Dewey and Dancy and the Moral Authority of Rules

Contemporary Pragmatism 4 (2):65-75 (2007)
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Abstract

Dewey's pragmatist regard for the place of rules in moral deliberation occupies a middle ground between the rejection of rules found in Jonathan Dancy's moral particularism and full scale subsumptivism of actions to rules. Concerning the authority rules should play in one's moral thinking, however, Dewey is closely aligned with the particularists: he rejects their authority over individual cases. This essay takes Dewey's naturalistic approach to the derivation of rules to argue that in some cases it is ultimately beneficial to allow rules to occupy a place of authority in moral thinking.

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Tom Spector
Oklahoma State University

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References found in this work

Moral Generalities Revisited.Margaret Olivia Little - 2000 - In Brad Hooker & Margaret Olivia Little (eds.), Moral particularism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Particularism and the Point of Moral Principles.Rebecca Lynn Stangl - 2006 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 9 (2):201-229.

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