Defending moral particularism

This thesis is a defense of extreme moral particularism, the view that morality cannot be codified in principle into necessarily true natural-moral moral principles, be they of the absolute kind or the pro tanto kind. My defense of it is negative rather than positive in the sense that instead of producing any positive evidence for my claim, I argue that two prominent arguments, the supervenience argument and the argument from the atomism of reason, that have been proposed by its opponents, the absolute principlists and the pro tanto principlists, are toothless against extreme moral particularism. If I am right about the failures of these arguments, I think we can be more confident about the claim of extreme moral particularism. Here is the plan of the thesis. The introduction introduces the general background of the debate between principlism and particularism. Chapter 1 lays out a conceptual taxonomy of various types of principlism and particularism. Here, I make it clear that my thesis is devoted to defending a particular kind of moral particularism-or what I call 'extreme particularism' , the view that there are no necessarily true natural-moral moral principles, be they ofthe absolute kind or the pro tanto kind. Chapter 2 deals with some businesses arising from the taxonomy. I try to head off some worries about the taxonomy and forestall some preliminary objections to the view of extreme particularism. Chapters 3 to 5 consist of an examination of the supervenience argument that is advanced collaboratively by Frank Jackson, Philip Pettit, and Michael Smith on behalf of the absolute principlists to establish the existence of absolute moral principles of the relevant kind. Chapter 3 is devoted to the reconstruction and elucidation of the argument whereas in chapters 4 and 5 I argue that Jackson et al. have not provided us compelling reasons to accept its premises. Chapters 6 and 7 examine an argument proposed by the pro tanto principlists to establishthe existence of pro tanto moral principles of the relevant kind. It is the argument from the atomism of reason. I argue that it fails chiefly for the following reasons: (1) There is no reason for us to believe that the atomism of reason is true. (2) The atomism of reason faces a problem of individuation of features such that it does not really tell us how a feature qua reason behaves. (3) The argument begs the question against extreme particularism

The twilight of the Liberal Social Contract? On the Reception of Rawlsian Political Liberalism

This chapter discusses the Rawlsian project of public reason, or public justification-based 'political' liberalism, and its reception. After a brief philosophical rather than philological reconstruction of the project, the chapter revolves around a distinction between idealist and realist responses to it. Focusing on political liberalism’s critical reception illuminates an overarching question: was Rawls’s revival of a contractualist approach to liberal legitimacy a fruitful move for liberalism and/or the social contract tradition? The last section contains a largely negative answer to that question. Nonetheless the chapter's conclusion shows that the research programme of political liberalism provided and continues to provide illuminating insights into the limitations of liberal contractualism, especially under conditions of persistent and radical diversity. The programme is, however, less receptive to challenges to do with the relative decline of the power of modern states

Constitutivism

A brief explanation and overview of constitutivism

Philosophy of action

The philosophical study of human action begins with Plato and Aristotle. Their influence in late antiquity and the Middle Ages yielded sophisticated theories of action and motivation, notably in the works of Augustine and Aquinas.1 But the ideas that were dominant in 1945 have their roots in the early modern period, when advances in physics and mathematics reshaped philosophy

Riociguat treatment in patients with chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension: Final safety data from the EXPERT registry

Objective: The soluble guanylate cyclase stimulator riociguat is approved for the treatment of adult patients with pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH) and inoperable or persistent/recurrent chronic thromboembolic pulmonary hypertension (CTEPH) following Phase