Divine Hoorays: Some Parallels between Expressivism and Religious Ethics

The so-called “conciliatory” norm in epistemology and meta-ethics requires that an agent, upon encountering peer disagreement with her judgment, lower her confidence about that judgment. But whether agents actually abide by this norm is unclear. Although confidence is excessively researched in the empirical sciences, possible effects of disagreement on confidence have been understudied. Here, we target this lacuna, reporting a study that measured confidence about moral beliefs before and after exposure to moral discourse about a controversial issue. Our findings indicate that participants do not abide by the conciliatory norm. Neither do they conform to a rival “steadfast” norm that demands their confidence to remain the same. Instead, moral discourse seems to boost confidence. Interestingly, we also find a confidence boost for factual beliefs, and a correlation between the extremity of moral views and confidence. One possible explanation of our findings is that when engaging in moral discourse participants become more extreme in their opinions, which leads them to become more confident about them, or vice versa: they become more confident and in turn more extreme. Although our work provides initial evidence for the former mechanism, further research is needed for a better understanding of confidence and moral discourse.

ABSTRACTThis paper presents a challenge to conciliationist views of disagreement. I argue that conciliationists cannot satisfactorily explain why we need not revise our beliefs in response to certain moral disagreements. Conciliationists can attempt to meet this challenge in one of two ways. First, they can individuate disputes narrowly. This allows them to argue that we have dispute-independent reason to distrust our opponents’ moral judgment. This approach threatens to license objectionable dogmatism. It also inappropriately gives deep epistemic significance to superficial questions about how to think about the subject matter of a dispute. Second, conciliationists can individuate disputes widely. This allows them to argue that we lack dispute-independent reason to trust our opponents’ moral judgment. But such arguments fail; our background of generally shared moral beliefs gives us good reason to trust the moral judgment of our opponents, even after we set quite a bit of our reasoning aside. On either approach, then, conciliationists should acknowledge that we have dispute-independent reason to trust the judgment of those who reject our moral beliefs. Given a conciliationist view of disagreement's epistemic role, this has the unattractive result that we are epistemically required to revise some of our most intuitively secure moral beliefs.

Argument darwinowski w metaetyce może posiadać swój memetyczny odpowiednik oparty na założeniu, że nasze przekonania moralne powstały w procesie ewolucji kulturowej na drodze memetycznego doboru naturalnego. Czy istnieje jakaś różnica w mocy argumentacyjnej tych dwóch rodzajów krytyki genealogicznej? W niniejszym artykule staram się wykazać, że różnica taka może występować. Dlatego też nie jest prawdą, że każdy możliwy mechanizm przyczynowy mieszący się w ramach naturalistycznego obrazu świata w tym samym stopniu podważa nasze przekonania moralne. Należy jednak zadać dalej idące pytanie: czy powinniśmy pozostawić racjonalność naszych najgłębszych przekonań moralnych na łasce wyników badań empirycznych nad ich przyczynową genezą? W artykule staję na stanowisku, że nie powinniśmy tego czynić. Jeśli jednak takie podejście ma być uzasadnione, musimy obronić twierdzenie o autonomii systemu przekonań moralnych. Tylko wówczas odmienna koncepcja wiedzy, a także odmienne standardy obiektywnej racjonalności propozycjonalnej mogą zostać zastosowane do tychże przekonań; odmienne, tj. różne od tych właściwych dla przekonań i sądów nienormatywnych. Okazuje się, że tylko ekspresywiści mogą utrzymywać, że własność, na mocy której przekonania moralne pełnią charakterystyczną dla siebie funkcję praktyczną, nadaje dyskursowi moralnemu poszukiwaną autonomię.

A common worry about moral conciliationism is that it entails at best uncertainty about many of our moral beliefs and at worst epistemological moral scepticism. Against this worry, I argue that moral conciliationism saves us from epistemological moral scepticism and enables us to be confident in many of our moral beliefs. First, I show that only taking disagreements seriously as a threat to our beliefs allows us to utilise agreements in support of our beliefs (call this symmetry). Next, I argue that utilising moral agreements as an epistemic resource allows moral conciliationism to resist the potentially worrisome reduction in confidence of our moral beliefs. Taking the relevance of moral agreement into account, I argue that it is anti-conciliationism that must meet the challenge of epistemological moral scepticism. For this, I suggest that moral inquiry is best understood as a collective endeavour. If so, then agreement on our moral judgments is required to justify the confidence we have in many of our moral beliefs. However, by symmetry, this appeal is possible only if one accepts the conciliatory attitude towards disagreements. Hence, accepting, rather than rejecting moral conciliationism, is the way out of moral scepticism.

Moral judgements have been a crucial subject-matter of a discussion in the domain of normativity. Many thinkers argue moral judgments are necessarily action-guiding, which prescribe what one ought to do and what ought to be the case. The moral statement “killing is wrong” is prescriptive and locates in the purview of first-order ethical questions. Moral realists widely accept that moral judgments represent propositions, therefore they are subject to truth and false conditions. Thus, moral conclusions can be derived logically from valid premises. How to derive the conclusion “killing is wrong”? How to justify the statement? What does “wrong” mean in this context? This kind of philosophical issue has been labeled as the second-order questions, which is in the purview of metaethics. This article is devoted to the subject of normativity and the nature of moral judgments advocated by metaethicists David Copp and Ralph Wedgwood. The purpose of this article is to outline the current debate on the nature of normative moral judgments. In conclusion, I shall agree with both Copp and Wedgwoodon two points. One, normative moral judgment can be subject to cognition. Two, there are true and false beliefs about particular moral facts which constitute the significant part of the reality we live in.

Universal Principles, Global Cooperation, and Moral Disagreement:A Natural Law Account Joseph Boyle (bio) I. Introduction Since ancient times a number of Western moral views have been described or self-described as "natural law" ethics. These views claim that there are universal moral principles and norms. Moral principles, according to natural law views, are somehow "natural," and, thus, are the common property of those who share human nature. That implies that the principles of the natural law are in principle accessible to all humans. Those who accept this ethical approach are not in full agreement about the precise sense and reference of the expression "natural law" or about the specific moral norms justified by the principles of the natural law. I do not here propose to address these differences among natural law theorists. Instead, I will sketch the approach to universal moral principles that I, as a philosopher working within the natural law tradition, think correct. My approach is within the broad tradition of natural law theorizing inspired by St. Thomas Aquinas; it is the version of Thomistic natural law called the "new natural law theory."1 Natural law theories include a conception of the nature and purpose of morality. Two closely related theses comprise the key elements of this conception. The first is that moral principles, and their implications in moral norms and judgments, are propositional realities having logical relationships and normative content that can be formulated, debated and judged either correct or incorrect. Thus, natural law theory is a form of ethical rationalism; moral judgments are a form of knowledge. The second thesis holds that moral principles are universal in two senses: they are applicable to all human actions, and they are accessible to all human beings capable of the reasoning needed for choice and action. Some immediate implications of these theses are obviously important for thinking about moral diversity, difference and consensus. First, the universal applicability of moral principles implies that there are no human actions, however complex their circumstances and obscure their significance, that are in principle immune from moral assessment. Second, the universal accessibility of the principles of the natural law implies that moral norms, customs, and practices are not finally a matter of local custom or particular circumstance. Criticism in the light of accessible moral principle is always possible. Third, the conjunction of the universal accessibility of natural law and its ethical rationalism makes the possibility of recognizing mistaken moral judgment and practice more than an abstract possibility, but, instead, an ordinary, intelligible aspect of moral life and thought. Any person capable of practical reasoning and choice can access enough of moral principle to criticize his or her own moral beliefs and those of his or her society. That capability is obviously ethically significant. Its availability in reflection to people generally implies that they are not simply stuck with the moral limitations and corruption of their culture, upbringing, and life experience; they have the resources for critical judgment and autonomous action based on that reflection. These claims about the nature of morality may now seem quaint given some defining features of post-modernity. The conjunction of two features of our post-modern world poses a special problem for natural law theory: (1) the rapidly emerging globalization of economic, social and political life; and (2) the pervasiveness of post-modern relativism, and "local-only" conceptions of morality. These conceptions reject the universalist theses I listed above. But they do so in a globalized context calling for moral guidance for the world-wide interactions that transcend the moralities of local communities and their members. Together these features challenge the core convictions of natural law theory. In this contribution, I will briefly articulate and defend these strong natural law claims about the nature of morality, and will bring natural law theory to bear on the challenge posed to them by the realities of our post-modern and globalized situation. I will develop this account as follows: In part II, I will summarize the account of the human good that underlies morality according to natural law theories that follow Aquinas's classic treatment. In Part III, I will sketch an account of how universal moral principles are justified...

ABSTRACTMoral abolitionists recommend that we get rid of moral discourse and moral judgement. At first glance this seems repugnant, but abolitionists think that we have overestimated the practical value of our moral framework and that eliminating it would be in our interests. I argue that abolitionism has a surprising amount going for it. Traditionally, abolitionism has been treated as an option available to moral error theorists. Error theorists say that moral discourse and judgement are committed to the existence of moral properties, and that no such properties exist. After error theory is established, abolitionism is one potential way to proceed. However, many error theorists suggest that we retain moral discourse as a sort of fiction. I evaluate some attractions of both fictionalism and abolitionism, arguing that abolitionism is a plausible position. No one doubts that error theorists can be abolitionists. However, what has gone largely undiscussed is that it is open to others to be abolitionists as well. I argue that moral realists of a metaphysically robust sort can and perhaps should be abolitionists. ‘Realist abolitionism’ makes for a surprisingly neat theoretical package, and I conclude that it represents an interesting new option in the theoretical landscape.

This paper presents the development of a generalized method to predict forming limits of sheet metals. The vertex theory, which was developed by Sto¨ren and Rice (1975) and recently simplified by Zhu, Weinmann and Chandra (2001), is employed in the analysis to characterize the localized necking (or localized bifurcation) mechanism in elastoplastic materials. The plastic anisotropy of materials is considered. A generalized deformation theory of plasticity is proposed. The theory considers Hosford’s high-order yield criterion (1979), Hill’s quadratic yield criterion and the von Mises yield criterion. For the von Mises yield criterion, the generalized deformation theory reduces to the conventional deformation theory of plasticity, i.e., the J2-theory. Under proportional loading condition, the direction of localized band is known to vary with the loading path at the negative strain ratio region or the left hand side (LHS) of forming limit diagrams (FLDs). On the other hand, the localized band is assumed to be always perpendicular to the major strain at the positive strain ratio region or the right hand side (RHS) of FLDs. Analytical expressions for critical tangential modulus are derived for both LHS and RHS of FLDs. For a given strain hardening rule, the limit strains can be calculated and consequently the FLD is determined. Especially, when assuming power-law strain hardening, the limit strains can be explicitly given on both sides of FLD. Whatever form of a yield criterion is adopted, the LHS of the FLD always coincides with that given by Hill’s zero-extension criterion. However, at the RHS of FLD, the forming limit depends largely on the order of a chosen yield function. Typically, a higher order yield function leads to a lower limit strain. The theoretical result of this study is compared with those reported by earlier researchers for Al 2028 and Al 6111-T4 (Grafand Hosford, 1993; Chow et al., 1997).

The one central problem in global forecasting area is to minimize the forecasting error and to have a simple model. This paper focuses on the fuzzy time series (FTS) forecasting which is one branch of fuzzy set (FS). Numerous FTS models have been proposed in literature during the past decades and the number of new models is still growing especially in stock markets and student enrolment problems. Some of the FTS models found in literature do not explain the fuzzy logical relationship strength between Ai and Aj which are the left-hand side (LHS) and right-hand side (RHS) of the fuzzy logical relationship respectively. This paper proposed Weighted Subsethood Fuzzy Time Series (WeSuFTS) to build fuzzy reasoning based to address the drawback in forecasting enrolment of students. In this paper, we create the weighted subsethood fuzzy rules to explain the fuzzy relationship between Ai and Aj . The simple centre mid-point defuzzification technique was introduced in defuzzification step. The results show that WeSuFTS method gives promising results where the average error forecasting is 2.31% which is smaller than the one presented by Song and Chissom in 1993 and Chen in 1996, the pioneer of FTS. The proposed method has an advantage since it can give a new interpretation of FTS model. Furthermore, this method able to present the degree of importance of LHS to RHS in explaining the fuzzy logical relationship in FTS.

MR. RACKHAM : I am afraid this is a subject I and many others know very little about, but it has been most interesting. In listening closely I could not quite see the form of broach used in splitting the gap through the big end of the connecting rod. In broaching very thin metal, say £ in. thick would the lecturer make any special form of broach ? MR. WBATHERLEY : I am afraid the slide showing the splitting operation was not very clear. However, the broaching tools for this operation comprised two case hardened mild steel broach bars of flat section, one on the left hand side of the fixture and one on the right-hand side, each having two sets of high-speed steel inserts. The broaching tool on the left-hand side splits the cap half way through, and that on the right-hand side completes the splitting. The inserts being of thin section, dual provision

According to the moral error theorist, moral judgments aim at the truth but systematically fail to secure it. This chapter pursues a strategy of arguing by elimination: building toward establishing moral error theory by refuting some alternative views. First, a case is offered against noncognitivism, the view that moral judgments do not even aim to say true things about the world and therefore cannot be convicted of erroneously doing so. Second, a case is advanced against non-objectivism, the view that moral facts exist but are not objective. Third, a two-part case is pressed against moral non-naturalism: that non-naturalism in general is implausible and that the moral non-naturalist struggles to account for how humans would have epistemological access to a realm of non-natural moral facts. If all these arguments are sound, then moral facts are objective and naturalistic or they don’t exist at all.

Examples of a new class of zwitterionic, “right-hand side” merocyanines containing a cyanodicyanomethylidenedihydrofuran electron acceptor have been prepared. As well as allowing for the facile synthesis of these chromophores, our synthetic methodology enables considerable variation in both the donor moiety as well as the extent of conjugation between the donor and acceptor systems. As expected, all of these “right-hand side” systems are negatively solvatochromic, with the difference between λmax (polar vs. nonpolar solvents) increasing with the extent of conjugation. In accord with expectations, hyper-Raleigh scattering (HRS) measurements confirm that molecules with the greatest conjugation pathway (for e.g.21c, 23c) have the largest first hyperpolarisabilites, βo. In addition, our HRS evaluation indicates that the 4-quinolinylidene donor nucleus is superior to both the 4-pyridinylidene and benzothiazolylidene systems. The figures of merit, μ(calc).βo(measured), that we obtain for some of these compounds, are of a similar magnitude to the best “left hand side” examples reported in the literature. In order to demonstrate the versatility of our synthetic technique, representative polymer-tetherable derivatives of these compounds have been prepared, as have the corresponding TDI-based polyurethanes.

Recent findings show that expressing factual beliefs and moral beliefs is both influenced by prior exposure to the case at hand, suggesting that truth judgments and moral judgments may rely on similar cognitive processes. However, the empirical evidence so far suggests that this repetition effect is larger on truth judgments than on moral judgments. Plausible theoretical assumptions could be made for both similar or different underlying cognitive processes, leading to either similar or different effect sizes. In eight experiments, we first investigated whether the illusory truth effect and the moral repetition effect are similar in size when tested on identical materials. This was not the case: The truth effect was reliably larger than the moral repetition effect, suggesting that the underlying processes differ. Second, six experiments tested the role of memory for repeated information in both repetition effects. The results show that recognition of previously encountered information was related to truth judgments but not to moral judgments, which explained part of the difference in repetition effects. Moreover, memory for repeated information was better after truth judgments than after moral judgments, suggesting that individuals try to remember previously encountered information when expressing factual versus moral beliefs. Together these findings indicate that individuals draw on their past experiences when assessing truth but not when assessing morality. We discuss these results in terms of the malleability of judgments to external information.

Introduction: The Secular Outlook. 1. Atheism, Agnosticism, and Theism. The Alpha Privative. Atheism and Liberal Concepts of God. Atheism as an Unpopular Position. A Definition of Atheism. Motives for Atheism. Atheist Values. Spiritual Excellences and the Liberal Decalogue. Agnosticism. The History of Agnosticism. Huxley and Russell. Pascal s Wager. Pascal s Insight. Atheism or Non-Theism? 2. Freethought I: Criticism of Religion. Ecrasez l Infame . Religion and Evil. Religious Violence. Father and Daughter. How to Discover a Relationship between Religion and Violence. Ramadan v. Hirsi Ali. Religion per se . Textual Relativism. Can Translation Mitigate All Immoral Passages in Scripture? Can Interpretation Mitigate All Immoral Passages in Scripture? Why Are Moderates so Reluctant to Criticize Religion? The Bible on Apostasy. Biblical Terrorism: The Story of Phinehas. Biblical Violence and Modern Legal Practice. The Book of History. Some Objections. 3. Freethought II: Freedom of Expression. Mill on Liberty. Khomeini v. Rushdie. Fukuyama Giving Up on the Arab World. The Limits of Free Speech. The Deontological and Utilitarian Justifications for Free Speech. Clifford on the Duty to Critique. Freedom of Speech and Philosophers on the Index. Intolerance not Restricted to Islam. Giniewski v. France. Freethought under Fire. People Are not Being Insulted for Having a Religion. Racism without Race. Social Criticism not Identical with the Urge to Provoke. Flemming Rose on Why He Published the Danish Cartoons. The Theory of Evolution: Too Controversial to Defend? Is There Another Way to Discover the Truth than by Free Discussion? 4. Moral and Political Secularism. Pope Benedict XVI on the Apostles Creed. Who Are You to Tell Believers What to Believe? What Judaism, Christendom, and Islam Have in Common: Theism. Divine Command Theories. Abraham and Isaac. The Story of Abraham in the Qur an. The Story of Jephtha. Adherents of Divine Command Theory. Command Ethics or Divine Command Ethics? An Assessment of Divine Command Ethics. Kierkegaard and Mill. Kohlberg and Moral Education. Religious and Secular Ethics. Worship. Kant s Struggle with Moral Autonomy and Free Speech. Kant s Legacy in Nineteenth-Century German Theology. Schleiermacher as the Father of Modern Hermeneutics. Armstrong s Plea for Liberal Interpretation. A New Way to Look at the Sacredness of Scripture? Classic Books and Sacred Books. Violating the Integrity of the Text. Is Hermeneutics the Only Way to Modernize Traditions? Is Islam Secularization-Resistant ? Two Kinds of Reformers: Liberal Islam and Secular Islam. Selected Reading. Index.

This chapter argues that evolutionary debunking arguments are dialectically ineffective. Such arguments rely on the premise that moral judgements can be given evolutionary explanations which do not invoke their truth. The challenge for the debunker is to bridge the gap between this premise and the conclusion that moral judgements are unjustified. After discussing older attempts to bridge this gap, this chapter focuses on Joyce’s recent attempt, which claims that ‘we do not have a believable account of how moral facts could explain the mechanisms…which give rise to moral judgements’. It argues that whether there is such an account depends on what it is permissible to assume about moral truth and that it is reasonable to make assumptions which allow for the possibility of at least partial moral epistemologies. The challenge for the debunker is to show that these assumptions are unreasonable in a way which does not render their debunking argument superfluous.