Omnivore – Moral Coherence and Other Issues in Morality

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From Bookforum‘s Omnivore blog, here is an interesting collection of links on morality in all its many contemporary (and ancient) forms. Just for fun, here is the abstract to one of the more interesting papers linked to in this collection:

Moral Coherence and Principle Pluralism

Patricia Marino, University of Waterloo Department of Philosophy

August 14, 2012
Journal of Moral Philosophy (2013)

Abstract:

This paper develops and defends a conception of moral coherence that is suitable for use in contexts of principle pluralism. I argue that, as they are traditionally understood, coherence methods stack the deck against pluralist theories, by incorporating norms such as systematicity – that the principles of a theory should be as few and as simple as possible. I develop and defend an alternative, minimal, conception of coherence that focuses instead on consistency. It’s been suggested that consistency in this context should aim at the avoidance of conflict, but I argue against this: what matters is “case consistency,” or judging consistently from one case to another. This means judging in accordance with morally relevant similarities and differences. I defend my proposal of minimal coherence from objections having to do with complexity and arbitrariness.

Citation:
Marino, P. (2013) Moral Coherence and Principle Pluralism. Journal of Moral Philosophy. DOI: 10.1163/17455243-4681032. Available at SSRN.

Moral Coherence

Sep 19 2013
9:00AM

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