Online research in philosophy

In this paper I discuss and try to remove some major stumbling blocks for a Moorean buck-passing account of reasons in terms of value (MBP): There is a pro tanto reason to favour X if and only if X is intrinsically good, or X is instrumentally good, or favouring X is intrinsically good, or favouring X is instrumentally good. I suggest that MBP can embrace and explain the buck-passing intuition behind the far more popular buck-passing account of value, and has (...) the means to avoid the wrong kind of reasons problem. Further, I counter the common suspicion that a Moorean account cannot make sense of deontological views such as Ross's, and that it generally leaves no room for agent-relative reasons. In order to do this, I appeal to the idea that a Moorean account does not dictate the substantive view that values have to be maximized. In some cases, expressing them might be a better response. Finally I lay out and reply to a potentially devastating argument to the effect that a Moorean account makes ought and reasons non-normative. I also criticize Scanlon's attempt to favour his own buck-passing account via consideration of the open question argument. MBP thus emerges as a live option in the buck-passing debate. (shrink)

The denial of the intrinsic value of acts apart from both motives and consequences lies at the heart of Ross’s deontology and his opposition to ideal utilitarianism. Moreover, the claim that acts can have intrinsic value is a staple element of early and contemporary attempts to “consequentialise” all of morality. I first show why Ross’s denial is relevant both for his philosophy and for current debates. Then I consider and reject as inconclusive some of Ross’s explicit and implicit motivations for (...) his claim, stemming from his philosophy of action, his axiology, and his concept of intrinsic value, or a combination of these. I also criticize Ross’s later view that all right acts somehow produce some good, but that the value of some of these goods is explained by the prior rightness of the act. In the course of the discussion, the idea that acts can have intrinsic value apart from motives and consequences gains credibility both from the weaknesses in Ross’s arguments and from some putative examples. So, finally, I distinguish two attitudes in the history of ideal utilitarianism towards the necessity or not to give a detailed account of the intrinsic value of acts, and suggest that a Why Bother attitude is more promising than a Constructive one. (shrink)

In this paper I attempt a critical examination of the multi-system or dual-process view of moral judgment. This view aims to provide a psychological explanation of moral sensitivity, and in particular an explanation of conflicting moral sensitivities in dilemma cases such as the crying baby scenario. I argue that proponents of the multi-system view owe us a satisfactory account of the mechanisms underlying “consequentialist” responses to such scenarios. For one thing, the “cognitive” processes involved in consequentialist reasoning only seem to (...) play a subserving role with respect to the final judgment (providing non-moral inputs to judgment, or exerting additional strength to override the immediate “deontological” response). In this sense, Greene and colleagues fail to identify a peculiar system of moral judgment specularly opposed to the affective “deontological” one. For another, Greene and colleagues’ work on the emotion-cognition dichotomy and the distinction between alarm-bell and currency emotions, though promising, still falls short of providing an adequate and consistent picture of the psychological mechanisms underlying “cognitive” evaluations and verdicts in dilemma scenarios. It is suggested that alongside further experimental work, proponents of this view should pay more attention to the conceptual underpinnings of their distinctions. (shrink)

The aim of this work is to bring analytically to light Sidgwick’s complex views on sexual morality. Sidgwick saw nothing intrinsically, self-evidently, and even derivatively wrong in getting sexual pleasure for its own sake. However, the overall consequences of attempting to modify common sense in matters of sexual ethics seemed to him to be worse, at his time, than retaining the moral category of purity. Sidgwick’s view is then contrasted with John Stuart Mill’s, whom he directly mentions in this connection. (...) Finally, I discuss how Sidgwick’s ethics of sex relates closely to his claims about esoteric morality and to the dualism of practical reason. (shrink)

Frances Kamm argues that physical distance is per se relevant to our duty to give aid to strangers.
Her methods, however, fail to bring into light the relevance per se of distance. To understand the claim that
distance is per se morally relevant, it is helpful to use distinctions devised by Jonathan Dancy among
different roles a feature may play in the explanation of moral reasons, yielding thus different senses of
relevance. A feature can directly count in favor of an action, enable another feature (...) to count in favor of an
action, or strengthen the favoring already done by another feature. For the relevance of nearness that is at
issue in Kamm's thesis, if nearness is relevant at all to our duty to aid strangers, it cannot be relevant in the
way Kamm takes it to be. It cannot directly count in favor of aiding or be a special reason to aid, someone
that non-near agents lack. Nor can physical distance be seen as a consideration that strengthens our
independently existing pro tanto duty to aid strangers, whenever we are near them. (shrink)

Sidgwick’s dualism of the practical reason is the idea that since egoism and utilitarianism<br>aim both to have rational supremacy in our practical decisions, whenever they conflict<br>there is no stronger reason to follow the dictates of either view. The dualism leaves us<br>with a practical problem: in conflict cases, we cannot be guided by practical reason to<br>decide what all things considered we ought to do. There is an epistemic problem as well:<br>the conflict of egoism and utilitarianism shows that they cannot be both (...) self-evident<br>principles. Only the existence of a just God could, for Sidgwick, prevent the conflict and<br>thus solve the dualism. The paper first explores in detail and rejects some reconstructions<br>of the dualism: a purely logical account, and accounts whereby egoism and utilitarianism<br>are principles of pro tanto reasons or of sufficient reasons. Then it proposes a better account,<br>in which egoism and utilitarianism are logically compatible and yet conflicting<br>principles of all things considered reason. The account is shown to fit with Sidgwick’s<br>view of the dualism and of its practical and epistemic pitfalls. Finally, some views are<br>discussed as to the wider positive significance of the dualism, regarded as a challenge to<br>the rational authority of morality, or as indicating the structural opposition of agentrelative<br>and agent-neutral reasons, or again as the imperfect yet amendable attempt at a<br>comprehensive pluralist theory of practical reasons. (shrink)

It has been thought that the prospects for non-naturalism about normativity may be significantly advanced if non-naturalists take the relation of being a reason as the basic normative entity, and so if, inter alia, they endorse a buck-passing account of value. This is thought to yield theoretical benefits regarding (i) the open question argument, (ii) the defence against the charge of queerness, and (iii) demands of parsimony. In the paper I contest these claims. Non- naturalists need not focus on reasons, (...) and so need not, as non-naturalists, endorse a buck-passing account of value. They can choose to hold evaluative notions to be the basic ones, or to have a (reasoned) plurality of basic normative concepts and properties. The debate with the naturalist in those three respects is not going to be significantly influenced by such preliminary conceptual decisions. (shrink)