References
- Thanks to Sam Black, Janice Dowell, Josh Gert, and Evan Tiffany for helpful comments on this paper.
- Foot , Philippa . “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives,” p. 320, note 15, in Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard, and Peter Railton's ” . In Moral Discourse and Practice New York : Oxford University Press .
- Prichard , H. A. 1995 . “Does Moral Philosophy Rest on a Mistake?”, in ” . In 20th Century Ethical Theory Edited by: Cahn , Steven M. and Haber , Joram G. 38 – 39 . Upper Saddle River , NJ : Prentice Hall .
- Ibid., 39.
- The set of pro-attitudes I have in mind includes counterfactual pro-attitudes or dispositions to have them.
- 2009 . Ethics , 119 : 759 – 87 . Some challenge whether subjective accounts have a rationale for granting authority to idealized desires rather than actual, non-idealized desires. I respond to this challenge in “Subjectivism and Idealization,” (January: 336–52 The challenge is issued by Arthur Ripstein, “Preference,” in Value, Welfare, and Morality, ed. R. G. Frey and Christopher Morris (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), reprinted, with a new conclusion, in Practical Rationality and Preference, ed. Christopher Morris and Arthur Ripstein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)]; H.L. Lillehammer, “Revisionary Dispositionalism and Practical Reason,” Journal of Ethics 4 (2000): 173–90; and David Enoch, “Why Idealize?” Ethics 115 (2005):
- 1981 . Moral Luck, , 7th ed. Vol. 63 , 283 – 91 . Oxford : Oxford University Press . On the reasons for action side, see, for example: Bernard Williams, “Internal and External Reasons,” in his 101–113; and David Lewis, “Dispositional Theories of Value,” Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, suppl. ser., (1989): 113–37. On the well-being side, see: Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1981), 111–12; Richard B. Brandt, A Theory of the Good and the Right (Oxford: Clarendon, 1979), 10, 113, 329; John Harsanyi, “Morality and the Theory of Rational Behavior,” in Utilitarianism and Beyond, ed. Amartya Sen and Bernard Williams (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1973), 55; John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press), 407–24; R. M. Hare, Moral Thinking (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981), 101–5 and 214–16. See also Hare and Critics, ed. Douglas Senor and N. Fotion (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1990), 217–18; Peter Railton, “Facts and Values,” Philosophical Topics 14 (1986): 5–29; David Gauthier, Morals By Agreement (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986), chap. 2; James Griffin, Well-Being (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986), 11–17; and Shelly Kagan, The Limits of Morality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989)
- Williams , Bernard . 1996 . “Internal and External Reasons.” Kantians and neo-Humeans can, and typically do, share a commitment to what Williams labelled “internalism.” See Christine Korsgaard's “Skepticism about Practical Reason,” in her ” . In Creating the Kingdom of Ends 311 – 34 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press . . The internalist thought is that an agent's normative reasons must resonate with or motivate her when she has deliberated in an ideally rational way. Neo-Humeans interpret this thought as showing that reasons must be relative to an agent's contingent concerns. Neo-Kantians interpret this thought as showing that rationality can guarantee resonance or motivation, regardless of her contingent psychological make-up. See also Thomas Nagel, The Possibility of Altruism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1970).
- 2001 . Social Philosophy and Policy , 18 : 218 – 35 . I move incautiously between claims about “internalism” in Williams’ sense and “subjectivism” in this paper. For my more careful thoughts about the differences between the two and how they work do the disadvantage of the former, see my “Explanation, Internalism, and Reasons for Action,”:
- Euthyphro Even if, as in Plato's God loves an action if and only if it is good, there remains the question of whether God's love explains the goodness or the goodness explains the love.
- 2008 . Slaves of the Passions New York : Oxford . Mark Schroeder's excellent develops a neo-Humean account according to which this may not be true. In a nutshell, Schroeder argues that because desires are cheap, having a reason to do something is also cheap. Further, he argues, the neo-Humean should reject the view that the weight of reasons is in proportion to the strength of the desire. I hope to criticize Schroeder's view elsewhere but for now I will simply assume that subjectivist views have the upshot that some rational agents lack any reason to be moral.
- I am not fussing about the distinction between varieties of rationalism. Some such views maintain that morality's instructions just are reasons instructions. Others maintain that reason always permits, but does not always require, one to behave as morality commands. I am assuming the most plausible variant of subjectivism will reject both claims.
- 2007 . Philosophers Imprint Ann Arbor : University of Michigan . Some who champion “the Demandingness Objection” against Consequentialism can sound as if they are arguing that Consequentialist morality would require action that diverges too much from our practical reasons, so Consequentialist morality must not be genuine morality. I argue that the Demandingness Objection is not a good ground for rejecting Consequentialism in my “The Impotence of the Demandingness Objection,” Digital Library, vol. 7, no. 8.
- Foot, “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives,” 320, note 15.
- 2000 . Philosophy and Phenomenological Research , 61 The claim that someone is blameworthy need not involve the claim that blaming the person is, all things considered, the thing to do. The claim that someone is not blameworthy need not involve the claim that blaming the person is not the thing to do. Judging that a joke is amusing need not entail the view that, all things considered, it makes sense to be amused by it. Many different types of considerations speak to the question of whether amusement is, all things considered, the thing to feel. But not all of these considerations speak to the question of whether the joke is funny. See Justin D'Arms and Daniel Jacobson, “The Moralistic Fallacy,”: 65–90. When I use the terms “judge blameworthy” or “meriting blame,” I mean to screen off these other, more instrumental, sorts of reasons to blame a person.
- Darwall , Stephen . 2006 . The Second Person Standpoint 98 Cambridge , MA : Harvard University Press .
- Williams , Bernard . 1995 . “Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame,” in Williams ” . In Making Sense of Humanity 39 Cambridge : Cambridge University Press .
- Scanlon , T. M. 1998 . What We Owe to Each Other Cambridge , MA : Harvard University Press . Appendix, 370–71. While Scanlon does not prefer the option he offers Williams, and seems to want to continue to be an externalist, he concludes that the remaining issues that divide his position from the internalist one he recommends to Williams do not make a “great deal of difference.” 373.
- Williams . 2001 . “Some Further Notes on Internal and External Reasons,” in ” . In Varieties of Practical Reasoning Edited by: Millgram , Elijah . 95 – 96 . Cambridge , MA : MIT Press .
- “Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame,”
- Ibid.
- Ibid.
- 2001 . Ethics , 111 : 461 – 92 . For my take on these issues, see my “Explanation, Internalism, and Reasons for Action,” and “Subjective Accounts of Reasons for Action,” (April:
- I think the former claim entails the latter.
- Williams , Like . 2008 . “ I will not say enough about blame to differentiate it from neighbouring concepts. For a detailed account specifically of blame, see T. M. Scanlon's ” . In Moral Dimensions Harvard University Press, especially chap. 4, entitled “Blame.” Scanlon's view is that “to claim that a person is blameworthy for an action is to claim that the action shows something about the agent's attitude towards others that impairs the relations that others can have with him or her” (128).
- Internalists can with perfect consistency claim that all or almost all humans will have most reason to behave morally. So the threat need not be understood as being that we cannot blame all the actual people we have been tempted to blame. Of course, just because this claim is consistent with internalism does not make it plausible. The internalist who wanted to rely on such claims would need to provide reasons, such as a common evolutionary history, for believing that humans overwhelmingly are alike in this respect.
- Foot, “Morality as a System of Hypothetical Imperatives,” 320n15.
- “Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame,’ 43.
- Shafer-Landau , Russ . 2003 . Moral Realism 177 New York : Oxford University Press . interprets Williams as quite generally focused only on expressions of blame, rather than judgments of blame generally. He claims that “Williams throughout understands blame in its performative mode.” But when we appreciate that someone can be worthy of blame even if there is no point in directing the blame to the agent, Shafer-Landau tells us, we can see the fault in Williams’ thinking. But this claim is too sweeping. Williams does not consistently focus merely on performances of blame. For example, Williams claims that our attitude towards those who are “beyond the pale” is not merely that we cease to blame them but that we cease “thinking that blame is appropriate to them” (”Internal Reasons and the Obscurity of Blame,” 43). I think the claim that sticks is that in key places Williams’ arguments can only hope to vindicate performative blame directed towards the person being blamed and that this is not sufficient for his purposes.
- Could Williams say that our blame that is not directed towards its target is potentially justified in that it signals to others that they have an internal reason to not act in such ways if they care to avoid our blaming them? Even if so, private blame would lack such a rationale and such indirectly justified blame would still be making assertions that Williams must allow to be “incoherent or false.”
- 2001 . Natural Goodness 514 – 54 . New York : Oxford University Press . Foot, and Rosalind Hursthouse, On Virtue Ethics (Oxford University Press, 1999). For an assessment of their program, see David Copp and David Sobel, “Morality and Virtue,” Ethics 114 (2004):