Moral Cognitivism and Character (original) (raw)
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Cognitivism about moral judgement
Oxford Studies in Meta-Ethics vol 10 forthcoming
What is it to make a moral judgement? There are two standard views, cognitivist and non-cognitivist, plus hybrid options according to which moral judgements have cognitivist and non-cognitivist components.In this context, cognitivism is typically defined as the theory that moral judgments are beliefs. This paper is not a defence of cognitivism (or of non-cognitivism). Rather, the aim is to get clearer about what it means for a moral judgment to be a belief. I begin by setting out a tension between three claims: cognitivism; an account of belief, and an account of moral judgement. I think all three claims are plausible, but I will not be defending them here. Rather, my interest is in whether they can be reconciled. In order to do so, I distinguish between broad and narrow belief. I give an example of a mental state that is a broad belief but not a narrow belief, a moral “ulief”. Finally, I set out new definitions of cognitivism and non-cognitivism and draw out some further implications of the argument.
Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences
In this paper, I defend the view that we can literally perceive the morally right and wrong, or something near enough. In defending this claim, I will try to meet three primary objectives: 1) to clarify how an investigation into moral phenomenology should proceed, 2) to respond to a number of misconceptions and objections that are most frequently raised against the very idea of moral perception, and 3) to provide a model for how some moral perception can be seen as literal perception. Because I take ‘moral perception’ to pick out a family of different experiences, I will limit myself (for the most part) to a discussion of the moral relevance of the emotions.
Cognitivist Presumptions of Moral Realism in Justification of Moral Truths
Beytulhikme International Journal Philolosopy, 2024
This study critically examines the foundational principles of impartial- ity and value independence advocated by moral realist epistemologies in the pur- suit of objectivity. Central to moral realists is the cognitivist presupposition ne- cessitating a clear distinction between cognitive and emotional components in- herent in moral judgments. The investigation focuses on the cognitive-emo- tional dichotomy underlying the moral realist perspectives of David Enoch and Thomas Nagel. The research findings unveil that the interplay between cogni- tion and emotion, as evidenced by experimental data, poses a formidable chal- lenge to the traditional understanding of impartiality and value independence. The article's initial section delves into the ontological nature of moral judgments, followed by an exploration of the cognitive assumptions shaping Nagel and Enoch's conceptualizations of objectivity. The final section elucidates the cog- nitive-emotional interdependence that disrupts the conditions of impartiality and value independence, conventionally posited as prerequisites for objectivity.
Moral Emotions, Principles, and the Locus of Perception
European Journal of Analytic Philosoophy, 2006
I vindicate the thrust of the particularist position in moral deliberation. To this purpose, I focus on some elements that seem to play a crucial role in first-person moral deliberation and argue that they cannot be incorporated into a more sophisticated system of moral principles. More specifically, I emphasize some peculiarities of moral perception in the light of which I defend the irreducible deliberative relevance of a certain phenomenon, namely: the phenomenon of an agent morally coming across a particular situation.
Moral Thought and Moral Judgment
Moral Thought and Moral Judgment This book is concerned with the ways in which moral thought involves more, including ending in more, than moral judgment as that is usually understood within standard moral theorising. What this claim, I hope it will become clear, entails is that moral thought and understanding are much more demanding of us, and in more varied ways, that moral theorists generally suppose. So, for example, it requires more than an intellectual grasp of moral concepts and principles, what follows from them, how they are to be ordered, integrated (or rendered consistent) and applied to specific situations and so on; though I recognise that there are undoubtedly many complex issues and problems that fall under this general head. In defending this claim, I will at various points make specific reference to literature. I do this as it seems plain that at least some literature is concerned with and involves moral thought even though such literature is far from what we would generally call moral philosophy, at least as that is understood by moral theorist. I am aware of course that some moral philosophers, Martha Nussbaum most prominently (Nussbaum 1990), have claimed that literature can be moral philosophy. However, I shall argue that such an assimilation stands in danger of missing the particular contribution that literature might make to moral thought beyond moral theorising, though that argument will only become clear as I discus the particular ways in which moral theorising is insufficient for and potentially distorts serious moral thought. This chapter makes a start on that project, by reflecting of a work of literature and a writer who has very commonly been taken, including by philosophers, to be engaging in moral thinking and judging in their work. I am alluding here to Jane Austen and the particular work I will consider is her novel Emma.
Philosophy, 2008
I develop an account of moral perception which is able to deal well with familiar naturalistic non-realist complaints about ontological extravagance and 'queerness'. I show how this account can also ground a cogent response to familiar objections presented by Simon Blackburn (about supervenience) and J.L.Mackie (about motivation). The familiar realist's problem about relativism, however, remains.
Winch on Moral Dilemmas and Moral Modality
Peter Winch's famous argument in “The Universalizability of Moral Judgments” that moral judgments are not always universalizable is widely thought to involve an essentially sceptical claim about the limitations of moral theories and moral theorising more generally. In this paper I argue that responses to Winch have generally missed the central positive idea upon which Winch's argument is founded: that what is right for a particular agent to do in a given situation may depend on what is and is not morally possible for them. I then defend the existence of certain genuine moral necessities and impossibilities in order to show how certain first-person moral judgements may be essentially personal.
Moral Emotions, Principles, and the Locus of Moral Perception
2006
I vindicate the thrust of the particularist posi tion in moral deliberation. to this purpose, I fo cus on some elements that seem to play a crucial role in first-person moral deliberation and argue that they cannot be incorporated into a more sophisticated system of moral principles. More specifically, I emphasize some peculiarities of moral perception in the light of which I defend the irreducible deliberative relevance of a cer tain phenomenon, namely: the phenomenon of an agent morally coming across a particular situation. Following on from bernard Williams, I talk of an agent’s character as a factor that con tributes to fixing what situations an agent comes morally across. A crucial point, in the debate, will be how an agent confronts the normatively loaded features of his own character when he is engaged in first-person deliberation.
A Hard Look at Moral Perception
Philosophical Studies
This paper concerns what I take to be the primary epistemological motivation for defending moral perception. Offering a plausible account of how we gain moral knowledge is one of the central challenges of metaethics. It seems moral perception might help us meet this challenge. The possibility that we know about the instantiation of moral properties in something like the way we know that there is a bus passing in front of us raises the alluring prospect of subsuming moral epistemology under the (relatively) comfortable umbrella of perceptual or, more broadly, empirical knowledge. The good news on this front is that various combinations of metaethical positions and theories of perception arguably have the potential to vindicate moral perception (though I won’t do much to defend this claim here). The bad news, I’ll argue, is that moral perception would be dependent for its epistemic merit on background knowledge of bridge principles linking moral and non-moral properties. Thus, in order to defend a purely perceptual moral epistemology, one would have to argue that knowledge of those principles is likewise perceptual. I further argue it is not.
Moral Judgments as Shared Intentions
The Ethics of Wilfrid Sellars, 2018
Chapter 3: Moral Judgments as Shared Intentions 3.1. Why Intentions? 3.1.1. Moral judgments, evidence and motivation David Solomon situates Sellars's ethical project within "a common view of the problematic of ethical theory which is largely shared by Anglo-American moral philosophers from Moore to Hare" (1977, 151). The chief difficulty facing classical metaethics (CM, as Solomon calls it) is a problem that should prove instantly familiar to anyone working in contemporary metaethics. The problem is how to reconcile two different aspects of moral judgment. First, we present evidence for our moral judgments, which entails (a) that moral judgments are belieflike or cognitive, and (b) that moral judgments can be involved in reasoning and logical