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MORALITY WITH HUMEAN FOUNDATIONS:
A PROPOSAL FOR A SOLUTION TO THE ACCOMMODATION PROBLEM
by
Keith E. Erwin
________________________________________________________________________
A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the
Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(PHILOSOPHY)
December 2008
Copyright 2008 Keith E. Erwin
Object Description
| Title | Morality with Humean foundations: a proposal for a solution to the accommodation problem |
| Author | Erwin, Keith E. |
| Author email | jibbyslap@yahoo.com; kee@usc.edu |
| Degree | Doctor of Philosophy |
| Document type | Dissertation |
| Degree program | Philosophy |
| School | College of Letters, Arts and Sciences |
| Date defended/completed | 2008-08-20 |
| Date submitted | 2008 |
| Restricted until | Unrestricted |
| Date published | 2008-10-03 |
| Advisor (committee chair) | Dreher, John |
| Advisor (committee member) |
Finlay, Stephen Heidsieck, Arnold |
| Abstract | The general goal of this dissertation project is to accommodate the peculiar relationship between moral judgment and human conduct. To this end, this project aims to sketch out an account of how the basic foundations of Hume's moral theory have significant potential to both explain and justify the somewhat peculiar connection moral judgment appears to have with motivation, action, and normativity. Hume explains the relationship between moral judgment and human conduct by appealing to human psychology, in particular, a moral "sense" or sensibility: particular attitudinal states, with the aid of sympathy and causal reasoning, are the source of moral distinctions and the motivational efficacy of those distinctions.; This project proposes and defends a particular interpretation of Hume's moral theory according to which Hume has a descriptivist account of moral judgments and a sentiment-dependent/dispositional account of the moral properties ascribed by those judgments. The project goes on to mount a contemporary defense of this Humean moral ontology in part by considering recent evidence in the fields of cognitive neuroscience and social psychology that support Hume's contention that morality is founded upon our emotional responses engendered by a psychological process of empathy, similar to what Hume denominates "sympathy".; The project also expands its defense by drawing an important distinction between moral properties, which are feeling-dependent properties of objects, and values per se, which are not feeling-dependent. Values per se are conceived as relational properties that hold between objects and ends. Moral qualities are interpersonal, dispositional, emotion-dependent properties that account for the connection between particular ends, as well as the objects that fulfill or foil those ends, and particular conative feelings.; This ontological distinction enables this project to offer a sentimentalist, dispositional account of moral properties that avoids many of the pitfalls typically associated with such conceptions of morality. In light of the proffered ontology of morals and values, the project develops a novel semantic analysis of moral and evaluative terms and expressions, and then sketches out how this analysis can be deployed to resolve various traditional metaethical problems such as those associated with the issues of factuality, moral objectivity, and normativity. |
| Keyword | Hume's Moral Theory; metaethics; descriptivism; naturalism; moral objectivity; sensibility moral theory; feeling-dependent moral properties; moral value; moral psychology; moral motivation; moral normativity; moral judgment; sympathy; empathy |
| Language | English |
| Part of collection | University of Southern California dissertations and theses |
| Publisher (of the original version) | University of Southern California |
| Place of publication (of the original version) | Los Angeles, California |
| Publisher (of the digital version) | University of Southern California. Libraries |
| Provenance | Electronically uploaded by the author |
| Type | texts |
| Legacy record ID | usctheses-m1621 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Rights | Erwin, Keith E. |
| Repository name | Libraries, University of Southern California |
| Repository address | Los Angeles, California |
| Repository email | http://www.usc.edu/isd/libraries/services/ask_a_librarian/email/ |
| Filename | etd-Erwin-2390 |
| Archival file | uscthesesreloadpub_Volume14/etd-Erwin-2390.pdf |
Description
| Title | Page 1 |
| Contributing entity | University of Southern California |
| Full text | MORALITY WITH HUMEAN FOUNDATIONS: A PROPOSAL FOR A SOLUTION TO THE ACCOMMODATION PROBLEM by Keith E. Erwin ________________________________________________________________________ A Dissertation Presented to the FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY (PHILOSOPHY) December 2008 Copyright 2008 Keith E. Erwin |
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