Moral Philosophy by Catherine Wilson
Practical Philosophy in a Global Perspective, 2019
The recognition that moral truths can be discovered does not require commitment to moral realism ... more The recognition that moral truths can be discovered does not require commitment to moral realism as opposed to Peircean pragmatic theories. Changes in practice tend to precede rather than follow acknowledgment of moral truths. First person testimony and emotional expression is important in the process as is socially disruptive behavior, despite the common view that it only sets the cause back.
Chapter 21 of The Routledge Handbook of Evolution and Philosophy, ed. Richard Joyce (2017)
The possibility of giving a rich descriptive account of morality and the absence of any agreed up... more The possibility of giving a rich descriptive account of morality and the absence of any agreed upon method of verification for the assessment of disputed moral claims suggests that the notion of moral truth is at best a useful social fiction. To escape this conclusion, I argue that we must begin at the other end, deriving moral epistemology from moral historiography, much as we derive scientific epistemology from consideration of the history of science, regardless of the absence of a consensus omnium.
Bernard Williams famously denied that there are objective moral oughts that are not grounded in a... more Bernard Williams famously denied that there are objective moral oughts that are not grounded in an individual’s current motivational set, nor in what might be called their ‘extendible set.’ Further, where natural science could aim at descriptively adequate portrayals of the external world, there could be no descriptively adequate portrayal of moral reality, including morality’s duties, obligations, permissions, and reasons (1978: 65-6; 1985: 139).
My aim in this paper is to defend Williams’s internalism and metaethical skepticism. At the same time, I point to a tension in his overall position and try to sharpen up the defense of the claim that Williams treated rather vaguely that it is possible to be ‘outside’ moral theory without being outside morality.
Early Modern Moral Epistemology
This paper argues that we can acknowledge the existence of moral truths and moral progress withou... more This paper argues that we can acknowledge the existence of moral truths and moral progress without being committed to moral realism. Rather than defending this claim through the more familiar route of the attempted analysis of the ontological commitments of moral claims, I show how moral belief change for the better shares certain features with theoretical progress in the natural sciences. Proponents of the better theory are able to convince their peers that it is formally and empirically superior to its rivals, and the better theory may be promoted to the status of the truth. Yet there is no 'decision-procedure' for ethics any more than there is for molecular biology. The betterness of true theories can be grasped through what I term 'undirectional narratives' of progress. And while there are true moral claims and perhaps numerous moral truths yet to be discovered, we should reject currently popular forms of moral realism with bivalence. Some moral claims lend themselves to the construction of fully reversible, bi-directional narratives and are likely neither true nor false.
Is human dignity an attribute that is detected or one that is postulated? If it is detected, how ... more Is human dignity an attribute that is detected or one that is postulated? If it is detected, how reliably is it detected, and if attribution errors are common are they more likely to be errors of over-attribution or of under-attribution? If dignity is postulated, is it postulated universally? Can one lose the attribute by behaving in certain ways, or lose the entitlement to have it postulated in oneself ? What are the social consequences of possessing or lacking human dignity?
Moral properties are widely held to be response-dependent properties of actions, situations, even... more Moral properties are widely held to be response-dependent properties of actions, situations, events and persons. There is controversy as to whether the putative response-dependence of these properties nullifies any truth-claims for moral judgements, or rather supports them. The present paper argues that moral judgements are more profitably compared with theoretical judgements in the natural sciences than with the judgements of immediate sense-perception. The notion of moral truth is dependent on the notion of moral knowledge, which in turn is best understood as a possible endpoint of theory change for the better. I Introduction. To some empirically-minded philosophers, morality comprises a vast set of human experiences and practices. Some of them are pathological, but none are categorically veridical or illusory , right or wrong. Moral judgements, on this purely anthropologi-cal view, reflect the responses of neurologically diverse and culturally constrained observers but have no epistemic standing. The regulations, penalties and rewards deemed appropriate and imposed by different cultures and subcultures—their moral systems —seem to be extensions, curtailments and embellishments of basic patterns of reactivity. Some moral attitudes and practices change; other seem robust. As there is a range of body types and faces, all of them recognizably human, some of them quite odd, and none of them specially privileged, there is a range of moral sensibilities delivering partially overlapping sets of moral judgements, all of them recognizably human, some of them quite odd, and none of them specially privileged. Of some 'we' approve; of others 'we' disapprove; and other people and other cultures and subcultures classify and describe
Williams's views on the importance of internal reasons and his denial that there can be reasons f... more Williams's views on the importance of internal reasons and his denial that there can be reasons for an agent to do something that have no relationship to their extend-ible motivational set are the key to his critical view of moral theory and moral theorists. The paper offers a qualified defense of his position on both counts, noting where adjustments to it are needed.
The claim that the level of well-being each enjoys ought to be to some extent a function of indiv... more The claim that the level of well-being each enjoys ought to be to some extent a function of individuals " talents, efforts, accomplishments, and other meritorious attributes faces serious challenge from both egalitarians and libertarians, but also from skeptics, who point to the poor historical record of attempted merit assays and the ubiquity of attribution biases arising from limited sweep, misattribution, custom and convention, and mimicry. Yet merit-principles are connected with reactive attitudes and innate expectations, giving them some claim to recognition and there is a widespread belief that their use indirectly promotes the well-being of all. After critically evaluating arguments for and against assigning a prominent role to merit in a distributive protocol, it is argued that an entitlement to the "doubtful and speculative" but not the "known and presumptive" components of well-being can flow from perceived relative merit. However, statistical equality of outcome with respect to groups is mandatory. Semi-meritocracies are defensible institutions, but existing reward schemes by and large do not meet the conditions of social justice. THE ROLE OF A MERIT-PRINCIPLE IN DISTRUBUTIVE JUSTICE I Suppose there is a given quantity of desirable goods and states, the components of well-being, to be distributed according to some rule. Define N as a condition of the world in which needs are universally met. Define M as a condition of the world in which the components of well-being can properly be said to be a function of merit; i.e. the more meritorious are better off than the less meritorious, in proportion to their merit. Consider now a perfectly just philosopher-king K who has the opportunity to employ various distributive protocols that will confer on the inhabitants of the world the components of well-being. Which protocol will K choose if scarcity obtains to the extent that the complete satisfaction of all their desires cannot be experienced by all? Two very different, though not logically inconsistent, general answers suggest themselves: 1) Merit priority: K will not fail to choose one amongst the various protocols that realize M even if need satisfaction N does not result. 2) Need priority: K will not fail to choose one amongst the various protocols that realize
Contents page of Metaethics From a First Person Standpoint, London, Open Book, 2016.
Evolution: Education and Outreach, 2009
Abstract: After presenting Darwin’s own views on the evolution of the moral sense and the Victor... more Abstract: After presenting Darwin’s own views on the evolution of the moral sense and the Victorian spectrum of opinion on the relevance of natural selection to morals, I go on to discuss the eugenics movement and the racialist assumptions of earlier Darwinians. There are echoes of these assumptions in a number of contemporary theorists, but evolutionary ethics has largely moved beyond them to explore instead the biological basis for altruism and co-operation as well as moralistic and political aggression.
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Moral Philosophy by Catherine Wilson
My aim in this paper is to defend Williams’s internalism and metaethical skepticism. At the same time, I point to a tension in his overall position and try to sharpen up the defense of the claim that Williams treated rather vaguely that it is possible to be ‘outside’ moral theory without being outside morality.