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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Moral Conviction, Matthew Pianalto
Moral Conviction, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
We often praise people who stand by their convictions in the face of adversity and practice what they preach. However, strong moral convictions can also motivate atrocious acts. Two significant questions here are (1) whether conviction itself — taken as a mode of belief — has any distinctive value, or whether all the value of conviction derives from its substantive content, and (2) how conviction can be made responsible in a way that mitigates the risks of falling into dogmatism, fanaticism, and other vices. In response to the first question, I suggest that conviction has instrumental value that derives from …
Moral Realism And Ways Of Life, Matthew Pianalto
Moral Realism And Ways Of Life, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong claims that a person's commitment to a way of life is a relevant factor in deciding what the agent ought to do in a moral dilemma. If that is correct, then extreme universal moral realism, which claims that facts about the agent make no contribution to the truth of what an agent ought to do, is false. In this paper, I attempt to characterize a kind of moral realism that can account for the relevance of ways of life to the resolution of personal moral dilemmas.
Moral Blindness And Moral Progress, Matthew Pianalto
Moral Blindness And Moral Progress, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
We often speak of a person's being blind to the truth (or the obvious) and being blinded by love (and similarly by hate). The aim of this paper is to make sense of this seemingly metaphorical notion of blindness as it relates to moral judgment, and to show that there is an intelligible sense in which we can be "morally blind." The sexual harassment case depicted in the film 'North Country' provides a vivid illustration of moral blindness. Corrections of this blindness amount to true moral progress, rather than mere shifts in our moral standards.
Moral Conflict And The Indeterminacy Of Morality, Matthew Pianalto
Moral Conflict And The Indeterminacy Of Morality, Matthew Pianalto
Matthew Pianalto
Cases of moral conflict often occupy a central role in arguments against claims that moral judgments admit truth. In this paper, I argue that the employment of moral conflicts against the truth-susceptibility of moral judgments rests upon a false conception of the determinacy of morality.