scholarly journals I Might be Fundamentally Mistaken

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 1-22 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ridge
Keyword(s):  
Moral Belief ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
First Person ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Realist Theory ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Moral Content ◽  
Simon Blackburn ◽  
Moral Error ◽  
Influential Paper

Quasi-realism aspires to preserve the intelligibility of the realist-sounding moral judgments of ordinary people. These judgments include ones of the form, “I believe that p, but I might be mistaken,” where “p” is some moral content. The orthodox quasi-realist strategy (famously developed by Simon Blackburn) is to understand these in terms of the agent’s worrying that some improving change would lead one to aban-don the relevant moral belief. However, it is unclear whether this strate-gy generalizes to cases in which the agent takes their error to be funda-mental in a sense articulated by Andy Egan. In an influential paper, Egan argues that it does not. Egan suggests that Blackburn’s approach is the only game in town for the quasi-realist when it comes to making sense of judgment of fallibility, and therefore concludes that Blackburn’s ina-bility to handle worries about fundamental moral error refutes quasi-realism tout court. Egan’s challenge has generated considerable discus-sion. However, in my view, we have not yet gotten to the heart of the matter. I argue that what is still needed is a fully general, quasi-realist-friendly theory of the nature of first-person judgments of fallibility, such that these judgments are demonstrably consistent with judging that the belief is stable in Egan’s sense. In this article, I develop and defend a fully general quasi-realist theory of such judgments, which meets this demand. With this theory in hand, I argue that Egan’s challenge can be met. Moreover, my discussion of how the challenge is best met provides an elegant diagnosis of where Egan’s argument against goes wrong. On my account, Egan’s argument equivocates at a key point between a “could” and a “would.”

Wittgenstein’s philosophy and action research

2003 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 295-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Shotter
Keyword(s):  
Action Research ◽  
Social Isolation ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Gain Control ◽  
Participatory Culture ◽  
Ordinary People ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
The Social ◽  
Professional Research ◽  
The Many

Three themes seem to be common to both Greenwood’s and Gustavsen’s accounts: One is the social isolation of professional [research] elites from the concerns of ordinary people, which connects with another: the privileging of theory over practice. Both of these are connected, however, with a third: the great, unresolved struggle of ordinary people to gain control over their own lives, to escape from schemes imposed on them by powerful elites, and to build a genuinely participatory culture. An understanding of Wittgenstein’s later philosophy, and the recognition of its striking differences from any previous philosophical works, can make some important contributions to all these issues. Wittgenstein’s aim is not, by the use of reason and argument, to establish any foundational principles to do with the nature of knowledge, perception, the structure of our world, scientific method, etc. Instead, he is concerned to inquire into the actual ways available to us of possibly making sense in the many different practical activities we share in our everyday lives together: “We are not seeking to discover anything entirely new, only what is already in plain view.”

scholarly journals Famine, Affluence, and Amorality

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
David Sackris
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
First Person ◽  
Moral Decision ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Distinct Kind ◽  
Ordinary Case ◽  
Made In ◽  
The Way

I argue that the debate concerning the nature of first-person moral judgment, namely, whether such moral judgments are inherently motivating (internalism) or whether moral judgments can be made in the absence of motivation (externalism), may be founded on a faulty assumption: that moral judgments form a distinct kind that must have some shared, essential features in regards to motivation to act. I argue that there is little reason to suppose that first-person moral judgments form a homogenous class in this respect by considering an ordinary case: student readers of Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”. Neither internalists nor externalists can provide a satisfying account as to why our students fail to act in this particular case, but are motivated to act by their moral judgments in most cases. I argue that the inability to provide a satisfying account is rooted in this shared assumption about the nature of moral judgments. Once we consider rejecting the notion that first-person moral decision- making forms a distinct kind in the way it is typically assumed, the internalist/externalist debate may be rendered moot.

All the Monkeys Aren't in the Zoo: Evolutionary Ethics and the Possibility of Moral Knowledge

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 245-265 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Stingl
Keyword(s):  
Mental Representations ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Error Theory ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Evolutionary Ethics ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
Naturalized Epistemology ◽  
Human Psychology ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Moral Content

The error theory of moral judgment says that moral judgments, though often believed to be objectively true, never are. The tendency to believe in the objectivity of our moral beliefs, like the beliefs themselves, is rooted in objective features of human psychology, and not in objective features of the natural world that might exist apart from human psychology. In naturalized epistemology, it is tempting to take this view as the default hypothesis. It appears to make the fewest assumptions in accounting for the fact that humans not only make moral judgments, but believe them to be, at least some of the time, objectively true. In this paper I argue that from an evolutionary perspective, the error theory is not the most parsimonious alternative. It is simpler to suppose that mental representations with moral content arose as direct cognitive and motivational responses to independent moral facts.

Huck Finn, Moral Reasons and Sympathy

Philosophy ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 87 (4) ◽  
pp. 583-593 ◽  
Author(s):  
Craig Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Moral Belief ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Influential Paper ◽  
Huck Finn ◽  
Huckleberry Finn

AbstractIn his influential paper ‘The Conscience of Huckleberry Finn’, Jonathan Bennett suggests that Huck's failure to turn in the runaway slave Jim as his conscience – a conscience distorted by racism – tells him he ought to is not merely right but also praiseworthy. James Montmarquet however argues against what he sees here as Bennett's ‘anti-intellectualism’ in moral psychology that insofar as Huck lacks and so fails to act on the moral belief that he should help Jim his action is not praiseworthy. In this paper I suggest that we should reject Montmarquet's claim here; that the case of Huck Finn indicates rather how many of our everyday moral responses to others do not and need not depend on any particular moral beliefs we hold about them or their situation.

scholarly journals Why Moral Error Theorists Should Become Revisionary Moral Expressivists

2017 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-72 ◽  
Author(s):  
Toby Svoboda
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Motivation ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Error ◽  
Better Than

Moral error theorists hold that morality is deeply mistaken, thus raising the question of whether and how moral judgments and utterances should continue to be employed. Proposals include simply abolishing morality (Richard Garner), adopting some revisionary fictionalist stance toward morality (Richard Joyce), and conserving moral judgments and utterances unchanged (Jonas Olson). I defend a fourth proposal, namely revisionary moral expressivism, which recommends replacing cognitivist moral judgments and utterances with non-cognitivist ones. Given that non-cognitivist attitudes are not truth apt, revisionary expressivism does not involve moral error. Moreover, revisionary expressivism has the theoretical resources to retain many of the useful features of morality, such as moral motivation, moral disagreement, and moral reasoning. Revisionary expressivism fares better than the three major alternatives in both avoiding moral error and preserving these useful features of morality. I also show how this position differs from the “revolutionary expressivism” of Sebastian Köhler and Michael Ridge.

Cosmopolitan nationalism: ordinary people making sense of diversity†

2010 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 188-206 ◽  
Author(s):  
JUDITH BRETT ◽  
ANTHONY MORAN
Keyword(s):  
Ordinary People ◽  
Making Sense

scholarly journals Précis of Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 397-402
Author(s):  
Jonas Olson
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Error Theory ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Moral Error Theory ◽  
Ontological Question ◽  
Moral Error ◽  
Contemporary Perspective ◽  
Moral Facts

Moral error theorists and moral realists agree about several disputed metaethical issues. They typically agree that ordinary moral judgments are beliefs and that ordinary moral utterances purport to refer to moral facts. But they disagree on the crucial ontological question of whether there are any moral facts. Moral error theorists hold that there are not and that, as a consequence, ordinary moral beliefs are systematically mistaken and ordinary moral judgments uniformly untrue. Perhaps because of its kinship with moral realism, moral error theory is often considered the most notorious of moral scepticisms. While the view has been widely discussed, it has had relatively few defenders. Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence (henceforth met) examines the view from a historical as well as a contemporary perspective, and purports to respond to some of its most prominent challenges. This précis is a brief summary of the book’s content.

scholarly journals Wpływ moralności na przeciwdziałanie zmianom klimatycznym

2020 ◽  
Vol 17 ◽  
pp. 17-41
Author(s):  
Thomas Pölcer ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Case Studies ◽  
Moral Judgement ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Industrialized Countries ◽  
Moral Practice ◽  
Moral Error ◽  
General Conditions

Suppose you are a moral error theorist, i.e., you believe that no moral judgment is true. What, then, ought you to do with regard to our common practice of mak-ing such judgments? Determining the usefulness of our ordinary moral practice is exacerbated by the great number and variety of moral judgments. In-depth case studies may thus be more helpful in clarifying error theory’s practical im-plications than refl ections about morality in general. In this chapter I pursue this strategy with regard to a particularly important matter, namely climate change. First, I establish general conditions for when a moral judgement has any eff ect on those who accept it. Second, I show that the judgement that in-dividuals in industrialized countries are morally obliged to act against climate change does not fulfi l these conditions, and is thus neither benefi cial nor harm-ful. Finally, I sketch several strategies for increasing people’s non-moral moti-vation to act against climate.

scholarly journals Sorting Out Solutions to the Now-What Problem

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
François Jaquet
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Error ◽  
Moral Facts

Moral error theorists face the so-called “now-what problem”: what should we do with our moral judgments from a prudential point of view if these judgments are uniformly false? On top of abolitionism and conservationism, which respectively advise us to get rid of our moral judgments and to keep them, three revisionary solutions have been proposed in the literature: expressivism (we should replace our moral judgments with conative attitudes), naturalism (we should replace our moral judgments with beliefs in non-moral facts), and fictionalism (we should replace our moral judgments with fictional attitudes). In this paper, I argue that expressivism and naturalism do not constitute genuine alternatives to abolitionism, of which they are in the end mere variants—and, even less conveniently, variants that are conform to the very spirit of abolitionism as formulated by its proponents. The main version of fictionalism, by contrast, provides us with a recommendation to which abolitionists cannot consistently subscribe. This leaves us with only one revisionary solution to the now-what problem.

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