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The Right Wrong‐Makers
Author(s) -
Chappell Richard Yetter
Publication year - 2021
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/phpr.12728
Subject(s) - normative , utilitarianism , epistemology , moral disengagement , social cognitive theory of morality , moral psychology , value (mathematics) , value theory , normative ethics , moral reasoning , simple (philosophy) , sociology , psychology , philosophy , computer science , machine learning
Right‐ and wrong‐making features (“moral grounds”) are widely believed to play important normative roles, e.g. in morally apt or virtuous motivation. This paper argues that moral grounds have been systematically misidentified. Canonical statements of our moral theories tend to summarize, rather than directly state, the full range of moral grounds posited by the theory. Further work is required to “unpack” a theory’s criterion of rightness and identify the features that are of ground‐level moral significance. As a result, it is not actually true that maximizing value is the fundamental right‐making feature even for maximizing consequentialists. Focusing on the simple example of utilitarianism, I show how careful attention to the ground level can drastically influence how we think about our moral theories.