Moral Hedging and Responding to Reasons

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 100 (3):765-789 (2019)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

In this paper, I argue that the fetishism objection to moral hedging fails. The objection rests on a reasons-responsiveness account of moral worth, according to which an action has moral worth only if the agent is responsive to moral reasons. However, by adopting a plausible theory of non-ideal moral reasons, one can endorse a reasons-responsiveness account of moral worth while maintaining that moral hedging is sometimes an appropriate response to moral uncertainty. Thus, the theory of moral worth upon which the fetishism objection relies does not, in fact, support that objection.

Similar books and articles

Moral Worth.Nomy Arpaly - 2002 - Journal of Philosophy 99 (5):223.
Against Moral Hedging.Ittay Nissan-Rozen - 2015 - Economics and Philosophy (3):1-21.
Praise without Perfection: A Dilemma for Right-Making Reasons.Paulina Sliwa - 2015 - American Philosophical Quarterly 52 (2).
Intertheoretic Value Comparison: A Modest Proposal.Christian Tarsney - 2018 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 15 (3):324-344.
Sentimentalism about Moral Understanding.Nathan Robert Howard - 2018 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 21 (5):1065-1078.
Moral testimony and its authority.Philip Nickel - 2001 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 4 (3):253-266.
Moral Worth and Normative Ethics.Arpaly Nomy - 2015 - Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics 5.
The Weight of Moral Reasons.Ralph Wedgwood - 2013 - Oxford Studies in Normative Ethics (Ed. Mark Timmons) 3:35-58.
Moral Reasons.Georg Spielthenner - 2007 - Etica E Politica 9 (2):423-437.
Direct Moral Grounding and the Legal Model of Moral Normativity.Benjamin Sachs - 2015 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 18 (4):703-716.
Impermissibility and Kantian Moral Worth.Jill Graper Hernandez - 2010 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 13 (4):403-419.

Analytics

Added to PP
2019-02-03

Downloads
798 (#18,192)

6 months
112 (#31,764)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Amelia Hicks
Kansas State University

References found in this work

The moral problem.Michael Smith - 1994 - Cambridge, Mass., USA: Blackwell.
Unprincipled virtue: an inquiry into moral agency.Nomy Arpaly - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Ifs and Oughts.Niko Kolodny & John MacFarlane - 2010 - Journal of Philosophy 107 (3):115-143.
The Right and the Good.Some Problems in Ethics.W. D. Ross & H. W. B. Joseph - 1933 - Journal of Philosophy 30 (19):517-527.
Acting for the right reasons.Julia Markovits - 2010 - Philosophical Review 119 (2):201-242.

View all 38 references / Add more references