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    A moral system with only one absolute principle (monism) ... — Carmelics
    Home/Moral Responsibility
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    A moral system with only one absolute principle (monism) is false.

    Moral ResponsibilityVirtue Ethics
    ?Rate how convincing each reason is below to see the overall strength.
    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.Moral phenomenology presents us with irreducibly distinct obligating features: harm, promise, fairness, and loyalty each generate reasons independently.
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    • 2.W.D. Ross's prima facie duties demonstrate that no single master principle (e.g., maximizing welfare) can subsume all these without systematic distortion of our considered judgments.
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    • 3.If a monistic principle must be perpetually qualified to handle counterexamples, the qualifications themselves constitute implicit additional principles, undermining genuine monism.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
    ?
    • 1.Bernard Williams showed that agent-relative reasons (integrity, personal projects) are not reducible to impartial consequentialist or Kantian frameworks without alienating agents from their own commitments.
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    • 2.Any monistic system that attempts to incorporate agent-relative reasons must abandon the single-principle structure, since agent-relative and agent-neutral reasons are logically distinct in kind.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.There is more than one sort of morally relevant property, or more than one way in which features can become morally relevant.
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    • 2.A monistic system recognizes only one absolute principle and therefore cannot account for this plurality of morally relevant properties.
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    Topics

    Moral ResponsibilityVirtue Ethics

    Related

    A monistic system recognizes only one absolute principle and therefore cannot ac...Any monistic system that attempts to incorporate agent-relative reasons must aba...Bernard Williams showed that agent-relative reasons (integrity, personal project...If a monistic principle must be perpetually qualified to handle counterexamples,...
    +3 moreShow less
    Moral phenomenology presents us with irreducibly distinct obligating features: h...There is more than one sort of morally relevant property, or more than one way i...W.D. Ross's prima facie duties demonstrate that no single master principle (e.g....

    Similar

    A monistic system recognizes only one absolute principle and therefore...90%Therefore, a system of absolute principles is inadequate for capturing...82%If there are no true moral principles, then no moral principle can be ...78%Morality cannot be just a system of absolute principles.78%

    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: moral-particularism
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    What this criticism amounts to is the complaint that we need to be able to make sense of cases in which there are moral reasons on both sides, for and against. But we cannot do this effectively if all moral reasons are specified in absolute principles. Morality cannot, therefore, be just a system of absolute principles. The only way in which we could continue to think of morality as governed by absolute principles is to suppose that there is only one such principle, so that there is no possibili
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit