Moral reasoning in a pluralistic world / Patricia Marino.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Marino, Patricia, 1966- author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Ethics.

Reasoning.

Pluralism.

Genre:

Libros electronicos.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (212 p.)

Distribution:

Ottawa, Ontario : Canadian Electronic Library, 2015.

Place of Publication:

Montreal [Quebec] : McGill-Queen's University Press, [2015]

Summary:

"Working broadly within the analytic philosophy tradition, Marino challenges commonly held ideas that to use reasoning in morality requires finding a single principle or value to apply to all cases. She argues instead for a method she calls "pluralistic coherence," in which reason requires us to find a principled way of prioritizing conflicting demands. Such prioritizations reflect reasoning when they are in accordance with "case consistency," which means judging like cases alike, taking dilemmas to be real and significant, and expanding our circle of concern. When values are shared and prioritized similarly, reasoning will lead to consensus. When that is not the case, competing sets of moral judgments can be internally justified and still disagree with one another. In these cases reason cannot determine who is right, and moral persuasion requires other kinds of social and cultural changes. Pluralist coherence also illuminates a new practical form of moral progress: even when we prioritize differently, we can agree on the importance of minimizing occasions of conflict, thus honoring more of our values. Marino illustrates these abstract ideas through examples including the abortion debate and the dilemma posed by recent controversies over medical testing in developing countries. She also explores what her conclusions entail about methodology in bioethics. Toward the end of the book, she draws out some implications of adopting her view of moral reasoning: among these are the idea that moral disagreement and diversity do not undermine the possibility of reasoning about moral issues, and that the special bitterness and entrenched disagreements sometimes associated with public moral discourse do not indicate that people are failing to reason morally."--Provided by publisher.

Contents:

1 Basic Concepts

2 Value Pluralism, the Unity of Value, and the Delimiting Argument

Epistemological Arguments and Rich Coherence

4 Case Consistency

5 Pluralist Coherence

6 Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 183-192) and index.

ISBN:

0-7735-9756-5

OCLC:

908308646