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Ethics and the Absolute Conception

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 January 2009

Jane Heal
Jane Heal
Affiliation:
St John's College, Cambridge
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Extract

The purpose of this paper is to examine some contentions advanced by B. A. O. Williams in his books Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry and Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. In particular I shall be concerned with the claims he makes about the nature of ethics—namely that it cannot be ‘objective’ or ‘realistic’ and that we may not hope for rational convergence in ethical judgments. My claims will be that Williams's case on these matters is importantly unclear and incomplete and that we lack cogent reasons to accept the conclusions he offers us. But a good deal of scene-setting is necessary before we can pose the questions I wish to address.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 64 , Issue 247 , January 1989 , pp. 49 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1989

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References

1 Williams, B. A. O., Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1978)Google Scholar—hereafter Descartes; Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana Press/;Collins, 1985)Google Scholar—hereafter ELP).

2 Descartes, 64–5Google Scholar; ELP, 138–9.Google Scholar

3 ELP, 138–9.Google Scholar

4 ELP, 139–40.Google Scholar

5 ELP, 135.Google Scholar

6 e.g. ELP, 150–5.Google Scholar

7 One such which I have ignored is that between the real and the objective. For Williams some judgments might be objective, in that there was defensible hope of rational convergence on a verdict about them, even if they were not about the real, i.e. not about something that exists ‘out there’ and has causal effects on us. See Williams, B. A. O., ‘Ethics and the Fabric of the World’ in Objectivity and Value, Honderich, T. (ed.) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985)Google Scholar. In so far as the distinction is of importance, it is the objectivity of the ethical which is at issue in this paper.

8 Blackburn, S., Spreading the Word (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984) esp. Chapter 6Google Scholar. See also ‘Opinions and Chances’ in Prospects for Pragmatism, Mellor, D. H. (ed.), (Cambridge University Press, 1980)Google Scholar and ‘Truth, Realism, and the Regulation of Theory’, in Midwest Studies in Philosophy V, Franch, P. A., Uehling, T. and Wettstein, H. (eds) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980).Google Scholar

9 ‘Opinions and Chances’ (cited above), 180.Google Scholar

10 ‘Opinions and Chances’, 180.Google Scholar

11 McDowell, J., ‘Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?’, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume (1978)Google Scholar, and ‘Non-Cognitivism and Rule Following’ in Wittgenstein: to Follow a Rule, Holzman, Steven H. and Leich, Christopher M. (eds.) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981).Google Scholar

12 See Williams's reply to Blackburn, Simon in Philosophical Books (1986)Google Scholar and see also Descartes, 243–4.Google Scholar

13 ELP, 141–2.Google Scholar

14 Descartes, 298–300Google ScholarELP, 140.Google Scholar

15 Descartes, 64.Google Scholar

16 ELP, 151.Google Scholar

17 ELP, 152.Google Scholar

18 ELP, 151–2.Google Scholar

19 ELP, 153.Google Scholar