After the fall: Religious capacities and the error theory of morality

2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 751-752 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Stingl ◽  
John Collier
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Moral Belief ◽  
Error Theory ◽  
Competitive Environment ◽  
Moral Cognition ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Target Article ◽  
Psychological Capacities ◽  
Error Theories

The target article proposes an error theory for religious belief. In contrast, moral beliefs are typically not counterintuitive, and some moral cognition and motivation is functional. Error theories for moral belief try to reduce morality to nonmoral psychological capacities because objective moral beliefs seem too fragile in a competitive environment. An error theory for religious belief makes this unnecessary.

Religion and Ethics—I

1992 ◽  
Vol 31 ◽  
pp. 123-134
Author(s):  
Stewart Sutherland
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Educational Theory ◽  
Moral Belief ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Religion And Ethics ◽  
Religious Teaching ◽  
The Relationship

It was, I believe, Thomas Arnold who wrote: ‘Educate men without religion and all you make of them is clever devils’. Thus the Headmaster of one famous school summarized pithily the view of the relationship between religion and ethics which informed educational theory and practice in this country for at least a further century. There is a confusion of two different assumptions usually to be found in this context. The first is that religious belief can provide an intellectual foundation (logical, or epistemological, or sometimes both) for moral belief; the second is that the effect of religious teaching is to improve behaviour according to the norms of some particular set of moral beliefs.

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 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.

The Error Theory

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bart Streumer
Keyword(s):  
Error Theory ◽  
Reasons For Belief ◽  
Moral Error ◽  
Error Theories

This chapter asks to which judgements the error theory applies, what the error theory entails, and whether what the error theory entails can be true. It argues that the error theory does not apply to judgements about standards, but does apply to instrumental normative judgements and judgements about reasons for belief. It then compares the error theory that this book defends to the moral error theories that have been defended by J.L. Mackie, Richard Joyce, and Jonas Olson. The chapter argues that Mackie, Joyce, and Olson underestimate the generality of their own arguments. It ends by arguing that the error theory entails that all normative judgements are false, and that it can be true that all normative judgements are false.

Defending Moral Judgment

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua May
Keyword(s):  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Framing Effects ◽  
Moral Belief ◽  
Dual Process ◽  
Substantial Influence ◽  
Trade Off ◽  
Moral Skepticism ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Main Basis

Wide-ranging debunking arguments aim to support moral skepticism based on empirical evidence (particularly of evolutionary pressures, framing effects, automatic emotional heuristics, and incidental emotions). But such arguments are subject to a debunker’s dilemma: they can identify an influence on moral belief that is either substantial or defective, but not both. When one identifies a genuinely defective influence on a large class of moral beliefs (e.g. framing effects), this influence is insubstantial, failing to render the beliefs unjustified. When one identifies a main basis for belief (e.g. automatic heuristics), the influence is not roundly defective. There is ultimately a trade-off for sweeping debunking arguments in ethics: identifying a substantial influence on moral belief implicates a process that is not genuinely defective. We thus lack empirical reason to believe that moral judgment is fundamentally flawed. Our dual process minds can yield justified moral beliefs despite automatically valuing more than an action’s consequences.

McDowell on Transcendental Arguments, Scepticism and “Error Theory”

2014 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 109-124
Author(s):  
Alan Thomas
Keyword(s):  
External World ◽  
Error Theory ◽  
Perceptual Content ◽  
Transcendental Argument ◽  
John Mcdowell ◽  
Transcendental Arguments ◽  
Error Theories ◽  
Philosophical Scepticism

John McDowell has recently changed his line of response to philosophical scepticism about the external world. He now claims to be in a position to use the strategy of transcendental argumentation in order to show the falsity of the sceptic’s misrepresentation of our ordinary epistemic standpoint. Since this transcendental argument begins from a weak and widely shared assumption shared with the sceptic herself the falsity of external world scepticism is now demonstrable even to her. Building on the account of perceptual intentionality defended in the Woodbridge lectures, McDowell argues that the idea of narrow perceptual content is unavailable to anyone, including the sceptic. This argument is assessed by drawing out an analogy with parallel responses to error theories in ethics.

scholarly journals Interpreting published effect sizes in behavioral science: a thought-experiment

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erich H. Witte ◽  
Frank Zenker
Keyword(s):  
Behavioral Science ◽  
Thought Experiment ◽  
Error Theory ◽  
Effect Sizes ◽  
Measurement Scale ◽  
Measurement Scales ◽  
Standardized Effect Sizes ◽  
Analytical Research ◽  
Error Theories

Standardized effect size measures (e.g., Cohen’s d) state the observed mean difference, m1-m0, relative to the observed standard deviation, s. These measures are commonly used in behavioral science today in meta-analytical research to quantify the observed m1-m0 across object-level studies that use different measurement-scales, as well as in theory-construction research to point-specify m1-m0 as a theoretically predicted parameter. Since standardization conceptually relates to the quality of measurement, m1-m0 can be interpreted fully only relative to whichever error-theory determines s. The error-theory, however, is what behavioral scientists must typically choose freely, because a theoretically motivated measurement-scale is normally unavailable. Using a thought-experiment, we show that differentially sophisticated error-theories let the observed m1-m0 vary massively given identical observations. This lets the common praxis of publishing m1-m0 “nakedly”—without a transparent error-theory—appear problematic, because it undermines the goals of a cumulative science of human behavior. We advocate reporting standardized effect sizes along with a transparent error-theory.

scholarly journals Go and Observe the Sower: Seeing Empirical Theology at Work

2015 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 155-183 ◽  
Author(s):  
Leslie J. Francis ◽  
Andrew Village
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Religious Belief ◽  
Moral Belief ◽  
Considerable Variability ◽  
Anglican Church ◽  
Significant Variance ◽  
Empirical Theology ◽  
The Church

This study explored and operationalised two theological constructs, one concerning the nature of being human (rooted in a theology of individual differences) and one concerning the nature of the church (rooted in ecclesiology). These two operationalised constructs were tested among a sample of 1,418 Anglican clergy resident in England to account for variance in three measures on which there was considerable variability among such clergy (after controlling for sex and age): traditional moral belief, traditional religious belief, and traditional worship. The data demonstrated that both theological constructs (concerning the nature of being human and concerning the nature of the church) explained significant variance in all three measures. The implications of these findings were discussed for ways in which diversity in belief is embraced or rejected within the Anglican Church.

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