Partial Values: A Comparative Study in the Limits of Objectivity (Values and Identities: Crossing Philosophical Borders) - Softcover

DeLapp, Kevin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 178660213X ISBN 13: 9781786602138

Verlag: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2019

Inhaltsangabe

When, if ever, is it permissible to afford special consideration to friends and family? How can we strive to be objective in our thinking, and is this always a feasible or appropriate aim?

This book examines the categories of impartiality and objectivity by showing how they frame certain debates in epistemology, moral psychology, and metaethics, arguing that many traditional conceptions of objectivity fail to capture what is important to our identities as knowers, social beings, and moral agents. A new thesis of 'perspectival realism' is offered as a critique of strong objectivity, but in a way that avoids radical subjectivism or relativism. Locally-situated identities can provide their own criteria of epistemic and moral justification, and we may aspire to be impartial in a way that need not sacrifice particular perspectives and relationships. Arguments throughout the book draw heavily on resources from classical Chinese philosophy, and significant attention is given to applications of arguments to
concrete issues in applied ethics, cross-cultural anthropology, and political science.

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Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Kevin DeLapp is Fleming Professor of Philosophy at Converse College. He is the author of Moral Realism (2013) and editor of Lying and Truthfulness (2016).

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Partial Values

A Comparative Study in the Limits of Objectivity

By Kevin DeLapp

Rowman & Littlefield International, Ltd.

Copyright © 2018 Kevin DeLapp
All rights reserved.

ISBN: 978-1-78660-213-8

Contents

Introduction, vii, 
1 Perspectival Realism, 1, 
1.1 Craving Objective Reasons, 1, 
1.2 A Partial History of Impartiality, 4, 
1.3 "We Are Amphibious Creatures", 16, 
2 Epistemic Objectivity, 29, 
2.1 McDowell's Seesaw, 30, 
2.2 Contextualizing Standpoint Theory, 40, 
2.3 Confucian Role Epistemology, 49, 
3 Ethical Objectivity, 67, 
3.1 Beyond Trolleys: Particularism and Care, 68, 
3.2 Xiao and Jian'ai: Partiality and Inclusivity, 79, 
3.3 "Seizing Hold of Extremes", 89, 
4 Metaethical Objectivity, 107, 
4.1 Realism and Relativism: Intuitions and Explananda, 108, 
4.2 Between Sensibility and Independence, 122, 
4.3 A Daoist Comparison, 133, 
Conclusion, 147, 
Bibliography, 153, 
Index, 169, 
About the Author, 173, 

CHAPTER 1

Perspectival Realism

In this chapter, we try to get clearer on what objectivity is and the extent to which we truly want it as a moral ideal. After identifying three alleged attractions of objectivity in §1, §2 looks to the Ideal Observer Theories that were popular during the early modern period as historical incarnations of these attractions. §3 reflects on some of the limitations of such theories and highlights the ways in which those limitations reveal countervailing attractions to subjectivity concerning values. In an effort to accommodate both sets of attractions, a new hybrid position of perspectival realism is sketched, which will serve as a guiding thread through subsequent chapters.

1.1 CRAVING OBJECTIVE REASONS

Much of the history of Western philosophy has been characterized by what Susan Bordo has called the "flight to objectivity" — that is, the pursuit of a perspective that is "able to transcend history and discover an ultimate 'neutral framework' within which to situate other human endeavors or describe reality." As Bordo notes, this motivation has been part of philosophy's traditional self-conception as the discipline uniquely responsible for and capable of rationally refereeing other domains of discourse. As Bordo sees it, the flight to objectivity is also fundamentally a gendered phenomenon. Working psychoanalytically, Bordo diagnoses the philosophical anxieties of objectivity seekers such as Descartes as arising out of a repressed dread concerning the "separation from the organic female universe." While I do not dispute Bordo's feminist critique of Cartesianism, I believe that the flight to objectivity has roots that run much deeper. For, as we saw in the Introduction, it is a common move in any persistent disagreement — philosophical or mundane — for at least one party to stake a claim to being the objective one or to accuse the other of projecting something merely or exclusively subjective. As David Wiggins has phrased it, our will in general "craves objective reasons, and it often could not go forward unless it thought it had them." And pace Bordo, there is nothing uniquely modernist about these cravings. Plato, out of very different motivations and with his own cultural and psychosexual assumptions, felt the same pull as Descartes toward the ideals of epistemic certainty, moral universality, and metaphysical transcendence.

This perennial craving for objective reasons stems from at least three potential attractions. The first is justificatory. When someone is being objective, part of what that is thought to involve is that the persons are warranted in holding the view they do, for a reason that is independent of the fact that they happen to be holding it. Judging things objectively or being in touch with objective reality, it is thought, may grant to one's beliefs a claim to legitimacy that others, even those who might not share one's perspective, must acknowledge (likewise for any motives or actions that might follow from those beliefs). In this way, claims to objectivity are partly claims that one's beliefs, actions, and commitments are answerable to and respected by (if not fully endorsed by) any and all others who are being equally objective. Let us call this form of objectivity that aims at public justification universalism.

To rephrase the point, one of the attractions to objectivity is that it can give justification universally, regardless of anything peculiar to the individual seeking such justification. Such universal justification might even seem to be essential to what makes morality normative in the first place. Without the potential for open and public buy-in and consensus, a putative moral code would become merely descriptive of whichever idiosyncratic perspectives were offering it. As Wiggins puts it,

We expect a point of view that can be shared between the members of an actual society to give expression to a potentially enduring and transmissible shared sensibility. To adopt the moral point of view is to see one's thoughts, feelings and actions as answerable to the findings of such a shared sensibility.

The commitment to universal justification is deeply bound up with morality's normative authority because, as Wiggins notes, it embodies a hope that the kind of public consensus and cooperative rational discourse such a commitment involves will get us closer to the truth.

Universalism is often envisioned as a check and balance against self-serving bias and prejudice. Part of being objective in this sense is arriving at one's conclusions or explaining one's actions in ways that do not depend on anything arbitrary or contingent about oneself. In empirical science, such universality is familiar as the principle of replicability. And in normative ethics, it has been given perhaps its most forceful expression by deontological theories, such as Kant's categorical imperative (more on that in §1.2).

Being able to justify ourselves universally is not the only alleged attraction of objectivity in the realm of values. A second attraction of objectivity can be the putative widening of moral consideration it would seem to entail. It is one thing to be objective in how one arrives at one's values, and it is another thing to apply those values to others objectively. In this second sense, objectivity is cast as that which is opposed to parochialism and nepotism. Thus, failures to adequately extend moral consideration — say, political rights — to certain groups or activities can be viewed as failures to be sufficiently objective in this sense. Let us call this form of objectivity that aims at broadening the scope of our thinking and the applicability of our moral considerations inclusivism.

A third motivation for the flight to objectivity is more psychological — even existential. Insofar as "objectivity" semantically suggests objects, it has ontic dimensions. Part of being an object, at least from the perspective of the "manifest image" of ordinary life, is being a thing that has an independent existence — independent, that is, of anyone else's subjectivity. Desks and trees are generally regarded as objective in this ontological sense (skeptical idealist anxieties notwithstanding). And this sense of objectivity is also at work when we condemn the "objectification" of persons: such objectification denies a person's subjectivity and blinds the objectifier to any connection their own subjectivities might or ought...

Details zur Ausgabe

• Verlag: Rowman & Littlefield International
• Erscheinungsdatum: 2019
• Sprache: Englisch
• ISBN 10: 178660213X
• ISBN 13: 9781786602138
• Einband: Taschenbuch
• Anzahl der Seiten: 186
• Kontakt zum Hersteller: Nicht verfügbar
• Verantwortliche Person: gpsr@libri.de; gpsr@libri.de; ; Friedensallee 273; Hamburg; 22763; Deutschland