Moral Generalism: Enjoy in Moderation

Väyrynen, Pekka

doi:10.1086/505232

Cited by 42 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 16 publications

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“…In this and the following two sections, I consider whether the competing theories of moral principles recently proposed by Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge (2006), Pekka Väyrynen (2006;2009), and Mark Lance and Margaret Little (2008;2007;2006a;2006b) vindicate the law conception of moral principles -whether they have the resources not only to answer our question, but also to answer it in a way that vindicates the law conception of moral principles. And I will show that none of them do.…”

Section: Mckeever and Ridge's "Action-guiding Standards"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Moral Principles are Not Moral Laws

Robinson

2017

JESP

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What are moral principles? The assumption underlying much of the generalism–particularism debate in ethics is that they are (or would be) moral laws: generalizations or some special class thereof, such as explanatory or counterfactual-supporting generalizations. Iargue that this law conception of moral principles is mistaken. For moral principles do at least three things that moral laws cannot do, at least not in their own right: explain certain phenomena, provide particular kinds of support for counterfactuals, and ground moral necessities, “necessary connections” between obligating reasons and obligations. Moreover, neither a best-systems theory of moral principles nor any of the competing theories of moral principles proposed by Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge, Pekka Väyrynen, and Mark Lance and Margaret Little could vindicate the law conception of moral principles. I conclude with some brief remarks about what moral principles might be if they are not moral laws.

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Section: Mckeever and Ridge's "Action-guiding Standards"mentioning

confidence: 99%

Moral Principles are Not Moral Laws

Robinson

2017

JESP

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“…For instance, we might want to distinguish facts that are right-or wrong-making from facts that are normatively relevant by providing various sorts of background conditions (cf. Dancy 2004;Väyrynen 2006). Then the role of F in explaining N would depend on how it is normatively relevant.…”

Section: The Normative Relevance Argumentmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…(That might be "one thought too many", for instance.) A contractualist might well say that the fact that actions with certain features -34 Different articulations of the source question can be found in Korsgaard (1996), Väyrynen (2006 and Chang (2009). The example of painfulness and the language of "bearers of normativity" is due to Chang (2009, 243).…”

Section: Two Levels In Normative Explanationmentioning

confidence: 99%

I—Pekka Väyrynen: Grounding and Normative Explanation

Väyrynen

2013

Aristot Soc Suppl Vol

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This paper concerns non‐causal normative explanations such as ‘This act is wrong because/in virtue of__’ (where the blank is often filled out in non‐normative terms, such as ‘it causes pain’). The familiar intuition that normative facts aren't brute or ungrounded but anchored in non‐normative facts seems to be in tension with the equally familiar idea that no normative fact can be fully explained in purely non‐normative terms. I ask whether the tension could be resolved by treating the explanatory relation in normative explanations as the sort of ‘grounding’ relation that receives extensive discussion in recent metaphysics. I argue that this would help only under controversial assumptions about the nature of normative facts, and perhaps not even then. I won't try to resolve the tension, but draw a distinction between two different sorts of normative explanations (one concerning ‘bearers’, the other concerning ‘sources’ of normativity) which helps to identify constraints on a resolution. One distinctive constraint on normative explanations in particular might be that they should be able to play a role in normative justification.

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“…Collections of essays on particularism include Hooker and Little (2000) and Lance, Potrc, and Strahovnik (2008). See, also, McNaughton (1988), Louden (1991), Shafer-Landau (1997), Sinnott-Armstrong (1999), Little (2001), Cullity (2002), Holton (2002), Lance and Little (2004, 2006a, 2006b, Väyrynen (2004, 2006a, 2006b), McKeever and Ridge (2006, Raz (2006), Crisp (2007), Stangl (2008, 2010), and Leibowitz (2009a, 2009b The persistent failure to find and formulate exceptionless moral principles that provide an adequate account of morality invites us to examine the presumption that such principles are essential to moral theorizing-a presumption that has been widely endorsed but rarely, if ever, argued for. 8 As I see it, those who are willing to give up this presumption are particularists, while those who retain it are generalists.…”

Section: The Particularism-generalism Debatementioning

confidence: 99%

Particularism in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

Leibowitz

2013

J Moral Philos

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Abstract:In this essay I offer a new particularist reading of Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. I argue that the interpretation I present not only helps us to resolve some puzzles about Aristotle's goals and methods, but it also gives rise to a novel account of morality-an account that is both interesting and plausible in its own right. The goal of this paper is, in part, exegetical-that is, to figure out how to best understand the text of the Nicomachean Ethics. But this paper also aims to contribute to the current exciting and controversial debate over particularism. By taking the first steps towards a comprehensive particularist reading of Aristotle's Ethics I hope to demonstrate that some of the mistrust of particularism is misplaced and that what is, perhaps, the most influential moral theory in the history of philosophy is, arguably, a particularist moral theory.

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Moral Generalism: Enjoy in Moderation

Cited by 42 publications

References 16 publications

Moral Principles are Not Moral Laws

Moral Principles are Not Moral Laws

I—Pekka Väyrynen: Grounding and Normative Explanation

Particularism in Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics

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