Uncovering the historical roots of naturalistic, secular contemporary ethics, in this volume Michael Gill shows how the British moralists of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries completed a Copernican revolution in moral philosophy. They effected a shift from thinking of morality as independent of human nature to thinking of it as part of human nature itself. He also shows how the British Moralists - sometimes inadvertently, sometimes by design - disengaged ethical thinking, first from distinctly Christian ideas and then from theistic (...) commitments altogether. Examining in detail the arguments of Whichcote, Cudworth, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson against Calvinist conceptions of original sin and egoistic conceptions of human motivation, Gill also demonstrates how Hume combined the ideas of earlier British moralists with his own insights to produce an account of morality and human nature that undermined some of his predecessors' most deeply held philosophical goals. (shrink)

In the mid-20th century, descriptive meta-ethics addressed a number of central questions, such as whether there is a necessary connection between moral judgment and motivation, whether moral reasons are absolute or relative, and whether moral judgments express attitudes or describe states of affairs. I maintain that much of this work in mid-20th century meta-ethics proceeded on an assumption that there is good reason to question. The assumption was that our ordinary discourse is uniform and determinate enough to vindicate one side (...) or the other of these meta-ethical debates. I suggest that ordinary moral discourse may be much less uniform and determinate than 20th century meta-ethics assumed. (shrink)

One of the most significant disputes in early modern philosophy was between the moral rationalists and the moral sentimentalists. The moral rationalists — such as Ralph Cudworth, Samuel Clarke and John Balguy — held that morality originated in reason alone. The moral sentimentalists — such as Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Francis Hutcheson and David Hume — held that morality originated at least partly in sentiment. In addition to arguments, the rationalists and sentimentalists developed rich analogies. The (...) most significant analogy the rationalists developed was between morality and mathematics. The most significant analogy the sentimentalists developed was between morality and beauty. These two analogies illustrate well the main ideas, underlying insights, and accounts of moral phenomenology the two positions have to offer. An examination of the two analogies will thus serve as a useful introduction to the debate between moral rationalism and moral sentimentalism as a whole. (shrink)

I argue that a policy of presumed consent for cadaveric organ procurement, which assumes that people do want to donate their organs for transplantation after their death, would be a moral improvement over the current American system, which assumes that people do not want to donate their organs. I address what I take to be the most important objection to presumed consent. The objection is that if we implement presumed consent we will end up removing organs from the bodies of (...) people who did not want their organs removed, and that this situation is morally unacceptable because it violates the principle of respect for autonomy that underlies our concept of informed consent. I argue that while removing organs from the bodies of people who did not want them removed is unfortunate, it is morally no worse that not removing organs from the bodies of people who did want them removed, and that a policy of presumed consent will produce fewer of these unfortunate results than the current system. (shrink)

When making moral judgments, people are typically guided by a plurality of moral rules. These rules owe their existence to human emotions but are not simply equivalent to those emotions. And people’s moral judgments ought to be guided by a plurality of emotion-based rules. The view just stated combines three positions on moral judgment: [1] moral sentimentalism, which holds that sentiments play an essential role in moral judgment,1 [2] descriptive moral pluralism, which holds that commonsense moral judgment is guided by (...) a plurality of moral rules2, and [3] prescriptive moral pluralism, which holds that moral judgment ought to be guided by a plurality of moral rules. In what follows, we will argue for all three positions. We will not present a comprehensive case for these positions nor address many of the arguments philosophers have developed against them. What we will try to show is that recent psychological work supports sentimentalist pluralism in both its descriptive and prescriptive forms. (shrink)

Michael B. Gill offers a new account of Humean moral pluralism: the view that there are different moral reasons for action, which are based on human sentiments. He explores its historical origins, and argues that it offers the most compelling view of our moral experience. Together, pluralism and Humeanism make a philosophically powerful couple.

ABSTRACTThis paper explicates Shaftesbury’s idea that we ought to live our lives as though they are works of art. I show that this idea is central to many of Shaftesbury’s most important claims, and that an understanding of this idea enables us to answer some of the most contested questions in the scholarship on Characteristics.

Many moral philosophers in the Western tradition have used phenomenological claims as starting points for philosophical inquiry; aspects of moral phenomenology have often been taken to be anchors to which any adequate account of morality must remain attached. This paper raises doubts about whether moral phenomena are universal and robust enough to serve the purposes to which moral philosophers have traditionally tried to put them. Persons’ experiences of morality may vary in a way that greatly limits the extent to which (...) moral phenomenology can constitute a reason to favor one moral theory over another. Phenomenology may not be able to serve as a pre-theoretic starting point or anchor in the consideration of rival moral theories because moral phenomenology may itself be theory-laden. These doubts are illustrated through an examination of how moral phenomenology is used in the thought of Ralph Cudworth, Samuel Clarke, Joseph Butler, Francis Hutcheson, and Søren Kierkegaard. (shrink)

The Cambridge Platonists were a group of religious thinkers who attended and taught at Cambridge from the 1640s until the 1660s. The four most important of them were Benjamin Whichcote, John Smith, Ralph Cudworth, and Henry More. The most prominent sentimentalist moral philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment – Hutcheson, Hume, and Adam Smith – knew of the works of the Cambridge Platonists. But the Scottish sentimentalists typically referred to the Cambridge Platonists only briefly and in passing. The surface of Hutcheson, (...) Hume, and Smith's texts can give the impression that the Cambridge Platonists were fairly distant intellectual relatives of the Scottish sentimentalists – great great-uncles, perhaps, and uncles of a decidedly foreign ilk. But this surface appearance is deceiving. There were deeply significant philosophical connections between the Cambridge Platonists and the Scottish sentimentalists, even if the Scottish sentimentalists themselves did not always make it perfectly explicit. (shrink)

: We argue that healthy people should be allowed to sell one of their kidneys while they are alive—that the current prohibition on payment for kidneys ought to be overturned. Our argument has three parts. First, we argue that the moral basis for the current policy on live kidney donations and on the sale of other kinds of tissue implies that we ought to legalize the sale of kidneys. Second, we address the objection that the sale of kidneys is intrinsically (...) wrong because it violates the Kantian duty of respect for humanity. Third, we address a range of consequentialist objections based on the idea that kidney sales will be exploitative. Throughout the paper, we argue only that it ought to be legal for an individual to receive payment for a kidney. We do not argue that it ought to be legal for an individual to buy a kidney. (shrink)

Moral cognitivists hold that in ordinary thought and language moral terms are used to make factual claims and express propositions. Moral non-cognitivists hold that in ordinary thought and language moral terms are not used to make factual claims or express propositions. What cognitivists and non-cognitivists seem to agree about, however, is that there is something in ordinary thought and language that can vindicate one side of their debate or the other. Don Loeb raises the possibility — which I will call (...) “the variability thesis” — that ordinary moral thought and language contains both cognitivist and non-cognitivist elements, and that there is no principled reason for thinking that either the cognitivist or non-cognitivist elements are conceptually more primary or aberrant than the other. According to the variability thesis, cognitivists accurately capture some aspects of what we think and say when we use moral terms and non-cognitivists capture other aspects, but neither side provides a correct analysis of ordinary moral thought and language as a whole. (shrink)

In the Introduction to his Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume credits “my Lord Shaftesbury” as one of the “philosophers in England, who have begun to put the science of man on a new footing.” I describe aspects of Shaftesbury’s philosophy that justify the credit Hume gives him. I focus on Shaftesbury’s refutation of psychological egoism, his examination of partiality, and his views on how to promote impartial virtue. I also discuss Shaftesbury’s political commitments, and raise questions about recent interpretations (...) that have taken his Characteristicks to be a polemic, partisan text. (shrink)

Michael B. Gill offers a new account of Humean moral pluralism: the view that there are different moral reasons for action, which are based on human sentiments. He explores its historical origins, and argues that it offers the most compelling view of our moral experience. Together, pluralism and Humeanism make a philosophically powerful couple.

Shaftesbury believed that the height of virtue was impartial love for all of humanity. But Shaftesbury also harboured grave doubts about our ability to develop such an expansive love. In The Moralists, Shaftesbury addressed this problem. I show that while it may appear on the surface that The Moralists solves the difficulty, it in fact remains unresolved. Shaftesbury may not have been able to reconcile his view of the content of virtue with his view of our motivational psychology.

Shaftesbury's philosophy combined a powerfully teleological approach, according to which all things are part of a harmonious cosmic order, with sharp observations of human nature (see section 2 below). Shaftesbury is often credited with originating the moral sense theory, although his own views of virtue are a mixture of rationalism and sentimentalism (section 3). While he argued that virtue leads to happiness (section 4), Shaftesbury was a fierce opponent of psychological and ethical egoism (section 5) and of the egoistic social (...) contract theory of Hobbes (section 6). Shaftesbury advanced a view of aesthetic judgment that was non-egoistic and objectivist, in that he thought that correct aesthetic judgment was disinterested and reflected accurately the harmonious cosmic order (section 7). Shaftesbury's belief in an harmonious cosmic order also dominated his view of religion, which was based on the idea that the universe clearly exhibits signs of perfect divine design (section 8). According to Shaftesbury, the ultimate end of religion, as well as of virtue, beauty, and philosophical understanding (all of which are turn out to be one and the same thing), is to identify completely with the universal system of which one is a part. (shrink)

Moral rationalism is the view that morality originates in reason alone. It is often contrasted with moral sentimentalism, which is the view that the origin of morality lies at least partly in sentiment. The eighteenth century saw pitched philosophical battles between rationalists and sentimentalists, and the issue continues to fuel disputes among moral philosophers today.

Moral phenomenology, as i will use the term in this paper, is the study of our experience of morality. It is the study of morality “as experienced from the first-person point of view,” 1 the study of the “what-it-is-like features of concrete moral experiences,” 2 the study of introspectively accessible features that can be discerned by “a direct examination of the data of men’s moral consciousness.” 3A crucial part of moral phenomenology is the study of what it is like to (...) make a moral judgment. This part of moral phenomenology seeks to delineate the introspectively accessible mental features that are essentially involved in judging that an act ought or ought not to be performed, and in judging that a person is virtuous or vicious.An adequate moral theory must account for the phenomenological facts. It must accommodate or explain in some way the introspectively accessible mental features essentially involved in our moral experience. An adequate moral theory must cohere with what it is like to make moral judgments.It has been common for philosophers to claim that their moral theories are superior to others because their moral theories better account for our experience of moral judgment. In sections 2 and 3 of this paper, I will show how Francis Hutcheson and David Hume used phenomenological claims of this sort to argue that their sentimentalist moral theories were superior to rationalist and egoist rivals.But Hutcheson’s and Hume’s phenomenological arguments do not succeed, or so I will argue in section 4. They fail to show that the phenomenology of moral judgment constitutes a strong reason for us to accept sentimentalism and reject rationalism and egoism. I think, moreover, that this failure is the typical fate of moral phenomenological arguments in general. This is because I think the introspectively. (shrink)

I. Introduction Most philosophers today have never heard of Benjamin Whichcote (1609-83), and most of the few who have heard of him know only that he was the founder of Cambridge Platonism.1 He is well worth learning more about, however. For Whichcote was a vital influence on both Ralph Cudworth and the Third Earl of Shaftesbury, through whom he helped shape the views of Clarke and Price, on the one hand, and Hutcheson and Hume, on the other. Whichcote should thus (...) be seen as a grandparent of both the rationalist and the sentimentalist strands of eighteenth century British ethical theory. In this paper, I will elucidate the particular ethical positions of Whichcote’s that played such an important role. Whichcote’s thought is interesting in its own right, moreover, as a lens for examining the implications of certain prevalent religious and moral commitments. In what follows, then, I will also seek to show that Whichcote’s profoundly theistic view of human nature is ultimately incompatible with the belief that is fundamental to his Christianity. Perhaps the idea of an irresolvable conflict between Whichcote’s Christianity and his theism sounds at first a bit paradoxical. I hope, though, that by the end of this paper it will be clear how, for many 17th century rationalists, such a conflict was virtually inevitable. (shrink)

abstract Many have held that there is some kind of incompatibility between a commitment to good end-of-life care and the legalization of physician-assisted suicide. This opposition to physician-assisted suicide encompasses a cluster of different claims. In this essay I try to clarify some of the most important of these claims and show that they do not stand up well to conceptual and empirical scrutiny.

When a man of business enters into life and action, he is more apt to consider the characters of men, as they have relation to his interest, than as they stand in themselves; and has his judgement warped on every occasion by the violence of his passion. When a philosopher contemplates characters and manners in his closet, the general abstract view of the objects leaves the mind so cold and unmoved, that the sentiments of nature have no room to play, (...) and he scarce feels the difference between vice and virtue. History keeps in a just medium betwixt these extremes, and places the objects in their true point of view. The writers of history, as well as the readers, are sufficiently interested in the characters and events, to have a lively sentiment of blame or praise; and, at the same time, have no particular interest or concern to pervert their judgment. (shrink)

Many people today glorify wild nature. This attitude is diametrically opposed to the denigration of wild nature that was common in the seventeenth century. One of the most significant initiators of the modern revaluation of nature was Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury. I elucidate here Shaftesbury’s pivotal view of nature. I show how that view emerged as Shaftesbury’s solution to a problem he took to be of the deepest philosophical and personal importance: the problem of how worship (...) of God can be both transportingly emotional and entirely rational. In section 1 I sketch the denigration of wild nature in two of Shaftesbury’s predecessors: Burnet and Locke. I next turn to Shaftesbury’s problem, describing in section 2 the love of God he aspired to and in section 3 his commitment to rational religion. I then explain Shaftesbury’s solution, describing in section 4 his view of beauty in general and in section 5 his view of the beauty of nature. (shrink)

This essay is a critical response to Loren Lomasky's essay in this volume: The essay argues that Lomasky both overestimates the value of eating meat and underestimates the harms to animals of practices surrounding meat eating. While Lomasky takes the fact that an animal would not have lived at all if it were not being raised for food to constitute a benefit for animals being so raised, this essay argues that it would be better for animals raised on factory farms (...) to have never been born. It also contends that Lomasky overstates his case regarding the benefits of meat eating for human well-being. While gastronomic experiences can enrich our lives, it would be a mistake to think that meat eating is indispensable to the enrichment of our lives; one canexperience the flourishing of eating well without eating animals. (shrink)

Of the many objections moral rationalists have raised against moral sentimentalism, none has been more long-lived and central than the claim that sentimentalism cannot accommodate the non-consequentialist aspects of our moral thinking. John Balguy raised an early version of the non-consequentialist objection just two years after Francis Hutcheson published the first systematic development of moral sentimentalism. As Balguy understood it, Hutcheson's sentimentalism implied that what makes an action virtuous is its effects, such as the advantages or pleasures it produces. According (...) to Balguy, however, what we actually think makes an action virtuous is an intrinsic quality it possesses, which is independent of any .. (shrink)

Impressed by morality's internal accessibility and motivational force, philosophers from the Greeks to the present day have advanced the view that moral distinctions originate in human nature. Every incarnation of this view, however, has had to face one central question: what is it about human nature that justifies some moral judgments and not others? This dissertation charts the rise and fall of one approach to that question, that contained in the works of the British moralists of the late seventeenth and (...) early eighteenth centuries. ;I argue, in the first four chapters, that in this period rationalists and sentimentalists alike collapsed justificatory questions into explanatory ones. I show how this collapse followed naturally from a widely-held theological conception of human nature, according to which it was possible to establish an immediate explanatory link between our original God-given constitution and some of our moral judgments. ;Against this background I turn, in chapters five and six, to David Hume, who shared his predecessors' commitment to founding moral distinctions in human nature but whose associative account severed the link between the explanation and justification of moral judgments. I maintain that Hume's work not only exposed the untenability of the theologically-based justificatory commitments of his predecessors but also casts serious doubt on contemporary efforts to ground normativity on reflexivity. Hume himself, I argue, makes plausible the suggestion that moral justification should be grounded not on the origins of judgments but on human ends that cannot and need not be justified in terms of anything else. (shrink)