An increasing number of scholars argue that moral judgements are adaptations, i.e., that they have been shaped by natural selection. Is this hypothesis true? In this paper I shall not attempt to answer this important question. Rather, I pursue the more modest aim of pointing out three difficulties that anybody who sets out to determine the adaptedness of moral judgments should be aware of (though some so far have not been aware of). First, the hypothesis that moral (...) judgements are adaptations has been advocated in various different specificities and scopes, and on various different levels. Second, the three kinds of evidence that have most often been appealed to by discussants of this hypothesis require additional arguments. And third, there is significant reasonable disagreement about what moral judgements essentially are. (shrink)

We propose a fundamental challenge to the feasibility of moral progress: most extant theories of progress, we will argue, assume an unrealistic level of cognitive control people must have over their moral judgments for moral progress to occur. Moral progress depends at least in part on the possibility of individual people improving their moral cognition to eliminate the pernicious influence of various epistemically defective biases and other distorting factors. Since the degree of control people can (...) exert over their moral cognition tends to be significantly overestimated, the prospects of moral progress face a formidable problem, the force of which has thus far been underappreciated. In the paper, we will provide both conceptual and empirical arguments for this thesis, and explain its most important implications. (shrink)

This book integrates Kantian and Aristotelian reflections on the nature and justification of moral judgements. Arguing that moral judgements are ultimately grounded in the normativity of practical identities, the book concludes that it is through obligations tied to our multifaceted identities that we can ultimately understand how we ought to act.

Cognitivists and non-cognitivists in contemporary meta-ethics tend to assume that moral judgments are semantically uniform. That is, they share the assumption that either all moral judgments express beliefs, or they all express non-beliefs. But what if some moral judgments express beliefs and others do not? Then moral judgments are not semantically uniform and the question “Cognitivist or non-cognitivist?” poses a false dilemma. I will question the assumption that moral judgments are semantically uniform. First, I will (...) explain what I mean by the assumption (section 2). I will call this assumption SUM, the semantic uniformity of moral judgments. Second, I will provide some examples in order to illustrate that SUM cannot be taken for granted (section 3). Third, I will try to understand, using ideas from Wittgenstein, why SUM has nevertheless so often been taken for granted (section 4). Fourth, I will discuss some authors in contemporary meta-ethics who have noted the false dilemma between cognitivism and non-cognitivism and evaluate the solutions they propose for overcoming it (section 5). Fifth, I will indicate, again with some help from Wittgenstein, how meta-ethical research about moral judgments is possible without the assumption that morality is semantically uniform (section 6). (shrink)

This paper explores how the three most common ethical theories, utilitarianism, deontology (specifically Kantianism), and Aristotelian virtue ethics seem to fail to adequately account for what justifies the obligations that our moral judgments hold on us, and where these moral judgements arise. This is because it appears that each of the three theories seems to be a different justification for the narcissistic pursuit of one’s own individual comfort, meaning that, people only act in a way that gives them (...) the most comfort and one’s moral judgements and actions are dictated by what an individual in comfortable with. This comfort is not fully individualized, though, in that is also contains a societal component that relates to one’s desire to not be ostracized. Thus, moral judgments are nothing more than one’s unrelentless pursuit of comfort. (shrink)

Philosophers have predominantly regarded morality and aesthetics judgments as fundamentally different. However, whether this claim is empirically founded has remained unclear. In a novel task, we measured brain activity of participants judging the aesthetic beauty of artwork or the moral goodness of actions depicted. To control for the content of judgments, participants assessed the age of the artworks and the speed of depicted actions. Univariate analyses revealed whole-brain corrected, content-controlled common activation for aesthetics and morality judgments in frontopolar, dorsomedial (...) and ventrolateral prefrontal cortex. Temporoparietal cortex showed activation specific for morality judgments, occipital cortex for aesthetics judgments. Multivariate analyses revealed both common and distinct whole-brain corrected representations for morality and aesthetics judgments in temporoparietal and prefrontal regions. Overall, neural commonalities are more pronounced than predominant philosophical views would predict. They are compatible with minority accounts that stress commonalities between aesthetics and morality judgments, such as sentimentalism and a valuation framework. (shrink)

The paper discusses the notion of reasoning with comparative moral judgements (i.e judgements of the form “act a is morally superior to act b”) from the point of view of several meta-ethical positions. Using a simple formal result, it is argued that only a version of moral cognitivism that is committed to the claim that moral beliefs come in degrees can give a normatively plausible account of such reasoning. Some implications of accepting such a version of (...) class='Hi'>moral cognitivism are discussed. (shrink)

This paper shows that Wittgenstein's later explorations of the meaning of expressive moral judgements reach far deeper than has so far been noticed. It is argued that an adequate description of the meaning of expressive moral judgements requires engaging in a grammatical investigation that focuses on three interwoven components within specific language-games. First, the ethical reactions expressed by moral words and the additional purpose they may fulfil. Second, the features of the actions which are bound up with (...) moral words and are constitutive of our moral evaluations. And, finally, the forms of life in which expressive moral judgements and moral language-games are embedded. (shrink)

The psychological and neurobiological processes underlying moral judgement have been the focus of many recent empirical studies1–11. Of central interest is whether emotions play a causal role in moral judgement, and, in parallel, how emotion-related areas of the brain contribute to moral judgement. Here we show that six patients with focal bilateral damage to the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC), a brain region necessary for the normal generation of emotions and, in particular, social emotions12–14, produce (...) an abnor- mally ‘utilitarian’ pattern of judgements on moral dilemmas that pit compelling considerations of aggregate welfare against highly emotionally aversive behaviours (for example, having to sacrifice one person’s life to save a number of other lives)7,8. In contrast, the VMPC patients’ judgements were normal in other classes of moral dilemmas. These findings indicate that, for a selective set of moral dilemmas, the VMPC is critical for normal judgements of right and wrong. The findings support a necessary role for emotion in the generation of those judgements. (shrink)

This paper proposes a structural framework for understanding the possibility of moral judgement by establishing three necessary axes: Intentionality, Consequentiality, and Acceptability. I argue that all moral judgement is fundamentally incomplete unless these three dimensions are coherently satisfied. Drawing from metaethical analysis, the paper distinguishes between the ontological basis of action (intent), its causal unfolding (consequence), and its intersubjective legitimacy (acceptability). Furthermore, I demonstrate that in certain extreme cases, moral judgement becomes entirely impossible, revealing (...) the logical outer boundaries of ethics. These findings offer not merely a critique of existing moral theories, but a meta-ethical diagnostic tool that captures the conditional possibility of ethical evaluation itself. In doing so, this paper contributes to a new paradigm in normative ethics grounded in evaluative epistemology and structural metaphysics. (shrink)

Neuroscience and psychology have recently turned their attention to the study of the subpersonal underpinnings of moral judgment. In this article we critically examine an influential strand of research originating in Greene's neuroimaging studies of ‘utilitarian’ and ‘non-utilitarian’ moral judgement. We argue that given that the explananda of this research are specific personal-level states—moral judgments with certain propositional contents—its methodology has to be sensitive to criteria for ascribing states with such contents to subjects. We argue that (...) current research has often failed to meet this constraint by failing to correctly ‘fix’ key aspects of moral judgment, criticism we support by detailed examples from the scientific literature. (shrink)

This paper applies the theory of teleosemantics to the issue of moral content. Two versions of teleosemantics are distinguished: input-based and output-based. It is argued that applying either to the case of moral judgements generates the conclusion that such judgements have both descriptive (belief-like) and directive (desire-like) content, intimately entwined. This conclusion directly validates neither descriptivism nor expressivism, but the application of teleosemantics to moral content does leave the descriptivist with explanatory challenges which the expressivist does not (...) face. Since teleosemantics ties content to function, the paper also offers an account of the evolutionary function of moral judgements. (shrink)

In this article, I discuss whether intuitive moral judgements have epistemic value. Are they mere expressions of irrational feelings that should be disregarded or should they be taken seriously? In section 2, I discuss the view of some social psychologists that moral intuitions are, like other social intuitions, under certain conditions more reliable than conscious deliberative judgements. In sections 3 and 4, I examine whether intuitive moral judgements can be said not to need inferential justification. I outline (...) a concept of moral intuition as a seeming whose seemingness resides in special, phenomenological features such as a felt veridicality, appropriateness, familiarity, or confidence, and whose justificatory force is influenced by the reliability of the belief-producing procedures and by a subject's competence in applying moral concepts. I argue that subjects can come to realise that the beliefs expressed in their intuitive judgements evoke a sense of non-inferential credibility. In section 5, I first discuss the contribution of moral expertise to the non-inferential credibility of a person's intuitions. Subsequently, I discuss whether Walter Sinnott-Armstrong is right in saying that we can never claim non-inferential justification for our intuitions because they are subject to all kinds of distorting influences. (shrink)

Hume is believed by many to hold an emotivist thesis, according to which all expressions of moral judgements are expressions of moral sentiments. However, most specialist scholars of Hume either deny that this is Hume's position or believe that he has failed to argue convincingly for it. I argue that Hume is an emotivist, and that his true arguments for emotivism have been hitherto overlooked. Readers seeking to understand Hume's theory of moral judgements have traditionally looked to (...) the first section of Book 3 of his Treatise, which discusses the relation between morality and reason. I argue that there is evidence elsewhere which better supports Hume's emotivist thesis. Hume's arguments for emotivism focus more on the causes of moral sentiments than on their relation to reason or belief, and he argues that moral sentiments are such as to arise whenever we contemplate morally relevant objects. He also holds that the presence of moral sentiments precludes any possibility of moral belief, because moral beliefs could only be less vivid copies of moral sentiments, and these cannot simultaneously exist. Hume concludes that all moral judgements must be expressions of sentiments. (shrink)

This thesis focuses on the question of whether moral feelings are necessary to the making of moral judgments. This is an important question and the answer one gives has more interesting implications than one might initially expect. I will argue that an experientialist account of moral concepts, on which moral judgments are beliefs about objective facts represented by moral feelings, provides the best naturalistic answer to the question. To make my point, I anchor my arguments (...) in a series of comparisons between the experientialist account and its rivals, and how they handle metaethical puzzles to do with the moral status of psychopaths, moral twin earth, the nature of moral motivation, and issues of integrity and moral improvement. (shrink)

Historically the focus of moral decision-making in games has been narrow, mostly confined to challenges of moral judgement (deciding right and wrong). In this paper, we look to moral psychology to get a broader view of the skills involved in ethical behaviour and how these skills can be employed in games. Following the Four Component Model of Rest and colleagues, we identify four “lenses” – perspectives for considering moral gameplay in terms of focus, sensitivity, (...) class='Hi'>judgement and action – and describe the design problems raised by each. To conclude, we analyse two recent games, The Walking Dead and Papers, Please, and show how the lenses give us insight into important design differences between these games. (shrink)

Motivational judgement internalists hold that there is a necessary connection between moral judgments and motivation. There is, though, an important lack of clarity in the literature about the types of moral evaluation the theory is supposed to cover. It is rarely made clear whether the theory is intended to cover all moral judgements or whether the claim covers only a subset of such judgements. In this paper I will investigate which moral judgements internalists should hold (...) their theory to apply to. I will argue that the possibility of the supererogation amoralist, someone who makes genuine supererogation judgements but remains unmotivated by them, makes it implausible to be an internalist about moral goodness. As a result, internalists should restrict their claim to moral requirement judgements. I will then argue that this creates an explanatory burden for Internalism. In order for their view to be plausible they must explain why some moral judgements and not others are necessarily connected to motivation. (shrink)

Are aesthetic judgements cognitive, belief-like states or non-cognitive, desire-like states? There have been a number of attempts in recent years to evaluate the plausibility of a non-cognitivist theory of aesthetic judgements. These attempts borrow heavily from non-cognitivism in metaethics. One argument that is used to support metaethical non-cognitivism is the argument from Motivational Judgement Internalism. It is claimed that accepting this view, together with a plausible theory of motivation, pushes us towards accepting non-cognitivism. A tempting option, then, for those (...) wishing to defend aesthetic non-cognitivism, would be to appeal to a similar argument. However, both Caj Strandberg and Walter Sinnott-Armstong have argued that Internalism is a less plausible claim to make about aesthetic judgements than about moral judgements by raising objections against aesthetic internalism. In this paper, I will argue that both of these objections can be raised against internalism about moral judgements as well. As a result, internalism is no less plausible a claim to make about aesthetic judgements than about moral judgements. I will then show how a theory of internalism about normative judgements in general is capable of avoiding both of these objections. (shrink)

This paper reinterprets the phenomenon of forgiveness not as a suspension of moral judgement, but as a structural act of restoring the possibility of judgement. Using the framework of Judgemental Philosophy, we analyze forgiveness through the three axes of the Judgemental Triad—Constructivity, Coherence, and Resonance. We argue that forgiveness functions as a delayed or restored resonance event: an ethical return that reopens the loop of meaning after it has been structurally collapsed by harm. Rather than moral (...) leniency or forgetting, forgiveness is shown to be an advanced ethical act that repairs the broken structure of attribution. (shrink)

Two priority problems frustrate our understanding of Spinoza on desire [cupiditas]. The first problem concerns the relationship between desire and the other two primary affects, joy [laetitia] and sadness [tristitia]. Desire seems to be the oddball of this troika, not only because, contrary to the very definition of an affect, desires do not themselves consist in changes in one's power of acting, but also because desire seems at once more and less basic than joy and sadness. The second problem concerns (...) the priority of desires and evaluative judgements. While 3p9s and 3p39s suggest that evaluative judgements are posterior to desires, Andrew Youpa has recently argued that passages in Ethics 4 indicate that rational evaluative judgements can give rise to, rather than arise out of, desires. I aim to offer solutions to these problems that reveal the elegance and coherence of Spinoza's account of motivation. Ultimately, I argue that whereas emotions and d.. (shrink)

The historical profession is not noted for examining its own methodologies. Indeed, most historians are averse to historical theory. In "Historical Judgement" Jonathan Gorman's response to this state of affairs is to argue that if we want to characterize a discipline, we need to look to persons who successfully occupy the role of being practitioners of that discipline. So to model historiography we must do so from the views of historians. Gorman begins by showing what it is to model (...) a discipline by using recent philosophy of law and philosophy of science. There are different models at work, whose rivalry and resolution are to be historically understood. With this approach in place he is able to develop the history of historiography and explore the character of historiography as presented by historians. He reveals that historians conform to various norms - that historians now and in the past have agreed and disagreed about the same set of interrelated matters: truth-telling, moral judgement and the synthesis of facts - and it is this internal understanding that we need to recover if we are to arrive at a correct characterization of the discipline of historiography. Demonstrating how the practice of historiography requires choices and therefore the exercise of judgement, Gorman is able to show that in their making of judgements historians enjoy the immense benefit of hindsight. He shows how, in reflecting on their own discipline, historians have typically failed to attend adequately to the history of historiography, neglecting to situate previous historians within their historical contexts, or to pay adequate attention to the fact that present historians, too, are within a context that will change. In addition, Gorman's approach, which emphasizes the power and necessity of choice, and which rests on the pragmatic holistic empiricism of Quine, shows postmodernism not to be the threat that some historians feel it to be, indeed, it is shown to be a radical form of empiricism. Gorman shows how the historical enterprise may be established in our factual and moral understanding in the light of our choices and commitments to a shared world. "Historical Judgement" is an original and important contribution to the philosophy of history. By bringing together the ideas of historians and philosophers, Gorman presents a much more practitioner-focused examination of the discipline of history, one that will, hopefully, encourage historians to think more about the nature of what they do. (shrink)

This paper argues that ethical judgement is not always possible. Unlike existing ethical theories that presuppose the universal applicability of moral reasoning, I propose a structural framework that explains when ethical judgement can or cannot occur. The theory consists of three foundational axes: intentionality, consequentiality, and acceptability. These conditions are not value judgments themselves, but meta-ethical criteria that determine whether moral judgement can be meaningfully formed. When any of these is structurally absent, moral reasoning (...) collapses not into ambiguity but into impossibility. This has implications for how we interpret cases such as non-human agents, unconscious persons, or post hoc moralization. The theory seeks to protect against ethical overreach and clarify why judgement must sometimes be deferred. (shrink)

This paper analyzes the ethical breakdowns witnessed during the COVID-19 pandemic through the structural lens of Judgemental Philosophy. We argue that many high-stakes decisions—lockdowns, vaccine mandates, contact tracing—were made in contexts where one or more axes of the Judgemental Triad (Constructivity, Coherence, Resonance) collapsed, rendering individual moral judgement impossible. In response, governments often appealed to public acceptability as a functional substitute. We explore when such substitution is structurally justifiable, and when it merely masks ethical voids. This framework reframes (...) pandemic-era ethics not as failed choices, but as decisions made in structurally unjudgeable fields. (shrink)

Is there an epistemic analogue of moral motivational internalism? The answer to this question has implications for our understanding of the nature of epistemic normativity. For example, some philosophers have argued from claims that epistemic judgement is not necessarily motivating to the view that epistemic judgement is not normative. This paper examines the options for spelling out an epistemic analogue of moral motivational internalism. It is argued that the most promising approach connects epistemic judgements to doxastic (...) dispositions, which are related to motivation in a fairly tenuous sense. It is also argued that this approach currently lacks a plausible and informative account of the nature and workings of these doxastic dispositions, and, hence, an explanation of the range of phenomena internalist theses typically set out to explain. The most promising route for developing such an account, based on recent expressivist work, is investigated and found inadequate for the task. (shrink)

Could animals behave morally if they can’t mindread? Does morality require mindreading capacities? Moral psychologists believe mindreading is contingently involved in moral judgements. Moral philosophers argue that moral behaviour necessarily requires the possession of mindreading capacities. In this paper, I argue that, while the former may be right, the latter are mistaken. Using the example of empathy, I show that animals with no mindreading capacities could behave on the basis of emotions that possess an identifiable (...) class='Hi'>moral content. Therefore, at least one type of moral motivation does not require mindreading. This means that, a priori, non-mindreading animals can be moral. (shrink)

This paper reexamines the foundations and boundaries of free speech through the lens of Judgemental Philosophy. While liberal democracies uphold the right to express without censorship, they struggle to delineate when speech becomes ethically unacceptable or structurally harmful. Using the Judgemental Triad—Constructivity, Coherence, and Resonance—we propose that the ethical legitimacy of expression should be grounded not merely in the right to emit symbols, but in the structural potential of that expression to participate in a meaningful judgement loop. Speech acts (...) must be structurally capable of returning meaning within a shared context to be justifiable as free expression. Expressions that structurally collapse this loop—particularly by disabling Resonance or fragmenting Coherence, such as dehumanizing hate speech, trolling, or algorithmic noise—fail structurally, not just morally. They undermine the very conditions necessary for public reason and shared judgement. We argue, therefore, that freedom of expression must be reframed not as unbounded liberty of emission, but as the 'freedom to mean' within a structure that enables judgement and return. (shrink)

It has long been claimed that moral judgements are dominated by reason. In recent years, however, the tide has turned. Many psychologists and philosophers now hold the view that there is a close empirical association between moral judgements and emotions. In particular, they claim that emotions (1) co-occur with moral judgements, (2) causally influence moral judgements, (3) are causally sufficient for moral judgements, and (4) are causally necessary for moral judgements. At first sight these (...) hypotheses seem well-supported. In this paper I show, however, that appearances are deceiving. If one considers the relevant scientific studies in detail, one finds that in many interpretations the above hypotheses are either not supported or even contradicted by the available evidence. This conclusion is significant both for our understanding of moral judgements qua empirical phenomena and for normative ethics and metaethics. (shrink)

Man is not a finished product. In other word, he is both a creature and a creator, using his rational powers to actively participate in the business of creation, by constantly inventing and modifying existing things to suit his being. Man's effort to answer the question "what is moral standard?", led to a set of compelling, sometimes complementary, theories, the major ones of which includes: eudaimonism, hedonism, egoism, altruism and utilitarianism. The major concern of this paper is utilitarianism, a (...) moral standard of judgement which holds that actions are right if they promote the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people. Using evaluative research method, this paper seeks to assess this ethical standard of moral judgement to unearth its strengths and weaknesses as well as its relevance in building a just society. The discovery is that utilitarianism advocates for self-sacrifice which when embraced by every member of the society will curb selfishness as only actions that promote greatest good for the greatest numbers will be considered worthy and taken, which will ultimately play a significant role in building a just society, where the common pursuit will be actions that will promote the collective good of the human family. Materials used of this research were sourced from libraries and internet. (shrink)

This chapter illustrates that Lambert’s works focus not only on mathematical and scientific topics but include reflections on issues in practical philosophy as well. I illustrate, first, that Lamber conceives of moral science [Moral] as the theory of moral judgement and, second, that an important part of this science illustrates how we are to distinguish moral truth from moral illusion.

My aim in this paper is to discuss Kant’s engagement with what is arguably the core feature of Hutcheson’s moral sense theory, namely the idea that the moral sense is the foundation of moral judgement. In section one I give an account of Hutcheson’s conception of the moral sense. This sense is a perceptive faculty that explains our ability both to feel a particular kind of pleasure upon perceiving benevolence, and to appraise such benevolence as (...) morally good on the basis of this feeling. Section two summarizes Kant’s discussion of the moral sense during his pre-Critical period. Kant’s appraisal of the concept changes during this time and culminates in the 1769/70 rejection of the moral sense as the foundation of moral judgement. In section three I turn to the main reason why Kant rejects the moral sense as the foundation of moral judgement, namely because it is incapable of issuing sufficiently universal and necessary judgements of moral good and evil. I argue that underlying Kant’s rejection of the moral sense is the fact that he understands the faculty not as a “sense” proper, but as a “feeling” according to his technical understanding of these terms. In the fourth section I conclude by briefly evaluating what my analysis says about Kant’s engagement with Hutcheson. I suggest that while Kant never accepted the existence of a moral sense, Hutcheson’s position was a view with which Kant often contrasted his own, and as such it played an important role in the development and expression of Kant’s mature moral philosophy. (shrink)

The rapid advancement of AI, particularly LLMs, presents a profound challenge to human judgement and meaning-making processes. This paper revisits the Judgemental Philosophical concept of "The End of Resonance" arguing that the pervasive temptation to delegate complex judgement to AI can lead to an abdication of personal responsibility, fostering ethical deskilling and cognitive atrophy. Drawing upon Judgemental Philosophy (JP) and its normative extension, Resonance Ethics, this inquiry analyzes how such delegation bypasses the essential human judgemental cycle of Constructivity (...) (C1), Coherence (C2), and Resonance (R). This risks cultivating a societal "thoughtlessness" analogous to Arendt's "banality of evil" or "Eichmannization," where individuals uncritically comply with systemic directives without engaging in resonant moral deliberation. The paper critically examines these risks, informed by Bernard Stiegler's concept of technology as a "pharmakon" and established principles of neuroplasticity. It concludes by proposing human-centric AI governance principles derived from R Ethics. These principles aim to protect human R Eligibility, mandate transparency about AI's non-human nature and its outputs as non-judgemental, and advocate for designing AI to augment rather than replace human judgement, thereby fostering the reclamation of human agency, R, and responsibility in an increasingly AI-mediated world. (shrink)

Analyses of moral value judgements must meet a practicality requirement: moral speech acts characteristically express pro- or con-attitudes, indicate that speakers are motivated in certain ways, and exert influence on others' motivations. Nondescriptivists including Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard claim that no descriptivist analysis can satisfy this requirement. I argue first that while the practicality requirement is defeasible, it indeed demands a connection between value judgement and motivation that resembles a semantic or conceptual rather than merely contingent (...) psychological link. I then show how a form of descriptivism, the interest-relational theory, satisfies the requirement as a pragmatic and conversational feature of value judgement – thereby also accommodating its defeasibility. The word ``good'' is always indexed to some set of motivations: when this index is unarticulated in many contexts the speaker conversationally implicates possession of those motivations. (shrink)

This paper examines the structural conditions under which legal responsibility can be justifiably assigned, especially in cases where the subject is cognitively, psychologically, or ontologically incapable of moral judgement. Using the Judgemental Triad (Constructivity, Coherence, Resonance), we analyze the foundations of legal judgement and show that when judgement is not structurally possible, traditional frameworks of liability collapse. We then propose criteria for structurally legitimate substitution of legal responsibility, outlining the ethical limits of legal personhood in cases (...) involving infants, Al systems, and mentally incapacitated individuals. (shrink)

Bart Streumer believes that the following principle is true of all normative judgements: When two people make conflicting normative judgements, at most one of them is correct. Streumer argues that noncognitivists are unable to explain why is true, or our acceptance of it. I argue that his arguments are inconclusive. I also argue that our acceptance of is limited in the case of instrumental and epistemic normative judgements, and that the extent to which we do accept for such judgements can (...) be explained by an assumption of shared standards of correctness. Finally, I argue that reductivists can appeal to the same ideas to defend their view that instrumental and epistemic normative judgements describe non-normative relations. (shrink)

This thesis sets out an argument in defence of moral objectivism. It takes Mackie as the critic of objectivism and it ends by proposing that the best defence of objectivism may be found in what I shall call Kantian intuitionism, which brings together elements of the intuitionism of Ross and a Kantian epistemology. The argument is fundamentally transcendental in form and it proceeds by first setting out what we intuitively believe, rejecting the sceptical attacks on those beliefs, and by (...) then proposing a theory that can legitimize what we already do believe. Chapter One sets out our intuitive understanding of morality: that morality is cognitive, moral beliefs can be true or false; that morality is real, we do not construct it; that morality is rational, we can learn about it by rational investigation; and that morality places us under an absolute constraint. The chapter ends by clarifying the nature of that absolute demand and by arguing that the critical idea within morality is the idea of duty. In Chapter Two Mackie’s sceptical attack on objectivism is examined. Four key arguments are identified: that moral beliefs are relative to bfferent agents; that morality is based upon on non-rational causes; that the idea of moral properties or entities is too queer to be sustainable; and that moral objectivism involves queer epistemological commitments. Essentially all of these arguments are shown to be ambiguous; however it is proposed that Mackie has an underlying epistemological and metaphysical theory, scientific empiricism, which is hostile to objectivism and a theory that many find attractive for reasons that are independent of morality. Chapter Three explores the nature of moral rationality and whether scientific empiricism can use the idea of reflective equilibrium to offer a reasonable account of moral rationality. It concludes that, while reflective equilibrium is a useful account of moral rationality, it cannot be effectively reconciled with scientific empiricism. In order to function effectively as a rational process, reflective equilibrium must be rationally constrained by our moral judgements and our moral principles. Chapter Four begins the process of exploring some alternative epistemologies and argues that the only account that remains true to objectivism and the needs of reflective equilibrium is the account of intuitionism proposed by Ross. However this account can be developed further by drawing upon number of Kantian ideas and using them to supplement Ross’s intuitionism. So Chapter Five draws upon a number of Kant's ideas, most notably some key notions from the Critique of Judgement. These ideas are: that we possess a rational will that is subject to the Moral law and determined by practical reason; that we possess a faculty of judgement which enables us to become aware of moral properties and that these two faculties together with the third faculty of thought can function to constitute the moral understanding. Using these ideas the thesis explores whether they can serve to explain how intuitions can be rational and how objectivism can be justified. (shrink)

Subjectivists claim that the absence of a theological or metaphysical grounding to moral judgements renders them all as simply statements about our subjective wants and preferences. Leslie Allan argues that the subjectivists' case rests on a misunderstanding of the nature of moral objectivity. He presents the view that subjectivists mistakenly counterpoise the ideal of moral objectivity with the expression of individual preferences. Being objective in moral deliberation, Allan argues, should be regarded instead as the antithesis of (...) parochial and biased reasoning. This account of moral objectivity, he concludes, makes sense of a long-standing universalist tradition in moral philosophy. (shrink)

In the history of philosophy, the debate over the existence of God has largely been a courtroom drama. Theists and atheists alike approach the bench, presenting exhibits of “evidence". We call label it as fine-tuning, biological complexity, gratuitous suffering, or divine hiddenness. All the while, we are expecting a verdict to be rendered by the jury of Human Reason. This entire enterprise, however, rests on a hidden premise that is rarely questioned: the assumption that the Divine is a subject capable (...) of being measured by the tools of the finite. Yet, we are not judges in a courtroom; we are characters in a play attempting to critique the playwright using only lines from the script. This error is what can be called "The God Fallacy": the belief that human cognitive tools (logic, empirical observation, and moral intuition) are neutral instruments capable of adjudicating the reality of an Absolute Being, as if language and subjective reasoning alone are enough to capture the objective quintessence while still being nominally understood. The contemporary deadlock in the philosophy of religion, where the same data (e.g., the laws of physics or the existence of pain) is confidently cited as evidence for and against God, demonstrates that "evidence" in this domain is not objective. It is paradigm-dependent. There is no "Null Hypothesis" regarding the ultimate nature of reality; there are only competing frameworks of Faith and Materialism, both of which must be presupposed before the evidence can be interpreted. The attempt to judge God’s moral character, specifically through the Problem of Evil, is not only an Appeal to Emotion, but it logically fails because it relies on an anthropomorphic projection of "love." By insisting that a Perfect Being must adhere to humanistic definitions of altruism and safety, we commit a category error, failing to recognize that the metaphysics of the Infinite may structurally require the "void" of contrast (suffering/evil) to manifest existence at all. -/- Therefore, this paper contends that any rational argumentation regarding God is futile, not because God does not exist, but because the mechanism of judgment is structurally incapable of the task. (shrink)

This paper redefines human nature not by traditional criteria such as reason, language, or sociality, but by the ability for structured judgment. Utilizing the framework of the Judgemental Triad—Constructivity, Coherence, and Resonance—it argues that humans are beings for whom judgment 'returns'. Unlike other species, humans constitute symbolic meaning, seek Coherence in identity and action, and require Resonance—the return of meaning—as a condition for dignity, ethics, and identity. This structural perspective grounds human uniqueness not in metaphysical substance but in ethical architecture. (...) The paper concludes with implications for moral education, technological extension, and the definition of future Personhood. (shrink)

This paper offers a structural account of bioethical judgement in critical life-and-death situations—such as euthanasia, end-of-life care, and abortion—using the framework of Judgemental Philosophy and its Judgemental Triad (Constructivity, Coherence, Resonance). We argue that the frequent moral impasses encountered in these cases often arise not from a lack of information or compassion, but from a fundamental breakdown in the structural conditions required for meaningful judgement. Analyzing how each axis of the Triad—Constructivity (the ability to form a (...) class='Hi'>judgement), Coherence (consistency with frameworks), and Resonance (meaningful return to affected parties)—is challenged or collapses in these dilemmas, we clarify why certain decisions feel inherently undecidable. Furthermore, we propose conditions under which institutional judgement (e.g., via ethical committees or legal frameworks) can be structurally justified as a necessary substitute when personal judgement becomes impossible due to the collapse of one or more axes. This framework aims to shift bioethical discourse from solely value-based disputes towards a structural diagnosis of judgemental possibility, offering a path toward more ethically sound resolutions in structurally compromised fields. (shrink)

This paper challenges the growing discourse suggesting artificial intelligence (AI) may one day serve as a moral decision-maker or possess moral authority. Using the framework of Judgemental Philosophy, we argue that AI, regardless of its sophistication in simulating reasoning or consistency, is structurally ineligible for genuine moral judgement because it cannot satisfy the necessary preconditions defined by the Judgemental Triad (Constructivity, Coherence, and Resonance). While AI systems can exhibit high degrees of Constructivity (generating complex outputs from (...) data) and Coherence (maintaining internal logical or statistical consistency), they fundamentally lack Resonance—the affective and intersubjective return of meaning to a subject that grounds ethical judgement in lived experience and shared value structures. We contend that moral judgement and the authority derived from it require a self-affecting subjectivity capable of receiving the 'return' of its own attributions, a structure that current and foreseeable AI systems inherently lack. Delegating moral judgement to non-resonant systems poses significant risks to human ethical autonomy and the very structure of meaning. (shrink)

The paper distinguishes three strategies by means of which empirical discoveries about the nature of morality can be used to undermine moral judgements. On the first strategy, moral judgements are shown to be unjustified in virtue of being shown to rest on ignorance or false belief. On the second strategy, moral judgements are shown to be false by being shown to entail claims inconsistent with the relevant empirical discoveries. On the third strategy, moral judgements are shown (...) to be false in virtue of being shown to be unjustified; truth having been defined epistemologically in terms of justification. By interpreting three recent error theoretical arguments in light of these strategies, the paper evaluates the epistemological and metaphysical relevance of empirical discoveries about morality as a naturally evolved phenomenon. (shrink)

In many situations, people are unsure in their moral judgements. In much recent philosophical literature, this kind of moral doubt has been analysed in terms of uncertainty in one’s moral beliefs. Non-cognitivists, however, argue that moral judgements express a kind of conative attitude, more akin to a desire than a belief. This paper presents a scientifically informed reconciliation of non-cognitivism and moral doubt. The central claim is that attitudinal ambivalence—the degree to which one holds conflicting (...) attitudes towards the same object—can play the role of moral doubt for non-cognitivists. I will demonstrate that ambivalence has all of the features that we would expect it to have in order to play the role of moral doubt. It is gradable, can vary through time, covaries with strength of motivation, and is suitably distinct from the other features of our moral judgements. As well as providing a defence of non-cognitivism, this insight poses a new challenge for the view: deciding how to act under moral ambivalence. (shrink)

In a recent response to Persson & Savulescu’s Unfit for the Future, Nicholas Agar argues that moral bioenhancement is dangerous. His grounds for this are that normal moral judgement should be privileged because it involves a balance of moral subcapacities; moral bioenhancement, Agar argues, involves the enhancement of only particular moral subcapacities, and thus upsets the balance inherent in normal moral judgement. Mistaken moral judgements, he says, are likely to result. I (...) argue that Agar’s argument fails for two reasons. Firstly, having strength in a particular moral subcapacity does not necessarily entail a worsening of moral judgement; it can involve strength in a particular aspect of morality. Secondly, normal moral judgement is not sufficiently likely to be correct to be the standard by which moral judgements are measured. (shrink)

Moral abolitionists recommend that we get rid of moral discourse and moral judgement. At first glance this seems repugnant, but abolitionists think that we have overestimated the practical value of our moral framework and that eliminating it would be in our interests. I argue that abolitionism has a surprising amount going for it. Traditionally, abolitionism has been treated as an option available to moral error theorists. Error theorists say that moral discourse and (...) class='Hi'>judgement are committed to the existence of moral properties, and that no such properties exist. After error theory is established, abolitionism is one potential way to proceed. However, many error theorists suggest that we retain moral discourse as a sort of fiction. I evaluate some attractions of both fictionalism and abolitionism, arguing that abolitionism is a plausible position. No one doubts that error theorists can be abolitionists. However, what has gone largely undiscussed is that it is open to others to be abolitionists as well. I argue that moral realists of a metaphysically robust sort can and perhaps should be abolitionists. ‘Realist abolitionism’ makes for a surprisingly neat theoretical package, and I conclude that it represents an interesting new option in the theoretical landscape. (shrink)

Nietzsche has sometimes been interpreted as endorsing an error theory about moral judgements. A host of passages provide prima facie reason for such an interpretation. However, the extent of the appropriateness of this interpretation is a matter of dispute. The parameters of his alleged error theory are unclear. This paper reconsiders the evidence for the view that Nietzsche is a moral error theorist and makes the case that Nietzsche defends a local theory about a particular form of “morality,” (...) but that a global error theory about value judgments in general is not established by the textual evidence. This view is defended by considering Nietzsche's affinities with Hume and how they are better harnessed in service of a projectivist error-theoretic reading as opposed to alternatives in the secondary literature (such as noncognitivist readings). Moreover, it explores how Nietzsche can continue to make genuine (that is, nonfictionalist) evaluative judgments by his drawing of a distinction between conventional evaluative practice expressive of herd morality on the one hand and a revisionary evaluative practice available to a small number of “higher types” or “free spirits” on the other. (shrink)

In the following paper I will examine the possibility for a rational foundation of morals, rational in the sense that to ground a moral statement on reason amounts to being able to convince an unmotivated agent to conform to a moral rule - that is to say, to “rationally motivate” him (as Habermas would have said) to act in ways for which he or she had no previous reason to act. We will scrutinize the “internalist’s” objection (in Williams’ (...) definition) to such a claim and confront it with a, however, obvious fact: our need to convince or, at least, to influence agents to act according to moral judgements that entail strong validity claims. Therefore we need to find a better ground for our moral norms than that provided by a narrow concept of practical reason, which ultimately offers the basis for the internalist’s intuitions. Classical philosophers believed that to have a “right” sense meant also to think accordingly, that there was no intelligence without a social or moral side and that a person who lacked moral sense was not, at the same time, very intelligent. This contradicts some deep Humean intuitions, and in any case requires a more complex concept of practical reason than the one we normally encounter in internalist moral philosophers. In the following pages, I would like to reflect on this kind of social reason, or intelligence, or moral rationality, in an attempt to couple, in a coherent vision of moral sense within the framework of practical reason, intuitions that appear in Kant and Adam Smith with empirical research about what the lack of moral sense could mean. (shrink)

Moral non-cognitivists hope to explain the nature of moral agreement and disagreement as agreement and disagreement in non-cognitive attitudes. In doing so, they take on the task of identifying the relevant attitudes, distinguishing the non-cognitive attitudes corresponding to judgements of moral wrongness, for example, from attitudes involved in aesthetic disapproval or the sports fan’s disapproval of her team’s performance. We begin this paper by showing that there is a simple recipe for generating apparent counterexamples to any informative (...) specification of the moral attitudes. This may appear to be a lethal objection to non-cognitivism, but a similar recipe challenges attempts by non-cognitivism’s competitors to specify the conditions underwriting the contrast between genuine and merely apparent moral disagreement. Because of its generality, this specification problem requires a systematic response, which, we argue, is most easily available for the non-cognitivist. Building on premisses congenial to the non-cognitivist tradition, we make the following claims: (1) In paradigmatic cases, wrongness-judgements constitute a certain complex but functionally unified state, and paradigmatic wrongness-judgements form a functional kind, preserved by homeostatic mechanisms. (2) Because of the practical function of such judgements, we should expect judges’ intuitive understanding of agreement and disagreement to be accommodating, treating states departing from the paradigm in various ways as wrongness-judgements. (3) This explains the intuitive judgements required by the counterexample-generating recipe, and more generally why various kinds of amoralists are seen as making genuine wrongness-judgements. (shrink)

The paper explores the consequences of adopting a moral error theory targeted at the notion of reasonable convergence. I examine the prospects of two ways of combining acceptance of such a theory with continued acceptance of moral judgements in some form. On the first model, moral judgements are accepted as a pragmatically intelligible fiction. On the second model, moral judgements are made relative to a framework of assumptions with no claim to reasonable convergence on their behalf. (...) I argue that the latter model shows greater promise for an error theorist whose commitment to moral thought is initially serious. (shrink)