Ethical Sentimentalism: New Perspectives

✍ Scribed by Remy Debes (editor); Karsten R. Stueber (editor)

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Year: 2017
• Tongue: English
• Leaves: 305
• Category: Library

✦ Synopsis

In recent years there has been a tremendous resurgence of interest in ethical sentimentalism, a moral theory first articulated during the Scottish Enlightenment. Ethical Sentimentalism promises a conception of morality that is grounded in a realistic account of human psychology, which, correspondingly, acknowledges the central place of emotion in our moral lives. However, this promise has encountered its share of philosophical difficulties. Chief among them is the question of how to square the limited scope of human motivation and psychological mechanism - so easily influenced by personal, social, and cultural circumstance - with the seeming universal scope and objective nature of moral judgment. The essays in this volume provide a comprehensive evaluation of the sentimentalist project with a particular eye to this difficulty. Each essay offers critical clarification, innovative answers to central challenges, and new directions for ethical sentimentalism in general.

✦ Table of Contents

Copyright
Contents
List of Contributors
Acknowledgments
Introduction -Remy Debes & Karsten R. Stueber
1 The Basic Position
2 Classical Sentimentalism
2 Neo-Classical Sentimentalism -Jesse Prinz
1 Introduction
2 Hume’s Classical Sentimentalism
3 Neo-Sentimentalism
4 Neo-Classical Sentimentalism
5 Conclusions
3 Moral Epistemology for Sentimentalists -Simon Blackburn
Introduction
I
II
4 Evolutionary Debunking Arguments, Explanatory Structure, and Anti-Realism -Karl Schafer
1 Two Varieties of Debunking
2 The Argument from Incredibility
3 The Argument from Incredibility Reconsidered
4 The Argument from Non-Accidental Truth
5 Dissatisfaction with the Explanatory Structure of Robust Realism as a Motivation for Anti-Realism
5 Sentimentalist Moral-Perceptual Experience and Realist Pretensions: A Phenomenological Inquiry -Terry Horgan & Mark Timmons
1 Phenomenological Inquiry and the Neutrality Thesis
2 Moral Emotion as Affective Moral Perception
3 Indignation: A Phenomenological Description and a Pro-Tanto Case for Affirmative
4 Cognitivist Expressivism and the Phenomenology of Moral Belief
5 Moral Emotion as Evaluative: A Cognitivist Expressivist Account
6 Conclusion
6 Sentimentalism and Realism in Epistemology and Ethics -Peter Railton
1 Introduction
2 Hume on Belief
3 Sentimentalist Epistemology and Meta-Epistemology
4 Sentimentalism in Ethics and Meta-Ethics
Conclusion
7 Sentimentalism, Blameworthiness, and Wrongdoing -Antti Kauppinen
1 Fitting Attitudes and Actual Sentiments
2 Blameworthiness and Reactive Attitudes
3 Why the Blame-Wrongness Link Doesn’t Hold
4 External Support for Blame
5 Conclusion: From Metaethics to Normative Ethics?
8 Reactive Attitudes and Second-Personal Address -Michelle Mason
1 Introduction
2 The Reactive Attitudes as a Class of Sentiments
3 Nonreactive Moral Sentiments and “Third-Personal Sentimentalism”
4 The Deontic Imperative Conception of the Reactive Moral Sentiments
5 Toward a More Inclusive View of the Reactive Attitudes
6 Conclusion
9 The Authority of Empathy (Or, How to Ground Sentimentalism) -Remy Debes
1 The Description
2 The Grounding
10 Smithian Constructivism: Elucidating the Reality of the Normative Domain -Karsten R. Stueber
1 Introduction
2 Evaluating the Promise of Korsgaardian Constructivism
3 Smith’s Mental Geography of Reasons: Empathy and the Impartial Spectator
11 A Modest Feminist Sentimentalism: Empathy and Moral Understanding Across Social Difference -Diana Tietjens Meyers
1 The Problem of Difference
2 Two Critiques of Empathy
3 A Feminist Conception of Empathy
4 Difference, Empathy, and the Problem of Bias
12 Moral Sentimentalism in Early Confucian Thought -David B. Wong
1 Mencius: Feeling Reflection
2 Pleasure in Acting on the Sprouts
3 Coming to Know Moral Priorities Through Reflection
4 What did Mencius think about the Source of Moral Judgment?
5 Xunzi: The Power of the Mind to Tame and Reshape the Self
6 What did Xunzi Think about the Source of Moral Judgment?
7 How to Place Mencius and Xunzi in the Context of Western Ethical Theory
13 Whither Sentimentalism? On Fear, the Fearsome, and the Dangerous -Justin D’Arms & Daniel Jacobson
1 Sentimentalism and Shadow Skepticism
2 Fear and the Dangerous
3 The Direction Forward
References
Index