Group Agency Meets Metaethics: How to Craft a More Compelling Form of Normative Relativism

In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics Volume 15. Oxford University Press. pp. 219-240 (2020)
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Abstract

The author argues that well-known forms of relativism are unable to accommodate, at once, a set of three highly intuitive theses about the distinctive character of moral reasons. Yet the author argues it is possible to formulate a novel form of normative relativism that has the power to accommodate these claims. The proposed view combines the relativist idea that the normative facts are attitude-dependent with the insight that there are non-human agents to which it makes sense to attribute the kinds of attitudes that give rise to normative reasons. Societies, too, can possess reasons to pursue their aims. What distinguishes moral reasons from reasons of practical rationality is that the former apply directly to societies in virtue of aims held by each society as a group, while the latter apply directly to persons in light of their own individual interests.

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Michelle M. Dyke
Tufts University

Citations of this work

Moral relativism.Christopher Gowans - 2015 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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References found in this work

Slaves of the passions.Mark Schroeder - 2007 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Group agency: the possibility, design, and status of corporate agents.Christian List & Philip Pettit - 2011 - New York: Oxford University Press. Edited by Philip Pettit.
Moral realism: a defence.Russ Shafer-Landau - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Language, truth and logic.Alfred Jules Ayer - 1936 - London,: V. Gollancz.

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