Moral Understandings: Alternative “Epistemology” for a Feminist Ethics

Hypatia ◽  
1989 ◽  
Vol 4 (2) ◽  
pp. 15-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margaret Urban Walker
Keyword(s):  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Feminist Critique ◽  
Feminist Ethics ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Women's Voices ◽  
Philosophical Ethics ◽  
Prevailing View

Work on representing women's voices in ethics has produced a vision of moral understanding profoundly subversive of the traditional philosophical conception of moral knowledge. 1 explicate this alternative moral “epistemology,” identify how it challenges the prevailing view, and indicate some of its resources for a liberatory feminist critique of philosophical ethics.

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 Understanding, Testimony, and Moral Exemplarity

2019 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 373-389 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michel Croce
Keyword(s):  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Virtue Ethics ◽  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Moral Value ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Moral Theories

AbstractWhile possessing moral understanding is agreed to be a core epistemic and moral value, it remains a matter of dispute whether it can be acquired via testimony and whether it involves an ability to engage in moral reasoning. This paper addresses both issues with the aim of contributing to the current debates on moral understanding in moral epistemology and virtue ethics. It is argued that moral epistemologists should stop appealing to the argument from the transmissibility of moral understanding to make a case for their favorite view of moral understanding. It is also argued that proponents of exemplarist moral theories cannot remain neutral on whether the ability to engage in moral reasoning is a necessary component of moral understanding.

scholarly journals The Role of the Holy Will

2014 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 163-184 ◽  
Author(s):  
John J. Callanan
Keyword(s):  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Human Cognition ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Moral Practice ◽  
Moral Perfection ◽  
Immoral Action ◽  
The Ideal

AbstractIt is well known that Kant uses the notion of the holy will in the Groundwork so as to contrast it with the finite wills of human beings. It is less clear, however, what function this contrast is supposed to perform. I argue that one role of the holy will is to illustrate transcendental idealism’s account of the relation between moral knowledge and moral practice. The position is one intended to negotiate between ostensibly competing traditions. Kant uses the holy will as a way of endorsing the metaphysical picture of the scholastic tradition’s so-called ‘ethics of freedom’, whereby the ideal of moral perfection is conceived as the perfection of one’s power of freedom to the point where one is constitutively incapable of immoral action. This position is married however with the claim that the holy will’s inaccessibility to human cognition motivates a subject-oriented moral epistemology more usually associated with Enlightenment humanism. I conclude by claiming that the nuanced role for the holy will can be understood as part of Kant’s expansion of the value of religious faith [Glaube] to the domain of practical inquiry in general.

Comment on Karen Jones and François Schroeter

2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alison Hills
Keyword(s):  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Virtuous Person ◽  
Moral Understanding

AbstractIn this comment I defend my account of moral understanding and its role in morally worthy action and claim that a fully virtuous person would have moral understanding. This means that deference to moral experts is not always appropriate. But there is still room for a social moral epistemology, whereby moral experts pass on moral understanding.

Feminism, Friendship, and Philosophy

2002 ◽  
Vol 28 ◽  
pp. 63-82
Author(s):  
Diane Jeske
Keyword(s):  
Intimate Relationships ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Feminist Philosophy ◽  
Feminist Ethics ◽  
Philosophical Work ◽  
Philosophical Ethics

In recent years, more and more philosophical work has come to be done under the rubric of ‘feminist philosophy.’ In particular, more and more work in philosophical ethics has come to be identified by both those who produce it and those who read it as within the domain of ‘feminist ethics.’ As a philosophical ethicist and a feminist, the question naturally arises as to whether I do feminist ethics. The question seems particularly natural in my case, because a great deal of my research has focussed on the nature of intimate relationships, the types of reasons to which such relationships give rise, and how moral theory ought to accommodate such relationships and their attendant reasons. Intimacy, after all, has been one of the areas to which feminist ethicists have paid a great deal of attention in their attempts to carve out a peculiarly’ feminist’ ethics, arguing that traditional or canonical theories need, at the very least, a great deal of revision if they are to respond appropriately to the ‘data’ acquired as the result of the inclusion and responsiveness to the experience of women.

The Biological Basis and Ideational Superstructure of Morality

2000 ◽  
Vol 26 ◽  
pp. 210-244
Author(s):  
Catherine Wilson
Keyword(s):  
True Belief ◽  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Learning Mechanisms ◽  
Biological Basis ◽  
Empirical Means ◽  
Moral Facts

If moral epistemology can be naturalized, there must be genuine moral knowledge, knowledge of what it is morally right for someone or even everyone to do in a particular situation. The naturalist hopes to explain how such knowledge can be acquired by ordinary empirical means, without appealing to a special realm of moral facts separate from the rest of nature, and a special faculty equipped to detect them. Various learning mechanisms for acquiring moral knowledge have been proposed. Most, however, have the following deficiency: What they actually explain is moral acculturation with respect to accepted or author-preferred moral norms, not the acquisition of moral knowledge. Of course, an additional premise to the effect that accepted moral norms or author-preferred norms embody moral truths would deal nicely with this problem, but at the expense of the distinction between opinion and knowledge, or true belief, in which epistemologists are necessarily interested.

scholarly journals Moral Progress and Evolution: Knowledge Versus Understanding

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eleonora Severini
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
Moral Understanding ◽  
Promising Strategy ◽  
State Of Affairs ◽  
Strategy I ◽  
Better Than ◽  
Realist View

AbstractThe paper explores the interplay among moral progress, evolution and moral realism. Although it is nearly uncontroversial to note that morality makes progress of one sort or another, it is far from uncontroversial to define what constitutes moral progress. In a minimal sense, moral progress occurs when a subsequent state of affairs is better than a preceding one. Moral realists conceive “it is better than” as something like “it more adequately reflects moral facts”; therefore, on a realist view, moral progress can be associated with accumulations of moral knowledge. From an evolutionary perspective, on the contrary, since there cannot be something like moral knowledge, one might conclude there cannot even be such a thing as moral progress. More precisely, evolutionism urges us to ask whether we can acknowledge the existence of moral progress without being committed to moral realism. A promising strategy, I will argue, is to develop an account of moral progress based on moral understanding rather than moral knowledge. On this view, moral progress follows increases in moral understanding rather than accumulations of moral knowledge. Whether an understanding-based account of moral progress is feasible and what its implications for the notion itself of moral progress are, will be discussed.

scholarly journals The Problem of Evil, Skeptical Theism and Moral Epistemology

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (5) ◽  
pp. 313
Author(s):  
Scott M. Coley
Keyword(s):  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Problem Of Evil ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Skeptical Theism ◽  
Logical Problem ◽  
The Problem Of Evil

This paper argues that skeptical theism isn’t susceptible to criticisms of the view presented in James Sterba’s new book on the logical problem of evil. Nevertheless, Sterba’s argument does serve to underscore the unpalatable moral-epistemological consequences of skeptical theistic skepticism (STS): for precisely the reasons that STS doesn’t succumb to Sterba’s critique, STS threatens to undermine moral knowledge altogether.

scholarly journals A narrative approach to empirical nursing ethics research: uncovering the everyday moral knowledge of nurses

2007 ◽  
Vol 16 (4) ◽  
pp. 746-752 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elizabeth Peter ◽  
Kirsten Martin
Keyword(s):  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Moral Experience ◽  
Narrative Approach ◽  
Research Approach ◽  
Nursing Ethics ◽  
Ethics Research ◽  
The Everyday ◽  
Different Types

In this paper we explore the use of Margaret Urban Walker's metaethical perspective, particularly the use of narratives, to inform the development of a research approach to uncover the everyday moral knowledge of nurses. A method based on Walker's work makes it possible to analyze the power dimensions inherent in nurses' moral experience, to ground a narrative approach to nursing ethics with a robust moral epistemology, and to differentiate different types of narratives. A number of analytic questions, which have their basis in Walker's work, are presented and are used to analyze a practice narrative written to illustrate how narratives can be used to draw out the moral knowledge of nurses within the context of their actual work.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Sarah McGrath
Keyword(s):  
Moral Epistemology ◽  
Moral Knowledge ◽  
Social Dimension ◽  
Empirical Knowledge ◽  
Relative Priority ◽  
Justified Belief ◽  
Working Hypothesis ◽  
The Relationship

This introductory chapter contains a brief overview of the topics the book addresses, together with a discussion of the working hypothesis: that moral knowledge can be acquired in any of the ways in which we acquire ordinary empirical knowledge, and that our efforts to acquire and preserve such knowledge are subject to frustration in all of the same ways that our efforts to acquire and preserve ordinary empirical knowledge are. Section 1.2 discusses methodological preliminaries and assumptions concerning the relative priority of moral epistemology (as opposed to metaphysics or semantics), the standards of moral vs. non-moral knowledge, and the relationship between moral knowledge and justified belief. Section 1.3 introduces another theme that unifies many of the arguments and views presented in this book, namely that our access to moral knowledge has an important social dimension.

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