The Evolutionary Challenge to Knowing Moral Reasons

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Terence Cuneo
Keyword(s):  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Evolutionary Forces ◽  
Moral Faculty ◽  
Strong Claim

The “debunker’s puzzle” asks how it could be that (i) moral non-naturalism is true, (ii) we have moral knowledge, and (iii) evolutionary forces have heavily shaped the workings of our moral faculty. This chapter begins by exploring a prominent attempt to dissolve the puzzle, so-called third-factor views, arguing that they are subject to a variety of objections. This discussion highlights a pivotal claim in the dialectic between debunkers and non-naturalists: the debunker’s puzzle has force against moral non-naturalism only if it incorporates an ambitious claim about how far evolutionary forces have operated on the workings of the moral faculty. Non-naturalists can plausibly reject such a strong claim. Still, debunkers can rightly reply that non-naturalists nonetheless lack an explanation regarding how our moral judgments are linked to normative reality. The chapter argues that, by appealing to constitutive explanations, non-naturalists have helpful things to say about what the link might be.

Cautiously optimistic rationalism may not be cautious enough

2019 ◽  
Vol 42 ◽  
Author(s):  
Justin F. Landy
Keyword(s):  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Judgments

Abstract May expresses optimism about the source, content, and consequences of moral judgments. However, even if we are optimistic about their source (i.e., reasoning), some pessimism is warranted about their content, and therefore their consequences. Good reasoners can attain moral knowledge, but evidence suggests that most people are not good reasoners, which implies that most people do not attain moral knowledge.

Traditional Moral Knowledge and Experience of the World

2008 ◽  
Vol 30 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Benedict Smith
Keyword(s):  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
John Mcdowell ◽  
The World ◽  
Moral Demands

AbstractMacIntyre shares with others, such as John McDowell, a broad commitment in moral epistemology to the centrality of tradition and both regard forms of enculturation as conditions of moral knowledge. Although MacIntyre is critical of the thought that moral reasons are available only to those whose experience of the world is conceptually articulated, he is sympathetic to the idea that the development of subjectivity involves the capacity to appreciate external moral demands. This paper critically examines some aspects of MacIntyre’s account of how knowledge is related to tradition, and suggests ways in which the formation of moral subjectivity involves the ability to experience the world.

scholarly journals Moral Reasoning Performance Determines Epistemic Peerdom

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
William H.B. McAuliffe ◽  
Michael E. McCullough
Keyword(s):  
Individual Differences ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Review Literature ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Cognitive Reflection ◽  
Friendly Criticism

We offer a friendly criticism of May's fantastic book on moral reasoning: It is overly charitable to the argument that moral disagreement undermines moral knowledge. To highlight the role that reasoning quality plays in moral judgments, we review literature that he did not mention showing that individual differences in intelligence and cognitive reflection explain much of moral disagreement. The burden is on skeptics of moral knowledge to show that moral disagreement arises from non-rational origins.

Does Neuroscience Undermine Morality?

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Henne ◽  
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
Keyword(s):  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Beliefs

In Chapter 4, the authors explore whether neuroscience undermines morality. The authors distinguish, analyze, and assess the main arguments for neuroscientific skepticism about morality and argue that neuroscience does not undermine all of our moral judgments, focusing the majority of their attention on one argument in particular—the idea that neuroscience and psychology might undermine moral knowledge by showing that our moral beliefs result from unreliable processes. They argue that the background arguments needed to bolster the main premise fail to adequately support it. They conclude that the overall issue of neuroscience undermining morality is unsettled, but, they contend, we can reach some tentative and qualified conclusions. Neuroscience is, then, not a general underminer, but can play a constructive role in moral theory, although not by itself. In order to make progress, neuroscience and normative moral theory must work together.

A Dialectic of Morals—III

1941 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 350-394
Author(s):  
Mortimer J. Adler
Keyword(s):  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
First Principle ◽  
Exercise Preference ◽  
Human Desire ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Cultural Location ◽  
Ultimate Principle

In the preceding sections of this essay, I have outlined a dialectical procedure whereby a doubting mind might be led to the recognition of moral truth. What has been given is the bare plot of a conversation between teacher and student. The student was, at the beginning, a skeptic about moral matters, denying the objectivity of moral knowledge, supposing that all moral judgments were a matter of opinion, entirely relative to the individual or to his cultural location at a given time and place. The teacher, by asking him to explain the undeniable fact that men exercise preference, gradually made him realize that his own criteria for preference — pleasure and quantity of pleasure — had a certain universal validity; and then, as a result of seeing the inadequacy of these criteria, the student began to understand that happiness, rather than pleasure, was the ultimate principle of moral judgments. The crucial steps in the argument were: (1) the distinction between pleasure as one among many objects of desire and pleasure as the satisfaction of any desire; (2) the enumeration of the variety of goods which are objects of human desire; (3) the point that only the totality of goods could completely satisfy desire; (4) the realization that this totality of goods, leaving nothing to be desired, is the end of all our seeking, and that everything else is sought for the sake of its attainment; (5) the conception of happiness as “all good things,” a whole constituted by every type of good, the complete good being the end, the incomplete good its parts or constitutive means; (6) the conclusion that the end, as the first principle in the practical order, is the ultimate criterion of preference, for preferor choice is exercised only with respect to means, and hence we should, in every case, prefer whatever is more conducive to the attainment of happiness.

scholarly journals Formazione etica ed emozioni

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ariele Niccoli
Keyword(s):  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Empirical Evidence ◽  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Philosophy Of Education ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Reasons ◽  
Education Philosophy ◽  
Philosophy Of Emotions ◽  
Theories Of Emotions ◽  
Ethical Formation

Affectivity – especially the emotions – are proved to be a key-point of ethical formation. This book aims at clarifying which thesis the neo-aristotelian Virtue Ethics hold about emotion education, by integrating philosophy of education, philosophy of emotions and moral epistemology. Virtue Ethics, compared to deontology and utilitarianism-consequentialism, offers the more appropriate framework to conceive the relations between education, emotions and ethics. The volume discusses cognitive-evaluative theories of emotions and address the anti-rationalist challenge, based on empirical evidence about how emotions impact on moral judgments. Anti-rationalism, it is argued, is incompatible with the purpose of shaping the emotions looking at our best moral reasons. Then, two Aristotelian educational theses are put forward: all the emotional dispositions – both ‘positive’ and ‘negative’ – should be cultivated, and all the emotional dispositions admit an appropriate moral form.

Moral Perception

2013 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Audi
Keyword(s):  
Moral Psychology ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Perception

We can see a theft, hear a lie, and feel a stabbing. These are morally important perceptions. But are they also moral perceptions—distinctively moral responses? This book develops an original account of moral perceptions, shows how they figure in human experience, and argues that they provide moral knowledge. The book offers a theory of perception as an informative representational relation to objects and events. It describes the experiential elements in perception, illustrates moral perception in relation to everyday observations, and explains how moral perception justifies moral judgments and contributes to objectivity in ethics. Moral perception does not occur in isolation. Intuition and emotion may facilitate it, influence it, and be elicited by it. The book explores the nature and variety of intuitions and their relation to both moral perception and emotion, providing the broadest and most refined statement to date of this widely discussed intuitionist view in ethics. It also distinguishes several kinds of moral disagreement and assesses the challenge it poses for ethical objectivism. Philosophically argued but interdisciplinary in scope and interest, the book advances our understanding of central problems in ethics, moral psychology, epistemology, and the theory of the emotions.

scholarly journals Universales Morales: la ciencia de la naturaleza humana y el enfoque de la Ética cognitiva

Daímon ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 147
Author(s):  
Enrique Fernando Bocardo Crespo
Keyword(s):  
Human Nature ◽  
Decision Processes ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
Recent Trends ◽  
Cognitive Revolution ◽  
Moral Faculty ◽  
Considered Moral Judgments ◽  
Potential Infinite

<p><strong>Abstract</strong>: Recent trends in Cognitive Ethics have emphasized the conceptual debts with the development of the Science of Human Nature in the late 1600s and early 1700s. The paper deals mainly with two major theoretical approaches in the cognitive revolution, (1) that is possible to offer an explanation of the cognitive mechanisms involved in moral decision processes in terms of abstract principles allegedly embedded in human nature; and (2) that there might be substantive reasons to assume a moral faculty to account for the capacity to issue a potential infinite number of considered moral judgments.</p><p><strong>Keywords</strong>: Cognitive Ethics, Science of Human Nature, Universal Moral Grammar.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Resumen</strong>: Investigaciones recientes en la Ética Cognitiva han puesto de manifiesto algunas de la deudas teóricas con el desarrollo de la Ciencia de la Naturaleza Humana a finales del siglo XVII y a comienzos del siglo XVIII. El trabajo trata específicamente sobre dos asunciones teóricas específicas dentro de la revolución cognitiva, (1) que es posible ofrecer una explicación de las mecanismos cognitivos responsables de los procesos de decisión moral en términos de principios abstractos que supuestamente están incorporados en la naturaleza humana, y (2) podría ser razonable suponer que existe una cierta facultad moral humana que podría explicar la capacidad de emitir un número potencialmente infinito de juicios morales considerados.</p><p> </p>

Moral scepticism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark T. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
The Real ◽  
Real Existence ◽  
Moral Scepticism

Scepticism in general is the view that we can have little or no knowledge; thus moral scepticism is the view that we can have little or no moral knowledge. Some moral sceptics argue that we cannot have moral knowledge because we cannot get the evidence necessary to justify any moral judgments. More radical moral sceptics argue that we cannot have moral knowledge because in morality there are no truths to be known. These radical sceptics argue either that moral judgments are all false because they erroneously presuppose the real existence of ‘objective values’, or that moral judgments aim to express feelings or influence behaviour instead of stating truths. Critics of moral scepticism, in turn, argue that in at least some cases moral judgments aim to state truths, some of these judgments are in fact true, and we have enough evidence to say that we know these moral truths.

Attacking Morality: A Metaethical Project

1995 ◽  
Vol 21 ◽  
pp. 221-249
Author(s):  
Allen W. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Speech Acts ◽  
Ethical Theory ◽  
Applied Ethics ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Philosophical Study ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Moral Issues ◽  
Dominant Position ◽  
Moral Facts

Metaethics is the philosophical study of what morality is. It differs from ethical theory, which attempts to systematize (and possibly ground) moral judgments, and also from practical or applied ethics, which reflects on particular moral issues or problems. As it has been done in this century, metaethics has usually involved three interrelated projects: ametaphysicalinvestigation into the nature of moral facts and properties, asemanticinquiry into the meaning of moral assertions, and anepistemologicalaccount of the nature of moral knowledge. In all three areas, the questions raised by twentieth-century metaethics have apparently been radical, and the dominant position was even openly nihilistic. In metaphysics it was antirealist, maintaining that there are no moral facts, in epistemology noncognitivist, denying that there is moral knowledge, and in semantics emotivist or prescriptivist, holding that moral assertions aren't assertions at all, but are speech acts utterly devoid of truth conditions.

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