Part 1A Ethics

Undergraduate Course

This is the web page for the Philosophy Part 1A course Metaethics and Moral Psychology given by Richard Holton at the University of Cambridge, Lent term 2023. This page provides links to papers and other texts that may be useful, to pdf versions of the handouts, and to some podcasts that give an overview of each topic.. If you have suggestions or comments, please let me know by emailing me at rjh221@cam.ac.uk

The course will cover the syllabus topics on Metaethics (fact and value; objectivity and subjectivity) and Moral Psychology (egoism and altruism; empathy; cognitive and affective attitudes); as well as providing a general introduction, part of the aim is to show how issues from these two areas interact.

The class will take place in person on Wednesdays at 10.00pm in Room Two of the Sidgwick Site Lecture Block.

Lectures

1. Introduction: Some Puzzles and Some Considerations

(25 January) Handout

Primary

Judith Jarvis Thomson The Trolley Problem Yale Law Journal 94 (1985)

2. What's Special About Ethics?

(1 February) Handout

Podcast for Lecture 2:

Primary

John Mackie Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong Ch. 1 The Subjectivity of Values

Secondary

John Searle, ‘How to Derive ‘Ought’ From ‘Is’’ in Philosophical Review 73, 1964

Gillian Russell, ‘In Defence of Hume's Law’ in Hume, ‘Is’, and ‘Ought’: New Essays, ed. Charles Pigden

Gillian Russell and Greg Restall, ‘Barriers to Inference’ in Hume, ‘Is’, and ‘Ought’: New Essays, ed. Charles Pigden

3. Egoism I: A Priori Issues

(8 February) Handout

Podcast for Lecture 3:

Primary

Bishop Butler Fifteen Sermons Sermon XI

4. Egoism II: A Posteriori Issues

(15 February) Handout

Podcast for Lecture 4:

Primary

E. Fehr & U. Fischbacher, ‘The Nature of Human Altruism’ Nature 425 (2003) 785-91

Secondary

S. Stich, J. Doris and E. Roedder, ‘Altruism’ in The Moral Psychology Handbook (Discusses Batson, and Sober and Wilson)

5. Aspects of our Moral Sensibility

(22 February) Handout

Partial podcast for Lecture 5 (covers the second half):

Primary

Michael Tomasello, Why We Cooperate, esp. pp. 22-69.
Jonathan Haidt, ‘The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail’ Psychological Review 108, 2001
Joshua Greene, ‘The Secret Joke of Kant's Soul’ in W. Sinnott-Armstrong (ed)Moral Psychology, Vol. 3: The Neuroscience of Morality 2007

Secondary

Victor Kumar, ‘Moral Judgement as a Natural Kind’ Philosophical Studies, 172, 2015. (Amongst other things, a good summary of empirical work on the moral/conventional distinction.)
Essi Viding Psychopathy: a Very Short Introduction OUP 2019. (A very clear introduction to recent empirical work on psychopathy.)
Victor Kumar, ‘Psychopathy and Internalism’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 43, 2016. (Summary of philosophical work on the relevance of psychopathy to internalism, together with a nuanced proposal.)

6. Subjectivism, Non-Cognitivism, Expressivism

(1 March) Handout

Podcast for Lecture 6:

Primary

C.L. Stevenson, ‘The Emotive Meaning of Ethical Terms’ Mind 46, 1937 (The positive proposal starts on p. 18, Section II)

Secondary

Elizabeth Camp ‘Metaethical Expressivism’ OUP 2019. (An excellent summary of work on expressivism and non-cognitivism, and of the difficulties of making them plausible without collapsing them into realism. Quite dense though; you might want to come back to it again later.)
C.L Stevenson's daughter Anne Stevenson, was a very distinguished poet who died just last year. Two poems of hers I'd specially recommend for their philosophical interest are ‘Small Philosophical Poem’ and ‘Elegy’.

7. Problems for Expressivism

(8 March) Handout

Primary

Peter Geach ‘Assertion’ Philosophical Review 1965
David Copp ‘Realist Expressivism’ Social Philosophy and Policy 2001
Allan Gibbard ‘Precis of Wise Choices, Apt Feelings’ Philosophy and Phenomenological Research Vol. 52, 2001 (after that you can try the book)

Secondary

James Dreier ‘Meta-Ethics And The Problem Of Creeping Minimalism’ Philosophical Perspectives 18, 2004.
Mark Schroeder ‘What is the Frege-Geach Problem?’ Philosophy Compass 2008.
Mark Schroeder Noncognitivism in Ethics; Taylor and Francis 2010. (A textbook outlining much of the recent debate)
Mark van Roojen ‘Moral Cognitivism vs. Non-Cognitivism: Embedding Problem Response Strategies’ Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2018.

8. Secondary Quality Accounts

(15 March) Handout

Primary

The classic recent statement of the approach, though rather hard going in places, is:
John McDowell ‘Values and Secondary Qualities’ reprinted in G. Sayre-McCord (ed.) Essays on Moral Realism 1988
For a critical discussion see:
Hallvard Lillehammer‘Values and Secondary Qualities’ from his Companions in Guilt 2007

Secondary

For a general introduction to the idea of a response-dependent concept, and of the circumstances in which it gives rise to immunity from error, see the first two sections of my:
‘Intentions, Response-Dependence and Immunity from Error’ in P. Menzies (ed.) Response Dependent Concepts (ANU Working Papers in Philosophy 1) Canberra, 1991, pp.83-121.
For a nice discussion of what is peculiar about colour see:
Kathleen Akins and Martin Hahn ‘The Peculiarity of Color’ in P. Davies (ed.) Color Perception Vancouver Studies in Cognitive Science, Volume IX, 2000.