Scanlon's contractualism grounds wrongness in principles that no one could reasonably reject, where reasonable rejection is sensitivity to the relative strength of competing claims.

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Reasons For

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Reason for

1.Moral principles should reflect what rational agents could collectively agree to, making morality grounded in reciprocal justification rather than subjective preference.
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2.Sensitivity to competing claims' relative strength captures how we actually deliberate about conflicts—by weighing whose interests matter most, not applying fixed rules.
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3.This framework explains why certain rejections of principles (selfish demands) are unreasonable while others (protecting the vulnerable) are legitimate moral complaints.
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Reasons Against

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Reason against

1.Determining what 'no one could reasonably reject' requires prior criteria for reasonableness, making the theory circular or dependent on unstated normative assumptions.
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2.Agents with radically different values or risk-tolerances may find different principles reasonably rejectible, undermining the claim that wrongness is objectively grounded.
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3.The theory struggles with agent-centered prerogatives and personal projects—allowing individual pursuits seems hard to justify via mutual agreement principles.
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Key Terms

Grounds (in philosophy)(Strawson's theory grounds responsibility in relationships rather than metaphysics): Serves as the foundation or basis for something; what something is based on or explained by.
Relative strength of competing claims(what 'reasonable' rejection is sensitive to—fairness based on whose needs matter more): When multiple people have different interests or needs that conflict, comparing how important or urgent each person's situation is compared to the others.
Scanlon: # Scanlon Tim Scanlon is an influential American philosopher known for developing a theory of ethics based on the idea that actions are right if they could be justified to others through principles everyone could reasonably accept. Rather than focusing on happiness or duty, his approach emphasizes what we can defend to each other as fair-minded people, making morality fundamentally about mutual respect and agreement. He's considered one of the most important moral philosophers of our time because his ideas have reshaped how philosophers think about fairness, responsibility, and what we owe to one another.
contractualism: A moral theory presented as a genuine alternative to both consequentialism and Kantian ethics, one that coheres with distinctively non-utilitarian intuitions in certain key cases
reasonably reject(as used in ethics): Has good, rational grounds to object to or refuse to accept something as justified or fair.
wrongness(Offered as an example of a proposed naturalistic constitutive explanation, used to illustrate the failure of such accounts): According to meta-ethical utilitarian naturalism, for an action to be wrong is for it to fail to maximize the general happiness.

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Consequentialism1 linked

Agents with radically different values or risk-tolerances may find different pri...Determining what 'no one could reasonably reject' requires prior criteria for re...Moral principles should reflect what rational agents could collectively agree to...Sensitivity to competing claims' relative strength captures how we actually deli...

Details

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