Moral Disagreement and Practical Direction

Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 23 (2):273-303 (2022)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Whenever A judges that x-ing is morally wrong and B judges that x-ing is not morally wrong, we think that they disagree. The two standard types of accounts of such moral disagreements both presuppose that the class of moral wrong-judgments is uniform, though in different ways. According to the belief account, the disagreement is doxastic: A and B have beliefs with conflicting cognitive contents. This presupposes “belief-uniformity”: that the content of moral concepts is invariant in such a way that, whenever A believes that x-ing is morally wrong and B believes that x-ing is not morally wrong, their beliefs have mutually inconsistent contents. According to the attitude account, moral disagreements are non-doxastic: A and B have clashing practical attitudes. This presupposes “attitude-uniformity”: that moral judgments are always accompanied by, or consist of, desire-like attitudes. Consequently, neither account is available if both uniformity-claims are rejected – as e.g., various forms of content-relativism do. This paper presents a new non-doxastic account of deontic moral disagreement, consistent with the rejection of both uniformity-claims. I argue first, that even if deontic moral judgments are not desires, and are not always accompanied by desires, they have practical direction in the same sense as desires: they are attitudes that one can act in accordance or discordance with. Second: deontic moral disagreement can be understood as clashes in practical direction: roughly, A and B morally disagree if, and only if, some way of acting is in accordance with A’s judgment but in discordance with B’s.

Similar books and articles

Moral Disagreement.Richard Rowland - 2020 - Abingdon: Routledge.
What Pessimism about Moral Deference Means for Disagreement.James Fritz - 2018 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (1):121-136.
Moral Disagreement among Philosophers.Ralph Wedgwood - 2014 - In Michael Bergmann & Patrick Kain (eds.), Challenges to Moral and Religious Belief: Disagreement and Evolution. Oxford University Press. pp. 23-39.
Subjectivism, Relativism and Contextualism (2nd edition).Jussi Suikkanen - 2023 - In Christian B. Miller (ed.), The Bloomsbury Handbook of Ethics, 2nd Edition. Bloomsbury. pp. 130-149.
Moral Realism and Expert Disagreement.Prabhpal Singh - 2020 - Trames: A Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences 24 (3):441-457.
Moral Contextualism and Moral Relativism.Berit Brogaard - 2008 - Philosophical Quarterly 58 (232):385 - 409.
An Alternative to Relativism.John K. Davis - 2010 - Philosophical Topics 38 (2):17-37.
Moral disagreement and moral skepticism.Katia Vavova - 2014 - Philosophical Perspectives 28 (1):302-333.
Metalinguistic negotiations in moral disagreement.Renée Jorgensen Bolinger - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (3):352-380.
Moral and Metaethical Pluralism: Unity in Variation.Ragnar Francén Olinder - 2012 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 50 (4):583-601.
The moral evil demons.Ralph Wedgwood - 2010 - In Richard Feldman & Ted A. Warfield (eds.), Disagreement. Oxford, GB: Oxford University Press.
No Deep Disagreement for New Relativists.Ragnar Francén - 2010 - Philosophical Studies 151 (1):19--37.

Analytics

Added to PP
2022-11-29

Downloads
251 (#73,799)

6 months
101 (#34,309)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Ragnar Francén
University of Gothenburg

Citations of this work

No citations found.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references