scholarly journals Not Just Errors: A New Interpretation of Mackie’s Error Theory

2017 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Victor Moberger
Keyword(s):  
Essential Feature ◽  
Error Theory ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Standard Interpretation ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
Semantic Pluralism

J. L. Mackie famously argued that a commitment to non-existent objective values permeates ordinary moral thought and discourse. According to a standard interpretation, Mackie construed this commitment as a universal and indeed essential feature of moral judgments. In this paper I argue that we should rather ascribe to Mackie a form of semantic pluralism, according to which not all moral judgments involve the commitment to objective values. This interpretation not only makes better sense of what Mackie actually says, but also renders his error theory immune to a powerful objection.

Habitude, connaissance et vertu chez Spinoza

Dialogue ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 43 (1) ◽  
pp. 99-124 ◽  
Author(s):  
Syliane Malinowski-Charles
Keyword(s):  
Essential Feature ◽  
Adequate Knowledge ◽  
New Interpretation

AbstractThe goal of this article is to reveal the primal role played by “use” in Spinoza's Ethics. Contrary to appearances, the concept is not linked only to passivity; it is an essential feature of the reinforcement of virtue toward wisdom. Considering that Laurent Bove's analyses of habit within the realm of imagination leave aside the links with adequate knowledge, this article offers an extension of his interpretation in a completely new direction. The new elements are, above all, a demonstration of the place of “use” in the texts where the shift from passivity to activity is concerned, and a new interpretation of intuition in the example of the discovery of the fourth proportional number. In this example, it is argued that intuition is simply a mechanical habituation to truth, thanks to the repetition of acts of reasoning.

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.

Metaethical theories, hybrid

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Ridge ◽  
Sebastian Köhler
Keyword(s):  
Philosophy Of Mind ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Direction Of Fit ◽  
False Dichotomy ◽  
The World ◽  
Important Sense ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
Theoretical Issues

Hybrid theories in metaethics hold at least one of the following theses: Moral claims express both belief-like and desire-like mental states.Moral judgments are constituted by both belief-like and desire-like components. This definition is deliberately broad and inclusive, to cover all theories that share a theoretically important aspiration: to accommodate or at least explain away both the belief-like and desire-like features of moral thought and discourse without abandoning a broadly Humean philosophy of mind. A broadly Humean philosophy of mind subscribes to two claims. First, that belief-like and desire-like states can be sharply distinguished in terms of their respective directions of fit: beliefs have a mind-to-world direction of fit (that is, beliefs aim to accurately represent the world), while desire-like states have a world-to-mind direction of fit (desires aim to have the world aligned with them). Second, that beliefs and desires are distinct existences: for any propositions p and q, believing that p and desiring that q can come apart. There are powerful arguments for this kind of view but, at the same time, moral thought and discourse have both belief-like and desire-like features. Hybrid theories take this appearance seriously and include both belief-like and desire-like elements in their theory at a basic level. In this way, they aim to accommodate or explain away the dual nature of moral judgments without abandoning a Humean philosophy of mind. Traditionally, philosophers have supposed that moral judgments either a) are just Humean beliefs, and that moral claims express precisely those beliefs (cognitivism) or b) are just Humean desire-like states, and that moral claims express precisely those desire-like states (expressivism). Hybrid theorists are keen to emphasize that this supposition rests on a false dichotomy. Perhaps moral judgments are hybrid states, being partly constituted by beliefs and partly by desire-like states. Even if moral judgments themselves just are beliefs, moral claims might still in some important sense express desire-like states. Either of these ways of breaking free of the traditional debate might better accommodate or explain away the dual nature of moral thought and discourse within a Humean framework. The introduction of hybrid theories does not, however, dissolve the traditional debate completely. There are several theoretical issues on which hybrid theories could have more in common with traditional cognitivism than with traditional expressivism and vice versa. It is therefore useful to distinguish two types of hybrid theory: hybrid cognitivism and hybrid expressivism.

Ethics of Reading

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Matthew Garrett
Keyword(s):  
Essential Feature ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Historical Inquiry ◽  
Ethical Criticism ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Ethics Of Reading ◽  
The Social ◽  
Cultural Texts ◽  
Moral Claims ◽  
Good And Evil

The ethics of reading connects with but is not identical to the field of ethical criticism. Often pursued as a normative inquiry into morality, ethics may be better understood in historical terms. From this point of view, the inquiry into ethics is not a matter of good and evil (or universal moral correctness) but rather of understanding historically variable and socially conditioned regimes of subjective self-construction (ethics). Thus, moral thought may be taken to be one specific modality of the ethical, not its essential feature. A social and historical inquiry into the ethics of reading must then examine the ethical impulse itself, the recurring attraction of ethical questions, normative moral claims, and the search for moral models in literary and cultural texts. Various strands of ethical criticism have treated literary characters as approximations of persons or have considered the way reading itself may be a morally healthful act. Understanding these approaches and their limitations helps one recognize an alternative ethics of reading, focused on the social and historical reconstruction of the category of the ethical, as well as a more specifically literary-critical style of reading, focused on a single ethical injunction: fidelity to the object of critical attention.

The Leviathan’s Conscience: Hobbesian Human Nature and Moral Judgment

2017 ◽  
Vol 70 (4) ◽  
pp. 778-789 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Branstetter
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Moral Judgment ◽  
Human Nature ◽  
Thomas Hobbes ◽  
The State ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Practical Judgment ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Moral Improvement ◽  
Individual Judgment

Hannah Arendt claims that Thomas Hobbes was responsible for constituting modern people as apolitical subjects who can no longer make independent moral judgments. The refusal to think that Hobbes allegedly engendered was a major factor in twentieth-century totalitarianism’s worst crimes. In her view, Hobbes’s Leviathan established the architecture of the totalitarian state and initiated the cultivation of people so incapable of exercising moral judgment that they stood idly by and let such a state commit horrors in their name. I argue that Hobbes rejected the proto-totalitarian form of domination Arendt attributes to him and expressed hope about the human capacities for practical judgment and moral improvement. Instead of creating thoughtless subjects which authorize any crime the state might commit, he suggests that the Leviathan should cultivate the public’s capacity for reason and judgment to make violence unnecessary. Considering Hobbes’s accounts of reason and science in light of his materialism shows that the Leviathan requires the exercise of individual moral thought and judgment to function properly. I suggest that the primary duty of the Hobbesian sovereign might be understood primarily in terms of the cultivation of individual judgment and reason rather than its suppression.

Is Irreducible Normativity Impossibly Queer?

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 437-460 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teemu Toppinen
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Error Theory ◽  
Evolutionary Explanation ◽  
Moral Thought ◽  
Response Strategies ◽  
Theory Section ◽  
James Dreier

I argue that Jonas Olson’s argument from irreducible normativity is not a secure basis for an argument for error theory (section 1) and that a better basis is provided by the argument from supervenience, which has more bite against non-naturalist moral realism than Olson is willing to allow (section 2). I suggest there may be a view which can allow for the existence of irreducibly normative facts while remaining unaffected by the kinds of arguments that work against non-naturalist realism. This view is expressivism. Interestingly, James Dreier has recently suggested that expressivism may not escape these arguments. I very briefly outline (but do not pursue) possible response strategies for expressivists (section 3). I close by discussing Olson’s argument against expressivism. Olson suggests, somewhat surprisingly, that expressivism is a bad fit with a plausible evolutionary explanation of our moral thought. I argue that Olson’s argument does not succeed (section 4).

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.

scholarly journals Models & Proofs: LFIs Without a Canonical Interpretations

2018 ◽  
Vol 22 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-112 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eduardo Alejandro Barrio
Keyword(s):  
Point Of View ◽  
Logical System ◽  
Truth Conditions ◽  
Conservative Extension ◽  
Standard Interpretation ◽  
Conflicting Evidence ◽  
New Interpretation ◽  
The One ◽  
Excluded Middle ◽  
Canonical Interpretation

In different papers, Carnielli, W. & Rodrigues, A. (2012), Carnielli, W. Coniglio, M. & Rodrigues, A. (2017) and Rodrigues & Carnielli, (2016) present two logics motivated by the idea of capturing contradictions as conflicting evidence. The first logic is called BLE (the Basic Logic of Evidence) and the second—that is a conservative extension of BLE—is named LETJ (the Logic of Evidence and Truth). Roughly, BLE and LETJ are two non-classical (paraconsistent and paracomplete) logics in which the Laws of Explosion (EXP) and Excluded Middle (PEM) are not admissible. LETJ is built on top of BLE. Moreover, LETJ is a Logic of Formal Inconsistency (an LFI). This means that there is an operator that, roughly speaking, identifies a formula as having classical behavior. Both systems are motivated by the idea that there are different conditions for accepting or rejecting a sentence of our natural language. So, there are some special introduction and elimination rules in the theory that are capturing different conditions of use. Rodrigues & Carnielli’s paper has an interesting and challenging idea. According to them, BLE and LETJ are incompatible with dialetheia. It seems to show that these paraconsistent logics cannot be interpreted using truth-conditions that allow true contradictions. In short, BLE and LETJ talk about conflicting evidence avoiding to talk about gluts. I am going to argue against this point of view. Basically, I will firstly offer a new interpretation of BLE and LETJ that is compatible with dialetheia. The background of my position is to reject the one canonical interpretation thesis: the idea according to which a logical system has one standard interpretation. Then, I will secondly show that there is no logical basis to fix that Rodrigues & Carnielli’s interpretation is the canonical way to establish the content of logical notions of BLE and LETJ . Furthermore, the system LETJ captures inside classical logic. Then, I am also going to use this technical result to offer some further doubts about the one canonical interpretation thesis.

scholarly journals What’s So Queer About Morality?

2019 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 11-29
Author(s):  
Luke Taylor
Keyword(s):  
Moral Values ◽  
Error Theory ◽  
Moral Error Theory ◽  
Moral Error ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
New Interpretation

Abstract Mackie (Ethics: inventing right and wrong, Penguin Books, London, 1977) famously argued for a moral error theory on the basis that objective moral values, if they existed, would be very queer entities. Unfortunately, his argument is very brief and it is not totally obvious from what he says exactly where the queerness of moral values is supposed to lie. In this paper I will firstly show why a typical interpretation of Mackie is problematic and secondly offer a new interpretation. I will argue that, whether or not we have reason to live in the morally correct way, what seems queer about moral properties is that there is a morally correct way in which to live in the first place. This interpretation makes sense of Mackie’s claim that theism might be able to solve the queerness problem; the notion of an objectively correct way to live may make sense if theism is true, but not otherwise.

scholarly journals Off-Topic: A New Interpretation of Weak-Kleene Logic

2016 ◽  
Vol 13 (6) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jc Beall
Keyword(s):  
Standard Interpretation ◽  
Simple Alternative ◽  
New Interpretation

This paper offers a new and very simple alternative to Bochvar's well known nonsense -- or meaninglessness -- interpretation of Weak Kleene logic. To help orient discussion I begin by reviewing the familiar Strong Kleene logic and its standard interpretation; I then review Weak Kleene logic and the standard (viz., Bochvar) interpretation. While I note a common worry about the Bochvar interpretation my aim is only to give an alternative -- and I think very elegant -- interpretation, not necessarily a replacement.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document