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A contextualist defence of cognitivism is open to the charge that it cannot supply a convincing theory of error for when moral judgements diverge. This chapter rebuts this concern: conditions have been set out for when apparent conflict between moral views really is such, or, alternatively, whether we should accept different diagnoses in any particular case. If a conflict between moral beliefs is genuinely a case of conflict, then various explanations have been supplied for why this might be so that do not, as yet, directly draw on the idea of moral error. This is to make the task facing a theory of moral error more manageable. In developing such a theory, it was argued that it is not a defect of cognitivism but a strength that it can explain moral error. The issue of social criticism was considered and a model described for the criticism of ideological beliefs that was, to a certain extent, independent of the truth of cognitivism.

The typical moral cognitivist holds that specifically moral beliefs — beliefs with explicitly evaluative moral content — can, and often in fact do, play an essential explanatory role. While admitting that specifically moral reasons have a place in the explanation of actions, the moral conativist refuses to allow seemingly cognitivist appearances to settle the question of their character: for the moral conativist, what may seem to be practical moral beliefs are in fact specifically moral desires, desires whose contents distinguish them from other desires. The moral cognitivist claims to catch moral reasons within the net of his cognitivist theory of reasons for action. For the moral conativist, specifically moral reasons can be understood only within the framework of a conativist theory of reasons for action. In his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume presents two arguments designed to support moral conativism and to subvert moral cognitivism in any of its forms.

In ”Epistemology and Ethics,” Noah Lemos suggests that moral epistemology is mainly concerned with “whether and how we can have knowledge or justified belief” about moral issues. After addressing skeptical arguments, he considers how the moral epistemologist and moral philosopher should begin their account of moral knowledge. Lemos favors a particularist approach whereby we begin with instances of moral knowledge and use these to formulate and evaluate criteria for moral knowledge. After relating his approach to concerns about the nature of the epistemic justification of moral beliefs as dealt with by foundationalists and coherentists, Lemos responds to arguments against particularist approaches in moral epistemology. Specifically, he addresses the claim that our moral beliefs must receive their justification from an independent moral criterion developed from nonmoral beliefs.

This book explores questions regarding the metaphysics of morals and moral epistemology, as well as questions in the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of language. In particular, it addresses the theory of metaphor. Art and morality are related in more than one dimension, but this book considers only one of these dimensions: the way in which works of art inform one's moral beliefs. The discussion is confined further to literary art alone, and that only, or almost only, in connection with one common feature of literary art, namely, the use of metaphor. The book examines in what way may one's engagement with literary art, and more particularly metaphorical discourse, informs his/her moral beliefs. The answer to that question can be extended to other features of literary discourse and indeed to other art forms.

The epistemic status of moral discourse turns in part on the explanation of divergent moral beliefs. Whether differences of moral opinion there are best explained by a failure accurately to represent specifically moral features of actions and characters, or whether they are better explained by cognitively blameless differences of preference and desire, not only matters to the cognitive claims of moral discourse. The answer to this question should also shed light on the phenomenology of moral experience and the epistemology of moral judgement. Crispin Wright's arguments suggest that an inferential account of moral belief can only be avoided by positing some anomalous faculty of moral perception. This chapter argues that the genesis of moral experience is one in which cognition and affect are jointly implicated, but that their cooperation does nothing to undermine the thought that moral discourse is, for the most part, both conceptually autonomous and genuinely representational. The concepts of moral reasons, rational conflict, moral competence, imagination, and basic moral judgements are also discussed.

This chapter begins the exploration of some of the more unsettling aspects of contemporary emerging adult life by focusing on the question of morality, moral beliefs, and moral reasoning. What do emerging adults think about morality? How do they know what is moral? How do they make moral decisions? Where do they think moral rights and wrongs, goods and bads, even come from? What is the source or basis of morality? And how important is it to emerging adults to choose what is morally good? The chapter examines their answers to these and other questions, and then ponders what this all may tell us not only about contemporary emerging adults’ own moral imaginations but also about the larger culture and society that has formed them morally.

This chapter describes one particular neuroethical project in more depth, in order to provide a glimpse of what a neuroethical analysis might look like and the kinds of issues that such an analysis might engender. It characterizes in some detail a body of empirical results from neuroscience, and considers the implications of trying to integrate such knowledge into our social and ethical frameworks. It argues that moral belief or judgment is intrinsically motivating and that, in judging morally, one is automatically motivated to act in accordance with one's judgment.

This chapter discusses the philosophy of religion during the twentieth century. The influence of Immanuel Kant and David Hume on the discussion of theological and religious issues by philosophers is examined in the first section. The dual role of philosophy and the main forms of interaction between philosophy and theology are discussed in the next section. The chapter also examines three main themes: the nature and significance of religious experience, the attempts in the twentieth century to deal with some of the links between religion and reason, and the interaction between religious and moral beliefs.

This chapter outlines the book’s unusual approach. Rather than compare characteristics of moral beliefs to levels of economic performance across societies, it undertakes a thought experiment launched by the following question: If a society’s sole objective is to maximize general prosperity, and it can choose its own moral beliefs, what kinds of moral beliefs would it choose? It briefly discusses how such beliefs provide a moral foundation for economic behavior. It connects moral beliefs to economic behavior through trust behaviour, and reviews evidence on the relationship between trust and economic performance. It reviews some of the major issues covered in the book including genuine trust, group size, and the role of culture. In then provides an overview of the central arguments.

This chapter explains Kant's attitude towards analytic theology, in particular his reasons for thinking that the results of such a practice will have the status of Belief. The goal is more than merely to provide a specific sort of analytic theology with the imprimatur of an eminent historical philosopher. The motive for focusing on Kant stems rather from the fact that his influence among people working in theology and religious studies is by all accounts immense, and that while many embrace that influence, others — especially those inclined towards analytic theology — find that influence deeply regrettable. It is argued that Kant engages in substantive theology himself and would not stand in clear opposition either to the project of providing analyses of religious concepts (including our concept of God), or to the application of the tools and methods of analytic metaphysics to theological topics.

This chapter proposes a doxastic practice epistemology for ethics, holding that we rightly, and probably inescapably, rely on belief‐forming dispositions that we have formed in learning social practices of evaluation. In the context of a theistic metaethics, the reliability of such practices and dispositions is explained in terms of a concept of “general revelation,” a concept that allows that some to whom ethical truths are revealed may be atheists. The chapter also expounds a conception of “special revelation” connected with historic religious traditions, in which particular possibilities of goodness may be empirically discovered and divine commands may be addressed to particular communities at particular times.

This chapter puts aside the epistemological level of discourse and outlines the reach of the argument from normative consistency. It shows how the argument from normative consistency can provide an apt and useful basis for the main tenets of moral realism. That ethical foundationalism is dangerous is an objection more prominent in philosophical than in ordinary discourse. However, the view that ethical foundationalism is utterly doomed to fail is the common view of many philosophers and non-philosophers alike. These two criticisms are examined, first in general terms and second in the version of Alasdair MacIntyre. The truth thesis of moral realism is discussed, along with truth and intersubjectivity, truth and tyranny, how moral beliefs can motivate, a typology of true (or right) moral judgements, and the teleological structure of rational agency.

This conclusive chapter summarises the content of each chapter. It argues that helping people with eating disorders means questioning ordinary moral values and beliefs. The focus should shift from the person with eating disorders, from her eating habits, and from what happens in her mind to shared moral assumptions about what is good and right, and their repercussions. Eating (normal or abnormal) is not important per se. Eating is important as an expression of people’s moral beliefs, and it is these beliefs that need to be unmasked and discussed.

This chapter compares trust behavior derived from moral beliefs that comport with the moral foundation to trust behavior as conceived under existing theories of trust. It shows that whereas conventional theories do not square well with existing empirical evidence at either the micro or macro level, trust behavior rooted in moral beliefs that comport with the moral foundation does. It discusses the implications this book has for arguments made by institutional theorists against the relevance of trust. It shows why, if a society has a sufficiently high proportion of individuals who abide by the moral foundation, it will enjoy a condition of generalized trust, making it possible for its people to trust each other at the micro level while at the same time making it possible for trust-dependent institutions to exist at the macro level.

This chapter analyzes how perception is a kind of experiential information-bearing relation between the perceiver and the object perceived. It argues that even if moral properties are not themselves causal, they can be perceptible. But the dependence of moral perception on non-moral perception does not imply an inferential dependence of all moral belief or moral judgment on non-moral belief or judgment. This kind of grounding explains how a moral belief arising in perception can constitute perceptual knowledge and can do so on grounds that are publicly accessible and, though not a guarantee of it, a basis for ethical agreement. The chapter also shows how perceptual moral knowledge is connected not only with other moral knowledge but also with intuition and emotion.