scholarly journals Non-Naturalism and Reasons-Firstism: How to Solve the Discontinuity Problem by Reducing Two Queerness Worries to One

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Moberger
Keyword(s):  
Discontinuity Problem ◽  
Moral Requirements

AbstractA core tenet of metanormative non-naturalism is that genuine or robust normativity—i.e., the kind of normativity that is characteristic of moral requirements, and perhaps also of prudential, epistemic and even aesthetic requirements—is metaphysically special in a way that rules out naturalist analyses or reductions; on the non-naturalist view, the normative is sui generis and metaphysically discontinuous with the natural (or descriptive or non-normative). Non-naturalists agree, however, that the normative is modally as well as explanatorily dependent on the natural. These two commitments—discontinuity and dependence—at least initially pull in opposite directions, and one of the central challenges to non-naturalism is how to reconcile them. In this paper I spell out the most pressing version of this discontinuity problem, as I propose to call it, and I go on to offer a novel solution. Drawing on the ideology of reasons-firstism, I formulate an account of normative explanation which reconciles the two commitments, and I argue that competing accounts either do not solve the problem or are implausible on independent grounds.

Fiduciary Principles in Corporate Law

2019 ◽  
pp. 60-78
Author(s):  
Julian Velasco
Keyword(s):  
Voting Rights ◽  
Corporate Law ◽  
Fiduciary Duty ◽  
Duty Of Care ◽  
Profit Motive ◽  
Fiduciary Duties ◽  
Common Misconception ◽  
Strict Enforcement ◽  
Default Rules ◽  
Moral Requirements

This chapter examines fiduciary duty in corporate law. Fiduciary duty is pervasive as well as all encompassing in corporate law. One common misconception about fiduciary duty in corporate law is that it is merely aspirational. Fiduciary duties are not simply moral requirements, they are legal ones. They are not merely suggestions, they represent the demands of the law. Although corporate law has often compromised rather than insisting upon strict enforcement of fiduciary law principles, these compromises are due to practical considerations that are entirely consistent with the goals of fiduciary law. In corporate law, general fiduciary law principles are balanced with practical considerations concerning the profit motive in order to achieve the best overall result for the shareholders. Understanding this tension between ambition and practicality is key to understanding fiduciary duty in corporate law. This chapter first considers the triggers for fiduciary duty in corporate law before discussing the role that the duty of loyalty plays in corporate law. It then explores the duty of care in corporate law, along with other fiduciary duties such as good faith, takeover situations and contests for control, shareholder voting rights, and the duty to monitor and the duty to disclose. The chapter proceeds by analyzing mandatory and default rules regarding the extent to which fiduciary duties can be waived in corporate law and concludes with an overview of remedies for breach of fiduciary duty.

scholarly journals On James Sterba’s Refutation of Theistic Arguments to Justify Suffering

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 64
Author(s):  
Bruce R. Reichenbach
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Recent Book ◽  
Middle Ground ◽  
Moral Decision Making ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Moral Principles ◽  
Divine Intervention ◽  
Horrendous Evils ◽  
Consistent Application ◽  
Moral Requirements

In his recent book Is a Good God Logically Possible? and article by the same name, James Sterba argued that the existence of significant and horrendous evils, both moral and natural, is incompatible with the existence of God. He advances the discussion by invoking three moral requirements and by creating an analogy with how the just state would address such evils, while protecting significant freedoms and rights to which all are entitled. I respond that his argument has important ambiguities and that consistent application of his moral principles will require that God remove all moral and natural evils. This would deleteriously restrict not only human moral decision making, but also the knowledge necessary to make moral judgments. He replies to this critique by appealing to the possibility of limited divine intervention, to which I rejoin with reasons why his middle ground is not viable.

On Discontinuity Problem at Fixed Point

2018 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 499-517 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. P. Pant ◽  
Nihal Yilmaz Özgür ◽  
Nihal Taş
Keyword(s):  
Fixed Point ◽  
Discontinuity Problem

Reasonable Self-Interest

1997 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-85
Author(s):  
Thomas E. Hill
Keyword(s):  
The Self ◽  
Rational Requirement ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
Interest Model ◽  
Moral Requirements

Philosophers have debated for millennia about whether moral requirements are always rational to follow. The background for these debates is often what I shall call “the self-interest model.” The guiding assumption here is that the basic demand of reason, to each person, is that one must, above all, advance one's self-interest. Alternatively, debate may be framed by a related, but significantly different, assumption: the idea that the basic rational requirement is to develop and pursue a set of personal ends in an informed, efficient, and coherent way, whether one's choice of ends is based on self-interested desires or not. For brevity I refer to this as “the coherence-and-efficiency model.” Advocates of both models tend to think that, while it is sufficiently clear in principle what the rational thing to do is, what remains in doubt is whether it is always rational to be moral. They typically assume that morality is concerned, entirely or primarily, with our relations to others, especially with obligations that appear to require some sacrifice or compromise with the pursuit of self-interest.

scholarly journals Benefiting from Wrongdoing and Sustaining Wrongful Harm

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 530-552 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christian Barry ◽  
David Wiens
Keyword(s):  
Social Contexts ◽  
Reasonable Disagreement ◽  
Per Se ◽  
General Explanation ◽  
Moral Requirements ◽  
Special Duty ◽  
Special Duties

Some moral theorists argue that innocent beneficiaries of wrongdoing may have special remedial duties to address the hardships suffered by the victims of the wrongdoing. These arguments generally aim to simply motivate the idea that being a beneficiary can provide an independent ground for charging agents with remedial duties to the victims of wrongdoing. Consequently, they have neglected contexts in which it is implausible to charge beneficiaries with remedial duties to the victims of wrongdoing, thereby failing to explore the limits of the benefiting relation in detail. Our aim in this article is to identify a criterion to distinguish contexts in which innocent beneficiaries plausibly bear remedial duties to the victims of wrongdoing from those in which they do not. We argue that innocent beneficiaries incur special duties to the victims of wrongdoing (qua beneficiary) if and only if receiving and retaining the benefits sustains wrongful harm. We develop this criterion by identifying and explicating two general modes of sustaining wrongful harm. We also show that our criterion offers a general explanation for why some innocent beneficiaries incur a special duty to the victims of wrongdoing while others do not. By sustaining wrongful harm, beneficiaries-with-duties contribute to wrongful harm, and we ordinarily have relatively stringent moral requirements against contributing to wrongful harm. On our account, innocently benefiting from wrongdoing per se does not generate duties to the victims of wrongdoing. Rather, beneficiaries acquire such duties because their receipt and retention of the benefits of wrongdoing contribute to the persistence of the wrongful harm suffered by the victim. We conclude by showing that our proposed criterion also illuminates why there can be reasonable disagreement about whether beneficiaries have a duty to victims in some social contexts.

scholarly journals Michael Smith and the Daleks: Reason, Morality, and Contingency

Utilitas ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Lenman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Michael Smith ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Moral Requirements

Smith has defended the rationalist's conceptual claim that moral requirements are categorical requirements of reason, arguing that no status short of this would make sense of our taking these requirements as seriously as we do. Against this I argue that Smith has failed to show either that our moral commitments would be undermined by possessing only an internal, contextual justification or that they need presuppose any expectation that rational agents must converge on their acceptance. His claim that this rationalistic understanding of metaethics is required for the intelligibility of moral disagreement is also found to be inadequately supported. It is further proposed that the rationalist's substantive claims – that there are such categorical requirements of reason and that our actual moral commitments are a case in point – are liable to disappointment; and that the conceptual claim is fatally undermined by reflection on how we might best respond to such disappointment.

Reasons Consequentialism

2013 ◽  
Vol 10 (5) ◽  
pp. 671-682 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Sachs
Keyword(s):  
Recent Book ◽  
Moral Requirements

Douglas Portmore’s recent book, Commonsense Consequentialism: Wherein Rationality Meets Morality, is an ambitious, painstaking effort to render the moral requirements of consequentialism consistent both with our intuitions and with the requirements of rationality. Portmore argues for a version of consequentialism that requires one to act in accordance with one’s reasons for preference or reasons for desire. I raise doubts here as to whether such reasons can explain moral requirements and whether, if they do, it would be of any practical use to know that they do.

Kant's Justification of Ethics

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Owen Ware
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Practical Reason ◽  
Human Freedom ◽  
Moral Law ◽  
Critical Methodology ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Historical Contextualization ◽  
Metaphysics Of Morals ◽  
Moral Normativity ◽  
Moral Requirements

Kant’s arguments for the reality of human freedom and the normativity of the moral law continue to inspire work in contemporary moral philosophy. Many prominent ethicists invoke Kant, directly or indirectly, in their efforts to derive the authority of moral requirements from a more basic conception of action, agency, or rationality. But many commentators have detected a deep rift between the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason, leaving Kant’s project of justification exposed to conflicting assessments and interpretations. In this major re-reading of Kant, Owen Ware defends the controversial view that Kant’s mature writings on ethics share a unified commitment to the moral law’s primacy. Using both close analysis and historical contextualization, Owen Ware overturns a paradigmatic way of reading Kant’s arguments for morality and freedom, situating them within Kant’s critical methodology at large. The result is a novel understanding of Kant that challenges much of what goes under the banner of Kantian arguments for moral normativity today.

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