Does Empirical Moral Psychology Rest on a Mistake? Understanding Theories About the Nature of Moral Judgment as Moral Propositions

The main goal of this dissertation is to develop and defend the thesis that theories about the nature of moral judgment must be understood as carrying moral commitments. This has profound consequences for the methodology of metaethics. Specifically, it implies that theories about the nature of moral judgment cannot be understood as empirical hypotheses. There have historically been many attempts to develop a philosophically satisfying theory that characterizes the nature and content of moral judgments. Many philosophers have thought that such theories are best understood as morally neutral hypotheses about human psychology. Recently, a number of philosophers have attempted to approach this question by treating theories about the nature of moral judgment as empirical hypotheses that can be confirmed or disconfirmed by psychological and neuroscientific evidence. I argue that this methodological presupposition is mistaken. In the first and second chapter, I articulate and defend a test for identifying moral propositions and use it to demonstrate that a number of prominent metaethicists have mistakenly thought that theories about the nature of moral judgment are morally neutral. The third chapter begins with an argument that moral propositions cannot be identical to or definable in terms of empirically-confirmable hypotheses. I then show that this conclusion undermines several empirically-informed theories of moral judgment put forward by Shaun Nichols, Jesse Prinz, and Richard Joyce.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph D

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Philosophy

Grantor dc:publisher

The University of Western Ontario

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• Clipsham, Patrick

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Skelton, Anthony

• Metaethics
• Normative Ethics
• Moral Psychology
• Empirical Hypotheses

Language dc:language.iso

en_ca

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14721/30853

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:uwo.scholaris.ca:20.500.14721/30853