The Moral Realism of Pragmatic Naturalism

2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
William Rottschaefer
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Moral Realist ◽  
Philip Kitcher ◽  
Pragmatic Account ◽  
Naturalistic Account ◽  
Do So ◽  
Ethical Project

AbstractIn his The Ethical Project, Philip Kitcher offers a pragmatic naturalistic account of moral progress, rejecting a moral realist one. I suggest a moral realist account of moral progress that embraces Kitcher’s pragmatic naturalism and calls on moral realism to show how the pragmatic account is successful. To do so I invoke a hypothesis about moral affordances and make use of a cognitive account of emotions.

scholarly journals The Open-ended Normativity of the Ethical

2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Allen Buchanan
Keyword(s):  
Natural Extension ◽  
Subsequent Development ◽  
Social Costs ◽  
Explanatory Model ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Original Function ◽  
Progressive Development ◽  
Do So ◽  
Ethical Project

AbstractIn The Ethical Project, Kitcher has throe main aim: (1) to provide a naturalistic explanation of the rise of morality and of its subsequent development, (2) to supply an account of moral progress that explains progressive developments that have occurred so far and shows how further progress is possible, and (3) to propose a further progressive development the emergence of a cosmopolitan morality and make the case that it is a natural extension of the ethical project. I argue that Kitcher does not succeed in achieving any of these aims and that he cannot do so given the meager resources of his explanatory model. The chief difficulty is that Kitcher equivocates in his characterization of the original (and still supposedly primary) function of ethics. Although he begins by characterizing it as (a) remedying altruism failures in order to avoid their social costs, he sometimes characterizes it instead as (b) remedying altruism failures simpliciter. Kitcher does not explain how a practice whose original function was (a) developed into one whose function is (b). Further, it appears that he cannot do so without significantly enriching his explanatory model to include a more robust account of how humans came to have the capacity to reflect on and revise norms.

Constructivism, moral realism, and the possibility of Kant's rational religion

2017 ◽  
Vol 54 (4) ◽  
pp. 455-473
Author(s):  
SAMUEL DUNCAN
Keyword(s):  
Strong Evidence ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Realism ◽  
Kantian Ethics ◽  
Moral Realist ◽  
Kantian Constructivism ◽  
Realist Interpretation ◽  
Do So ◽  
Kantian Moral Theory

AbstractIn this article I challenge Kantian constructivism both as an interpretation of Kant's own philosophical commitments and on its own merits as a moral theory, and argue in favour of a moral realist interpretation of Kant. I do so by focusing on Kant's own religious views and the question of whether a Kantian moral theory can be religiously neutral. I show that constructivist readings have severe problems on both fronts, while realist readings of Kant do not. This provides strong evidence that realist forms of Kantian ethics are preferable both as readings of Kant and as approaches to moral theory.

Reconstruction in Moral Philosophy?

2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Braddock ◽  
Alexander Rosenberg
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Genealogy Of Morals ◽  
Ethical Project

AbstractWe raise throe issues for Kitcher’s Ethical Project: First, we argue that the genealogy of morals starts well before the advent of altruism-failures and the need to remedy them, which Kitcher dates at about 50K years ago. Second, we challenge the likelihood of long term moral progress of the sort Kitcher requires to establish objectivity while circumventing Hume's challenge to avoid trying to derive normative conclusions from positive ones ‘ought’ from ‘is’. Third, we sketch ways in which Kitcher’s mctacthical opponents could respond to his arguments against them.

Moral realism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Dancy
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Fact ◽  
Moral Realist ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
Natural Fact ◽  
Moral Facts

Moral realism is the view that there are facts of the matter about which actions are right and which wrong, and about which things are good and which bad. But behind this bald statement lies a wealth of complexity. If one is a full-blown moral realist, one probably accepts the following three claims. First, moral facts are somehow special and different from other sorts of fact. Realists differ, however, about whether the sort of specialness required is compatible with taking some natural facts to be moral facts. Take, for instance, the natural fact that if we do this action, we will have given someone the help they need. Could this be a moral fact – the same fact as the fact that we ought to do the action? Or must we think of such a natural fact as the natural ‘ground’ for the (quite different) moral fact that we should do it, that is, as the fact in the world that makes it true that we should act this way? Second, realists hold that moral facts are independent of any beliefs or thoughts we might have about them. What is right is not determined by what I or anybody else thinks is right. It is not even determined by what we all think is right, even if we could be got to agree. We cannot make actions right by agreeing that they are, any more than we can make bombs safe by agreeing that they are. Third, it is possible for us to make mistakes about what is right and what is wrong. No matter how carefully and honestly we think about what to do, there is still no guarantee that we will come up with the right answer. So what people conscientiously decide they should do may not be the same as what they should do.

An Ambiguity in Marx's and Engels's Account of Justice and Equality

1982 ◽  
Vol 76 (2) ◽  
pp. 328-346 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Gilbert
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Logical Structure ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Ethical Argument ◽  
Distribution Of Wealth ◽  
Moral Standards ◽  
The Status ◽  
International Distribution ◽  
Recent Debate

Given the widespread moral conventionalism or historicism in contemporary social science and ethics, many have viewed Marx as arguing either that conceptions of justice simply shift historically and lack objectivity (relativism) or that notions of justice are to be understood solely as expressions of class interests (reductionism). Although metaethical ambiguities about the status of conceptions of justice influenced some of Marx's and Engels's formulations, they condemned the “crying contrasts” of rich and poor. Marx is better understood as defending a version of moral objectivity or moral realism. The paper begins with an example from the recent debate about justice in the international distribution of wealth to highlight the implausibility of a relativist or reductionist account. It then describes alternative views of the status of justice and equality in Marx and Engels and explores the logical structure of Marx's critique of Proudhon. A fourth section examines the analogy between Marx's and Engels's realism in the philosophy of science and their realist arguments in ethics, focusing on Marx's and Engels's non-relativist and non-reductionist conception of moral progress. The conclusion sets Marx's use of concepts of exploitation in the context of his overall moral judgments and suggests that Marx's social or historical theory rather than his moral standards are the most controversial part of his ethical argument.

Moral Progress Without Moral Realism

2010 ◽  
Vol 39 (1) ◽  
pp. 97-116 ◽  
Author(s):  
Catherine Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Progress

scholarly journals A produção do conhecimento e o projeto éticopolítico do Serviço Social

2020 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 34-42
Author(s):  
Sandra Lourenço de Andrade Fortuna ◽  
Olegna de Souza Guedes
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Human Activity ◽  
Historical Materialism ◽  
Social Meaning ◽  
Production Of Knowledge ◽  
The Social ◽  
Do So ◽  
Ethical Project

Abstract This theoretical essay has as its object the production of knowledge in social work and emphasizes its importance in the current conjuncture. It was written from the analysis of contributions by authors of this area that reflect on this theme and from Marxist authors who analyze the method and the production of knowledge from dialectical historical materialism. To do so, it chooses two premises. The first refers to the production of knowledge as one of the expressions of human activity that, in the movement of reality, seeks the apprehension of particularities as expressions of concrete thought. The second refers to the defense of the necessary linkage of research in the field of social work with the social meaning of this profession, which, in the contemporary era, bears itself in a direction sustained in its current and radically current political ethical project.

scholarly journals A debunking explanation for moral progress

2019 ◽  
Vol 177 (11) ◽  
pp. 3171-3191
Author(s):  
Nathan Cofnas
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Truth ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Cultural Convergence ◽  
Moral Beliefs ◽  
Debunking Arguments ◽  
Empirical Argument ◽  
Evolutionary Debunking

Abstract According to “debunking arguments,” our moral beliefs are explained by evolutionary and cultural processes that do not track objective, mind-independent moral truth. Therefore (the debunkers say) we ought to be skeptics about moral realism. Huemer counters that “moral progress”—the cross-cultural convergence on liberalism—cannot be explained by debunking arguments. According to him, the best explanation for this phenomenon is that people have come to recognize the objective correctness of liberalism. Although Huemer may be the first philosopher to make this explicit empirical argument for moral realism, the idea that societies will eventually converge on the same moral beliefs is a notable theme in realist thinking. Antirealists, on the other hand, often point to seemingly intractable cross-cultural moral disagreement as evidence against realism (the “argument from disagreement”). This paper argues that the trend toward liberalism is susceptible to a debunking explanation, being driven by two related non-truth-tracking processes. First, large numbers of people gravitate to liberal values for reasons of self-interest. Second, as societies become more prosperous and advanced, they become more effective at suppressing violence, and they create conditions where people are more likely to empathize with others, which encourages liberalism. The latter process is not truth tracking (or so this paper argues) because empathy-based moral beliefs are themselves susceptible to an evolutionary debunking argument. Cross-cultural convergence on liberalism per se does not support either realism or antirealism.

Moral Progress for Evolved Rational Creatures

2019 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
pp. 217-238
Author(s):  
William J. FitzPatrick
Keyword(s):  
Moral Philosophy ◽  
Moral Theory ◽  
Moral Belief ◽  
Adaptive Plasticity ◽  
Moral Progress ◽  
Human Beings ◽  
Naturalistic Account ◽  
And Behavior ◽  
The Way

Abstract Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell have developed a rich ‘biocultural theory’ of the nature and causes of moral progress (and regress) for human beings conceived as evolved rational creatures with a nature characterized by ‘adaptive plasticity’. They characterize their theory as a thoroughly naturalistic account of moral progress, while bracketing various questions in moral theory and metaethics in favor of focusing on a certain range of more scientifically tractable questions under some stipulated moral and metaethical assumptions. While I am very much in agreement with the substance of their project, I wish to query and raise some difficulties for the way it is framed, particularly in connection with the claim of naturalism. While their project is clearly naturalistic in certain senses, it is far from clear that it is so in others that are of particular interest in moral philosophy, and these issues need to be more carefully sorted out. For everything that has been argued in the book, the theory on offer may be only a naturalistic component of a larger theory that must ultimately be non-naturalistic in order to deliver the robust sort of account that is desired. Indeed, there are significant metaethical reasons for believing this to be the case. Moreover, if it turns out that some of the assumptions upon which their theory relies require a non-naturalist metaethics (positing irreducibly evaluative or normative properties and facts) then even the part of the theory that might have seemed most obviously naturalistic, i.e., the explanation of how changes in moral belief and behavior have come about, may actually require some appeal to non-naturalistic elements in the end.

Moral realism

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Dancy
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Moral Fact ◽  
Moral Realist ◽  
The World ◽  
The Right ◽  
Natural Fact ◽  
Moral Facts

Moral realism is the view that there are facts of the matter about which actions are right and which wrong, and about which things are good and which bad. But behind this bald statement lies a wealth of complexity. If one is a full-blown moral realist, one probably accepts the following three claims. First, moral facts are somehow special and different from other sorts of fact. Realists differ, however, about whether the sort of specialness required is compatible with taking some natural facts to be moral facts. Take, for instance, the natural fact that if we do this action, we will have given someone the help they need. Could this be a moral fact – the same fact as the fact that we ought to do the action? Or must we think of such a natural fact as the natural ‘ground’ for the (quite different) moral fact that we should do it, that is, as the fact in the world that makes it true that we should act this way? Second, realists hold that moral facts are independent of any beliefs or thoughts we might have about them. What is right is not determined by what I or anybody else thinks is right. It is not even determined by what we all think is right, even if we could be got to agree. We cannot make actions right by agreeing that they are, any more than we can make bombs safe by agreeing that they are. Third, it is possible for us to make mistakes about what is right and what is wrong. No matter how carefully and honestly we think about what to do, there is still no guarantee that we will come up with the right answer. So what people conscientiously decide they should do may not be the same as what they should do.

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