Meta-ethical Relativity and Objectivity

THIS PAPER IS THE CO-WINNER OF THE FRED BERGER PRIZE IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW FOR THE 1999 AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE BEST PUBLISHED PAPER IN THE PREVIOUS TWO YEARS.

The conflict between liberal legal theory and critical legal studies (CLS) is often framed as a matter of whether there is a theory of justice that the law should embody which all rational people could or must accept. In a divided society, the CLS critique of this view is overwhelming: there is no such justice that can command universal assent. But the liberal critique of CLS, that it degenerates into an unpalatable moral relativism on which there is no non-arbitrary basis between a justice that underwrites forms of domination such as slavery and a justice that condemns such forms of domination is equally powerful and compelling. I show that there is a way to harmonize both views that is subject to empirical test.

First I show that the most widely accepted and influential formulation of liberal justice, John Rawls' Justice as Fairness, in. e.g, A Theory of Justice, cannot avoid the relativistic challenge because it would not be accepted, as a matter of sociological fact, by real people in a divided society once the "veil of Ignorance" is removed and real people step out from the Original Position. To put it differently, different reflective equilibria are inevitable in a divided society. Given the weight that Rawls properly puts on the realizability of a conception of justice and its stability in practice, this is a fatal objection. There can be no divided society that is "well ordered" in Rawls' sense, governed by a shared conception of justice and known to be so governed.

I then turn to the most powerful statement of the CLS view, Milton's Fisk's relativistic account in The State and Justice. For Fisk, justice is a compromise between what the dominant groups can compel and what the the subordinate groups will acquiesce to., There is no one such compromise in any given situation, so the account is in that sense relativistic, but more deeply, it is relativistic in that it offers no non-arbitrary, non-question begging way to choose between the official justice of, e.g., a slaveholding society and and the radical justice of the slaves, which has no place for slaveholders as a group or slavery as an institution.All that Fisk can offer is an arbitrary existential choice: I'm with the slaves. (Or the slaveowners.) Most of us would find this disconcerting or even unacceptable.

I show that Fisk's general sort of account can be modified to allow for an non-arbitrary choice. Given general facts about human nature, societies based on domination will produce resistance that over the long run will diminish or eliminate various forms of domination. Through a sort of ratchet effect, rights won will be hard if not impossible to reverse. Societies embodying forms of domination can therefore be compared on dimensions of stability: the more domination, the more resistance, and the less stability. Such societies are inferior on the dimension of justice to more emancipatory society on the terms of both kinds of justice, official and radical.

This is not question begging because regimes of domination incorporate stability no less than more emancipatory social orders. The choice between official justice embodying domination and radical justice that does not is not arbitrary because it is based on a shared commitment to long term stability. This offers an empirical test of which social orders are more justice, and a prediction that over time, domination will tend to decrease.

Subjectivists claim that the absence of a theological or metaphysical grounding to moral judgements renders them all as simply statements about our subjective wants and preferences. Leslie Allan argues that the subjectivists’ case rests on a misunderstanding of the nature of moral objectivity. He presents the view that subjectivists mistakenly counterpoise the ideal of moral objectivity with the expression of individual preferences. Being objective in moral deliberation, Allan argues, should be regarded instead as the antithesis of parochial and biased reasoning. This account of moral objectivity, he concludes, makes sense of a long-standing universalist tradition in moral philosophy.

Here I bewail the slapdash and confusing way in which philosophers bandy about the word ‘incoherent’ (and ‘incoherence’ and ‘incoherently’).  To some it appears to mean: inconsistent; to others: pragmatically self-defeating; and to yet others: nonsensical, i.e. meaningless.  And often one is left guessing.

Stressing that the pronoun "I" picks out one and only one person in the world (i.e., me), I argue against Hunt (and other like-minded Rand commentators) that the supposed "hard case" of destructive people who do not care for their own lives poses no special difficulty for rational egoism. I conclude that the proper response to a terse objection like "What about suicide bombers?" is the equally terse assertion "But I don't want to get blown up."

Foot argues that there are certain things that all human beings - perhaps all rational agents - need.  This gives a sense in which certain values and disvalues can be called 'objective'.  I suggest that, with certain relatively minor adjustments, her argument can be made cogent but that it cannot be used to show that there are objective answers to questions about what one should do when values conflict.  If Foot's own virtue ethics, utilitarianism, Kantian ethics or any other first-order moral system were to be established as objectively valid, this would require some completely different form of argumentation. 


Almost sixty years ago Philippa Foot published an article that began: To many people it seems that the most notable advance in moral philosophy during the past fifty years or so has been the refutation of naturalism; and they are a little shocked that at this late date such an issue should be reopened. It is easy to understand their attitude: given certain apparently unquestionable assumptions, it would be about as sensible to try to reintroduce naturalism as to try to square the circle. Those who see it like this have satisfied themselves that they know in advance that any naturalistic theory must have a catch in it somewhere, and are put out at having to waste more time exposing an old fallacy. This paper is an attempt to persuade them to look critically at the premises on which their arguments are based. 1 The paper in question was one of a number written by Foot around the time that were highly successful in reopening the issue of naturalism in ethics. Nowadays no one can just take it for granted that naturalism has been refuted, that there is a sharp distinction (or indeed any clear distinction) between fact and value or that it is impossible to derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. This is not to say that the naturalists have been completely victorious, of course; only that naturalism is today a live option. I shall argue that Foot's paper contains an important insight and an equally important mistake; and that the insight and the mistake are linked. I believe that the thinking behind it has influenced the subsequent course of moral philosophy to a quite remarkable extent and that this has been in some ways beneficial and in some ways harmful – not surprisingly, if I am right in seeing it as containing both truth and error. I do not want to exaggerate the influence of this one paper 2 but I do not know of any other that so neatly encapsulates the coupled insight and mistake. The anti-naturalism that Foot is attacking she characterises as follows: It would not be an exaggeration to say that the whole of moral philosophy, as it is now widely taught, rests on a contrast between statements of fact and evaluations, which runs something like this: The truth or falsity of statements of fact is shewn by means of evidence; and what counts as evidence is laid down in the meaning of the expressions occurring in the statement of fact … It follows that no two people can make the same statement and count completely different things as evidence; in the end one at least of them could be convicted of linguistic ignorance. It also follows that if a man is given good evidence for a factual conclusion he cannot just refuse to accept the conclusion on the ground that in his scheme of things this evidence is not evidence at all. 3 But, on the view she is criticising, [w]ith evaluations, however, it is different. An evaluation is not connected logically with the factual statements on which it is based. One man may say that a thing is good because of some fact about it, and another may refuse to take that fact as any evidence, for nothing is laid down in the meaning of 'good' which connects it with one piece of 'evidence' rather than another. It follows that a moral eccentric could argue to moral conclusions from quite idiosyncratic premises; he could say, for instance, that a man was a good man because he clasped and unclasped his hands and never turned NNE after

The subtitle of Virginia Woolf's Orlando (1928) is not "A Novel,” but "A Biography." Though Woolf's diaries establish that Orlando's subject owes homage to Vita Sackville-West, her long-time lover, the text's fantastical plot marks it as a work of fiction. Yet Orlando's male narrator insists that his account — Orlando's "life story" — is true. This paper explores this tension by pulling apart what we know as the “subject” (in a biography) vs. “character” (in a novel); biographer vs. narrator; and narrator vs. author. Working through Percy Lubbock's and Marthe Robert's attempts at defining the novel, Boris Tomashevsky's stab at "narrative,” and Hermione Lee's work on "biography,” this paper unmasks the biographer-narrator's pretensions to objectivity and truth-telling. Because Orlando's narrator "has a desire to mislead, to ring true" (Marthe Robert), he is fundamentally a novelist — yet in this text, he is also a character that Woolf dresses up as a biographer in order to ridicule the profession, to mock. Orlando is A Biography, then, because it is a caricature, "a joke,” a romp.

Sam Harris (2010) argues that, given our neurology, we can experience well-being, and that seeking to maximize this state lets us distinguish the good from the bad. He takes our ability to compare degrees of well-being as his starting point, but I think that the analysis can be pushed further, since there is a (non-religious) reason why well-being is desirable, namely the finite life of an individual organism. It is because death is a constant possibility that things can be assessed as “for” or “against” one (Champagne 2011a; Smith 2000). Such an account lets us objectively adjudicate moral questions, as Harris desires. However, by anchoring itself in the mortal body as a whole and not just the brain, such an account dampens the claim that neuroscience would have all the answers. Moreover, it pivots on an affirmation of one’s life that can seem mysterious by regular scientific standards. This chapter thus explains why the trade-off is worthwhile.

Almost sixty years ago Philippa Foot published an article that began: To many people it seems that the most notable advance in moral philosophy during the past fifty years or so has been the refutation of naturalism; and they are a little shocked that at this late date such an issue should be reopened. It is easy to understand their attitude: given certain apparently unquestionable assumptions, it would be about as sensible to try to reintroduce naturalism as to try to square the circle. Those who see it like this have satisfied themselves that they know in advance that any naturalistic theory must have a catch in it somewhere, and are put out at having to waste more time exposing an old fallacy. This paper is an attempt to persuade them to look critically at the premises on which their arguments are based. 1 The paper in question was one of a number written by Foot around the time that were highly successful in reopening the issue of naturalism in ethics. Nowadays no one can just take it for granted that naturalism has been refuted, that there is a sharp distinction (or indeed any clear distinction) between fact and value or that it is impossible to derive an 'ought' from an 'is'. This is not to say that the naturalists have been completely victorious, of course; only that naturalism is today a live option. I shall argue that Foot's paper contains an important insight and an equally important mistake; and that the insight and the mistake are linked. I believe that the thinking behind it has influenced the subsequent course of moral philosophy to a quite remarkable extent and that this has been in some ways beneficial and in some ways harmful – not surprisingly, if I am right in seeing it as containing both truth and error. I do not want to exaggerate the influence of this one paper 2 but I do not know of any other that so neatly encapsulates the coupled insight and mistake. The anti-naturalism that Foot is attacking she characterises as follows: It would not be an exaggeration to say that the whole of moral philosophy, as it is now widely taught, rests on a contrast between statements of fact and evaluations, which runs something like this: The truth or falsity of statements of fact is shewn by means of evidence; and what counts as evidence is laid down in the meaning of the expressions occurring in the statement of fact … It follows that no two people can make the same statement and count completely different things as evidence; in the end one at least of them could be convicted of linguistic ignorance. It also follows that if a man is given good evidence for a factual conclusion he cannot just refuse to accept the conclusion on the ground that in his scheme of things this evidence is not evidence at all. 3 But, on the view she is criticising, [w]ith evaluations, however, it is different. An evaluation is not connected logically with the factual statements on which it is based. One man may say that a thing is good because of some fact about it, and another may refuse to take that fact as any evidence, for nothing is laid down in the meaning of 'good' which connects it with one piece of 'evidence' rather than another. It follows that a moral eccentric could argue to moral conclusions from quite idiosyncratic premises; he could say, for instance, that a man was a good man because he clasped and unclasped his hands and never turned NNE after

Quasi-realism claims that an anti-realist can earn the right to the truth-predicate. In this paper I want to show that quasi-realism is an inconsistent theory. This is because firstly, quasi-realism has an internal inconsistency in its theory of truth. I argue that fast-track quasi-realism and slow-track quasi-realism cannot be employed together for a theory of truth, as Blackburn claims, because they contradict each other. Secondly, Blackburn’s projectivism and quasi-realism both borrow problematic terms that are inconsistent with expressivism, which quasi-realism aims to defend.

Ethics and mathematics have long invited comparisons. On the one hand, both ethical and mathematical propositions can appear to be knowable a priori, if knowable at all. On the other hand, mathematical propositions seem to admit of proof, and to enter into empirical scientific theories, in a way that ethical propositions do not. In this article, I discuss apparent similarities and differences between ethical (i.e., moral) and mathematical knowledge, realistically construed -- i.e., construed as independent of human mind and languages. I argue that some are are merely apparent, while others are of little consequence. There is a difference between the cases. But it is not an epistemological difference per se. The difference, surprisingly, is that ethical knowledge, if it is practical, cannot fail to be objective in a way that factual knowledge can. One upshot of the discussion is radicalization of Moore’s Open Question Argument. Another is that the concepts of realism and objectivity, which are widely identified, are actually in tension.

Le présent mémoire se propose de faire le point sur cette question : est-ce que le constructivisme moral, particulièrement celui que défend Sharon Street, peut se présenter comme une position métaéthique convaincante et apte à répondre aux enjeux que soulève la question du réalisme moral et de l’objectivité des faits normatifs? Dans un premier chapitre, il sera donc nécessaire de déterminer ce en quoi constitue justement cette question du réalisme moral. Après avoir identifié les principales « avenues » entre réalisme et anti-réalisme, nous nous pencherons sur les enjeux particuliers qu’elle soulève d’un point de vue métaphysique, par rapport aux désaccords moraux, aux regards de l’épistémologie ainsi que de la psychologie morale. Nous pourrons alors conclure le chapitre sur une analyse de la position générale du constructivisme sur l’axe réalisme et anti-réalisme. Ensuite, une fois que sera bien maîtrisé ce qu’implique cet enjeu du réalisme moral, nous nous pencherons dans un second chapitre sur le détail de la pensée de Sharon Street. Seront alors abordés les arguments anti-réalistes au fondement de sa position, les réponses qu’aura reçues son article de 2006 et son argument du dilemme darwinien ainsi que la conception générale des faits moraux que défend la philosophe dans son constructivisme humien. Le second chapitre s’achèvera alors sur une analyse des implications normatives que pourrait comporter son constructivisme. En conclusion, nous pourrons en venir à déterminer si le constructivisme moral répond aux conditions que nous avons établies au début de notre démarche. /// This thesis will focus on the following question: can moral constructivism, particularly the one defended by Sharon Street, be considered a convincing metaethical view, able to answer in a distinctive way to the most important problems raised by the question of moral realism and the objectivity of normative facts? Accordingly, the first chapter will be dedicated to the understanding of what implies the question of realism. After having identified the principal alternatives between realism and antirealism, we will explore the main problems that the question raises from four different perspectives: metaphysics, moral disagreement, epistemology and moral psychology. The chapter will then be concluded on an analysis of the general position of moral constructivism regarding the realism/antirealism axis. Once the implications of the moral realism question understood, we will move in a second chapter to the details of Sharon Street’s philosophy. Will be discussed the antirealist arguments at the foundation of her position, the answers given to her 2006 article and the Darwinian Dilemma argument and the general conception of normative facts she defends in her Humean constructivism. The chapter will end on an analysis of possible normative implications that her constructivism could have. In conclusion, we should be able to determine if moral constructivism meets the conditions we have established at the beginning of our work.

It may seem that a naturalistic view of humankind renders ethics as a matter of taste. Science seems to dictate that there can be no objective standards for how we ought to behave. In fact, both of these positions misconstrue the nature of ethical reasoning and greatly impoverish our view of ourselves and of our social norms. In this talk, Leslie Allan invites you to consider how both objectivity and subjectivity are essential elements of moral discourse.

Prompted by the thesis that an organism’s umwelt possesses not just a descriptive dimension, but a normative one as well, some have sought to annex semiotics with ethics. Yet the pronouncements made in this vein have consisted mainly in rehearsing accepted moral intuitions, and have failed to concretely further our knowledge of why or how a creature comes to order objects in its environment in accordance with axiological charges of value or disvalue. For want of a more explicit account, theorists writing on the topic have relied almost exclusively on semiotic insights about perception originally designed as part of a sophisticated refutation of idealism. The end result, which has been a form of direct givenness, has thus been far from convincing. In an effort to bring substance to the right-headed suggestion that values are rooted in the biological and conform to species-specific requirements, we present a novel conception that strives to make explicit the elemental structure underlying umwelt normativity. Building and expanding on the seminal work of Ayn Rand in metaethics, we describe values as an intertwined lattice which takes a creature’s own embodied life as its ultimate standard; and endeavour to show how, from this, all subsequent valuations can in principle be determined.

This essay argues that acknowledging the existence of mind-independent facts is a matter of vital importance, in that acquiescence before the layout of the world is something demanded of knowing agents from the most elementary empirical deliverance to the most abstract construct. Building on the idea that normativity requires the presence of more than one option to choose from, the essay shows how the cessation of one's life is the disjunctive alternative of any experiential episode. This much has been missed, it argues, because of a generalized failure to appreciate how even the simplest atomic contents embroil their subjects in acts of assent. Its account thus casts a new light on relativism and skepticism, revealing them to be provisional luxuries supported only by the cognitive labor of others.

In a discussion associating his views with those of William James, Richard Rorty once wrote that the word "true" (like the words "good" and "rational") was merely a normative notion, "a compliment paid to sentences that seem to be paying their way and that fit in with other sentences which are doing so." (Rorty, 1982, p. xxv) Rorty argued that our culture's failures to achieve "Objectivity" tell us that we have been desiring the wrong ideal all along.
Perhaps "true" is just a compliment and "objectivity" is just an illusory desire; perhaps not. Regardless, calling objectivity "illusory" has done little to eradicate the constant and practical need of discussing and debating what objectivity should—and should not mean.
To better understand objectivity, this paper examines how objectivity is faring among theorists in history and journalism because both fields are crucially important in influencing what the average person considers to be debate, argument, knowledge, truth—indeed, what they think is "objectivity." First, I present two sketches of the recent history of the concept of "objectivity"—first among historians and then among journalism/media theorists. Second, I examine several critiques each field has made against what they consider the traditional conception of objectivity. Third, I shift to these critics' pragmatic proposals for reconstructing objectivity. Finally, I make a very brief case regarding why these critics' proposals would benefit from greater connection with a philosophically pragmatist conception of democracy. In brief, my tentative conclusion is that these (historians' and journalists') proposals to renovate "objectivity" only become defensible once they more firmly connected to democracy by dialogical and epistemic habits of inquiry.

I this article, I introduce the notion of pluralism about an area, and use it to argue that the questions at the center of our normative lives are not settled by the facts -- even the normative facts.  One upshot of the discussion is that the concepts of realism and objectivity, which are widely identified, are actually in tension.  Another is that the concept of objectivity, not realism, should take center stage.

When one deliberates one has reasons both for and against doing something.  Could the reasons for OBJECTIVELY outweigh the reasons against, in the sense that someone who thought otherwise would simply be wrong?  (This is not the same question as that of whether any of the competing reasons could be objectively valid in itself.)  Three seemingly relevant kinds of ethical theory are examined: virtue ethics, utilitarianism and moral absolutism.  It is suggested that the proponents of these have all so far failed to show that they can give compelling objective reasons for acting on certain reasons rather than others.  We so far lack any conception of what sort of second-order considerations could adjudicate between competing reasons.  This is not so much an ‘error theory’ in J. L. Mackie’s sense as an admission of ignorance.

This paper criticizes J.L. Mackie's attempt to prove that "there are no objective values" by means of his "argument from queerness." I argue that Mackie's argument from queerness is either question-begging or performatively self-contradictory.

Some theologians claim that if God did not exist, there would be no grounding for our moral judgments. Our moral prescriptions, they argue, would be subject only to our changing whim and fancy. Leslie Allan challenges the presumption that moral objectivity consists in tapping into a realm of human-independent facts. He endeavours to show that moral judgments are expressions of human preferences taken from an impartial standpoint. This view, while explaining the nature of objectivity in ethics, leaves no room for a deity. Allan concludes by showing how this account of moral objectivity makes sense of a long-standing universalist tradition in moral philosophy and religious thinking.

"Public Administration as Pragmatic, Democratic, and Objective" Public Administration Review, 2008 (Volume 68 Issue 2 Page 222-229, March-April 2008). Public Administration Review. In "Rediscovering the Taproot: Does Classical Pragmatism Offer a Source of Renewal to Public Administration," Patricia M. Shields argues that Public Administration/Administrators (PA) should support a much greater incorporation of classical pragmatism (CP) than it has to date. This paper supports that conclusion by focusing upon CP's central benefit to PA--its ability to provide PA with a claim to objectivity which it badly needs, but which Shields barely mentions. It shows how objectivity is closely connected to a pragmatic conception of democracy, and how this conception of democracy diametrically opposes one built upon a fact/value (or administration/politics) dichotomy.

Mackie’s claim that in general courage benefits its possessor seems inconsistent with his ‘error theory’ of value.  But how plausible is it in itself?  I suggest that his arguments for the claim fail in the same way as the arguments of those who more explicitly embrace ‘virtue ethics’ fail.  We do not know any way of objectively weighing risks against other considerations, of deciding whether something is ‘worth the risk’.  Since I have no PROOF that there could not be a way, I prefer to speak of ‘ignorance’ rather than ‘error’ here.

Davidson and Kolnai in different ways emphasise that practical syllogistic reasoning can only tell one that one has a reason to do or not to do something.  It cannot adjudicate between conflicting reasons.  It can tell one the means to certain ends but not which ends to pursue.  This paper considers possible responses to this predicament.  What if anything can be done to put deliberation - the 'weighing' of competing reasons - on  a rational basis?

Ethics is often dominated by an understanding of objecitivity according to which any subjective influences are to be eliminated as far as possible. This suggests that emotions are an obstacle to ethical cognition because they tend to dull the look upon (ethically relevant) facts. The author here makes an attempt to criticize this kind of understanding of objectivity, reality and rationality, which is (often implicitly) inherent in ethical discourses, as well as the ideal of a moral philosopher as a scientific expert. His aim is to make room for another view of what ethics is actually about. The reality of ethics is that of the significance of situations, and this kind of reality is only accessible to an involved perception and not to a "look from nowhere". Thus, emotions are not in any case to be seen as an obstacle to valid ethical cognition; on the contrary, it is them which facilitate to perceive a situation in its moral relevance. As to the reflections of the moral philosopher about ethical problems this kind of view has the consequence that what has to be asked is not generally keeping distance from his subjective reactions but a somewhat deeper understanding of them.

One of the most fundamental problems in moral philosophy is to account for the objectivity of ethical knowledge. Broadly speaking, ethical knowledge is the sort of knowledge implicated in doing the right thing. It is the sort of knowledge that enables agents to tell right from wrong and which guides (rational) agents in acting as they should. The challenge behind the attempt to offer a satisfactory account of ethical knowledge has been accounted in various manners. One way to frame the challenge is to say that ethical judgments appear to aspire to objectivity and practicality, but these aspirations push in opposite directions, and it is an open question whether and how to reconcile them. For many, the main challenge in defending ethical objectivity is that it seems to commit one to a queer ontology, insofar as it entails knowledge of properties of the world that are “intrinsically motivating” (Mackie 1977, Smith 1994). Underlying these debates about the ontological commitments of ethical objectivity, there are deeper divisions concerning not only the very standard of ethical objectivity in ethics, but also the standards of practical significance. The first issue divides those adopting an ontological approach to objectivity and those proposing a practical approach to it. The second issue divides those concerned with the practical powers of reason, and those investigating the capacity to motivate action through rational argumentation, rhetorical persuasion, or psychological inducement. The prevailing view, most often combined with the rejection of the ontological approach, is that ethical judgments guide action through conative states and emotions, rather than via reasoning and rational argumentation. Thus, the practical guidance of ethical judgment is supposed to have little to do with the normative authority of reason. This is a move that has been recurrently associated with naturalism. Broadly speaking, ethical naturalism holds that the semantic features of ethical judgments require no special ontology. Moral facts – if there are any – are natural facts. Moral properties are nothing but natural properties. In this broad sense, any meta-ethical account of ethics that is consistent with naturalistic position in general philosophical inquiry counts as naturalistic. But this general claim can be phrased in more or less stringent terms [Lutz & Lenman 2018]. From a metaphysical point of view, naturalism admits to existence only natural things; and, from an epistemological point of view, it holds that we know such things via empirical methods. When this view is combined with realism, it holds that there are objective, mind-independent moral facts, and we know about them using empirical methods. This is the view I call “reductive naturalism”, which stands in contrast to anti-realist theories of various sorts (e.g. error theory, Humean constructivism, relativism, expressivism), and Kantian constructivism. A seeming advantage of reductive naturalism is that it solves all these debates with a simple move, which admits of a naturalistic ontology to which all special ontologies belong and eliminates the problem of normativity as a pseudo-problem. According to its critics, the disadvantage of this move is that it does not account for the subjective experience of moral life, understood as the life of mutually dependent and vulnerable subjects, governed by and accountable to principles of rationality, and participating in a community regulated by norms. Practical subjects represent themselves and others as governed by (ethical) norms, which can be defended, challenged, observed, and violated. To be guided by norms requires an understanding of the authority of such norms, which eludes reductive naturalism. Reductive naturalism seems right in pressing a unified naturalistic ontology, but its reductivist methodology bears epistemic costs that seem intolerable exactly because it imposes a loss of understanding of the subjective experience of ordinary normative practices. Liberal naturalism offers a very plausible way to avoid this problem in that it acknowledges that riddles and frictions underlying the dynamics of moral life are genuine phenomena which call for philosophical explanation, and yet admit no redundant or extravagant ontology [De Caro & Macarthur 2010, 9]. Philosophical explanation aims to elucidate and further our understanding of paradigmatic ethical phenomena: it is pluralistic in its methodology and does not stand in need of any special ontology. Within these methodological coordinates, Kantian constructivism represents a promising approach to ethical objectivity, which shares some fundamental tenets of liberal naturalism [Mcarthur 2019]. While Kantian constructivism agrees with moral realism that there are objective distinctions, such distinctions do not rest on any separate ontology. Kantian constructivism adopts the naturalistic constraint on ontology, and is parsimonious in admitting moral facts…

This paper presents a new analysis of the concept of non-instrumental need, and, using it, demonstrates how a need-satisfaction theory of well-being is much more plausible than might otherwise be supposed. Its thesis is that in at least some contexts of evaluation a central part of some persons’ well-being consists in their satisfying certain “personal needs”. Unlike common conceptions of other non-instrumental needs, which make those out to be moralised, universal, and minimal, personal needs are expansive and particular to particular persons, generated rather by persons’ non-moral personal commitments. Against objections to the contrary, I show how these are genuine necessities, since unlike mere desires and freely escapable aims, personal needs constitute objective, inescapable, and non-compensable practical requirements. The personal-need-satisfaction theory of well-being combines objectivity with subject-dependence in novel ways, and motivates well-being pluralism at the level of individual agency. Implicating necessity as it does in the structure of individual well-being, this account presents a robust challenge to ethical and political theories that rely on the intrapersonal aggregation of well-being to be unproblematic.

'Organs for Sale: Bioethics, Neoliberalism, and Public Moral Deliberation' is an extended case study of the bioethical question of how to increase human organ supply, focusing on the rhetoric of competing advocates, namely, the altruism-based status quo and market alternatives. But it is also an inquiry into what a public values and how and why it disagrees, and the relationship between morals and markets under conditions of ethical pluralism and democratic regimes. Deciding together about the limits of markets, of what is and ought to be for sale and why, is about organ policy in particular but, more significantly, it is also about the very kind of society in which citizens and markets exist, deliberate, and thrive.

I argue that Mackie's thesis about courage and self-interest is neither consistent with his 'error theory' of value nor convincing in itself.  The question of the objectivity of value needs to be distinguished from that of whether one value can objectively outweigh or outrank another.  This is so even when the only values under consideration are self-interested ones.

According to the argument from moral disagreement, the existence of widespread or persistent moral disagreement is best explained by, and thus supports the view that there are no objective moral truths. One of the most common charges against this argument is that it “overgeneralizes”: it implausibly forces its proponents to also deny the existence of objective truths about certain matters of physics, history, philosophy, etc. (“companions in guilt” objections) or even about the argument’s own conclusion or its own soundness (“self-defeat” objections). My aim in this paper is to provide a detailed clarification and assessment of this overgeneralization charge. Various (mostly empirical) issues relevant to assessing the above objections have so far not been sufficiently investigated. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to believe that realists have exaggerated the significance of their overgeneralization charge. Both its companions in guilt and its self-defeat versions likely fail.

Leslie Allan defends his thesis that ethics is objective in the sense of requiring moral agents to offer impartial reasons for acting. Radical subjectivists have attacked this requirement for impartiality on a number of grounds. Some critics make the charge that Allan’s thesis is simply a version of subjectivism in disguise. He responds by showing how a broadly naturalist view of ethics accommodates objective moral constraints. Allan also counters cases in which impartiality is purportedly not morally required and considers the subjectivists’ response to the problem of demarcating moral from non-moral judgements.

As the issue is usually framed, the fundamental issue at stake between mainstream liberal jurisprudence and various forms of Critical Legal Studies (CLS) is, as Jeffrie Murphy puts it, whether there are ‘neutral principles in law and morality. By neutral principles [are] mean[t] those principles that can be agreed to by all rational beings.’ CLS theorists of all sorts typically hold that there are no neutral principles in a society divided into groups with vastly unequal power and status. Socialist Critics assert the class character of the law and morality. Feminist and Critical Race Theorists hold that these are infected with gender or racial biases. Social conflict between groups translates into irreconcilable conflicts of values. But in rejecting liberal neutrality, Murphy claims, the Critics fall into a radical ‘value relativism or skepticism’, which he regards as pragmatically self-defeating given their political commitments to the interests of subordinate groups.

My dissertation has two main aims. The first is to show how some of the central parts of Bernard Williams’ conception of ethics fit together. The second is to criticize and develop Williams’ thought and, by doing so, to illustrate why it offers such an important and fruitful starting point for contemporary moral philosophy.
Much of the importance of Williams’ work stems from his rich and ambivalent engagement with moral skepticism. His work forcefully engages both with philosophical and wider cultural concerns about the ‘status’ and authority of moral values and with questions over how to understand and sustain the deliberative priority traditionally accorded to moral concerns. His conception of reasons for action, which I consider in Chapter One, entails that we must either accept that some of our moral judgements are mistaken or else give up the appealing view that moral judgements always give reasons for action to those to whom they apply. His exploration of what it is to have a deep commitment to a person or project suggests, as I explain in Chapter Two, that moral obligations do not necessarily have priority over other concerns. His doubts about moral objectivity, which I explore in Chapter Three and Chapter Four, lead him to a deeply problematic conception of the relationship between ethical reflection and ethical practice.
All of these views of Williams’ incorporate varying degrees of skepticism. But Williams does not aim to be an outright moral skeptic. Indeed, I reveal how his work can be read as containing a response to outright skepticism: what he shows is that ethics need neither be as exacting nor as saddled with metaphysical ambition as the skeptic thinks. However, the elements of Williams’ work that tell against outright skepticism, I argue, give one reason to go further and to be less skeptical about morality than he is.

Advisor: J.B. Schneewind

Second reader: Susan Wolf

Readers: Amanda Anderson, Michael Fried, Stephen Nichols

As a non-cognitivist analysis of moral language, Charles Stevenson's sophisticated emotivism is widely regarded by moral philosophers as a substantial improvement over its historical antecedent, radical emotivism. None the less, it has come in for its share of criticism. In this essay, Leslie Allan responds to the key philosophical objections to Stevenson's thesis, arguing that the criticisms levelled against his meta-ethical theory rest largely on a too hasty reading of his works.

These remarks are concerned with how we might distinguish the humanities from other intellectual projects and with explicating the importance of the humanities as a way of deepening and enlarging our understanding of numerous types of value and the relations between them.

I discuss Benacerraf's epistemological challenge for realism
about an area, F, like mathematics, metalogic, modality, or morality.
I argue that it should be understood as the challenge to show
that our beliefs are safe, realistically construed -- i.e., as the
challenge to show that we could not have easily had systematically
false ones.  I explain how F-pluralism -- the view that there are
a plurality of F-like concepts, all independently satisfied -- can be
understood as a response to Benacerraf's challenge.  And I explain why moral, and more generally, normative pluralism is peculiarly
problematic.  One upshot of the discussion is a radicalization of
Moore's Open Question Argument.  Another is that the concepts of
realism and objectivity, which are widely identified, are actually in
tension.