Volume 6, Issue 2

These days when the sciences are confronted with a range of moral challenges, we need an extensive and professional discussion that is updated in moral philosophy as well as in normatively informed social sciences. For this reason, the institutionalized field of science studies should leave their traditional anti-philosophical inclinations behind and reorientate themselves according to these demands.

Abstract: As has been noted by Alvin Goldman, there are some very interesting similarities between his Veritistic Social Epistemology (VSE) and Sandra Harding's Feminist Standpoint Theory (FST). In the present paper, it is argued that these similarities are so significant as to motivate an incorporation of FST into VSE, considering that (i) a substantial common ground can be found; (ii) the claims that go beyond this common ground are logically compatible; and (Hi) the generality of VSE not only does justice to the inclusive ambition of FST, but even solves a well-discussed problem for the latter.

I will begin this paper by identifying the problem within the theory of ethics, which contractualism as a moral theory is attempting to address. It is not that of solving the problem of moral motivation like the ‘arch-contractualist’, Thomas Scanlon, often claims, but rather that of describing a class of fundamental moral reasons – contractualist reasons for short. In the second section, I will defend the contractualist idea of how the nature of these moral reasons provides us with sufficient, independent tools to construct the content of public moral principles. The rest of my paper is defensive. It addresses the main challenges set to the contractualist account of moral reasons. In the third section, I will discuss a frequent objection according to which the contractualist reasons are a redundant addition to the space of moral reasons. In the fourth section, I will examine the worry that acting from these reasons would not lead to morally admirable action but rather to vice. In the last section, I will investigate the criticism according to which the normative force of the contractualist reasons is insufficient for rationalising our moral actions in certain difficult circumstances. In this section, we get to the heart of the matter – what the reasons contractualism describes truly are, and how they can explain the generally overriding strength of our moral requirements. I hope to conclude that even after these serious challenges contractualism remains a philosophically viable account of morality's rationalistic appeal.

This paper takes on the broad theme of the relation between legality and morality in Immanuel Kant's practical philosophy. It aims, more specifically, at a clarification of Kant's views on obedience and enjoyment. I claim that Kant's statements in his later writings, especially in the Metaphysics of Morals, of the obligation of citizens of a state to subject themselves unconditionally to the sovereign in power, must be seen in connection with his earlier moral writings in order to maintain a proper Kantian conception of the relation between legality and morality. To this end, Kant's use of the concept of enjoyment is instructive, and looking at it closely makes it possible to spell out why obedience in itself does not suffice for a moral existence. Subjecting ourselves to the prescriptions of positive law might actually function as a way of escaping the insatiable demands of the moral law. In this case, the positive law not only sustains our enjoyment (by securing basic liberties), but also comes to function as an object of enjoyment itself.

This article investigates the resolute readings account of Wittgenstein's early remarks on ethics, especially the claim that there are no ethical sentences. According to Cora Diamond a Wittgensteinian ethics therefore relies on a particular type of imaginative understanding consisting in taking nonsense for sense. I argue that that there are some problems connected to Diamonds reading of the remarks on ethics in the Tractatus and that these mainly stem .from her not seeing the importance of a particular concept of showing for Wittgenstein's work.

Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals is a singularly enigmatic book. Here I propose a reading that construes the book first and foremost as a tool to help us realize something about our personal morality. First, I argue that the rationalisation of the true origin of values, which according to Nietzsche is inherent in Occidental morality, constitutes an obstacle to Nietzsche's communicating his insights about theprevaling morality. Therefore he needs a strategy that makes the reader find out some of the main points for himself. I argue, further, that in the preface to On the Genealogy of Morals the reader is directed to observing his own reactions when reading the text. The first stage of Nietzsche s special strategy is thereby in place, consisting infixing the reader's attention to himself and then provoking the relevant experiences. At the end of the paper I present an outline of how to read the book in this light.

In a recent article, Lars Bo Gundersen has suggested a new semantics for counterfactuals (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 85: 1-20, 2004). The new semantics gives up on the idea that the actual world must be at the center of world orderings. Instead, statistically normal worlds are at the center. Part of the motivation for this idea is that a very influential account of knowledge, so-called ‘tracking’ accounts, seem right, but suffer serious problems with more traditional semantics for counterfactuals. Gundersen's semantics, if correct, helps tracking accounts with certain problems, but leads to new problems that seem intractable. So while Gundersen's semantics might be correct, those who endorse tracking accounts of knowledge should be loath to endorse it.

In his ‘Gundersen on Counterfactuals and Tracking’ (Sats – Nordic Journal of Philosophy: 2005), Joshua Smith presents some very interesting points of criticism relating to my ‘Outline of a New Semantic for Counterfactuals’ (Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 85: 2004). In the following I'll do three things. I will briefly summarise the central theses from that paper and sketch the arguments that I take to support these theses. Then I will discuss Smith's objections; identify some points of agreement – but also some points of disagreements – and try to shed some more light on certain central views of mine that might otherwise give rise to objections akin to those offered by Smith. Finally I will pursue a bit further a line of enquiry taken up by Smith. The central question here is to which extent, and why, tracking (and safety) theories of knowledge are vulnerable to Gettier cases.