The metaphysics of moral judgements of obligation.
Item
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Title
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The metaphysics of moral judgements of obligation.
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Identifier
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AAI3144138
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identifier
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3144138
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Creator
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Sheehan, Mark Patrick.
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Contributor
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Adviser: Stefan Baumrin
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Date
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2004
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Language
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English
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Publisher
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City University of New York.
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Subject
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Philosophy
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Abstract
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This thesis is an essay in philosophical moral psychology. It seeks to develop an account of the nature of moral judgements of obligation, where 'nature' is understood as the necessary preconditions for these judgements and where a judgement is taken to be a psychological act---the act of judging.;This aim is achieved by beginning with a key feature of our experience of moral judgements of obligation. This feature can be briefly characterised as a pressure to act which seems to originate independently of the agent. The two most important aspects of this experience are its capacity to motivate and its 'external' or 'objective' character. The argument then proceeds through a series of regressive steps. At each step we reach a conclusion that helps to unpack the nature of these judgements.;The account that is developed at the end of this series of argumentative steps makes claims about the structure of an agent's 'frame of mind'. That is, it provides a structural account of the configuration of the agent's mental states. The key feature of this structure is a set of desires (or more generally, attitudes) towards ways of representing the world. The simplest examples of desires of this kind are desires to notice.;The account developed in the thesis is strictly neither a cognitivist nor a non-cognitivist one. There are two reasons for this. First, the thesis is not concerned with whether moral judgements of obligation are capable of having truth-values but with the psychological structures involved. Second, the general structural account of the agent's 'frame of mind' given in the thesis does not privilege either belief-like or desire-like states but interlocks them in the key feature of the account.;However, the key structural element of the frame of mind is a type of attitude or desire-like state in quite non-cognitivist-friendly way. The arguments presented here and the account given of the nature of moral judgements of obligation are not intended to settle the debate between cognitivist non-cognitivist. Instead, it goes some way towards closing off one part of the dispute.
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Type
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dissertation
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Source
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PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
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degree
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Ph.D.
