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Language & Mind Seminar: Nick Allen (St Andrews)
23rd November 2021 @ 12:00 pm - 2:00 pm
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Pluralist Meta-ethical Constructivism and Feminist Social Construction:
Meta-ethical Constructivism holds that ethics is grounded upon shared values between agents in a society. In this sense a Constructivist thinks there are correct moral procedures dictated from the ‘moral point of view’ (Street, 2008/2010), the following of which both gives answers to moral questions and justifies the moral values we receive as answers (Darwall et.al., 1992). From this, a moral semantics view can follow in which moral terms are ‘explained by identifying the kinds of inferences (for example, about means and ends) one must be making in order to count as employing normative concepts at all.’ (Street, 2010)
Despite basing their accounts on moral practice, the correct moral procedures and moral point of view which constructivism evinces are considered to be monological. That is, there is one correct moral point of view and one set of correct moral procedures for justifying moral values.
I will argue that this is a mistake, and that an alternative, pluralist version of meta-ethical constructivism is both available and preferable. This pluralist meta-ethical constructivism is built out of an altogether different understanding of construction: feminist social construction.
The resultant view has both independent support and is able to overcome some challenges which face traditional constructivism, most notably what I call “the thick/thin dilemma”.
