Practical Thought

This is a collection of papers published between 1977 and 2017. The papers focus on moral metaphysics, on holism in the theory of reasons and ethical particularism, on the theory of motivation, and on the development of ethical intuitionism. In moral metaphysics the distinction between resultance and supervenience is taken to have significant consequences. In moral theory the general line is that there are plenty of moral reasons but no moral principles. In the theory of motivation a case is made for the idea that the reasons for which we act are matters of fact, real or supposed. In the history of intuitionism, I try to show the benefits of taking H. A. Prichard seriously.

Metasemantics for the Relaxed

This chapter discusses how to meet the ‘generalized integration challenge’ as a relaxed moral realist by providing a metasemantics of moral vocabulary which is compatible with relaxing about moral metaphysics and epistemology. Employing normative inferentialism and focussing on evaluative moral terms in particular, it is suggested that evaluative moral terms function to explain proprieties of language exit transitions, where having this function amounts to systematizing language exit transitions through a process of reflective equilibrium. Crucially, this inferentialist take on explanatory function does not engender any substantive metaphysical commitments about moral properties. Moreover, the systematization process on which it is based is undertaken from within moral discourse. As such, understanding evaluative terms as tools that systematize language exits fits perfectly with the relaxed take on moral discourse.

The Karma of Love

This essay examines Vietnamese tales of marvels [kỳ] and the uncanny [quái] composed in Literary Sinitic and offers close readings of four narratives through focusing on the theme of predestined love [duyên]. The essay shows that the discourse of duyên was embedded in both Confucian and Daoist voices and that this reflected a common cultural repertoire in which the discourse of social karma was a part of a shared moral metaphysics. The essay offers a theory and methodology for examining tales of marvels and the uncanny, arguing that heretofore scholars have read around the depictions of religious phenomena, rather than by means of them.

SPIRITUAL-ACADEMIC PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY IN SEARCH OF VALUE BASES

The article attempts to determine the value principles of the moral metaphysics of Orthodox academic theism of the late XIX – early XX centuries. The specificity of the Orthodox “ontological” and “teleological” interpretation of the category of moral law is revealed. The role of European moral teachings of the XVIII – early XIX centuries in the formation of Orthodox moral philosophy is shown. The role of the idea of “good” as the highest value in the system of spiritual-academic moral metaphysics is noted

An outline of a pragmatic sociology of ‘violence’

In this article we propose a model for a pragmatic sociology of violence. Based on a semiotic analysis of a primordial cognitive operation deployed in people’s definition of situations, namely qualification, the essential characterization of things, the paper maps the meanings attributed to what both ordinary social actors and academic analysts treat as violence. Our analysis shows that this operation imbues a concrete object with meaning, the disproportionate use of force, whose resignifications compose a typology of five ‘sociologies of violence,’ both native and academic. These are: substantivist, constructivist, political, critical, and praxiological. To this gallery, we suggest the addition of another item: a pragmatic sociology. Taking the sign ‘violence’ as an interpretant, this sociology seeks to understand how, in people’s qualifications, it functions as a connection between moral metaphysics (worldviews in which the deployment of disproportionate force makes sense) and devices capable of effectuating them.

Why Confucianism? Which Confucianism?

This chapter argues that early Confucians were revolutionaries with a conservative facade. According to this “progressive” reading, they tried to solve issues of modernity not by rejecting modernity but by embracing it, although some of their locutions seem to resonate with those widely used in the “good old days,” and they were not as resolute as thinkers from some other schools. Moreover, not accepting early Confucianism as a moral metaphysics, the chapter also rejects the reading that early Confucians tried to solve political issues by improving on people’s morals alone. Rather, the premise of its reading is that they apprehended the political concerns as primary and the ethical ones as secondary, a byproduct of their political concerns. They were concerned with reconstructing a political order and were thus open to the idea of institutional design, even though they themselves did not discuss it in detail. To take a continuous reading of early Confucianism by asking about which political institutions they would have in mind, especially in today’s political reality, would not be alien to Confucianism.

Moral Metaphysics, Moral Psychology, and the Cognitive Sciences

Morality, like language, is a ubiquitous feature of contemporary human societies. Both cases exhibit social variation as well as cross-cultural similarities, and individual acquisition of largely tacit abilities to communicate and cooperate spontaneously in an open-ended array of circumstances. Cognitive science has shed light on how this is possible in the case of language, but recently has challenged whether human morality could actually live up to the character it purports to have (e.g., objective and nonparochial) or the social role it purports to play (e.g., in guiding judgment, motivation, and practices). Realism about morality is seen as at odds with understanding it scientifically. Challenges have been based upon “dual-process” theories and evolutionary psychology. A defense of realism can be given, however, on the strength of research supporting a picture of the mind as engaged in non-egocentric as well as egocentric causal-evaluative modeling of the physical and social world.

The Hard Problem for Soft Moral Realism

Several leading moral philosophers have recently proposed a soft version of moral realism, according to which moral facts—though it is reasonable to postulate them—cannot metaphysically explain other facts (Dworkin 2011; Parfit 2011; Scanlon 2014). However, soft moral realism is faced with what I call the “Hard Problem,” namely, the problem of how this soft version of moral metaphysics could accommodate moral knowledge. This paper reconstructs and examines three approaches to solving the Hard Problem on behalf of the soft realist: the autonomy approach, the intuitionist approach, and the third-factor approach. I then argue that none of them is successful.