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Moral Explanations of Moral Beliefs
Author(s) -
LOEB DON
Publication year - 2005
Publication title -
philosophy and phenomenological research
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.7
H-Index - 39
eISSN - 1933-1592
pISSN - 0031-8205
DOI - 10.1111/j.1933-1592.2005.tb00511.x
Subject(s) - spell , moral disengagement , moral psychology , epistemology , argument (complex analysis) , moral reasoning , social cognitive theory of morality , victory , moral philosophy , moral authority , philosophy , moral responsibility , psychology , law , political science , theology , chemistry , biochemistry , politics
Gilbert Harman and Judith Thomson have argued that moral facts cannot explain our moral beliefs, claiming that such facts could not play a causal role in the formation of those beliefs. This paper shows these arguments to be misguided, for they would require that we abandon any number of intuitively plausible explanations in non‐moral contexts as well. But abandoning the causal strand in the argument over moral explanations does not spell immediate victory for the moral realist, since it must still be shown that moral facts do figure in our best global explanatory theory.