A Critique of Jonathan Dancy’s “Moral Reasons” (Against Dancy’s Particularism)

As noted in a previous entry, I recently acquired a copy of Dancy’s Moral Reasons, the most systematic contemporary account of moral particularism on offer, due to a concern that particularism might be being dismissed unfairly. Dancy is a brilliant philosopher, and his work is a joy to read, as he makes compelling and excitingly […]

Weakness of the Will and Particularism (and Dancy, cognitivist internalism, and moral motivation)

I tend to be skeptical of moral particularism, but after reading Ethical Intuitionism: Re-evaluations (click here for my review), wherein particularism was dismissed out of hand, I decided I better explore particularism more thoroughly – after all, it wasn’t long ago that ethical intuitionism was too hastily dismissed. So I picked up a copy of […]

Review of “Ethical Intuitionism: Re-Evaluations”

Ethical Intuitionism: Re-evaluations I tend to shy away from anthologies, as such collections often bring together essays not in proper dialogue (as opposed to an author’s dialogue with himself throughout the course of his book); this collection is an exception, most likely due to the narrow focus on a epistemological view in morality. In fact, […]

The Ethics of Love (care ethics, partiality, and pluralism)

With Valentine’s day upon us, now seems a good time to touch on a metaethical view I have on the whole neglected: care ethics, a moral methodology based in love. It’s an interesting approach to morality arguing that the most basic and preliminary ethical relationship is between a mother and her child, such that our […]

McNaughton on W.D. Ross (and Particularism, Pluralism and the double weighing of duties)

One of the more interesting broad questions of metaethics is whether we can expect to craft moral theories that provide principles for right action that serve as guiding decision procedures. Moral pluralists argue that we can have a list of criteria for what makes actions right, but from there we must use practical judgment to […]

The Call of Duties pt II (Thoughts on Ross’s The Right and The Good [on partial knowledge, epistemic access, and luck])

In a previous entry, I explicated W.D. Ross’s argument that “morally right action” does not mean the same thing as “morally good action”, with special attention given to the premise that was the most essential to his argument: it is the not the case that it is obligatory to act from a good motive. His […]

The Call of Duties (Thoughts on W.D. Ross’s The Right and the Good) pt I

  For a person who professes to be a proponent of ethical pluralism (which posits the CALL OF prima facie DUTIES), I am surely among the few who have not read W.D. Ross’s The Right and the Good from cover to cover (I have read excepts in anthologies, and secondary sources, of course). I was […]

Moral Dilemmas (and expressivism, monism, particularism and pluralism)

In the past two weeks I have been riddled by a moral dilemma, involving the balancing of my duties to two different groups of people, and though I have recently resolved the dilemma, insofar as I have made a choice of which course of action to take, I still feel guilt and regret for not […]

Robot & Frank (and Rossian Pluralism)

In continuing with the recent discussion of robot ethics, I want to  consider the challenge to absolute, monistic moral reasons posed by a movie I just watched for the first time, “Robot & Frank”. I greatly enjoyed the movie — aside from its predominate focus on morality, it also dealt a great deal with theories […]