PEA Soup

What is morality normative for?

Here’s an interesting quote from Stephen Darwall’s entry on “Normativity” in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy:

On one popular view, morality is normative for action by its very nature, so that to say that an action is wrong is to imply that one ought not to do it. …But it may be that morality is indeed normative, only not for action as the first view supposes. It may be, as Mill proposed, that the concept of moral wrong is tied to the appropriateness of certain sanctions and ‘sanctioning emotions’ such as blame, guilt, indignation and so on…. On this view, morality’s normativity directly concerns not the acts that are said to be right or wrong, but certain reactive emotions and their natural expressions. If this is right, an action could be wrong (and so something one morally ought not to do) without being something one (categorically) ought not to do. Its being morally wrong would consist in its being something that warrants blame and guilt, and that might be true even if there were [sufficient or decisive] reason to do it.

Scanlon oddities

As everyone knows, I ‘Reealy’ like Scanlon’s What We Owe to Each Other. One good thing about the book is that every time you read it (and I’ve read it quite a few times) you find something new that’s usually both interesting and puzzling. Here’s three quite recent small things that I’ve spotted.

Taxonomy in Ethics

Lately I've been thinking about taxonomy of philosophical views, especially in the area of normative ethics.

Here's a fragment of a common taxonomy of ethical theories. (This will be a bit rough; but the details aren't important here.) To begin, we distinguish consequentialist from non-consequentialist views, according as they accept or reject the claim that we ought to maximise the good. Then, within the category consequentialist, we distinguish between utilitarian and non-utilitarian views, according as they accept or reject the claim that the good is overall wellbeing. Then, within the category utilitarian, we distinguish between henonistic and non-hedonistic views, according as they accept or reject the claim that wellbeing consists solely in pleasure. Then, within the category hedonistic, we distinguish between phenomenological and non-phenomenological views, according as they accept or reject the claim that pleasure is just a mental state with a particular phenomenology. And so on and so forth.

So, here's what I'm wondering about. Can we go on like this forever, adding distinction after distinction without end? Or will we at some point find that we cannot distinguish any further? Will we eventually reach the "basic unit" of ethical theory? And if so, how will we know when we get there? What would be wrong with stopping at some more general level? Why not, say, simply distinguish consequentialism from non-consequentialism and leave it at that?

Value and Kantians

The standard view of Kantianism has been that it firmly denies that the right is grounded in the good.

Desire Bleg

Does anyone hold the following view? If so, who? Where? When? Why?

The notion of desire is to be understood/analyzed in terms of the notion of preference, perhaps along the following lines:

S wants that P =df. S prefers P to not-P.

(The basic idea is that what one wants is (i) determined by one's preferences, where preference is a contrastive relation that links a subject to two other entities, and (ii) we should accordingly analyze desire in terms of preference.)

Thanks!

Killing and Letting Die in the Bathtub

In James Rachels’ famous article, “Active and Passive Euthanasia,” he argues that, if the only relevant difference between active and passive euthanasia is that the former involves killing and the latter involves letting die, then that difference is not a morally relevant difference if there’s no morally relevant difference between killing and letting die.  And indeed, he argues, there is no morally relevant difference between killing and letting die, a conclusion drawn from the Bathtub Case (which, along with Judith Thomson’s Violinist Analogy, is one of the most famous thought experiments in moral philosophy).  Now there’s indeed a lesson to be learned here, but I don’t believe it’s the one Rachels had in mind.  Instead, I think there’s a really interesting lesson about the asymmetry of our patterns of blame and praise to be had.

Philosophy of Enjoyment

One of the best parts of Crisp’s book so far is the section on enjoyment. He is a hedonist about well-being – something increases your well-being only in so far as it creates experiences of enjoyment for you. Having this view about well-being then supposedly requires a criterion for which experiences count as experiences of enjoyment. This is an interesting question and Crisp does a good job in laying out the dialectic on the basis of which he ends up with his own view. I’m not sure I understand what that view ultimately is and how plausible it is. But, I would be interested in hearing your views about the matter as I’m pretty clueless. For a basis of discussion, I’d like to give a brief sketch of Crisp’s presentation.

Call for Papers: Utilitarianism Conference

The international conference "Utilitarianism: an
ethics of experience?" will be held at the University
of Rome "La Sapienza", Rome, June 14-16, 2007.

ETHICS ALERT

The latest appears below the fold.

New Addition

I'm happy to announce the addition of John Oberdiek to our list of contributors.  John is a co-director of the Rutgers Institute for Law and Philosophy, and he's also on the graduate faculty in the Rutgers department of philosophy.   He specializes in -- wait for it -- law and philosophy, and we're pleased to have him aboard.