Original scientific paper
https://doi.org/10.31820/ejap.17.2.1
Famine, Affluence, and Amorality
David Sackris
orcid.org/0000-0002-3914-3311
; Arapahoe Community College
Abstract
I argue that the debate concerning the nature of first-person moral judgment, namely, whether such moral judgments are inherently motivating (internalism) or whether moral judgments can be made in the absence of motivation (externalism), may be founded on a faulty assumption: that moral judgments form a distinct kind that must have some shared, essential features in regards to motivation to act. I argue that there is little reason to suppose that first-person moral judgments form a homogenous class in this respect by considering an ordinary case: student readers of Peter Singer’s “Famine, Affluence, and Morality”. Neither internalists nor externalists can provide a satisfying account as to why our students fail to act in this particular case, but are motivated to act by their moral judgments in most cases. I argue that the inability to provide a satisfying account is rooted in this shared assumption about the nature of moral judgments. Once we consider rejecting the notion that first-person moral decision- making forms a distinct kind in the way it is typically assumed, the internalist/externalist debate may be rendered moot.
Keywords
Meta-ethics; moral judgment; internalism; externalism; natural kinds
Hrčak ID:
263002
URI
Publication date:
30.9.2021.
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