Philosophy

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Moral Properties and Patterns: Some Problems for Particularism by Joel Martinez (Lewis & Clark College) and Sarah Raskoff (Lewis & Clark College)

Date: November 12 2010, 3:30pm Location: John R. Howard Hall 202

Moral particularism is the view that there are no justifiable moral principles. The particularist insists that the relationship between the descriptive and the evaluative is irreducibly complex: she denies that there is any non-trivial and explanatorily significant pattern to the way descriptive or natural properties determine supervening evaluative or moral properties. Hence, the particularist also denies that proper moral judgment consists in the application of general moral principles to particular cases because she doubts that there are any moral principles that are sufficiently precise and contentful to be action-guiding.  The foundation of moral particularism is a commitment to holism rather than atomism about moral reasons. Atomism about moral reasons is the view that “a feature that is a reason in one case will be a reason, with the same polarity, in any other” (Dancy, 2006).  In contrast, holism about moral reasons is the view that a feature that is a reason in one case may be no reason or even a reason with the opposite polarity, in any other. Whether a particular feature is morally relevant, and if so, to what polarity, is not linked to the feature itself, but varies from situation to situation. The move from holism about moral reasons to particularism, then, is straightforward: if the very valence of moral-making features varies from case to case, then we have good reason to suspect that the moral landscape is not the sort of place that lends itself to exceptionless and explanatory codification. 

In this paper, we briefly explain some of the more common objections to particularism.  We articulate a problem for the particularist, what we call “the application problem,” that has not been discussed in the literature.  In addition, we consider how some prominent particularists might respond.  We conclude by spelling out some lessons we have learned from investigating particularism.