Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rcrh6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-22T16:58:32.152Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Gripped by authority

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Terry Horgan  and
Mark Timmons
Terry Horgan*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
Mark Timmons*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ, USA
*
[email protected]
[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Moral judgments are typically experienced as being categorically authoritative – i.e. as having a prescriptive force that (i) is motivationally gripping independently of both conventional norms and one's pre-existing desires, and (ii) justificationally trumps both conventional norms and one's pre-existing desires. We argue that this key feature is best accommodated by the meta-ethical position we call ‘cognitivist expressivism’, which construes moral judgments as sui generis psychological states whose distinctive phenomenological character includes categorical authoritativeness. Traditional versions of expressivism cannot easily accommodate the justificationally trumping aspect of categorical authoritativeness, because they construe moral judgments as fundamentally desire-like. Moral realism cannot easily accommodate the aspect of inherent motivational grip, because realism construes moral judgments as a species of factual belief.

Keywords

Categorical authoritativenessexpressivismmoral judgmentmotivationphenomenology
Type
Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 48 , Issue 3-4: Special issue: Representation and Evaluation , 2018 , pp. 313 - 336
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Copp, D. 2018a. “Are There Substantive Moral Conceptual Truths?” In Moral Skepticism: New Essays, edited by Muchaca, D. E., 91–114. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Copp, D. 2018b. “A Semantic Challenge to Non-Realist Cognitivism.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 48: 554–575.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cuneo, T., and Shafer-Landau, R.. 2014. “The Moral Fixed Points.” Philosophical Studies 171: 399–443. 10.1007/s11098-013-0277-5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Enoch, D. 2011. Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199579969.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hampton, J. 1998. The Authority of Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511625213CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horgan, T., and Potrč, M.. 2010. “The Epistemic Relevance of Morphological Content.” Acta Analytica 25: 155–173. 10.1007/s12136-010-0091-zCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horgan, T., and Timmons, M.. 2006. “Cognitivist Expressivism.” In Metaethics after Moore, edited by Horgan, T. and Timmons, M., 255–298. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199269914.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horgan, T., and Timmons, M.. 2008. “What Can Moral Phenomenology Tell Us about Moral Objectivity?” Social Philosophy & Policy 25: 267–300.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horgan, T., and Timmons, M.. 2009. “Expressivism and Contrary-Forming Negation.” Philosophical Issues 19: 92–112. 10.1111/phis.2009.19.issue-1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horgan, T., and Timmons, M.. 2015. “Modest Quasi-Realism and the Problem of Deep Moral Error.” In Passions and Projections: Themes from the Philosophy of Simon Blackburn, edited by Johnson, R. N. and Smith, M., 190–209. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198723172.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horgan, T., and Timmons, M.. 2017. “Sentimentalist Moral-Perceptual Experience and Realist Pretensions: A Phenomenological Inquiry.” In Ethical Sentimentalism, edited by Stueber, K. R. and Debes, R., 86–106. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/9781316105672CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Horgan, T., and Timmons, M.. 2018. “The Phenomenology of Moral Authority.” In Moral Skepticism: New Essays, edited by Muchaca, D. E., 115–140. London and New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Horgan, T., and Timmons, M.. Forthcoming. “The Phenomenology of Deliberation and the Non-Naturalistic Fallacy.” In The Naturalistic Fallacy, edited by Sinclair, N.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Horgan, T., and Timmons, M.. Forthcoming. Illuminating Reasons: An Essay in Moral Phenomenology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
McEwan, I. 1998. Amsterdam. New York: Anchor Books.Google Scholar
Mackie, J. L. 1977. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books.Google Scholar
Nagel, T. 1986. The View from Nowhere. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Olson, J. 2014. Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defense. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198701934.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Solzhenitsyn, A. 1962. One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich. Rutherford, NJ: Signet Classics.Google Scholar
Stevenson, C. L. 1961. “Relativism and Non-Relativism in the Theory of Value.” Proceedings and Addresses of the American Philosophical Association 35: 25–44 (reprinted as Chapter 5 of hisFact and Value. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1963). 10.2307/3129345CrossRefGoogle Scholar