Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-ws8qp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-29T14:14:24.977Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Two Forms of Practical Generality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 January 2010

Christopher W. Morris
Affiliation:
Bowling Green State University, Ohio
Arthur Ripstein
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Get access

Summary

This essay is an inquiry into the workings of two concepts, practical disposition and social practice, as they enter, or might enter, into moral philosophy. Or rather, it is a fragment of such an inquiry. Its point of departure is a pair of familiar tendencies in moral philosophy, the tendencies we meet with in what might be called dispositional accounts of the rationality of morality and practice versions of utilitarianism. Of course, the concepts of a practice and a disposition enter into other types of moral theory, some of them perhaps intuitively more attractive than either of these. But the deployment of our concepts in these two lines of thought is, I think, uniquely clear and intelligible. A study of their workings here can therefore be expected to supply a general elucidation of the two concepts as they are properly understood in practical philosophy and thus potentially in quite different types of normative theory.

The concepts practice and disposition appear at first sight to be quite diverse: One looks to be a concept proper to social theory, the other perhaps to psychology. A comparative treatment will, I hope, tend to burn off this dross of associated ideas and reveal an underlying kinship at least in their specifically practical-philosophical use. But further, recognition of this kinship will in turn put us into contact with a more extensive class of practical concepts and with it a larger logical, metaphysical, and normative topic, namely, the role of a certain kind of generality in practice and practical thought.

Type
Chapter
Information
Practical Rationality and Preference
Essays for David Gauthier
, pp. 121 - 152
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2001

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.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure coreplatform@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×