Moral and epistemic evaluations: A unified treatment

IF 1.6 1区 哲学 0 PHILOSOPHY Philosophical Perspectives Pub Date : 2021-10-23 DOI:10.1111/phpe.12159
Bob Beddor
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引用次数: 1

Abstract

A rich tradition in metaethics seeks to explain the meaning of moral language in terms of desire-like attitudes. This approach can be implemented in di erent ways. On a contextualist implementation, moral discourse describes the desire-like attitudes of some agent(s), for example, the speaker or the speaker’s community. On an expressivist implementation, moral discourse does not describe desire-like attitudes; it expresses them. On a relativist implementation, the truth-value of a moral assertion at a context of assessment depends on the desire-like attitudes of the assessor—that is, someone assessing the utterance for truth or falsity. Despite these di erences, all such “attitudinal metaethics” are bound by a common thread: they analyze moral discourse in terms of conative states. Attitudinal metaethicists sometimes propose extending their approach to other varieties of normative discourse, including epistemic discourse.1 A generalized attitudinal semantics along these lines carries obvious attractions. But it also faces important challenges. An initial challenge concerns how to even spell out a generalized attitudinal semantics. While much ink has been spilled in pursuit of a precise attitudinal semantics for moral discourse, the extension to other fragments of normative language has not received a comparable degree of attention. Second, and more worrisome, some philosophers have argued that there are principled obstacles to the very idea of a generalized attitudinal semantics. For example, Boult and Köhler 2020 argue that a generalized attitudinal semantics is under-motivated, since the primary arguments for an attitudinal metaethics do not carry over to the epistemic domain. And Wodak 2017 argues that a generalized attitudinal semantics over-predicts disagreements across normative domains. These obstacles can be used to frame a dilemma for any attempt to generalize an attitudinal semantics. On the one hand, generalizers need to show that there are su cient commonalities between di erent normative domains to warrant a uni ed treatment. On the other hand, generalizers had better not erase the obvious di erences between di erent avors of normative judgment.
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道德和认知评价:统一的处理
元伦理学中有一个丰富的传统,试图从欲望态度的角度来解释道德语言的意义。这种方法可以通过不同的方式实现。在语境主义的实施中,道德话语描述了一些行为主体(例如,说话者或说话者的群体)的欲望式态度。在表现主义的实施中,道德话语不描述欲望般的态度;它表达了它们。在相对主义的实施中,在评估的语境中,道德主张的真值取决于评估者的欲望态度,也就是说,某人评估话语的真实性或虚假性。尽管存在这些差异,但所有这些“态度元伦理学”都被一条共同的线索所束缚:他们从自然状态的角度分析道德话语。态度元伦理学家有时建议将他们的方法扩展到其他种类的规范性话语,包括认识论话语沿着这些路线的广义态度语义具有明显的吸引力。但它也面临着重要的挑战。一个最初的挑战是如何拼出一个广义的态度语义。虽然在追求道德话语的精确态度语义学方面已经花费了大量的精力,但将其扩展到规范语言的其他片段却没有得到相当程度的关注。其次,更令人担忧的是,一些哲学家认为,广义态度语义学的概念本身存在原则性障碍。例如,Boult和Köhler 2020认为,广义的态度语义是动机不足的,因为态度元伦理学的主要论点没有延续到认知领域。Wodak 2017认为,广义态度语义过度预测了规范领域之间的分歧。这些障碍可以用来为任何试图概括态度语义的尝试构建一个困境。一方面,泛化者需要证明在不同的规范领域之间有足够的共性来保证统一的处理。另一方面,泛化者最好不要抹去不同规范性判断偏好之间的明显差异。
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