Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Realist-Expressivism: A Neglected Option for Moral Realism
- Thinking about Cases
- But I Could Be Wrong
- Moral Facts and Best Explanations
- Two Sources of Morality
- “Because I Want It”
- Realism, Naturalism, and Moral Semantics
- Incomplete Routes to Moral Objectivity: Four Variants of Naturalism
- Explanation, Internalism, and Reasons for Action
- Moral Knowledge as Practical Knowledge
- Practical Reason and Moral Psychology in Aristotle and Kant
- Hypothetical Consent in Kantian Constructivism
- Mill's “Proof” of the Principle of Utility: A More than Half-Hearted Defense
- Index
But I Could Be Wrong
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 August 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Introduction
- Acknowledgments
- Contributors
- Realist-Expressivism: A Neglected Option for Moral Realism
- Thinking about Cases
- But I Could Be Wrong
- Moral Facts and Best Explanations
- Two Sources of Morality
- “Because I Want It”
- Realism, Naturalism, and Moral Semantics
- Incomplete Routes to Moral Objectivity: Four Variants of Naturalism
- Explanation, Internalism, and Reasons for Action
- Moral Knowledge as Practical Knowledge
- Practical Reason and Moral Psychology in Aristotle and Kant
- Hypothetical Consent in Kantian Constructivism
- Mill's “Proof” of the Principle of Utility: A More than Half-Hearted Defense
- Index
Summary
INTRODUCTION
My aim in this essay is to explore the implications of the fact that even our most deeply held moral beliefs have been profoundly affected by our upbringing and experience—that if any of us had had a sufficiently different upbringing and set of experiences, he almost certainly would now have a very different set of moral beliefs and very different habits of moral judgment. This fact, together with the associated proliferation of incompatible moral doctrines, is sometimes invoked in support of liberal policies of toleration and restraint, but the relevance of these considerations to individual moral deliberation has received less attention. In Sections II through V, I shall argue that this combination of contingency and controversy poses a serious challenge to the authority of our moral judgments. In Section VI, I shall explore a promising way of responding to this challenge.
THE CHALLENGE TO MY MORAL JUDGMENTS
In Chapter II of On Liberty, John Stuart Mill observes that the person who uncritically accepts the opinion of “the world”
devolves upon his own world the responsibility of being in the right against the dissentient worlds of other people; and it never troubles him that mere accident has decided which of these numerous worlds is the object of his reliance, and that the same causes which made him a churchman in London would have made him a Buddhist or a Confucian in Peking.
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- Chapter
- Information
- Moral Knowledge , pp. 64 - 78Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2001