How can we be moral when we are so irrational?
2013 (English)In: Logique et Analyse, ISSN 0024-5836, E-ISSN 2295-5836, Vol. 56, no 221, p. 101-126Article in journal (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Normative ethics usually presupposes background accounts of human
agency, and although different ethical theorists might have different
pictures of human agency in mind, there is still something
like a standard account that most of mainstream normative ethics
can be understood to rest on. Ethical theorists tend to have Rational
Man, or at least some close relative to him, in mind when constructing
normative theories. It will be argued here that empirical findings
raise doubts about the accuracy of this kind of account; human beings
fall too far short of ideals of rationality for it to bemeaningful to
devise normative ideals within such a framework. Instead, it is suggested,
normative ethics could be conducted more profitably if the
idea of unifying all ethical concerns into one theoretical account is
abandoned. Such a disunity of ethical theorizing would then match
the disunited and heuristic-oriented nature of our agency. Some preliminary
suggestions about what ethical theorizing might look like
instead are provided here along with some remarks about how these
relate to other approaches in the literature.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
National Centre for Logical Investigation, Belgium , 2013. Vol. 56, no 221, p. 101-126
Keywords [en]
Ethics, Decision Theory, Rationality
National Category
Humanities and the Arts
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:mau:diva-2170Local ID: 16563OAI: oai:DiVA.org:mau-2170DiVA, id: diva2:1398912
2020-02-272020-02-272022-06-27Bibliographically approved