Jeffrey Luk's Blog

II.  Linville seeks to defend the traditional doctrine of human dignity, the idea that humans enjoy a special worth -- moral standing. Moral standing is granted as a result of a uniquely human characteristic that make us possess more worth than other creatures. Aristotle pointed to rationality, Thomas Huxley to linguistics, and other arguments to intelligence, culture, etc. Linville appeals to Kant's basis of human dignity -- on the capacity for us to make moral judgements and decisions. This idea is called human moral agency. Critics have ruled out other traits because (1) humans are not the only ones who have access to intelligence, linguistics, or moral capacities, and (2) The issue of moral relevance. A white supremacist might maintain that the empirical results of a studying showing the intellectual superiority of whites justifies discriminatory treatment against other races. Linville quotes Singer that equality is not an empirucally determined fact, but a prescription on...

  Pace begins by answering a common atheist objection to moral-pragmatic justifications for theism, which are accused of amounting to mere wishful thinking. He begins with the Clifford's Principle of Evidentialism: That "It is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence." Is there any way in which we can vindicate moral-pragmatic arguments then? He concedes that it is epistemically wrong to engage in moral-pragmatic reasoning as we can't be morally correct without some epistemic "dirt". So we will need to argue without intellectual dishonesty. Pace outlines the epistemically relevant questions for properly justified belief: How much evidence, and to what degree does this evidence support the conclusion? There are three cases in which evidence is insufficient: No evidence (or no relevant evidence), evidence, on balance, is insufficient even if any individual piece of evidence is compelling, and intuitively compelling ...

  Linville's Argument from Personal Dignity reveals that the Kantian notion of personal dignity presupposes that persons exists on the account of moral personhood. He weighs the contemporary theories of normative ethics and finds them lacking in their metaethical account of duties. Furthermore, he examines various worldviews and how the idea of personhood fits into them and concludes that a naturalistic worldview cannot account for personhood. For any moral theory, it must both be consistent with our moral convictions/intuitions and offer a satisfactory account of implications.  He attributes moral standing to individuals -- which cannot be fulfilled by egoism, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics. Egoism frames all moral actions in terms of the agent. Thus, only indirect duties apply to anyone else. However, this is clearly contrasted our moral convictions that an egoist says that rape is wrong, he can only say that it wrongs the rapist, which is grotesque (Joyce 2006) -- so onl...