What We Owe to Each Other

Fülszöveg

We all believe that some actions are morally wrong.
But when we claim that an action is wrong, what kind of judgment are we making? Judgments about right and wrong cannot be straightforwardly understood as factual claims about the empirical world or about our own psychology. Yet they do seem to make claims about some subject matter, claims which are capable of being true or false. Moreover, while certain kinds of experience can be important in putting us in a position to make moral judgments, making these judgments themselves does not seem to be a matter of observation. Rather, we arrive at the judgment that a certain kind of action would be wrong simply by thinking about the question in the right way, sometimes through a process of careful assessment that it is natural to call a kind of reasoning. But what kind of reasoning is it? Finally, the fact that a certain action would be morally wrong seems to provide a powerful reason not to do it, one that is, at least normally,... Tovább

Fülszöveg

We all believe that some actions are morally wrong.
But when we claim that an action is wrong, what kind of judgment are we making? Judgments about right and wrong cannot be straightforwardly understood as factual claims about the empirical world or about our own psychology. Yet they do seem to make claims about some subject matter, claims which are capable of being true or false. Moreover, while certain kinds of experience can be important in putting us in a position to make moral judgments, making these judgments themselves does not seem to be a matter of observation. Rather, we arrive at the judgment that a certain kind of action would be wrong simply by thinking about the question in the right way, sometimes through a process of careful assessment that it is natural to call a kind of reasoning. But what kind of reasoning is it? Finally, the fact that a certain action would be morally wrong seems to provide a powerful reason not to do it, one that is, at least normally, decisive against any competing considerations. But it is not clear what this reason is. Why should we give considerations of right and wrong, whatever they are, this kind of priority over our other concerns and over other values? The aim of this book is to answer these questions.
What We Owe to Each Other T. M. Scanlon
How do we judge whether an action is morally right or wrong? If an action is wrong, what reason does that give us not to do it? Why should we give such reasons priority over our other concerns and values? In this book,T. M. Scanlon ofFers new answers to these questions, as they apply to the central part of morality that concerns what we owe to each other. According to his contractualist view, thinking about right and wrong is thinking about what we do in terms that could be justified to others and that they could not reasonably reject. He shows how the special authority of conclusions about right and wrong arises from the value of being related to others in this way, and how familiar moral ideas such as fairness and responsibility can be understood through their role in this process of mutual justification and criticism.
Scanlon bases his contractualism on a broader account of reasons, value, and individual well-being that challenges standard views about these crucial notions. He argues that
desires do not provide us with reasons, that states of affairs are not the primary bearers of value, and that well-being is not as important for rational decisionmaking as it is commonly held to be. Scanlon is a pluralist about both moral and nonmoral values. He argues that, taking this plurality of values into account, contractualism allows for most of the variability in moral requirements that relativists have claimed, while still accounting for the full force of our judgments of right and wrong. Vissza