Among the many areas in philosophy where I wish I had an opinion (not necessarily the true opinion, but preferably a defensible and idiosyncratic one) is the debate about particularism vs universalism about norms. I have this little dream that after the ethicists have sorted out all the issues, but before the epistemologists have noticed that they have, I can make a quick buck translating all the ethics papers into epistemology and looking like I’m doing cutting edge work on epistemic values. Since I have that dream, I probably shouldn’t go round promoting good papers on moral particularism, but I will anyway.

Particularism and Default Reasons by Pekka Väyrynen

ABSTRACT. Moral particularism says that what descriptive non-moral facts function as moral reasons is determined not by general moral principles, but on a fundamentally case-by-case basis. This paper addresses the recent suggestion that particularists can extend their view to countenance presumptive or default reasons – reasons that are pro tanto unless undermined – by relying on certain background expectations of normality (Cullity 2002). Drawing on discussions of normality, and of generic statements, I argue that normality must be understood non-extensionally. Thus we cannot assume that if being a default reason rests on some normality claims, those claims bestow upon default reasons any definite degree of extensional generality. The extensional generality of moral reasons depends rather on the contingent distributional aspects of the world. Such contingent matters play no role in the normative grounding of reasons for action, so appeals to them cannot decide between generalism and particularism. Therefore, appeals to default reasons cannot uniquely support particularism. Moreover, since the extensional generality of reasons turns out to be the sort of contingent matter that no theory of reasons purports to decide on its own, generalism would be a non-starter if it were committed to the existence of reasons whose moral valence is invariant regardless of the context (which is a typical extensional characterization). Since generalism is not a non-starter, we must rethink the parameters of the generalism-particularism debate. I outline the sort of generalism that I think is suggested by my discussion and sketch a generalist account of default reasons that doesn’t depend on normality claims.

Looks like there will already be lots for tomorrow’s philosophy papers blog.