Taking Moral Theorising Seriously

This book develops a plausible and novel account of methodology for moral philosophy. It focuses on the structural features of moral theories, specifically what is taken as input and the process of theorizing itself. Philosophers have long neglected the difficulties of identifying and using good input for moral theorizing. The first part of the book argues that we should use "contrastively successful" judgments as input. A moral judgment about a case must be shown to be interpersonally superior to alternatives to qualify as input for moral theorizing. The next part of the book follows recent work on theoretical virtues in science to develop an account of virtues of moral theories. It argues that moral theorists should seek defeasibly parallel maximization of the virtues of moral theories. It then applies this overall account of a method for moral philosophy to the topic of agent-relativity and agent-neutrality. Taking Moral Theory Seriously will appeal to researchers and graduate students interested in moral philosophy and philosophical methodology.