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Moral Philosophy Homework

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.