Explaining right and wrong
When an act is right or wrong, there may be an explanation why. Different moral theories recognize different moral facts and offer different explanations of them, but they offer no account of moral explanation itself. What, then, is its nature? This thesis seeks a systematic account of moral explanation within a framework of moral realism. In Chapter 1, I develop a pluralist theory of explanation. I argue that there is a prima facie distinctive normative mode of explanation that is essential to moral theory. In Chapter 2, I characterize normative explanation through its formal properties. I then draw on John Mackieâs claim that moral explanations are queer to develop a powerful form of moral scepticism. In Chapters 3â4, I reject attempts to reduce normative explanation to logical necessity, metaphysical necessity, or conceptual (analytic) necessity. The failure of these accounts is taken to reinforce Mackieâs scepticism. In Chapter 5, I defend a partial analysis of normative explanation in terms of irreducible normative laws. I argue that irreducible normative laws offer a realist, though non-naturalist, answer to Mackieâs scepticism. The existence of irreducible normative laws then is defended as
Ferrari, Geoffrey Harrison
Ethics (Moral philosophy) ; Metaphysics ; Philosophy ; Rightmaking ; right-making ; Mackie ; queerness ; explanation ; laws ; reasons ; virtue ; motivation
Explaining right and wrong. When an act is right or wrong, there may be an explanation why. Different moral theories recognize different moral facts and offer different explanations of them, but they offer no account of moral explanation itself. What, then, is its nature? This thesis seeks a systematic account of moral explanation within a framework of moral realism. In Chapter 1, I develop a pluralist theory of explanation. I argue that there is a prima facie distinctive normative mode of explanation that is essential to moral theory. In Chapter 2, I characterize normative explanation through its formal properties. I then draw on John Mackieâs claim that moral explanations are queer to develop a powerful form of moral scepticism. In Chapters 3â4, I reject attempts to reduce normative explanation to logical necessity, metaphysical necessity, or conceptual (analytic) necessity. The failure of these accounts is taken to reinforce Mackieâs scepticism. In Chapter 5, I defend a partial analysis of normative explanation in terms of irreducible normative laws. I argue that irreducible normative laws offer a realist, though non-naturalist, answer to Mackieâs scepticism. The existence of irreducible normative laws then is defended as
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