The Research Seminar Series in Philosophy invites you to a seminar with Victor Moberger, "What Is the Point of Moral Objectivity?".
Accommodating moral objectivity is usually thought of as an important desideratum in metaethics. Even proponents of broadly speaking subjectivist views largely agree. The focus is usually on objectivist features of moral thought, phenomenology and language use, which are typically held to favour objectivist theories, at least initially. I will focus on a particular objectivist feature, pertaining to arbitrariness. Objectivist metaethical theories are usually thought to have the upper hand with respect to eliminating arbitrariness, since arbitrariness is primarily associated with response-dependence. Morality will be arbitrary if the responses of individuals, groups or even God can influence the moral status of actions. And by eliminating such undue influence, objectivist theories eliminate arbitrariness. I will argue, however, that objectivity does not suffice to rule out arbitrariness. I will spell out a more fundamental desideratum of non-interference, of which objectivity is just a special case. To eliminate arbitrariness, we also need to rule out various kinds of undue influence from completely objective sources. Once we see that the notion of non-interference rather than objectivity gets to the heart of the matter, we will see that various objectivist views also fail to ward off arbitrariness. I will make some tentative suggestions about which metaethical theories pass the non-interference test.
This seminar is intended primarily for presentations of PhD work and other research in philosophy conducted at the Department of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies. Guest lectures sometimes take place in the seminar as well. The seminars are given in English and all interested are welcome to attend these events.
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