Online research in philosophy

In a series of publications, Tamar Gendler has argued for a distinction between belief and what she calls ‘alief.’ Gendler’s argument for the distinction is a serviceability argument: the distinction is indispensable for explaining a whole slew of phenomena, typically involving ‘belief-behavior mismatch.’ After embedding Gendler’s distinction in a dual-process model of moral cognition, I argue here that the distinction also suggests a possible (dis)solution of what is perhaps the organizing problem of contemporary moral psychology: the apparent tension between the inherently motivational role of moral judgments and their manifestly objectivistic phenomenology. I argue that moral judgments come in two varieties, moral aliefs and moral beliefs, and it is only the former that are inherently motivating and only the latter that have an objectivistic phenomenology. This serves to both bolster the case for the alief/belief distinction and shed new light on otherwise well-trodden territory in metaethics. I start with an exposition of the moral-psychological problem (§1) and a discussion of Gendler’s alief/belief distinction (§2). I then apply the latter to moral judgments in an attempt to dissolve the former (§3). I close with discussion of the upshot for our understanding of moral thought, moral motivation, and moral phenomenology (§4).

In this book, I consider whether the hypothesis of moral dilemmas undermines ethics' pretensions to objectivity. I argue against the view that moral dilemmas challenge the very possibility of ethical theory, as a practical and theoretical enterprise. By examining Kantian, Intuitionist and Utilitarian arguments about moral dilemmas, I show that no ethical theory is capable of avoiding them. I further argue that an adequate ethical theory should admit dilemmas. Dilemmas do not reveal a logical or normative flaw in the theory that permits them to arise, nor are they necessarily generated by subjective mistakes. Rather, dilemmas are a sign of the deliberative capacity of an agent who operates in non-ideal conditions of rationality and cooperation. The inevitability of moral dilemmas shows that we should reconsider the bounds of deliberation, and the purposes of ethical theory. My argument for the philosophical significance of moral dilemmas rests on the claim that an adequate ethical theory should make sense of moral phenomenology, and that moral phenomenology should to be understood from the perspective of an agent who conceives of herself as an agent. The view of moral dilemmas I advocate does not invite skepticism about ethical theory, but suggests that we redefine its scope and its many practical aims.

Moral objectivists hold that there are answers to moral questions, answers that are correct independently of who is asking the question. And they often think that traits of moral phenomenology and discourse support their understanding of moral thinking and moral language, creating a strong presumption against relativist, non-cognitivist and nihilist accounts. This paper questions that assumption, developing an argument of a type that has been alluded to more or less explicitly by proponents of non-cognitivism, relativism and nihilism. If the argument is successful, the existence of widespread and deep moral disagreement prevents objectivism from explaining or making sense of apparently objectivist traits of morality in a straightforward way. The fact that moral discourse and moral thinking seem to be concerned with objective matters gives us no straightforward reason to accept objectivism. Support for objectivism would have to come from a different source.

While not an explicit claim of Hegel’s, this paper aims to use his analysis of ‘Conscience’ in the Phenomenology of Spirit to demonstrate that the conflict betweendifferent moral judgments is morally necessary. That is, rather than being the unfortunate result of ‘hard’ cases, I argue that moral conflict is a necessary condition for the possibility of duty. Grasping the moral ground of moral conflict, I contend, allows us to understand why such conflicts arise, how and why they become entrenched into ‘moral issues’ and what our duties are in such cases. Thus, I aim to articulate both the moral necessity and dutiful resolution of seemingly intractable moral conflicts.

Terry Horgan and Mark Simmons’ work implies four criteria that moral phenomenology must be capable of meeting if it is to be a viable field of study that can make a worthwhile contribution to moral philosophy. It must be (a) about a unifed subject matter as well as being, (b) wide, (c) independent, and (d) robust. Contrary to some scepticism about the possibility or usefulness of this field, I suggest that these criteria can be met by elucidating the very foundations of moral experience or what I call a moral ontology of the human person. I attempt to partially outline such an ontology by engaging with Robert Sokolowski's phenomenology of the human person from a moral perspective. My analysis of Sokolowski's thought leads me to five core ideas of a moral ontology of the human person: well-being, virtue, freedom, responsibility, and phronesis. Though I do not by any means boast a complete moral ontology of the human person, I go on to demonstrate how the account I have presented, or something like it, can go a long way to helping moral phenomenology meet the criteria it requires to be a viable and worthwhile pursuit.

One of the most significant disputes in early modern philosophy was between the moral rationalists and the moral sentimentalists. The moral rationalists — such as Ralph Cudworth, Samuel Clarke and John Balguy — held that morality originated in reason alone. The moral sentimentalists — such as Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson and David Hume — held that morality originated at least partly in sentiment. In addition to arguments, the rationalists and sentimentalists developed rich analogies. The most significant analogy the rationalists developed was between morality and mathematics. The most significant analogy the sentimentalists developed was between morality and beauty. These two analogies illustrate well the main ideas, underlying insights, and accounts of moral phenomenology the two positions have to offer. An examination of the two analogies will thus serve as a useful introduction to the debate between moral rationalism and moral sentimentalism as a whole.

This paper distinguishes between two senses of the term “phenomenology”: a narrow sense (drawn from Nagel) and a broader sense (drawn from Husserl). It claims, with particular reference to the moral sphere, that the narrow meaning of moral phenomenology cannot stand alone, that is, that moral phenomenology in the narrow sense entails moral intentionality. The paper proceeds by examining different examples of the axiological and volitional experiences of both virtuous and dutiful agents, and it notes the correlation between the phenomenal and intentional differences belonging to these experiences. The paper concludes with some reflections on how the focus on the broader sense of “phenomenology” serves to provide a more precise sense of what we might mean by “moral phenomenology.”.

Moral phenomenology is (roughly) the study of those features of occurrent mental states with moral significance which are accessible through direct introspection, whether or not such states possess phenomenal character – a what-it-is-likeness. In this paper, as the title indicates, we introduce and make prefatory remarks about moral phenomenology and its significance for ethics. After providing a brief taxonomy of types of moral experience, we proceed to consider questions about the commonality within and distinctiveness of such experiences, with an eye on some of the main philosophical issues in ethics and how moral phenomenology might be brought to bear on them. In discussing such matters, we consider some of the doubts about moral phenomenology and its value to ethics that are brought up by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong and Michael Gill in their contributions to this issue.

In this short paper, I argue that the phenomenology of moral judgment is not unified across different areas of morality (involving harm, hierarchy, reciprocity, and impurity) or even across different relations to harm. Common responses, such as that moral obligations are experienced as felt demands based on a sense of what is fitting, are either too narrow to cover all moral obligations or too broad to capture anything important and peculiar to morality. The disunity of moral phenomenology is, nonetheless, compatible with some uses of moral phenomenology for moral epistemology and with the objectivity and justifiability of parts of morality.

In this paper, I address the what, the how, and the why of moral phenomenology. I consider first the question What is moral phenomenology?, secondly the question How to pursue moral phenomenology?, and thirdly the question Why pursue moral phenomenology? My treatment of these questions is preliminary and tentative, and is meant not so much to settle them as to point in their answers’ direction.