A pluralistic moral mind

Abstract

In this paper I offer some criticisms of Jonathan Dancy’s moral particularism. In Dancy’s version moral particularism states that there are neither general nor universal moral principles, that moral action is not the application of principles to particular cases, that moral reasoning has no motivational force because it deduces what must be done by moral principles, and that the agent who acts morally is not a person who has moral principles. However, Dancy’s proposal fails to explain the regularity of moral behavior and the function of stability that moral agents and moral psychology play within social cooperation, nor is it able to explain the possibility of moral progress.

Keywords

• jonathan dancy
• moral psychology
• principles
• cooperation