Moral Particularism: The Nonexistence of Moral Principles and the Nature of Proper Moral Deliberation

<p>This dissertation takes up the project of analyzing and evaluating contemporary moral particularism. Moral particularism is a family of views---a family unified by its rejection of moral principles---in moral metaphysics and moral epistemology. Some versions of particularism claim that there are no true moral principles, while others claim that we shouldn't use moral principles in moral deliberation; I call the former view 'eliminativism' and the latter view 'abstinence.'</p> <p>Chapters 1-3 concern eliminativism. I argue that contemporary presentations of eliminativism are inadequate on the grounds that they do not make clear how eliminativism is compatible with the supervenience of moral on descriptive properties. However, I also present an overlooked version of eliminativism---a version I call 'incompactness eliminativism'---that avoids the problems faced by other versions. I examine how an incompactness eliminativist can respond to typical objections posed to particularism, and I thereby show that incompactness eliminativism is both coherent and defensible. I also explore how an incompactness eliminativist can provide positive motivation for her view. I show that one promising strategy is to use an argument from 'radical holism' and develop a normative theory (of a certain structure) in order to support the premises of that argument. Thus, it turns out that although eliminativism places some constraints on what kind of normative theory one can accept, one must at least partially develop a normative theory in order to motivate eliminativism in the first place.</p> <p>The fourth and final chapter addresses abstinence. I argue that those who accept incompactness eliminativism should not accept abstinence. I do this by showing that abstinence entails a commitment to a strong form of intuitionism, and that extant attempts to defend the plausibility of such an intuitionism require models of moral reasoning that are incompatible with incompactness eliminativism. However, I develop another model of praiseworthy moral deliberation that the eliminativist can accept, one according to which good moral deliberation can involve the responsible use of 'rules of thumb.'</p>