Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

a product of human reasoning — the cognitivist position. In terms of our responses to moral standards, ‘strong normativity’ is feeling compelled to act in line with fairness. It forms the backbone of agreed standards of moral behaviour. Derek Parfit (On What Matters) said there are ‘irreducible normative truths’ (about moral values) that we find difficult to step away from. Hence our innate values, that lie behind all this.

This idea is given the name ‘moral cognitivism’. Moral cognitivists believe there is truth in moral precepts, whilst non-cognitivists think morality is less amenable to reasoning. There is an important step taken between when we understand a situation and when we choose to take some action as a result. (The cognitivist position may be as a result of morality being absolute, but it may simply be that moral values can be figured out by reason and logic. Either way, it more or less equates morality with truth.) This sees morality as ‘consensual’, in the sense that something does not become wrong unless there is some agreement between individuals about a particular moral standpoint. (It’s probably reasonable to think of the cognitivist position as half way along the rationalist/emotivist scale.) This seems to carry with it the inevitable conclusion that morality is thereby relative. No matter how universal a particular ethical position might be — such as believing murder to be wrong — it can never be demonstrated that this is anything more than an opinion. The cognitivist position has consensus as its underlying value, it might be said, and seems to allow for more of the subjective, emotional responses than the purely rational

210