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This final chapter presents some general guidelines for thinking about the structure of our reasoning about norms. It begins with a dismissal of a purely evolutionary perspective on the contents of cultural systems, in favor of a more rational, reconstructive approach. It goes on to trace out the relationship between conventional morality and the more idealized constructions that philosophers typically have in mind when they speak about “morality.” The latter is identified as a type of expressive vocabulary that facilitates the development of critical reflection upon the former. Speculations on the origins and nature of the “moral point of view” are also advanced.

The existence and nature of a moral point of view is explored. There is a philosophically deep way of dividing considerations into moral and non‐moral such that even thought other context‐dependent, uses of the terms are legitimate marks the correct or significant delineation of morality. Moral considerations are a distinct type, distinct in how we find out about them and in what makes them into considerations with a call for our attention. A powerful argument for the distinctness of the moral point of view is provided, and it is one that is relevant to the thesis that there are internal and external reasons for action, and to forms of agent‐relativism, which depend on it.

H. L. A. Hart characterized his theory about the nature of law as “descriptive and morally neutral.” Like previous legal positivists such as John Austin and Hans Kelsen, he thought that a philosophical account of the nature of law should strive to avoid moralizing of any kind, and should aim at an explanation of the nature of law that is quite general in its application—one that explains what law, in general, is. However, many contemporary legal philosophers claim that a theory about the nature of law, such as Hart's legal positivism, cannot be detached from moral and political views about law's merits. This chapter argues that Hart was quite right, and that it is both possible and theoretically desirable to detach a philosophical account of the nature of law from moral and political views about law's merit.

This chapter distinguishes two senses in which philosophers speak of moral verdicts that invite two senses of moral overridingness. The first takes such moral verdicts to reflect decisive reasons for acting from a distinctively moral point of view; the second takes moral verdicts to reflect decisive reasons simpliciter for acting that are in some sense distinctively moral. Agents can be morally required to act in one of these senses without being morally required in the other, and the corresponding questions concerning whether or not morality is overriding differ significantly. Although the first of these senses of moral verdict currently dominates the moral overridingness debate, the focus here is primarily on the second, and the importance of disambiguating the two. Emphasizing the dominant sense to the exclusion of the alternative has fundamentally skewed debates in moral theory. The chapter offers a proposal for understanding the relationship between these two distinct senses.

This chapter examines the new views about women which were put forward at this period by German medical writers and the French writers who influenced them, and they compare them with those which were held a hundred years later, around 1900. It then focuses on discussions of female eating behaviour and wasting diseases in particular. In the context of the moral and philosophical views with which perceptions of the female body were inextricably bound up, it examines whether women's illness could sometimes have constituted a protest against gender stereotypes, as feminist critics have suggested.

This chapter introduces the main findings of the medical research on psychopathy as well as the most significant threads of the philosophical debates surrounding psychopathy. It also introduces the articles collected in this volume. The introduction focuses on issues in moral psychology and metaethics, such as moral motivation, moral responsibility, and moral understanding. It shows the difficulty in conceptualising psychopathy and in using psychopathy as a test case for philosophical theories.

Suppose you believe you’re morally required to φ‎ but that it’s not a big deal; and yet you think it might be deeply morally wrong to φ‎. You are in a state of moral uncertainty, holding high credence in one moral view of your situation, while having a small credence in a radically opposing moral view. A natural thought is that in such a case you should not φ‎, because φ‎ing would be too morally risky. The author argues that this natural thought is misguided. If φ‎ing is in fact morally required, then you should φ‎, and this is so even taking into account your moral uncertainty. The author argues that if the natural thought were correct, then being caught in the grip of a false moral view would be exculpatory: people who do morally wrong things thinking they are acting morally rightly would be blameless. But being caught in the grip of a false moral view is not exculpatory. So the natural thought is false. The author develops the claim that you should act as morality actually requires as a candidate answer to the question “how should one act in the face of moral uncertainty?” This answer has been dismissed in discussion up to this point. The author argues that not only is this answer a serious contender; it is the correct answer.

The chapter starts from a specific interpretation of what it means to know the difference between right and wrong, which stems from Gilbert Ryle. To know the difference between right and wrong implies caring about morality. The author links Ryle’s ideas to the notion of being a moral person. Two different ideas found in moral philosophy are delineated, namely, the amoral person, that is, someone who rejects the demands of morality, and the morally incapacitated person, that is, someone who cannot take those demands into account. Psychopaths are not amoral in the philosophers’ sense of the word, but are incapable of, or seriously deficient in, taking the moral point of view.

This chapter focuses on the various kinds of motivational failure and how they have significant and underappreciated implications for metaethics. The central question in metaethics lies in knowing what it is to think of something as right or wrong, good or bad, and obligatory or forbidden. Generally, people do not engage in behaviors genuinely considered evil, even when they would stand to benefit from it, because sincerely held moral views influence conduct. To an extent, therefore, moral judgments seem to be motivationally effective. If they were merely motivationally effective psychological states such as desires, they could readily and easily be explicated. However, moral judgments do not necessarily lead to corresponding action. In fact, it is conceptually possible to believe that a certain behavior is wrong and still want to engage in it; therefore, thinking that something is wrong does not simply consist in aversion toward it.

Chapter 13 concludes the book. It first highlights some of the communal ethic’s advantages compared to standard utilitarian and Kantian moral theories, recalling how it uniquely grounds judgements such as: animals have a moral status, albeit one less than that of humans; persons have a dignity of a sort that plausibly explains why reducing their quality of life matters morally; and despite people’s dignity’s demanding impartial consideration, an agent has duties to do more for those who have been in relationship with her. Then, the chapter sketches three projects it would be sensible to undertake, supposing the book’s central ideas have been worth taking seriously. Whereas the book focuses on prescriptive matters pertaining to right action in interpersonal contexts, it is also worth considering how well communality describes morality, whether it grounds an attractive account of good character, and what it entails for justice in legal, political, and economic institutions.

In a famous article, J. J. C. Smart argued against the idea that utilitarians could avoid counterintuitive moral judgments by adopting an indirect version of their theory such as rule utilitarianism. To do so, Smart claimed, was to succumb to “superstitious rule-worship.” This essay argues that as long as one assumes that morality is an expression of a distinctive moral point of view, Smart’s argument against rule utilitarianism is decisive. But if one thinks of morality as a practice, along the lines introduced by John Rawls in “Two Concepts of Rules,” there is an altogether different justification for rule utilitarianism that escapes Smart’s criticisms. Furthermore, the essay points out, there is some basis for thinking that John Stuart Mill did think of morality in this way.

Kant argued that autonomy of the will is a necessary presupposition of all morality. His idea of autonomy is abstract, foundational, normative, and a key to his defense of the rationality of moral commitment. In contemporary ethics philosophers often appeal to autonomy, more specifically, as a moral right to make one’s own decisions or as a psychological ideal of independence and rational self-control. Kantian and contemporary ideas of autonomy are not the same, but how are they related? Arguably, Kantian autonomy, when applied realistically to common human circumstances, tends to not only support but also limit the particular claims made in the name of autonomy. Kantian autonomy is a crucial part of the moral point of view from which specific principles can be assessed, not an ideal of living independently of others. Derivative principles must take into account ways in which various physical and social conditions inhibit the capacity for self-determination.

This chapter explores the complex nature of moral reasoning as an activity people engage in that can lead to a change in one’s moral view. The particular model of change (whether construed as a normative model or as a descriptive model) is that of reflective equilibrium in which one attempts to find a balance between conservatism and coherence; between minimizing changes in one’s view and reducing negative coherence on one hand, and enhancing positive coherence of one’s view on the other. The chapter proceeds to discuss various dimensions of such reasoned change in moral view, including the role for perceptions, feelings, and sensations, in addition to beliefs, desires, and intentions.

Some of the hits taken by administrators will be delivered by those faculty members who have forgotten (or never knew) what their job is and spend time trying to form their students’ character or turn them into exemplary citizens. I can’t speak for every academic, but I am not trained to do these things, although I am aware of people who are: preachers, therapists, social workers, political activists, professional gurus, inspirational speakers. Teachers, as I have said repeatedly, teach materials and confer skills, and therefore don’t or shouldn’t do a lot of other things—like produce active citizens, inculcate the virtue of tolerance, redress injustices, and bring about political change. Of course a teacher might produce some of these effects—or their opposites—along the way, but they will be, or should be, contingent and not what is aimed at. The question that administrators often ask, “What practices provide students with the knowledge and commitments to be socially responsible citizens?” is not a bad question, but the answers to it should not be the content of a college or university course. No doubt, the practices of responsible citizenship and moral behavior should be encouraged in our young adults, but it’s not the business of the university to do so, except when the morality in question is the morality that penalizes cheating, plagiarizing, and shoddy teaching. Once we cross the line that separates academic work from these other kinds, we are guilty both of practicing without a license and of defaulting on our professional responsibilities. But isn’t it our responsibility both as teachers and as citizens to instill democratic values in our students? Derek Bok thinks so and invokes studies that claim to demonstrate a cause and effect relationship between a college education and an active participation in the country’s political life: “researchers have shown that college graduates are much more active civically and politically than those who have not attended college” (Our Underachieving Colleges). But this statistic proves nothing except what everyone knows: college graduates have more access to influential circles than do those without a college education.