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LOCATION:Howison Library
SEQUENCE:0
DTEND:20081113T180000
DTSTART:20081113T161000
UID:philosophy.berkeley.edu:events:457
DTSTAMP:20091124T190807
DESCRIPTION:John Mackie famously argued that the objective purport of moral
  discourse requires that values be part of the fabric of the universe\, but
  that the universe\, at least as it has been disclosed to us by the natural
  sciences\, contains no such “queer” properties. Nor have the natural scien
 ces disclosed any perceptual or other capacities that would allow us to det
 ect the presence of such properties\, even if they did exist. Mackie thus c
 laimed that moral judgments are not what they sometimes appear to be: warra
 nted\, true statements of objective fact. The Kantian strategy in ethics is
  to demonstrate that certain norms are inescapable for practical agents. I 
 want to investigate whether there is an interpretation of the Kantian strat
 egy that can answer or at least mollify the worry pressed by error-theorist
 s that our normative judgments are based on an illusion. Is there a way of 
 understanding the Kantian strategy as a method of arriving at normative tru
 ths? If not\, might the Kantian strategy be used to undermine the threat th
 at we are duped in our judgments about such fundamental norms in some other
  way?\n\nThe first section of the paper explores a tempting line of thought
  that leads to a constructivist interpretation of the Kantian strategy. Con
 structivism\, if true\, would justify treating the Kantian strategy as a me
 thod for arriving at normative truths. I will argue\, though\, that a const
 ructivist interpretation is of dubious coherence\, and in any case is unava
 ilable to those who seek to apply the Kantian strategy across the board to 
 doxastic and practical norms alike. The second section examines a more defe
 nsive strategy that the Kantian might employ against an error-theorist. I d
 escribe an argument that attempts to show that\, even absent a demonstratio
 n that it is a method for arriving at normative truths\, the Kantian strate
 gy\, if applied to both practical and doxastic norms\, is invulnerable to a
 ny completely general argument that all of our normative judgments are fals
 e. I conclude with some reflections on the implications of this argument fo
 r the practice of metaethics. \n
SUMMARY:Philosophy Colloquium\nNishi Shah\n*The Limits of Normative Detachm
 ent*
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