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Moral Answerability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Ruth Cigman
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Extract

The Humean legacy in moral philosophy has given rise to the following familiar divergence of views:

1. Moral questions are questions of feeling. Rational discussion can occur given the acceptance of unreasoned commitments to values or principles, but it must not be thought that these values or principles can themselves be justified rationally. Moral disagreements may be resolved through persuasion, but it is appropriate for rational persons to be permanently irreconcilable in their moral views.

2. Moral questions are questions of fact and/or logic. They are therefore in principle resolvable through rational discussion, like any other questions of fact and/or logic. The idea that rational persons should be permanently unable to agree on moral questions, despite indefinitely lengthy discussion and enquiry, is unintelligible.

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 61 , Issue 237 , July 1986 , pp. 355 - 375
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1986

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References

1 An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, L. A. Selby-Bigge (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 1963), 290.

2 Reason, Truth and History (Cambridge University Press, 1981), 216.

3 Descartes, Discourse on Method (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1968),

4 Op.cit.,55.

5 Ibid., 9.201.

6 On this point see Bambrough, Renford, Moral Scepticism and Moral Knowledge (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1979), 18.Google Scholar

7 Ibid., 89.

8 After Virtue (London: Duckworth, 1981), 8.

9 Blackburn, Simon and McDowell, John, ‘Rule-Following and Moral Realism’, in Wittgenstein: to Follow a Rule, Holtzman, S. H. and Leich, C. M. (eds) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981), 141. All subsequent quotations from Simon Blackburn are from his article in this symposium.Google Scholar

10 Wolf, Susan, ‘Moral Saints’, Journal of Philosophy 79, No. 8 (08 1982).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Austin, J. L., Sense and Sensibilia (Oxford University Press, 1962), 42.Google Scholar

12 Op. cit., 122.

13 Morality (Cambridge University Press, 1972), 50.

14 I am grateful to Renford Bambrough and Bernadette Santamaria for many helpful comments on an earlier draft of this paper.