Explaining moral disagreement

2020 ◽  
pp. 18-46
Author(s):  
Richard Rowland
Keyword(s):  
Moral Disagreement

Reality and Morality

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Billy Dunaway
Keyword(s):  
Moral Realism ◽  
Explanatory Power ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Moral Language ◽  
Moral Properties ◽  
Realist View

This book develops and defends a framework for moral realism. It defends the idea that moral properties are metaphysically elite, or privileged parts of reality. It argues that realists can hold that this makes them highly eligible as the referents for our moral terms, an application of a thesis sometimes called reference magnetism. And it elaborates on these theses by introducing some natural claims about how we can know about morality, by having beliefs that are free from a kind of risk of error. This package of theses in metaphysics, meta-semantics, and epistemology is motivated with a view to an explanation of possible moral disagreements. Many writers have emphasized the scope of moral disagreement, and have given compelling examples of possible users of moral language who appear to be genuinely disagreeing, rather than talking past one another, with their use of moral language. What has gone unnoticed is that there are limits to these possible disagreements, and not all possible users of moral language are naturally interpreted as capable of genuine disagreement. The realist view developed in this book can explain both the extent of, and the limits to, moral disagreement, and thereby has explanatory power that counts significantly in its favor.

Depoliticising the Polls: Voting Abstention and Moral Disagreement

Politics ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 46-51
Author(s):  
Iñigo González-Ricoy
Keyword(s):  
Moral Disagreement

scholarly journals Michael Smith and the Daleks: Reason, Morality, and Contingency

Utilitas ◽  
1999 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 164-177 ◽  
Author(s):  
James Lenman
Keyword(s):  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Michael Smith ◽  
Rational Agents ◽  
Moral Requirements

Smith has defended the rationalist's conceptual claim that moral requirements are categorical requirements of reason, arguing that no status short of this would make sense of our taking these requirements as seriously as we do. Against this I argue that Smith has failed to show either that our moral commitments would be undermined by possessing only an internal, contextual justification or that they need presuppose any expectation that rational agents must converge on their acceptance. His claim that this rationalistic understanding of metaethics is required for the intelligibility of moral disagreement is also found to be inadequately supported. It is further proposed that the rationalist's substantive claims – that there are such categorical requirements of reason and that our actual moral commitments are a case in point – are liable to disappointment; and that the conceptual claim is fatally undermined by reflection on how we might best respond to such disappointment.

Moral Disagreement in a Democracy

1995 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-110 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy Gutmann ◽  
Dennis Thompson
Keyword(s):  
Deliberative Democracy ◽  
Political Process ◽  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Political ◽  
Moral Deliberation ◽  
Constitutional Democracy ◽  
American Democracy ◽  
Prominent Feature ◽  
Adequate Response

Moral disagreement about public policies—issues such as abortion, affirmative action, and health care—is a prominent feature of contemporary American democracy. Yet it is not a central concern of the leading theories of democracy. The two dominant democratic approaches in our time—procedural democracy and constitutional democracy—fail to offer adequate responses to the problem of moral disagreement. Both suggest some elements that are necessary in any adequate response, but neither one alone nor both together are sufficient. We argue here that an adequate conception of democracy must make moral deliberation an essential part of the political process. What we call “deliberative democracy” adds an important dimension to the theory and practice of politics that the leading conceptions of democracy neglect.

Thomas Reid on Moral Disagreement

2010 ◽  
pp. 67-87
Author(s):  
William C. Davis
Keyword(s):  
Moral Disagreement ◽  
Thomas Reid
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