Moral obligations and social expectations: a humean reduction
- Creators
- Jones, William Thomas
Abstract
In this paper I shall argue that an account can be given of the sense of duty without reference to such specifically philosophical notions as "moral law," "moral rule," "moral principle," and "moral intuition." By shifting out of this vocabulary into talk about social roles, role expectations, and role modulations, attention is directed away from an attempt to justify people's moral judgments by demonstrating their consistency with those principles--an attempt that is likely, in view of the immense diversity of these judgments, to be unsuccessful and to have, at best, only an intellectual interest -- and turned in a direction that, more modestly, concentrates on the kind of small-scale theory that helps us understand a little better how moral attitudes, moral judgments and moral changes occur.
Additional Information
I am much indebted to the following friends and colleagues for comments on earlier drafts of this paper: Burton H. Klein, Bruce E. Cain, Edward Green, James McGilvray, Alan Schwartz, Robert M. Stewart, Peter Westen, and Charles Young.Attached Files
Published - HumsWP-0100.pdf
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 17065
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20100105-135034898
- Created
-
2010-01-06Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2019-10-03Created from EPrint's last_modified field
- Caltech groups
- Humanities Working Papers
- Series Name
- Humanities Working Paper
- Series Volume or Issue Number
- 100