted traditional methods of analysis, including what we mean when we talk about what is tasty, what we know, what will happen, what might be the case, and what we ought to do.

This chapter offers an overview of four key debates about the roles of emotion in morality. First, many believe that emotions are an important psychological mechanism for explaining altruistic behavior and moral conscience in humans. Second, there is considerable debate about the causal role of affective reactions in moral judgment. Third, some philosophers have argued that emotions have a constitutive role in moral thought and even moral facts. Finally, philosophers disagree about whether affective influence undermines the justification of moral beliefs (...) or, in suitable circumstances, guides us toward moral truth. (shrink)

I defend normative subjectivism against the charge that believing in it undermines the functional role of normative judgment. In particular, I defend it against the claim that believing that our reasons change from context to context is problematic for our use of normative judgments. To do so, I distinguish two senses of normative universality and normative reasons---evaluative universality and reasons and ontic universality and reasons. The former captures how even subjectivists can evaluate the actions of those subscribing to other conventions; (...) the latter explicates how their reasons differ from ours. I then show that four aspects of the functional role of normativity---evaluation of our and others actions and reasons, normative communication, hypothetical planning, and evaluating counternromative conditionals---at most requires our normative systems being evaluatively universal. Yet reasonable subjectivist positions need not deny evaluative universality. (shrink)

This paper investigates whether different philosophers’ claims about “normativity” are about the same subject or (as recently argued by Derek Parfit) theorists who appear to disagree are really using the term with different meanings, in order to cast disambiguating light on the debates over at least the nature, existence, extension, and analyzability of normativity. While I suggest the term may be multiply ambiguous, I also find reasons for optimism about a common subject-matter for metanormative theory. This is supported partly by (...) sketching a special kind of hybrid view of normative judgment, perspectivism, that occupies a position between cognitivism and noncognitivism, naturalism and nonnaturalism, objectivism and subjectivism, making it more plausible that radically different metanormative theories could be about the same thing. I explore three main fissures: between (i) the “normativity” of language/thought versus that of facts and properties, (ii) abstract versus substantive senses, and (iii) formal versus robust senses. (shrink)

I argue that it’s quite comprehensible to get upset about metaethical nihilism, to indulge what I call nihilistic despair. When we lose the objective moral or normative point of view, we lose the promise of luck-immune guidance and categorical importance, things many of us hope for. This is all quite Williams-friendly, but I reject his puzzling but suggestive remarks that nihilistic despair must be a self-pitying muddle. Finally, I argue that internalism about reasons is even more depressing than outright nihilism, (...) in one way at least. (shrink)

The adage, “one person’s terrorist is another person’s freedom fighter,” is offered as a plausible example of evoking moral relativism. Moral relativists recognize no transcultural moral facts. So, for them, even the concept of harm would be subjective or context-sensitive. Yet one can appeal to cogent transcultural moral reasons to distinguish between deliberately and unjustifiably harming impeccably innocent people and those who might engage in justifiably harming those guilty of grave crimes. In the face of the preventable evil acts that (...) terrorists frequently perpetrate against impeccably innocent people, it is argued that moral relativists have a substantive burden of proof to demonstrate that no cogent transcultural moral reasons exist against the practice of terrorism. In the absence of such a demonstration, it is reasonable to believe that the practice of terrorism, while not totally defeating moral relativism, seems to undermine its credibility. (shrink)

Meta-ethics without normative ethics is empty. In the current climate this hardly needs emphasis: since 1960 or so philosophers in the English-speaking world have put away their earlier reluctance to think about substantive moral issues. For a while, in fact, it seemed that normative ethics would completely dominate the scene in the way metaethics once did, but, happily, this situation has begun to change with the appearance of a stimulating and illuminating body of work on the rational basis of morality. (...) Even those philosophers most intent on solving first-order moral problems have begun to realize that, in the last analysis, normative ethics without meta-ethics is blind. (shrink)

Despite increasing prominence, ‘ought’-contextualism is regarded with suspicion by most metaethicists. As I’ll argue, however, contextualism is a very weak claim, that every metaethicist can sign up to. The real controversy concerns how contextualism is developed. I then draw an oft-overlooked distinction between “parochial” contextualism—on which the contextually-relevant standards are those that the speaker, or others in her environment, subscribe to—and “aspirational” contextualism—on which the contextually-relevant standards are the objective standards for the relevant domain. However, I argue that neither view (...) is acceptable. I suggest an original compromise: “ecumenical contextualism”, on which some uses of ‘ought’ are parochial, others aspirational. Ecumenical contextualism is compatible with realism or antirealism, but either combination yields interesting results. And though it’s a cognitivist view, it is strengthened by incorporating an expressivist insight: for robustly normative usages of ‘ought’, the contextually-relevant standards must be endorsed by the speaker. (shrink)

I respond to an argument made by Gunnar Björnsson and Ragnar Francén Olinder against motivational internalism. Björnsson and Olinder present a hypothesis in which all of us are selfishly motivated to act in accordance with our moral judgments. The conceivability of such a possibility, they argue, rules out motivational internalism. I argue that this is not the case, and that, according to one dominant view about moral judgments, the agents in the hypothesis do not make genuine moral judgments. One therefore (...) cannot argue decisively against motivational internalism without arguing against this view about moral judgments. (shrink)

In this paper I present a new objection to the Aristotelian Naturalism defended by Philippa Foot. I describe this objection as a membership objection because it reveals the fact that AN invites counterexamples when pressed to identify the individuals bound by its normative claims. I present three examples of agents for whom the norms generated by AN are not obviously authoritative: mutants, aliens, and the Great Red Dragon. Those who continue to advocate for Foot's view can give compelling replies to (...) the first two of these examples, but their replies drive the view into an unwelcome result when it faces the last example. I conclude that the concept of being human, on which AN crucially depends, is not as straightforward as Foot's advocates presume. (shrink)

I show that the existence of an omniscient, omnipotent, and essentially omnimalevolent being is impossible given only two metaethical assumptions (viz., moral rationalism and reasons internalism). I then argue (pace Stephen Law) that such an impossibility undercuts Law’s (Relig Stud 46(3):353–373, 2010) evil god challenge.

This article is an introduction to the recent debate about whether rationality is normative – that is, very roughly, about whether we should have attitudes which fit together in a coherent way. I begin by explaining an initial problem – the “detaching problem” – that arises on the assumption that we should have coherent attitudes. I then explain the prominent “wide-scope” solution to this problem, and some of the central objections to it. I end by considering the options that arise (...) if we reject the wide-scope solution. (shrink)

Morality is commonly thought to be normative in a robust and important way. This is commonly cashed out in terms of normative reasons. It is also commonly thought that morality is necessarily and universally normative, i.e., that moral reasons are reasons for any possible moral agent. Taking these commonplaces for granted, I argue for a novel view of moral normativity. I challenge the standard view that moral reasons are reasons to act. I suggest that moral reasons are reasons for having (...) sentiments—in particular, compassion and respect—and I argue that this view has important advantages over the standard view of moral normativity. (shrink)

The goal of this paper is two-fold. First, I begin by reviewing several of themajor points of emphasis among health educatorsas they begin to incorporate multiculturalissues into healthcare education. I thenconsider the role of moral relativism, which iscurrently being endorsed by some healtheducators, as the foundation for resolvingcross-cultural conflicts in healthcare. Iargue that moral relativism is ultimatelyinconsistent with the stated goals inmulticultural curricular proposals and fails toprovide an effective framework for consideringmoral conflicts in cross-cultural settings. Instead, I propose that those (...) methods seekingto establish a common morality, built uponmutually shared values, offer the mostpromising means of resolving cross-culturalconflicts. This leads to my second goal, tocompare recent work in moral pragmatism withwhat is now widely known in bioethics as moral``principlism.'' I argue that while proponentsof principlism and pragmatism each seek toestablish a common foundation for moraldeliberation, they fail to appreciatesignificant similarities between theirrespective approaches. Instead of offeringtwo completely unique and independent methodsof moral deliberation, I suggest thatprinciplism and pragmatism embrace commonthemes that point us in a positive direction,providing an effective framework useful forconsidering cross-cultural conflicts inhealthcare. (shrink)

Contributions to stakeholder theory often do not systematically deal with the prioritization of stakeholder interests. An exception to this is Reed’s Habermasianapproach to stakeholder management. Central to Reed’s discursive approach is Habermas’s distinction between morality and ethics. Many authors in business ethics argue that, because of its distinction between morality and ethics, discourse ethics is well suited for dealing with the pluralism that characterizes modern society, but also mention complications with the application of this distinction. This paper taps into the (...) vivid debate in political philosophy on Habermas’s distinction between morality and ethics and, on this basis, further elaborates how stakeholder interests should be prioritized from the point of view of discourse ethics. It thus estimates the consequences of the objections against Habermas’s distinction for a discursive approach to the prioritization of stakeholder interests. The conclusion is that, although Habermas’s distinction is not as neat as it may seem, it is not fundamentally challenged and may be successfully applied in the prioritization of stakeholder interests. (shrink)

The key problem for normative (or moral) cultural relativism arises as soon as we try to formulate it. It resists formulations that are (1) clear, precise, and intelligible; (2) plausible enough to warrant serious attention; and (3) faithful to the aims of leading cultural relativists, one such aim being to produce an important alternative to moral universalism. Meeting one or two of these conditions is easy; meeting all three is not. I discuss twenty-four candidates for the label "cultural relativism," showing (...) that not one meets all three conditions. In the end I conclude that cultural relativists have produced nothing that threatens universalism. (shrink)

Discussions of moral relativism commonly distinguish between normative relativism (NR) and moral judgment relativism (MJR) without highlighting the differences between the two. One significant difference—a difference between normative relativism and the most prevalent type of moral judgment relativism—is not immediately obvious and has not been discussed in print. This paper explains it and draws out some of its philosophical consequences.

In discussions of practical reason we often encounter the view that a fact is a reason for an agent to act only if the fact is capable of moving the agent to act. This view figures centrally in many philosophical controversies, and while taken for granted by some, it is vigorously disputed by others. In this essay I show that if the disputed position is correctly interpreted, it is well armored against stock objections and implied by a premise that is (...) not only plausible, but generally accepted by the position's critics. (shrink)

Public reason theories are characterized by three conditions: constructivism, representation, and stability. Constructivism holds that justification does not rely on any antecedent moral or political values outside of the procedure of agreement. Representation holds that the reasons for the choice in the model must be rationally explicable to real agents outside the model. Stability holds that the principles chosen in the procedure should be stable upon reflection, especially in the face of diversity in a pluralistic society. Choice procedures that involve (...) at least two-stages with different information, as Rawls’s theory does, will be path-dependent and not meet the condition of representation since it will not be globally coherent. Attempts to solve this problem without eliminating the segmentation of choice in the procedure will run afoul of constructivism or stability. This problem is instructive because it highlights how public reason theories must evolve in the face of increased concerns about diversity. (shrink)

Some think that recent empirical research has shown that peoples' moral intuitions vary in a way that is hard to reconcile with the supposition that they are even modestly reliable. This is in turn supposed to generate skeptical conclusions regarding the claims and theories advanced by ethicists because of the crucial role intuitions have in the arguments offered in support of those claims. I begin by trying to articulate the most compelling version of this challenge. On that version, the main (...) problem is the absence of a believable positive account of the reliability of the intuitions . I then consider the response to this challenge that, in my view, holds most promise. It differs from others by invoking substantive moral assumptions. Such a strategy may appear problematically circular, in that the justification of those assumptions seems to presuppose the very thesis that is challenged . However, although I think that objection can be met, I argue that there are other problems with the strategy. On the basis of a set of conditions that a successful defense of the pertinent kind plausibly must satisfy, I argue that the prospects of developing such an account are bleak. (shrink)

Moral platonism, the claim that moral entities are both objective and prescriptive, is generally thought to be a dead end. In an attempt to defend a moderate form of moral platonism or more precisely platonism about values, I first argue that several of the many versions of this doctrine are not committed to ontological extravagances. I then discuss an important objection due to John McDowell and developed by Michael Smith, according to which moral platonism is incoherent. I argue that objectivism (...) is compatible with the claim that certain ways of being aware of values, namely those involving emotions, are motivating. (shrink)

For more than 100 years, metaethicists have overlooked the best version of G. E. Moore’s Open Question argument. This despite the fact that it appears on the same page of Principia Ethica as his other, weaker versions of the argument. This better Open Question Argument does not rely on introspection of the meanings of ethical terms, and so does not fall to the standard criticisms of Moore. In this paper, I present this ‘new’ Open Question Argument and show that Moore (...) has done to naturalistic ethics something like what Plato’s Euthyphro does to supernaturalistic ethics. (shrink)

Traditionally, the problem of defeating scepticism about the rationality of morality is that of showing that every morally required act is rationally required. Little or no direct attention has been paid to whether we must also show that it is rational for the agent to have and act from the morally appropriate motive, whatever that may be. This is not to say that philosophers have entirely ignored the issue of motives; a fair number—Kant and Aristotle come to mind—are concerned in (...) part with the kind of motive agents ought to have and from which they ought to act. But the link to scepticism has not been clearly made. At issue is whether scepticism is fully defeated if we show that every morally required act is rationally required, even if we leave it possible that a fully rational person who performs the act just “goes through the motions” in doing so. (shrink)

This article is a critical examination of Harry Frankfurt's view of reasons. Frankfurt has argued in a number of recent books for the view which holds that all practical reasons are a function of what we love. This article examines Frankfurt's key argument for this claim. It uses the analogy of a similar argument in the domain of epistemic reasons to show where Frankfurt's argument fails. It also argues that there are a number of plausible views about practical reasons that (...) are available for us as a result. (shrink)

According to contextualist theories in metaethics, when you use a moral term in a context, the context plays an ineliminable part in determining what natural property will be the semantic value of the term. Furthermore, on subjectivist and relativist versions of these views, it is either the speaker's own moral code or her moral community's moral code that constitutes the reference-fixing context. One standard objection to views of this type is that they fail to enable us to disagree in ordinary (...) conversations. In this chapter, I develop a new response to this objection on the basis of Kai von Fintel and Anthony Gillies' notion of proposition clouds. I argue that, because we live in a multicultural society, the conversational contexts we face will fail to disambiguate between all the things we could mean. This is why we can at best put into play proposition clouds when we make moral utterances. All the propositions in such clouds are then available for rejection and acceptance on the behalf of our audiences. The norms of conversation then guide us to make informative contributions to the conversation - accept and reject propositions in a way that leads to co-ordination of action and choice. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to defend G. E. Moore's open question argument, understood as an argument directed against analytic reductionism, the view that moral properties are analytically reducible to non-moral properties. In the first section I revise Moore's argument in order to make it as plausible and resistant against objections as possible. In the following two sections I develop the argument further and defend it against the most prominent objections raised against it. The conclusion of my line of (...) reasoning is that the open question argument offers the best explanation of our responses to the questions put in the argument, namely that analytic reductionism is mistaken. (shrink)

Contemporary philosophers offer three kinds of justification for morality. Some, following plato, claim that morality is justified by self-interest. Others, following hume as he is frequently interpreted, claim that morality is justified in terms of other-regarding interests, wants or intentions that people happen to have. And still others, following kant, claim that morality is justified in terms of the requirements of practical reason. In "the moral point of view" published in 1958 and in a series of articles continuing to the (...) present, kurt baier has defended this third sort of justification for morality. In this paper, after years of respectful opposition, i join forces with baier and argue that only a justification of this third sort can be fully adequate and then only when it is developed in a certain way. I begin by showing what is wrong or defective in the other justifications. Then i consider attempts by baier and others to elaborate the third sort of justification. Drawing upon their work, i present a justification based on the requirements of practical reason that succeeds in demonstrating that the rational egoist acts contrary to reason. (shrink)

Legal realism comes in two main versions, namely American legal realism and Scandinavian legal realism. In this article, I shall be concerned with the Scandinavian realists, who were naturalists and non-cognitivists, and who maintained that conceptual analysis is a central task of legal philosophers, and that such analysis must proceed in a naturalist, anti-metaphysical spirit. Specifically, I want to consider the commitment to ontological naturalism and non-cognitivism on the part of the Scandinavians and its implications for their view of the (...) nature of law. I argue that the Scandinavians differ from legal positivists in that they reject the idea that there are legal relations, that is, legal entities and properties, and to varying degrees defend the view that law is a matter of human behavior rather than legal norms, and that they do not and cannot accept the idea that there is a ‘world of the ought’ in Kelsen's sense. I also argue, more specifically, that the objection to non-naturalist theories raised by the Scandinavians—that there is and can be no connection between the higher realm of norms and values and the world of time and space—is convincing, and that Kelsen's introduction of a so-called modally indifferent substrate does nothing to undermine this objection. In addition, I argue that the Scandinavians can account for the existence of legal relations that do not presuppose the existence of morally binding legal norms by embracing conventionalism about the existence of the sources of law, while pointing out that in doing so they would also be abandoning their legal realism for legal positivism. Finally, I argue that the implications for legal scholarship of the realist emphasis on human behavior instead of legal norms is not well explained by the realists and appear to amount to little more than a preference for teleological interpretation of legal norms. (shrink)

Legal realism comes in two main versions, namely American legal realism and Scandinavian legal realism. In this article, I shall be concerned with the Scandinavian realists, who were naturalists and non-cognitivists, and who maintained that conceptual analysis is a central task of legal philosophers, and that such analysis must proceed in a naturalist, anti-metaphysical spirit. Specifically, I want to consider the commitment to ontological naturalism and non-cognitivism on the part of the Scandinavians and its implications for their view of the (...) nature of law. I argue that the Scandinavians differ from legal positivists in that they reject the idea that there are legal relations, that is, legal entities and properties, and to varying degrees defend the view that law is a matter of human behavior rather than legal norms, and that they do not and cannot accept the idea that there is a ‘world of the ought’ in Kelsen's sense. I also argue, more specifically, that the objection to non-naturalist theories raised by the Scandinavians—that there is and can be no connection between the higher realm of norms and values and the world of time and space—is convincing, and that Kelsen's introduction of a so-called modally indifferent substrate does nothing to undermine this objection. In addition, I argue that the Scandinavians can account for the existence of legal relations that do not presuppose the existence of morally binding legal norms by embracing conventionalism about the existence of the sources of law, while pointing out that in doing so they would also be abandoning their legal realism for legal positivism. Finally, I argue that the implications for legal scholarship of the realist emphasis on human behavior instead of legal norms is not well explained by the realists and appear to amount to little more than a preference for teleological interpretation of legal norms. (shrink)

This article provides a critical introduction to contractualism as a moral or ethical theory, that is, as a theory of the rightness and wrongness of individual conduct – focusing specifically on the influential 'Kantian' version of contractualism due to T. M. Scanlon. I begin by elucidating the key features of Scanlon's contractualism: justifiability to others; reasonable rejectability; the individualist restriction; and mutual recognition. I then turn to discuss both its appeal and the main objections that have been raised to it (...) – objections concerning our duties to the cognitively limited and impaired, aggregation, demandingness, normativity and explanatory adequacy. I conclude by mentioning some contractualist alternatives to Scanlon's theory. (shrink)

A difficult problem for contractualists is how to provide an interpretation of the contractual situation that is both subject to appropriately stringent constraints and yet also appropriately sensitive to certain features of us as we actually are. My suggestion is that we should embrace a model of contractualism that is structurally analogous to the “advice model” of the ideal observer theory famously proposed by Michael Smith (1994; 1995). An advice model of contractualism is appealing since it promises to deliver a (...) straightforward solution to the so-called “conditional fallacy.” But it faces some formidable challenges. On the face of it, it seems to be straightforwardly conceptually incoherent. And it seems to deliver a solution to the conditional fallacy at the cost of being vulnerable to what I shall call “the concessional fallacy.” I shall consider how, if at all, these challenges are to be met. I shall then conclude by considering what this might mean for the so-called “ideal/non-ideal theory” issue. (shrink)

Although moral relativists often appeal to cases of apparent moral disagreement between members of different communities to motivate their view, accounting for these exchanges as evincing genuine disagreements constitutes a challenge to the coherence of moral relativism. While many moral relativists acknowledge this problem, attempts to solve it so far have been wanting. In response, moral relativists either give up the claim that there can be moral disagreement between members of different communities or end up with a view on which (...) these disagreements have no “epistemic significance” because they are always faultless. This paper introduces an alternative strategy: accounting for disagreement in terms of “metalinguistic negotiation”. It argues that this strategy constitutes a better solution to the challenge disagreement poses for moral relativists because it leads to a nuanced understanding of the epistemic significance of moral disagreement between members of different communities. The upshot is a novel account of disagreement for moral relativists that has consequences for how moral relativism should be understood. (shrink)

The existence of deep and persistent moral disagreement poses a problem for a defender of moral knowledge. It seems particularly clear that a philosopher who thinks that we know a great many moral truths should explain how human populations have failed to converge on those truths. In this paper, I do two things. First, I show that the problem is more difficult than it is often taken to be, and second, I criticize a popular response, which involves claiming that many (...) false moral beliefs are the product of nonmoral ignorance. (shrink)

The Water Margin is one of the four great classical novels of China. It describes how people from different walks of life were driven to become outlaws as a result of poor governance and widespread corruption. These outlaws have been regarded by some commentators as heroes, despite the fact that they perform wanton killing, over retribution, and cannibalism. Liu Zaifu 劉再復 argues that the novel has contributed to the moral downfall of the Chinese people. In this essay, I put forward (...) various arguments in objection to Liu. I think Liu’s argument is unsound, partly because he fails to address the nature of the cultural confrontation between modern readers and The Water Margin. By conducting an evaluation of Liu, I also consider a range of issues concerning how we may understand The Water Margin, and how the novel may morally relate to us in modern society. (shrink)

In this paper I argue that the explanationist argument in favour of moral realism fails. According to this argument, the ability of putative moral properties to feature in good explanations provides strong evidence for, or entails, the metaphysical claims of moral realism. Some have rejected this argument by denying that moral explanations are ever good explanations. My criticism is different. I argue that even if we accept that moral explanations are (sometimes) good explanations the metaphysical claims of realism do not (...) follow. (shrink)

What is the connection between reasons and motives? According to Reasons Internalism there is a non-trivial conceptual connection between normative reasons and the possibility of rationally accessing relevant motivation. Reasons Internalism is attractive insofar as it captures the thought that reasons are for reasoning with and repulsive insofar as it fails to generate sufficient critical distance between reasons and motives. Rather than directly adjudicate this dispute, I extract from it two generally accepted desiderata on theories of normative reasons and argue (...) that a new theory can satisfy both. The new theory locates part of the meaning of normative reason statements in their role in normative discussion. It generates a view of the connection between reasons and motives that is distinct from Reasons Internalism, yet distinctively in its spirit. (shrink)