Week 3
Mackie and Harman (1) What role does judgment interalism play in Mackie's argument against the existence of objective values? Judgment interalism, as explained by Darwall, holds that if S judges that he ought to do A, then necessarily, he has some motivation to do A. This is compatible with the claim that there are no moral objectives because this moral force is dependent on the subject S and his beliefs and does not need to be based on moral facts. Furthermore, it is to something like this that Mackie appeals to explain the apparent authority of ethics, which is not explained by either the theory that moral terms express attitudes of the speaker or the theory that moral terms are descriptive of natural features that everyone would recognize. (2) How does Harman's claim that ethics is cut off from observational testing support Mackie's error theory? According to Harman, moral principles can help explain why A is wrong, but would not help explain S's thinking that A is wrong. Ethical principles, then, can not be justified by their role in explaining observations. For Mackie, that there are no objective values is explained as an error theory --- that people do appear to be claiming/implying objective values when they make moral judgments, but these claims are false. Belief in objective values is, despite being incorrect, built into our moral language. That we cannot test moral judgments (or the psychology behind thinking particular moral judgments) may help to explain how this error can come about.
Week 4
Boyd and Railton (1) On his theory, what relationship does Boyd think there is between moral judgments and motivation? The question Boyd wishes to address is whether moral judgments (X is right/wrong, I ought/ought not do X) provide motivation for action (do/don't do X). If moral facts are to be like scientific facts, then it seems that moral facts can provide constraints on choices for action, but only because of desires and interests. Moral judgments might, then, be irrelevant to choices of action. Boyd explains that naturalistic moral realists deny that moral judgments must by themselves provide reasons for action. He maintains, however, that for normal (not cognitively deficient) people, moral preference is a factor for prefering one action over another. (2) What sort of facts does Railton think--on his theory--the property of non-moral goodness explain? What about the property of moral goodness? According to Railton non-moral goodness can explain why one's actual desires have certain counterfactual features, part of physical and psychological well-being (the example with Tad and Lonnie), and the evolution of one's desires (that is, learning about interests through experience). Moral rightness, he says, can serve explanatory theories, as in the "ought" in "the roof ought not collapse". Railton points especially to individual rationality and social rationality. The explanatory power actually comes from the human motivational system.
Week 5
Smith 1) How does Smith respond to Brink's amoralist challenge? Brink's challenge is not whether moral facts exist, but why we should care. He points to amoralists (who do exist) who remain unmoved by what others regard as moral considerations. Defenders of the practicality requirement (Hare) often say amoralists aren't really making moral judgments, only "moral" judgments, so there is no conflict. Brink believes this does not take the amoralist challenge seriously enough. Smith thinks Hare and other are mostly right, but need to say more. Smith offers an analogy with a color blind person who speaks of colors; such a person is talking about something, but not colors in the same way that we do. The same is true for amoralists (morally blind people). Smith believes Brink's challenge puts prejudicial interpretation on the amoralist's reliable use of moral terms. 2) What positive argument does Smith give in favor of what he calls the practicality requirement? The practicality requirement is to be preferred, says Smith, because of its explanatory powers (or rather, the absurdity of explanations following from its denial). Smith takes it as a fact that there is a reliable connection between judgment and motivation. The question, then, is how this connection is to be explained. For the defender of the practicality requirement (internalist) this fact follows internally from the content of the judgment. This puts the internalist in a good position to insist that an agent is motivated to do what he judges right. For the externalist, this fact follows from the motivation disposition of the "good", strong-willed person. This relies on the disposition or psychology of the agent. It follows from this explanation that the good moral agent is motivated by doing what is right. As Williams' charges (in a similar argument), this is impersonal and provides the agent with "one thought too many". Good moral agents should be motivated by the moral content itself, rather than a motivation to do what is right for the sake of doing what is right. That is, the externalist's explanation leads to a false view of the reliable connection between moral judgment and motivation of good, strong-willed people; moral perfection becomes moral fetishism.
Week 6
Ayer and Dreier 1) What is the difference between the view of ethical statements that Ayer proposes and the view he calls subjectivism (which he discusses on pp. 104-105)? Ayer begins with an explanation of ethical statements offered by subjectivists: to call an action right or good is to say it is (1) generally approved of or (2) approved of by the speaker. On Ayer's view, ethical statements are not statements that assert the existence of feelings (as is typical for subjectivism); ethical statements *are* expressions of feelings. For Ayer, (1) normative ethical concepts are irreducible to empirical concepts, (2) statements of value are unverifiable, and (3) statements of a moralizer do not express genuine propositions. 2) What does Dreier think the expressivist has to do in order to solve what he calls the Weaker Version of the embedding problem? The Weaker version of the embedding problem is that expressivism is incomplete since it doesn't tell us how to understand statements containing normative predicates (such as "If capital punishment is wrong, then we ought to abolish it"). Dreier believes that the expressivist much somewhere give an explanation of embedding. (Blackburn, Hare, and Gibbard provide some different explanations. The first two rely on inference rule explanations of connectives; Gibbard relies on possible world semantics and set theory.)
Week 7
1) On pages 172-176 Blackburn discusses three criticisms of projectivism or expressivism. As best you can, try to briefly describe what these three criticisms are. Blackburn discusses the following criticisms: (1) Projectivism willfully refuses to hear the external reading, an explanatory demand as it is intended; (2) Projectivism threatens not to explain, but to explain away ethical commitment (because our commitments are not external demands); (3) Projectivism must lead to relativism (because truth must be relative to whatever set of attitudes is grounding the ethical stance and there is no truth outside the local system of preference). 2) On Blackburn's view what attitude is one expressing when one says that murder is not wrong? Why on Blackburn view is saying that murder is wrong inconsistent with saying murder is not wrong? (A crucial passage to look at here is the one containing Blackburn's discussion of what "~H!p" means for him on p.192.) To say "murder is not wrong" is to say that murder is permitted or tolerated (T!p, ~H!p). To say "murder is wrong" is to say that murder is not permitted or tolerated (~T!p, H!p). It is inconsistent to say that murder is both permitted/tolerated and not permitted/tolerated.
Week 8
(1) Try your best to explain the essence of Unwin's criticism of Blackburn's expressivist theory. Unwin draws particular attention to the meaning of negation, which unlike the binary operators, Blackburn ignores. Unwin charges that instead of explaining negation, Blackburn ignores the problem by introducing T! (with ~H!p <=> T!~p). Unwin says that this is wrong because "not hooray ~p" does not mean accepting not-H!~p, but rather not-accepting H!~p; this he says is similar to the distinction between atheism and agnosticism. The problem, Unwin says, is not just a problem with negation. The expressivist theory explains two ways of negating "A accepts H!p" (namely, A not-accepts H!p and A accepts H!~p), but it does not (and needs to) explain what is meant by A accepts not-H!p. (2) On Gibbard's view what attitude is one expressing when one says that murder is morally wrong? To say that murder is morally wrong is to say that if a rational, sane agent ("in a normal frame of mind", says Gibbard) is to commit murder, he would be to blame --- that is, it would be rational for him to feel guilty and for others to resent him for his action --- for not being motivated to conform to the standards ruling out murder.
Week 10
(1) What exactly is the problem about expressivism or projectivism that Blackburn is trying to address in his paper? Blackburn addresses the claim that since projectivism is subjective (of our sentiments), it cannot have the kind of objective feel that moral claims have. We discusses how the projectivist can subjectively approve of something while knowing that it is objectively wrong. He considers how we can have morality (rightness/wrongness) and especially obligation without external constraints (God, moral facts). (2) What does Gibbard think he has to do to show that even though he is an expressivist about judgments about rationality (or what it makes sense to do) he can still regard them as objective? Gibbard needs to show that there is more to judgments about rationality under the expressivist account than just expressing acceptance of norms. Gibbard claims that to say/judge something as rational is both to express acceptance of norms and to issue conversational demands, namely the acceptance of these norms by others. For objectivity, these demands must have force (claim authority), as Gibbard says they do, to make a community of normative judgment possible.
Week 11
(1) What is Smith's distinction between motivating and normative reasons? For Smith normative reasons are normative requirements, or reasons why an action is justified from the perspective of the normative system. In contrast, motivating reasons (the reasons which Smith is concerned with in this chapter) are psychological states that explain the occurrence of actions. To illustrate the difference Smith offers examples such as the following: someone who desires to purchase a Picasso but does not believe the painting he is looking at is a Picasso has a normative reason for buying the painting but not a motivating reason. (2) What distinguishes a Humean account of motivating reasons from a non-Humean account of motivating reasons? The crucial difference between Humean and non-Humean accounts for Smith is that, he says, only the Humean account makes sense of motivation as the pursuit of a goal; that is, the Humean account explains why motivating reasons are teleological explanations.
Week 12
(1) According to Smith, what is it for someone to have a normative reason to do F in circumstances C? Why does he think on his view it follows that if someone believes that they have a normative reason to do F, then that person rationally should desire to do F? Smith analyzes desirability in terms of what would be desired by fully rational agents. The belief that one has a normative reason to do F in circumstance C is the belief that one would, if fully rational, desire to do F. This leads directly to C2 --- If an agent believes that she has a normative reason to do F, then she rationally should desire to do F --- because if one would, if fully rational, desire to do F, then one rationally should desire to do F. (2) How does Smith think that his analysis of normative reasons can be used to solve what he calls the moral problem? Smith believes his analysis gives a way of thinking about moral beliefs as a subject's beliefs about an objective mater of fact and explains the connection between these beliefs and motivation. Smith's explanation of normative reason (question 1) captures the subjective and objective requirements. Smith also thinks that belief that one would do F if rational is motivation for rationally desiring F.
Week 13
(1) Briefly explain the two different accounts of the meaning of "morally right" and "morally wrong" that Gibbard considers (i.e., the direct substance-constrained account and the indirect sentiment account)? Gibbard's own view is an indirect view about judging the morality of performed actions: an action is morally wrong if it is blame-worthy; that is, if self-blame and guilt are warranted on the part of the agent and if blame, resentment, and indignation are warranted on the part of observers of the moral action. Gibbard also develops (but does not in the end endorse) an alternative account about moral judgments as reasons for action in which an act is morally wrong if it ruled out on valid moral grounds, those that constitute genuine reasons in favor of courses of action or against them. (2) Is Smith's account a kind of direct substance-constrained account? Smith's account is that an action in particular circumstances is right if and only if we would desire that we perform the action if we were fully rational. That is, if the action is one we would rational want to obtain in an evaluated possible world, or to use terminology that sounds a lot like Kant's categorical imperatives, an action is right if it such that we, as rational beings, would want the maxim of that action to be lawlike. This account is direct in that it concerns decisions of and motivation for moral action rather than just the making of moral judgments about observed actions.