Yahoo Web Search

According to many, Socrates's position fits well withmorality's pretensions. It fits well also with the thoughtthat whatever standards humans might put in place are, one and all,liable to moral criticism. Of course, Socrates's positionbrings along a suite of puzzles concerning the nature of thesetranscendent standards. What is their origin and from where dothey derive their authority? Many have thought the right answers to these questions are found in anappeal to God. On their view, moral principles are the expression ofGod's will — they are His commands to us — and they gettheir authority from their source. In important ways, though, thismerely shifts the puzzles back a step. Whatever problems one mighthave making sense of eternal transcendent standards re-emerge whentrying to make sense of an eternal transcendent being who might issuecommands. And, as Plato emphasized in Euthyphro, one is alsoleft with the difficulty of explaining why God's commands areauthoritative. One plausible...

One appealing feature of Glaucon's account of morality as a mutuallyadvantageous convention is that it renders morality's origin andnature non-mysterious. Moral facts, on this sort of view, emerge as nomore puzzling than facts about what is legal or polite. In each case,the standing of some behavior (as moral, or legal, or polite) dependson its conforming to, or conflicting with, various standards that havebeen put in place. Glaucon's account also makes clear why it is thatpeople might care deeply about morality's demands (even as they are,in their own cases, tempted to violate them when they believe they canwith impunity), since the relevant conventions are mutuallyadvantageous. Yet conventionalist views such as Glaucon's have real difficultiesfitting with the common idea that the fundamental principles ofmorality are universal. Conventions, after all, are contingentcreations that differ from place to place and come in to, and go outof, existence. Moreover, conventions seem liable...

David Hume seemed to have these points in mind when he observed thatan ‘ought’ cannot be derived from an ‘is.’[5]There is substantial debate about just what Hume meant, and similarlysubstantial debate as well about whether he was right. But at leastpart of Hume's concern seems to have been that no set of claims aboutplain matters of fact (‘is’ claims) entail any evaluativeclaims (‘ought’ claims). That is, he seems to havethought, that one can infer the latter from the former only if, inaddition to premises concerning plain matters of fact, one has on handas well at least one evaluative premise. If, for instance, one infersfrom the fact that someone is feeling pain that something bad ishappening, one is at least presupposing that pain is bad. And thatpresupposition, in turn, is not entailed by any claims concernedsolely with plain matters of fact. If Hume is right, every validargument for an evaluative conclusion either includes or presupposessome evaluative premise. And, as a result...

Anyone mounting such a defense needs to offer some account of how itis we might successfully justify one set of moral judgments as overagainst others. When we turn to morality, what counts as good groundsfor holding one view rather than other? What sort of evidence mightbe available? If Hume and Moore are right, no evidence that appealssolely to non-evaluative considerations will be sufficient (unless wepresuppose some principle of inference that connects non-moralpremises to moral conclusions). But if we need to rely on evaluativepremises or principles in order to infer substantive moral conclusionsfrom non-moral premises (e.g. non-moral premises regarding the impactof a course of action on pleasure or on the satisfaction of humaninterests), the question immediately arises, “How might wejustify these evaluative premises or principles?” One answer often offered is that, at a suitably abstract level, thereare premises or principles that everyone in fact accepts. Perhaps'Murder is wro...

Among morality's distinctive features, all agree, is its apparentlyintimate connection to action. In making moral judgments, forinstance, we seem to be making a claim that, if true, establishes thatsomeone or other has a reason to act or be a certain way. This marksan important difference between moral claims and claims concerning,say, color. The claim that something is red is, even if true, onlycontingently connected to whether anyone has any reason at all to actor be a certain way. Whereas if a certain thing is morally good itseems that everyone necessarily has at least some reason (perhapsoverrideable or defeasible, but still some reason) to promote, pursue,protect, or respect it — at least if they recognize that it isgood. Moreover, many have thought, to judge sincerely that somethingis good (whether or not one is right) is to have some motivation(again, perhaps overrideable or defeasible, but still some motivation)to promote, pursue, protect, or respect it. Thus there seem to b...

Making sense of how moral considerations might figure in practicaldeliberation is especially important when it comes to explaining whenand why people are responsible for what they do or fail to do. Someof that explanatory job is a matter of moral theory, not metaethics,and involves figuring out what counts as good excuses, legitimatejustifications, and appropriate burdens. A theory of moralresponsibility inevitably relies on substantive moral theory. Yet there are important metaethical issues bound up in giving anaccount of moral responsibility. They emerge most sharply as oneconsiders the nature and significance of free will. Doesresponsibility presuppose free will? If so, when does someone countas having a free will? It cannot merely be a matter of her will beinguncaused. After all, a person whose will was utterly random,responsive neither to her nor to the reasons she had for doing things,would be a person no freer (in the relevant sense) than a person whosewill was fully and dir...

The history of moral theory is a history of attempts to identify,articulate, and defend general moral principles that serve to explainwhen and why various types of action, institutions, or characterscount as right or wrong, just or unjust, virtuous or vicious. Theassumption has consistently been that there is a general andprincipled account of morality to be given. And this assumption hassurvived the fact that few people think any particular set ofprinciples that we have actually succeeded in articulating, is fullyadequate. What explains the assumption? Why not hold, asparticularists do, that there may well be no set of general principlesthat adequately mark moral distinctions? Or, why not think, asskeptics do, that our repeated failures actually to identify fullyadequate principles shows that morality is a chimera? Wrestling with these questions returns one immediately and directly towondering about the nature of morality and the role it is supposed toplay in human life. What is it...