Moral Hedging and Responding to Reasons

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (3):765-789 (2019)
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Abstract

In this paper, I argue that the fetishism objection to moral hedging fails. The objection rests on a reasons-responsiveness account of moral worth, according to which an action has moral worth only if the agent is responsive to moral reasons. However, by adopting a plausible theory of non-ideal moral reasons, one can endorse a reasons-responsiveness account of moral worth while maintaining that moral hedging is sometimes an appropriate response to moral uncertainty. Thus, the theory of moral worth upon which the fetishism objection relies does not, in fact, support that objection.

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Amelia Hicks
Kansas State University

Citations of this work

Non-ideal prescriptions for the morally uncertain.Amelia Hicks - 2021 - Philosophical Studies 179 (4):1039-1064.
The Subjective Ought and the Accessibility of Moral Truths.Frederick Choo - 2024 - American Philosophical Quarterly 61 (3):245-253.

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References found in this work

The moral problem.Michael Smith - 1994 - Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell.
Unprincipled virtue: an inquiry into moral agency.Nomy Arpaly - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Ifs and Oughts.Niko Kolodny & John MacFarlane - 2010 - Journal of Philosophy 107 (3):115-143.
Acting for the right reasons.Julia Markovits - 2010 - Philosophical Review 119 (2):201-242.
The Right and the Good.Some Problems in Ethics.W. D. Ross & H. W. B. Joseph - 1933 - Journal of Philosophy 30 (19):517-527.

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