Colors as Secondary Qualities

McDowell, John H.

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195381658.003.0010

Cited by 8 publications

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“…What is less familiar but has been discussed by philosophers such as McDowell is the idea of logical or mathematical or even moral features of the world, the grasp of which require subjects to be appropriately intellectually or rationally attuned [10]. McDowell likens moral features of the world to secondary qualities, though the analogy is contested by Crispin Wright, for example [11], [15]). On this picture, there is an essential relation between the moral features which a knowledgeable agent is able to recognise and his or her responses to them.…”

Section: Trolleyology: What Does the Convergence In Judgement Telmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychopathy: what apology making tells us about moral agency

Ayob

Thornton

2014

Theor Med Bioeth

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Psychopathy is often used to settle disputes about the nature of moral judgement. The Trolley Problem is a familiar scenario in which psychopathy is used as a test case. Where a convergence in response to the Trolley Problem is registered between psychopathic subjects and non-psychopathic (normal) subjects, it is assumed that this convergence indicates that the capacity for making moral judgments is unimpaired in psychopathy. This in turn is taken to have implications for the dispute between motivation internalists and motivation externalists, for instance. In what follows, we want to do two things: firstly, we set out to question the assumption that convergence is informative of the capacity for moral judgement in psychopathy. Next, we consider a distinct feature of psychopathy which we think provides strong grounds for holding that the capacity for moral judgement is seriously impaired in psychopathic subjects. The feature in question is the psychopathic subject's inability to make sincere apologies. Our central claim will be this: convergence in response to Trolley Problems doesn't tell us very much about the psychopathic subject's capacity to make moral judgements, but his inability to make sincere apologies does provide us with strong grounds for holding that this capacity is seriously impaired in psychopathy.Psychopathy: what apology making tells us about moral agency

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Section: Trolleyology: What Does the Convergence In Judgement Telmentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychopathy: what apology making tells us about moral agency

Ayob

Thornton

2014

Theor Med Bioeth

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“…Or, 'subjective' may mean (ii) a quality such that it cannot be adequately understood except in terms of dispositions to give rise to certain subjective states. 9 McDowell argues that the second sense is the one relevant to a secondary quality, a quality such that it is ascribed to an object in virtue of the object's disposition to present a certain sort of perceptual appearance. Nonetheless, it can be a fully objective matter that a feature has that status.…”

Section: The Criteriological Approachmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Fact/Value Distinction and the Social Sciences

Jacobs

2013

Soc

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Metaethics is an especially illuminating context for exploring the relation between facts and values. There are good reasons in favor of a cognitivist, realist interpretation of moral value, and some of the elements of that interpretation suggest bases for rejecting the alleged fact/value distinction in social scientific explanations. Some of the main objections to the alleged fact/value distinction and to expressivist interpretations of moral value are articulated, with a view to showing their relevance to the understanding of social phenomena more broadly. Also, the way in which rationality inevitably involves normativity is discussed because it is a crucial consideration in regard to understanding the normative aspects of issues the social sciences seek to explain.

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“…Intellectual enquiry in moral theory might appear to be dedicated to trying to figure out the underlying descriptive properties of, for example, a 'just war' or a 'humane diet,' but this process is really aimed at discovering the extension of these terms, whereas the investigation of water's chemical properties is not aimed at discovering the actual extension of the term 'water. ' Other moral naturalists maintain that moral properties are 'secondary qualities' like colour (McDowell 1988); they are 'detected' and may be said to supervene on certain configurations of surface reflectances, light, eyes and brains. Although they are 'response-dependent,' secondary qualities are on this view not subjective, for some colour judgements are just erroneous.…”

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confidence: 99%

The Scientific Perspective on Moral Objectivity

Wilson

2017

Ethic Theory Moral Prac

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The naturalistic approach to metaethics is sometimes identified with a supervenience theory relating moral properties to underlying descriptive properties, thereby securing the possibility of objective knowledge in morality as in chemistry. I reject this approach along with the purely anthropological approach which leads to an objectionable form of relativism. There is no single method for arriving at moral objectivity any more than there is a single method that has taken us from alchemy to modern chemistry. Rather, there is an ensemble of (cognitive) instruments, techniques, experiments and observations that contribute to eliminating moral error, delivering what we are entitled to call greater objectivity.

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Colors as Secondary Qualities

Cited by 8 publications

References 0 publications

Psychopathy: what apology making tells us about moral agency

Psychopathy: what apology making tells us about moral agency

The Fact/Value Distinction and the Social Sciences

The Scientific Perspective on Moral Objectivity

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