Affect  (feeling, evaluative experience) The word is often used synonymously with "feeling." In the terminology of ethics, it denotes an experience that is simultaneously cognitive, emotional, and motivational. Fear of flying is an affect. A person who fears flying has a complex experience: it is based (1—cognitively) on certain beliefs about flying (theses concerning the probability of a crash); (2—emotionally) it produces unpleasant sensations of fear due to a presumed danger to life and limb; and (3—motivationally) it prompts a person, on the one hand, to travel by train instead and, on the other, to plan their life (work, holidays) so that they can manage without flying. (Other affects include jealousy, grief, love, curiosity, joy, and disgust.)

Everyday morality  Persons grow into a morally meaningful world. They adopt the moral conceptions of a spatially and temporally contingent social environment. This process of biographical appropriation is not merely passive; persons also give morality an individual character. There is thus no single form of everyday morality, but rather many different forms. Yet this diversity is by no means chaotic. Despite all variability, largely shared moral views can always be assumed within a cultural and social framework. This social commonality can be called common sense. Common sense is a complex plurality in terms of validity. The reason it is not regarded as capable of constituting morality lies in its plurality. Morality is often regarded as a non-pluralistic system of norms and values. The validity of common sense and everyday morality therefore appears questionable and weak. The consensus may also be immoral (consider sexist, racist, and other forms of everyday morality that one may rightly wish to disapprove of). The consensus is fragile and mutable. Its complex validity can therefore not be successfully interpreted within the framework of traditional modern philosophical ethics (psychological ethics), but only through approaches based on value ethics or virtue ethics. Its conception of validity may also be described as that of historical experience.

Altruism  Egoism

Autarky  is self-sufficiency (from the Greek autarkeia). A country is autarkic when it obtains all its goods by itself and for itself. In the moral sense, persons can be morally self-sufficient if they are factually, justificationally, motivationally, and effectively self-sufficient. Their moral experience adequately apprehends situations (factually). They adequately understand the moral aspects of those situations (justificationally) and act accordingly and adequately (motivationally). Moreover, through perception, reflection, and action, they realize what is right, appropriate, and good in the world (effectively). It is rather unlikely that a person could be self-sufficient in this fourfold sense. Autarky is an ideal. For ancient virtue ethics, however, autarky is a necessary and sufficient condition for happiness. In this regard, Aristotle even asks whether a person may be called happy if their life is successful, but the values of that life are destroyed after their death (the family dies out, the wealth is lost, and their reputation vanishes along with the memory of them ...).

Axiology  The axiology of an ethics is its theory of value (from the Greek axion = valuable). This concept is central above all to value ethics and virtue ethics. Yet every ethics must be able to interpret value phenomena. This requires concepts that help us philosophically interpret what has value (the good, the right, the appropriate, and the valuable). These concepts and justificatory structures constitute the axiology of an ethics. In value ethics, axiology is the system of values. In virtue ethics, axiology is the rich and conceptually elaborated conception of a flourishing life. In psychological ethics, the theory of value is identical to the subjective character of the evaluations made by the type of evaluative experience that they privilege. Thus, in hedonism as a philosophical position, the concept of "pleasure" is developed from the philosophical interpretation of the experience of pleasure. The concept is identical to the phenomenon insofar as its meaning is nothing else.

Desire  Since Plato, desire has been a polemical concept in philosophy. There is a nonspecific concept of desire, according to which we desire all manner of things whenever we strive for something. Desire in this sense encompasses everything we want, wish for, hope for, or are motivated to pursue. Desire becomes a polemical concept in particularist moral psychologies. In them, desire (what we want, wish for, hope for ...) stands opposed to reason. Thus, in acting, one should not simply want, wish, and hope nonspecifically, but rather do so rationally. Those objects of wanting, wishing, and hoping that are irrational are devalued as desire. The opposition between reason and desire (Plato, Aristotle, Kant) is derived in Chapter 12.

Consciousness   (a) Consciousness is every form of conscious evidence (wishes, pleasure, desire, affects, emotions, perceptions ...). Evidences are any conscious experiences, some of which are present in consciousness simultaneously, while others alternate with one another (follow one another). Although consciousness is a mysterious "phenomenon," it is investigated (directly) by certain branches of psychology. Certain other branches of psychology (psychoanalysis) or neurology investigate consciousness indirectly. As mysterious as consciousness is, the fact that everyone knows what consciousness is, or what he or she is conscious of, is also (prima facie) trivial. As immediate and indisputable evidence, consciousness is an empirical fact. One can investigate it oneself. Indeed, one can investigate it best oneself because states of consciousness are private. Consciousness is empirically, that is, as evidence, immediately accessible only to itself. Publicly, it is accessible through linguistic utterances (someone articulates his or her states of consciousness and communicates them linguistically) or through behavior (for others infer our consciousness from what we do and refrain from doing). As everyday morality, evaluative experience is persons’ moral consciousness. It is indeed so in all its diversity, but many philosophical ethics restrict it to particular domains of consciousness (types of conscious experience: reason, pleasure ...). This always requires justification and is never immediately evident. It becomes intelligible only on the basis of a particular moral psychology within an ethics, because certain domains of evaluative experience exhibit distinctive features with respect to validity: categorical consciousness of duty differs from fleeting experiences of pleasure, and the experience of an ought differs from that of appropriateness—these and many other things feel different as cognitive evidence in their evaluative character). This is immediately evident to everyone as his or her moral consciousness, even though it cannot always be articulated correctly, completely, or competently. To this extent, one may not fully understand one’s own moral consciousness. By articulating moral consciousness and interpreting it philosophically as ethics, one also gains clarity about one’s moral consciousness in the sense of new evidence. In the sense relevant here, private, empirical consciousness is always also self-consciousness. (b) Such a concept of consciousness (sketched here only in rudimentary form) can be distinguished from two alternatives. Whereas consciousness initially comprises the phenomena to be investigated by empirical psychology, consciousness can also be investigated within the framework of a rational or transcendental "psychology." (For the latter, see subjectivity.) Rational psychology philosophically interprets consciousness as the mental, independently of all empirical aspects of consciousness. The properties, structures, and laws of the mental are those of a substance or structure (of the mental: anima rationalis). They are rationally inferred. (Consider the unity of the self in "cogito sum.") The mental (soul) in this sense makes possible the empirical phenomena of self-consciousness and object-consciousness.

Biodiversity  Biodiversity is an example of a value that is largely uncontested today. It may therefore be described as a modern value. Today, this value has a legally protected status both internationally and nationally and is significant in the moral consciousness of many persons. It is a historical experience in modern industrial societies that the environment constitutes a value resource that is not available without limit or restriction. Its loss is not only life-threatening to human beings in consequentialist terms, but also constitutes a loss of value. The diversity of species safeguards the stability of life, just as it is experienced by us as an aesthetic value that becomes accessible through scientific inquiry. Biodiversity is an important concept for understanding the value character of the environment.

Boo-and-hurrah theory  In the context of non-cognitivism, moral judgments are judgments only in appearance. Moral experience is, on the one hand, a perception (of situations, for example) and, on the other, an affective reaction: boo (–) or hurrah (+). In affective experience, no cognitive or rational "aspects of judgment" become conscious; rather, these are purely motivational reactions to something. In ethics, evaluative experience may be such an unqualified feeling, an affect, or, in the broadest sense, an evaluation.

Common sense  In ethics, the term common sense is largely interchangeable with everyday morality. The views shared within a historical, cultural, and biographical framework are the starting points for our reflections on morality. Since common sense is contingent and was not deliberately shaped through generally accepted ethical reflection, one cannot infer the validity (appropriateness, correctness, etc.) of everyday morality from its mere existence. Ethics can criticize everyday morality and thereby change it, but no ethical theory to date has arrived, at the end of its reflections, at a complete revision of everyday morality. Even Kant ultimately reconstructs, more or less completely, the actual consensus of his time (including its errors: the prohibition of suicide). In ethics, there are both critical and positive attitudes toward common sense. From a critical perspective, the contingency of everyday moralities is emphasized, and attention is directed to their questionable aspects. From a positive (or affirmative) perspective, one advocates the justificatory thesis that our everyday morality (despite all the criticism warranted in matters of detail) emerged through a process of historical experience that also confers moral validity upon it, which can then be philosophically reconstructed within an ethical theory.

Ethical decisionism  Decisionism is a position that places an arbitrary decision at the center of justification (Latin decidere = to bring something to a conclusion). At certain points in the justificatory structure of an ethical theory, decisions can serve as sources of legitimacy. Those who argue in a decisionist manner maintain that an ungrounded decision can constitute a reason. Philosophically, this appears nonsensical, and attempts are made to avoid decisionism. Whenever, however, we wish to let a lottery or a mark on a ballot paper decide, we ultimately advocate decisionism (from a political and social perspective). For in genuinely important matters, we then accept decisions (= recognize them as legitimate). There are two ways of accepting “ungrounded” decisions: respect for arbitrariness can be radical, in which case we do not necessarily expect someone to provide any reasons at all for their actions (= lottery). It can, however, also be less radical: in that case, although we expect reasons (and are entitled to do so), we must respect the fact that these reasons are none of our concern (= ballot paper). Reasons need not necessarily be transparent (= dragged into the public sphere) if they belong to the realm of our intimacy. (Cf. abortion, § 218a, 219 StGB: Society requires abortions to take place on an informed basis and for stated reasons. This is ensured through nondirective counseling. In practice, however, only the decision of the person seeking the abortion matters.)

Egalitarianism  Equality is a fundamental value in modern societies (from French égalité or Latin aequalitas). The inequality of an estate-based society, which recognizes equality only among members of the same estate, is regarded by us as unacceptable. The concept entered ethics from the context of political philosophy. Psychological ethics are revisionist insofar as they identify one type of evaluative experience as the moral experience. Examples include the axiologies of utilitarianism and deontology: pleasure (hedonism) and reason (deontology). These value principles are egalitarian—for why should my pleasure be better than yours? My reason, insofar as it is reason, is also your reason! Anyone who wishes to exclude women, proletarians, and animals from the domain of morally considerable partners in cooperation must therefore show that they possess no reason or that their pleasure is irrelevant. Otherwise, denying women and proletarians equal rights of political participation is simply unjust arbitrariness (cf. Kantian deontology). Anyone who wishes to include animals within the moral domain will elevate their pleasure to a status equal to ours (utilitarianism).

Egoism  Egoism can be understood both as a psychological and as an ethical thesis. The two are independent of one another. Psychologically, egoism means that persons have only self-regarding motives. Altruism is the opposing thesis (love of one’s neighbor). Thus, the claim concerns the fact that everyone strives only for their own advantage. Ethical egoism is the thesis that it is good, right, appropriate, and in accordance with duty to strive for one’s own advantage (allocentrically, heteropsychologically). See Chapter 4 for the overall discussion.

egocentric  allocentric

Emotivism  According to emotivism, moral evaluations are neither judgments nor affects, but feelings. We apprehend a situation perceptually or affectively and respond with a feeling to what we have apprehended. Unlike affects, feeling is binary (boo/yuck!, hurrah/great!), and unlike affects and judgments, feeling is simple. This means that, as an affect, fear of flying is a negatively evaluative response to flying that is based on certain assumptions. Fear of spiders is a different fear. Emotions in emotivism are neither specific feelings nor feelings associated with assumptions. They are simply a + or a – that stirs within us (booh-and-hurrah-theory).

Epistemology  Epistemology is the theory of knowledge. Its principal concern is the question: What is justified knowledge? In psychological ethics, epistemology is constitutive of axiology. In non-psychological ethics, epistemology likewise depends on moral psychology, but moral psychology is not constitutive of their axiology.

Error theory  Error theory is a particular thesis in the context of the theory of justification and epistemology. Evaluative experience is (according to one part of the thesis) judgmental in character. We make moral judgments. As such, these judgments, like perceptual judgments, are judgments about facts. The judgment that it is raining is true if it is raining. Unlike perceptual judgments, moral judgments are (according to the other part of the thesis) necessarily false. Although the inventory of the world may contain "rain," it cannot contain values, "cruelty," or the good. Only the natural sciences tell us what the inventory of the world contains (naturalism, B). Moral judgments, as judgments, are always false and therefore errors; but they are errors of judgment.

Ethics  Three concepts are central to the subject matter of an introduction to general ethics: ethics, morality, and metaethics. In philosophy, however, there is no clear demarcation between ethics and morality, nor is there any agreement as to whether metaethics is meaningful. Every philosopher may write such an introduction differently if they hold different views concerning these concepts. Any stipulation is idiosyncratic (idiopsychological). In this introduction, (A) morality is understood as something that can be said with reasonable plausibility to be acknowledged by common sense (not understood as ethics) (everyday morality, historical experience). Common sense is mutable, unclear, contradictory, by no means uniform, and perhaps even immoral in many respects. An (B) ethics interprets morality conceptually, theoretically, and argumentatively. This philosophical interpretation may be conceived both as articulation and as justification. A common-sense ethics interprets common-sense morality as a development of historical experience and conceptually elaborates a clear conception of validity. Other ethics arrive at different interpretations. Yet one cannot infer a morality from an ethics. Utilitarianism can justify a prohibition of abortion just as deontology can justify permission or a requirement to have an abortion. Ethics are theories of moralities. Every ethics can interpret every morality and, in doing so, can reconstruct the morality of common sense affirmatively just as it can revise it critically. There are, however, ethics that are better suited than others to interpreting certain aspects of moral experience theoretically. Yet anyone who says that a "categorical" prohibition of abortion (morality) can only be justified deontologically as "unconditional," and not utilitarianly (ethics), commits a theoretical fallacy: for the claim that a vehement rejection (morality) implies validity in the sense of deontological unconditionality (ethics) is plainly inconclusive, because there are other ethics with other conceptions of validity that arrive by different routes at a materially equally vehement morality. (C) Metaethics is, on the one hand, a reflection on the relationship between morality and ethics (A/B). This glossary entry is therefore metaethics. On the other hand, metaethics also includes the question of what distinguishes ethics from one another. How do ethics arrive at interpretations of moralities, and how are affirmation and criticism related to one another relative to ethics? A utilitarian prohibition of abortion functions differently from a deontological one. Ethics and moralities, or parts of moralities, may not be related to one another arbitrarily. Metaethics might therefore conclude that it would be better to justify a prohibition of abortion utilitarianly rather than deontologically (or vice versa). Presumably, this would not merely be a conclusion drawn from metaethical considerations, but a moral demand that would not, however, be part of common sense. Thus, there are neither definitive nor particularly clear boundaries between A, B, and C. Nevertheless, this introduction distinguishes between A, B, and C, as far as possible, in the sense specified by this glossary entry.

The evaluative  The evaluative is the domain of the world to which we refer through our evaluative experience. In psychological ethics, the evaluative is the totality of occurrences (tokens) of a privileged type of experience (type). In other ethics, the evaluative is the ontological domain apprehended by their axiologies.

Evaluative experience  Persons also perceive the world in which they live evaluatively. One does not simply observe with detachment a drowning child or someone rescuing a drowning child. One experiences the things in one’s life positively or negatively. One finds something good or bad, right or wrong, appropriate or inappropriate, cruel, loving, considerate, polite, merciless, foolish, and so forth. Evaluative experience is value-laden, but sometimes binary (right, wrong), sometimes specific (cruel), and always extremely diverse, rich, and often surprising. On the one hand, one must not infer from the fact that one experiences something evaluatively in one way or another that our evaluations are adequate. On the other hand, our evaluations (when we experience something evaluatively in one way or another) are important to us if we wish to understand our own motivations. And insofar as everyday morality and common sense are nourished by our evaluative experience, there is no rational reason to distrust our evaluations in principle on philosophical grounds (historical experience). The terms "evaluative experience" and "evaluative experience" are used interchangeably in this book.

Externalism/Internalism  Imagine a circle, with some points located within it and others outside it. The former are internal points, the latter external points. If one then says in philosophy that, for a problem x, the relevant "points" are the internal ones (y1, y2, y3, ...) rather than the external ones (z1, z2, z3, ...), one advocates internalism. (Otherwise, one advocates externalism or neutral agnosticism.) The opposition thus characterizes different philosophical strategies concerning any philosophical problems whatsoever. In this sense, particularist moral psychologies advocate an externalism concerning the theory of justification: moral reasons (x) are derived from reason (y1, y2, y3, ...) and not from desire (z1, z2, z3, ...). By contrast, a holistic moral psychology advances the thesis that moral reasons arise from evaluative experience as a whole. In a psychological sense (type), they are not external to other psychological sources of reasons. This holism in moral psychology is therefore a comprehensive internalism insofar as no particularist boundary may be drawn between (y1, y2, y3, ...) and (z1, z2, z3, ...). This means that the typology of evaluative experience has no axiological relevance or relevance to the theory of justification.

Freedom  Negatively defined, freedom is freedom from coercion; positively defined, it is freedom to do all manner of things. Freedom in this positive and negative sense is freedom of action: Can one attain or realize what one wants? Metaphysical freedom, or freedom of the will, must be distinguished from this: Can one "freely" decide what one wants? Many believe that freedom of the will and freedom of action stand in a conceptual relationship to one another. The concept of freedom has many uses, one important use being "political freedom." This is understood as a value (for example, the right to participate in political decision-making processes or the freedom to choose one’s place of residence).

Joy  In Chapter 1, joy is a technical term. (1) Pleasure and happiness are related concepts in the context of hedonism. The concept of joy denotes a "conception of pleasure" that this book calls "abstract" or "heteropsychological." A wine connoisseur (sommelier) does not simply take pleasure in good wine when tasting and smelling it. Their pleasure is more complex: it distinguishes many nuances and, as pleasure, simultaneously provides intersubjectively intelligible (heteropsychological) criteria for its own adequacy. Sommeliers learn to apprehend the phenomenon of pleasure in wine. Neither for the wine connoisseur experiencing the pleasure nor for their colleagues is the pleasure a simple (idiopsychological) fact of their sensation. Such pleasure is called "joy" in this book. (2) Pleasure in the egalitarian sense, by contrast, is a simple psychological fact when someone experiences something positively without simultaneously knowing, in that sensation, "why." This why concerns both the reasons that legitimately justify the experience and its causes. Experiences of pleasure of this kind are egalitarian because all experiences of a person throughout their life and all experiences of all persons are of equal value. In this sense, the sommelier, like us, will experience a truly bad (unpleasurable) wine as pleasant (pleasurable), provided only that it is sweet enough, sufficiently low in acidity, or lukewarm. (3) Of course, this egalitarian pleasure is regularly devalued in its positive evaluative character by the sommelier’s connoisseurial pleasure. Egalitarian pleasure is concrete as a fact and idiopsychological with respect to its epistemic character. Accordingly, non-egalitarian pleasure is abstract and heteropsychological. It is abstract insofar as, in the immediate sensation of pleasure, connoisseurial pleasure does not simultaneously intuit either its genesis (learning, cultural and historical experience) or the criteria of its validity.

Feeling  (affect, evaluative experience, pleasure) An affect of fear of something can, in some cases, develop into a pure feeling: pure, panic-like, and unqualified existential anxiety occurs, for example, in cases of severe depression. Feelings, however, not only lack the cognitive aspects of affects; their emotional aspect is also less complex or directed. One is afraid but does not know why or what the danger consists in. The boundary between affects and feelings may be fluid, which would count against an externalist conception of this distinction oriented toward types. Thus, pain can simply be pain (a feeling), or a rapidly throbbing pain caused by stubbing one’s little toe (an affect). A special feeling might be the "moral feeling" understood as pure approval or disapproval (boo-and-hurrah theory).

Ethics of intention   In contrast to consequentialist approaches, it is a definitional feature of deontological ethics that ethics is concerned with evaluating "intentions": persons act rightly when their intentions are good, right, valuable, or appropriate. The consequences are irrelevant to a (pure) ethics of intention. The reason is that agents have control over their intentions, but not over the consequences. For some consequentialist ethical theories, intentions are irrelevant because only the (teleological) consequences count.

Happiness  Happiness is happiness. Yet happiness sometimes means good fortune, sometimes a flourishing life, and sometimes an abstract and comprehensive conception of a flourishing life that may always remain an unattainable ideal. And sometimes happiness is simply a beautiful moment alone or with friends. Happiness cannot truly be defined; one can only understand how the word is used and examine every aspect of the phenomenon of a more or less happy life. It seems implausible that happiness as joy could dispense entirely with happiness as idiopsychological pleasure.

Hedonism  (joy, happiness, pleasure) Hedonism is the thesis that happiness, as the moral goal of our lives, depends on pleasure when pleasure is interpreted heteropsychologically as joy.

heteropsychological/idiopsychological A distinction relevant to psychological ethics. Types of evaluative experience can be idiopsychological (Greek idion = one’s own, self). In this sense, they are idiosyncratic (peculiar in epistemic terms and with respect to their validity). Pronouncements of conscience are idiopsychological because, for the person concerned, they constitute a partly unintelligible inner voice that successfully tells them what they ought to do. We subjectively acknowledge the authority of this voice even though we do not ultimately understand it (cf. Socrates’ daimonion). (There are no heteropsychological pronouncements of conscience. Those who act with complete conviction and in full awareness of all reasons are "courageous and steadfast" or "authentic," but not "conscientious" or "scrupulous.") Other types of experience can also be heteropsychological (for example, pleasure, displeasure, and reason). Pleasure in the heteropsychological sense is, for example, "disgust" (and its absence, for which there is no name). There is no idiopsychological disgust that could be described as normal, for disgust is a learned sensation of displeasure that develops within the social sphere during our early development. Those who experience disgust draw non-idiosyncratic distinctions. Cultural, social, and historical parameters have become constitutive of their discriminating sensibility. These parameters are reflected in our explanations and justifications of disgust. To this extent, disgust is psychologically subjective, but in terms of validity it does not relate immediately to ourselves (idion), but rather to the other (heteron) of culture. (Someone who experiences disgust in an idiosyncratic sense when, for example, drinking tap water that complies with standards is mentally ill.)

Historical experience   Historical experience is, on the one hand, a historical process in which individual and social everyday morality develops with a greater or lesser degree of systematicity. On the other hand, it is the justificatory result of this process. The interconnected and overlapping moral dimension of individual biographies within a social context is tenacious both individually and socially, and either proves itself or fails to do so. This twofold tenacity is a kind of viscosity in the validity-theoretical sense relevant to ethics. The validity of what is factual can serve as a justificatory basis for ethics because everyday morality constitutes a genuine experience of value and is descriptive as well as normative, prescriptive, valuable, and constitutive of happiness. As a justificatory resource, it therefore does not conflict with Hume’s law. It is true that the ethics of everyday morality, understood as a plural common sense, is vague, diverse, and dynamic in the validity and justificatory force of historical experiences that either prove or disenchant themselves. Yet many regard this character of an ethics as a deficiency because they seek an ethics that is neither vague nor diverse nor dynamic. They therefore favor one privileged method for their ethics and base their moral judgments on suitable epistemic sources of validity that provide clear answers. They ignore other sources of validity. Within the context of such ethical theories, the philosophically narrow objective guiding this search is the principal argument for attributing deficiencies to historical experience (revisionism). The longing for clear answers is the actual point of disagreement. The viscosity of moral validity cannot solidify into generality or universality if moral common sense is ethically reconstructed as historical experience. It solidifies because of the philosophically motivated longing for universal and immutable laws that can be prescribed equally to everyone because everyone must acknowledge the source of validity. The aspect of proving itself (biodiversity) has hedonistic depths in a heteropsychological sense that can best be interpreted in terms of virtue ethics and social ethics (Chs. 8, 13, 14). An ethics of everyday morality, however, provides only unclear answers because it neither permits nor seeks methodological and epistemological revisions in the strong sense. Pleasure as the principle of validity of such an ethics can also be a psychological/non-psychological foundation of moral validity (cf. Ch. 1).

Holism  (moral psychology, internalism/externalism) The chapter on moral psychology employs a distinction between holism and particularism that is used in many different ways in philosophy. Holism does not understand a whole as the sum of its parts. Rather, the parts of a whole can be individuated (distinguished), and the whole thereby understood, only by reference to that whole. A particularism in this sense would be the mechanistic thesis that the whole is merely the sum of its parts. Some philosophers are particularists with respect to mechanical clocks but holists with respect to organisms. Holism is generally regarded as the opposite of particularism (cf. Greek holon = the whole and Latin pars = part). In cosmology, atomism is a form of particularism: the whole of the cosmos is composed of atoms as discrete particles. This is opposed by the so-called doctrine of the elements (which may now be undergoing a revival as string theory). The entire cosmos consists of fire, earth, air, and water. These elements are not atoms because they are neither indivisible nor immutable. Elements can transform into one another and then move toward their place in the cosmos (from the center to the periphery: earth, water, air, fire). These smallest "parts" can be understood only by reference to the whole. (Thus, water is the part of matter that distinguishes itself as water from other matter because it strives toward its place in the cosmos, even when it is mixed with the other elements, for example in our organism.) Analogously, in psychology, individual experiences (experiences of pleasure) or types of experience (reason, desire) can be understood as "atoms" or as "elements" of conscious experience. As atoms, experiences individuate themselves from within (cf., for example, the simple ideas of sensory or mental perception in John Locke’s empiricist epistemology), and the mind is composed of them just as the cosmos is composed of atoms. The same applies analogously to types of experience: some philosophers maintain that experiences of reason (pure practical reason) differ in their experiential character from other experiences (desire, inclination). In this sense, they endorse a psychological particularism.

Hume’s Law  Hume’s Law must be distinguished from the naturalistic fallacy. Hume observed that, in moral discussions, one cannot spend some time asserting that such-and-such is thus-and-so, only then to say that it ought to be so. Stated somewhat more formally, the law is as follows: No moral, prescriptive, or evaluative validity can be derived from a set of purely descriptive statements. Hume’s Law is therefore a thesis concerning the validity of inferences. Such an inference would be valid if one assumed that the premises were not purely descriptive (common sense, historical experience). Such an inference would also be valid if one accepted the following bridging principle: “One ought to do what everyone in fact does!”

Moral intuition  (1) The concept of moral intuitions is highly controversial. Intuitions resemble perceptions. In perception, something presents itself to our consciousness of its own accord: We see a stone when our eyes are open and there is sufficient light. In perceiving, we are “passive.” (2) Intuitions in mathematics are insights that cannot themselves be further justified or explained (e.g., the logical principle of non-contradiction or the axioms of arithmetic and geometry). In the act of intuitive apprehension, we know that something cannot be both itself and something else at the same time and in the same respect. In mathematical intuitions, one apprehends “incontrovertible truths” and is “absolutely justified.” (3) Intuitions in ethics share with perception the two features described in points 1 and 2. Unlike perception, however, intuitions are not necessarily restricted to the domain of objects of the empirical experience provided by our senses. The feature of passivity nevertheless always remains. The claim that intuitions are indisputably true can be conceived in ethics by analogy with mathematics (cf. Plato). However, intuitions can also be conceived as immediate subjective truths that are fallible. We see things as we see them, but perhaps we ought to see them differently. Intuitions can therefore be either evaluative experience in the general sense or basic epistemic principles of Platonic, expressionist, or decisionist value ethics (cf. Chapter 9). In psychological ethics, intuitions are individual occurrences of the type of experience constitutive of the axiology of the respective ethical theory (cf. Chapters 5 and 6, and psychological ethics).

Categorical imperative  This is a principle of universalization in Kantian ethics. Rational human persons regard themselves as being subject to obligations. Although the concept of duty is rational and is cognized through reason, it does not furnish itself with content: Act according to the maxim that can at the same time make itself into a universal law. Substantive determinations of duty (What obligations am I under here and now?) can be reached only by examining whether one’s own motivational structures (maxims) are universalizable and free of contradiction. In such a test procedure, the rationality of moral justification is reduced to the universalizability and consistency of actions.

Pleasure, experience of pleasure  Pleasure is a type (type) of evaluative experience. In pleasure, something is experienced as pleasurable. This experience can be interpreted heteropsychologically or idiopsychologically. Pleasure may be akin to a feeling or an affect. Pleasure is always initially a positive experience, displeasure a negative one. This experience may be more or less complex (and, depending on its complexity, will be more akin to a feeling or an affect). Unlike joy, experiences of pleasure are idiopsychological and therefore epistemically and in terms of validity theory egalitarian. For the pleasant experience itself yields no unequal criteria of evaluation: Why should my pleasure be more relevant to us than yours?

Doctrine of the Mean  In Greek, the meson is that which lies in the middle or is intermediate. In Aristotelian (virtue) ethics, the doctrine of the mean is central to the understanding of the ethical virtues. Courage is a virtue that preserves the mean between the vice of excess (recklessness) and the vice of deficiency (cowardice). This mean is, on the one hand, not arithmetic but proportional and, on the other, not immutable but situational and personal.

Metaethics  Ethics

Monism  Pluralism

Moral point of view  In revisionist psychological ethics, there is a "moral point of view." This refers to a privileged standpoint in moral matters that one must adopt when seeking practical orientation in order to arrive at an appropriate answer. Such a privileged standpoint disregards many other standpoints and perspectives that one might also adopt. The moral point of view is always revisionist insofar as evaluative experience, interpreted as philosophical ethics, methodologically suggests a plurality of standpoints. An ethicist of common sense advocates a pluralism relating to them. In psychological ethics, a monistic perspective on morality can be achieved through a particularist moral psychology. The philosopher's motivation for demanding a moral point of view as an ethical justification of moral validity claims is the desire for morality to have a strong consensus-building force and to provide clear answers. Here, consensus is initially (i) merely mutual understanding, but usually (ii) more than that, namely mutual agreement. Moreover, the validity of a moral point of view is universalist in the sense of (iii) an agreement that can be mutually compelled. An advocate of a moral point of view-theory will therefore select in their moral psychology a type of evaluative experience that is particularly heteropsychological. For, ideally, this secures the universal validity of the answers provided by the moral point of view. In this respect, a moral point of view (i-iii) is usually anti-pluralist: morally anti-pluralist with respect to practical orientation and methodologically anti-pluralist with respect to ethics. The only pluralist moral point of view would be evaluative experience in conjunction with a holistic moral psychology.

Morality  Ethics

Moral experience  evaluative experience

Moral psychology  Moral psychology may be understood, on the one hand, as (a) the psychology of the moral and, on the other, as (b) the morality of the mental. Psychology is understood as the discipline or science whose object of investigation is the mental. The mental is initially nothing more than conscious experience. In some psychologies, the "subconscious" or "neural patterns of excitation" are also included among the objects of investigation. Unfortunately, the adjectives "mental" and "psychological" are often used interchangeably in German. In this book, in most cases only "mental" is intended, even where "psychological" appears linguistically appropriate. (ad a) Plato held that a human being is good when their motivations (actions, behavior) arise in a particular way: Reason is to control desire with the aid of the affects. This theory presupposes that there are three "mental modules" (reason, affect, desire) in a manner not directly accessible through introspection. Their existence and the necessity of their threefold structure (these three, and no more than three!) can be inferred through reflection on our subjective experience and our actions. Without these psychological assumptions, one cannot understand the moral. Aristotle, like Kant, held that there is only a psychological duality (reason, desire). The Stoics held that there is only a mental monism. In this sense, most philosophers advocate particularist moral psychologies, whereas the Stoics advocate a non-particularist (holistic, monistic) one. Although ethical theories are committed to a particular psychology, this does not yet make them directly psychological ethics. (Cf. Chapter 12) In a moral psychology, the structures of the mental (reason, affect, desire) must not be equated with their conscious manifestations in the practice of rational thought or in affective and desiderative experience. (ad b) The morality of the mental is initially merely the evaluative character of certain experiences or types of experience. Pain, for example, is simultaneously a negative evaluation experienced as unpleasant and is thus axiologically negative. In a broader sense, the morality of the mental encompasses moral feelings or affects and their complex phenomenology (shame, gratitude, guilt, pride, compassion, forgiveness, ...).

Naturalistic Fallacy  Unlike Hume (Hume’s Law), George Edward Moore maintained that the ethical concepts pertaining to moral validity must not be interpreted naturalistically. Anyone who defines “good” as “pleasurable” commits a naturalistic fallacy if “pleasure” is understood as a physiological state of the kind studied in biology. Ontologically, the natural sciences and ethics concern different domains of being, and the definition “good is pleasurable” inappropriately identifies these domains with one another. In philosophy, a definition is not normally an inference, nor is defining a form of inferring. Thus, it is necessary to explain not only “naturalistic” in this concept but also “fallacy.” Nevertheless, identifying one thing with another in the aforementioned definition of “good” may be understood as inferring. (Such an understanding is not customary in philosophy.) “Good” is a property in the ontological realm of the evaluative; “pleasurable” is a property in the ontological realm of nature; the definition identifies something from one realm with something from the other. There is also a corresponding metaphysical fallacy: it identifies the ethical with the supernatural. There are thus three domains of being (the natural domain of natural science, the moral domain of ethics, and the supernatural domain of metaphysics). Ethics may concern itself only with its own domain of being. We apprehend it through intuitions.

Naturalism  In ethics, there are two principal ways of endorsing naturalism: (A) One may have a substantive conception of the essence and nature of human beings and derive moral requirements from it. In the past, this was done by regarding marriage as essentially a heterosexual union of two persons. However, accepted examples still exist today: a solidarity-based healthcare system may be conceptually grounded in the view that human beings form communities of shared fate with respect to health risks and have a moral obligation to assume mutual responsibility for one another because, by their nature, they are vulnerable to illness and are not self-sufficient in this respect. (B) One is also a naturalist, however, if one takes the natural sciences as one’s model (a) epistemologically, (b) methodologically, (c) ontologically, and (d) with regard to the theory of validity. (a) Epistemologically, these sciences are empirical (perception is a central source of knowledge). (b) Methodologically, experimentation is characteristic of the natural sciences. (c) Ontologically, everything that exists (e.g., societies) can be reduced to individuals interacting in social space and cultural time. (d) With regard to the theory of validity, the natural sciences rest on a second central source of knowledge: universal (mathematical) laws. – A may be called anthropological naturalism and B metaphysical naturalism.

objective  subjective

Particularism  This concept has many meanings in philosophy. (A) On the one hand, particularism stands opposed to holism. In this respect, it is related to the distinction between internalism/externalism. (B) On the other hand, in ethics, particularism is the thesis that the infinitely fine-grained aspects of situations may ultimately be relevant to the problem of moral justification and decisive for moral decisions. In this respect, particularism stands opposed to universalism/generalism. The latter maintains that moral decisions must be guided by general or universal laws. For example: May I lie here and now? The universalist may say “No!” because there is a universal prohibition against lying (which the universalist has justified within a revisionist ethics). Possible particular aspects of situations that support lying are therefore irrelevant. The particularist attributes at least potentially justificatory significance to these aspects. The particularity of validity stands opposed not only to the universal character of validity or the generality of valid rules, but also, as emotional involvement, to the impartiality of sober reason. There is no compelling philosophical reason why particular and universal validity should not coexist systematically within an ethics.

Pluralism  There is a plurality (a diversity of something) that one may value pluralistically. (A) If one values it, one is a pluralist or endorses pluralism. In matters of morality, pluralism maintains that it is good, right, and appropriate for there to be a diversity of mutually contradictory moralities. As a moral pluralist, one can do justice to this plurality only by also being an epistemic and justificatory pluralist in ethics. (B) In philosophy, pluralism and its opposite, monism, characterize philosophical methods. Many philosophers seek to reduce everything to a single principle (utilitarians reduce the good to utility, deontologists the right to reason). To preserve monism, they must therefore demonstrate that everything incompatible with this principle is irrelevant. By contrast, pluralists accommodate contradictions, conflicts, ambiguities, and vagueness within their systems. In this sense, intuitionists (intuitionism) in philosophy are pluralists.

poiesis vs. praxis  (Or: poietic vs. practical action) This distinction differentiates between two classes of actions. Poietic actions are productive actions (from the Greek poiein = to make, procure, sacrifice, turn into something) directed toward an end distinguishable from the action and the agent, in the sense of a manufactured product. Practical actions are actions whose end lies in their performance itself (from the Greek prattein = to act, accomplish, engage in). A craftsperson produces a work that can be enjoyed in use; when one dances, the point—at least when dancing for pleasure—is the enjoyment of the activity itself. (The distinction derives from Aristotle 2011, 6.4–5, 3.1–2, 10.7; cf. Ebert 1976.) The distinction may be interpreted strongly, in which case these are extensionally exclusive classes of actions. An action must then have its end either independently of itself (in the product of the action) or within itself. The distinction may also be interpreted weakly, in which case these are types of action that can be identified as intensionally inclusive aspects of individual actions. A person who produces something (a bread roll) is motivated in the production, on the one hand, by using it (eating the bread roll). Its utility lies in enjoying the product as the external end of producing it. On the other hand, a baker is also talented and called upon in life to produce bread rolls elegantly and to a high standard of quality (artfully). Thus, the manner in which the baker engages in production has an intrinsic value, just as dancing does. One might hold that life as a whole is exclusively practical and not poietic. Yet persons also work on themselves (character formation, training), accomplish something through their lives (results of how they live that merit recognition), and reproduce themselves in their descendants. The intensional interpretation of the distinction might be expressed more adequately (without reference to ends) as follows: every activity can be poietic and practical at the same time (although one or the other may sometimes predominate or be more relevant). An activity is poietic insofar as it can constitute an externalization of the agent: through one’s work, one realizes oneself (one’s ideas, powers, and abilities) in an independent product; yet by working on oneself, one also shapes one’s character or body, which then factually confronts one as an ability or inability. (Externalization has nothing to do with the distinction between internal and external: it concerns only aspects of persons’ motivations.) Poiesis as self-externalizing activity can now be contrasted with praxis as follows: an activity is practical when it concerns aspects of the activity that are, negatively formulated, non-externalizing. Positively formulated, it concerns a person’s authentic remaining with oneself (the factual and ideal “self”) in one’s activity. In this respect, the practical may be described as action in its performance and the poietic as productive action.

psychological ethics  There are different types of experience. (Cf. type/token.) Here, experience means having conscious experiences. (Cf. consciousness.) Types of conscious experience differ from one another. Differences of this kind are at least intuitively clear to us. Perceptions, feelings, affects, reason, and desire are some examples of such types of conscious experience or experience. Evaluative experience, as moral experience, is also such a type. However, evaluative experience is itself highly diverse (feelings, affects, judgments of reason, value expe­rience ... they all vary in strength, intensity, or motivational force). Psychological ethics maintains that moral experience is a particular type of evaluative experience that differs from other experiences (both evaluative and non-evaluative), although we do not apprehend its distinctness intuitively, but only by following philosophical derivations (pure practical reason would be such a type, as would pleasure). The ethicist must methodically “isolate” such types, as a chemist would. Moral experience can therefore be evaluative experience in the broad sense. In psychological ethics, however, it is reconstructed more narrowly: such approaches are therefore revisionist with respect to evaluative experience in the broad sense. Psychological ethics reduces moral experience to a particular type of evaluative experience. Accordingly, its various forms differ in their axiology.

Rationality  Reason.

Revisionism  Revisionism is ambiguous. (A) Every ethics is revisionist insofar as an ethics reflects on morality (articulating and interpreting it) and may thereby arrive at a more or less comprehensive critique. This is the contingent moral revisionism of every ethics, since ordinary morality is generally ethically acceptable. (B) In a narrower ethical sense, every ethics is revisionist, but psychological ethics are particularly revisionist. Since evaluative experience, in its complexity, contradictoriness, and dynamism, is constitutive of common sense, every ethics, as a theory of morality, is a simplification. Psychological ethics are additionally particularly reductive. They are therefore often inadequate in matters of practical orientation. From a metaethical perspective, the concept of ethical revisionism thus aims to clarify the scope of ethics (cf. Chapter 2).

subjective vs. objective  This pair of opposites is often used unclearly in epistemology and ethics (a). This lack of clarity has strategic reasons (b). (ad a) Something can be subjective in the (i) epistemic, (ii) ontological, or (iii) validity-theoretical sense. These distinctions are independent of the differences between (iv) abstract/concrete and (v) general/specific. (ad i) In the epistemic sense, that which is an object in consciousness is subjective. An essential feature of consciousness is that its occurrences (conscious experiences) are private. Epistemically, they are directly accessible only to the person concerned. For others, they are epistemically accessible only indirectly through utterances and actions/behavior. Objective in this respect is everything that is also publicly accessible. (ad ii) In the ontological sense, everything whose existence depends on consciousness is subjective. This feature is also often formulated as follows: "..., that which depends on the operations of subjectivity." It is unclear, however, whether subjectivity, as distinct from consciousness, exists. Thus, toothache exists subjectively, even if it results objectively from an inflamed nerve that exists independently of consciousness. No one knows how the inflammation manifests itself in sensation as conscious pain. That which exists objectively is known from the epistemic observer perspective (natural science); that which exists subjectively is known from the participant perspective (non-natural science). (ad iii) In the sense of validity or justification theory, that which applies only to me or with respect to me (is right, good, appropriate, valuable, etc.) can be subjective. Objective would be that which applies to at least more persons, situations, actions, character traits, etc. than to me or mine. Mathematical reflections are thus subjective (i) and possibly subjective or objective (ii), but in any case objective (iii). For the epistemically subjective comprehension of a mathematical proof apprehends something that is objectively valid. Heteropsychological experiences of pleasure are presumably epistemically and ontologically subjective, but can be valid in the objective sense. Joy in what is valuable is an example of this. (ad iv) The abstract is "detached" (from the Latin abstrahere = to draw away). It can be epistemically, motivationally, or ontologically detached. If one follows advice that one does not understand, one follows an idea that is abstract for oneself and may subsequently gain a concrete understanding through experience (Historical Experience). By contrast, consider a complex choreography (waltz) and a set of instructions (sequence of steps). If one lacks the competence to realize it, it may be motivationally abstract. One must develop a feel for it through dancing and acquire a concrete motivational competence. The abstract can, however, also be that which cognition, through theory, detaches from the world. The world would then be the ontologically concrete point of departure. The abstract in this sense is objective because it has not been subjectively appropriated. (ad v) That which is objective in the sense of validity is often identified with the general and the universal. Moral validity can, however, also be specific. The objective can be highly specific: the moral injustice of a tax system can depend on minute details and be located in them. In addition to this semantic distinction, there is also a distinction pertaining to justification theory. Objective validity in morality is generally characterized by ethicists as universal: something applies to everyone, always, everywhere, categorically, and in every respect (Universalism). But why should there not also be more or less particular validity alongside universal validity? (ad b) The strategic conflation of these distinctions can be discerned in critiques of hedonism. Because pleasure is epistemically and ontologically subjective, it must—so the claim goes—also be subjective in the sense of validity. But this is true only of an idiopsychological concept of pleasure, not of a heteropsychological one. Moreover, it is also often claimed that what is epistemically dependent on consciousness must be ontologically subjective. But private states of consciousness simply cannot be observed. Their nonexistence, unreality, or fictionality does not follow from this (there is at least observable behavior, for which we often posit motivations by way of explanation and understanding). The conflation of these distinctions is a consequence of revisionism in philosophical ethics. Clear answers to questions of practical orientation and general rules are desired; and because people wish to prescribe to others how they should live, validity is supposed to be as universal as possible—for these purposes, a specific epistemology is then devised, and from it a theory of justification suited to that epistemology is derived, which then devalues other epistemological aspects of evaluative experience as merely subjective because they are incompatible with the preferred theory of justification.

Subjectivity  The concept of subjectivity can be developed by distinguishing it from the psychological aspects of empirical and rational psychology. (Cf. Consciousness.) Subjectivity is the object of a transcendental psychology. It is distinct from both rational and empirical psychology. Subjectivity is therefore the condition of possibility of empirical experience and cognition. The structure of subjectivity is "transcendental" insofar as it transcends empirical experience (from the Latin transcendere = to transcend). For the many and diverse empirical representations in consciousness necessitate the assumption either of the mental (such as the "soul" of a rational psychology) or of subjectivity ("pure" or transcendental psychology). Since all diverse appearances (perceptions, feelings, etc.) are experienced by one "I," this "I" is the transcendental unity of self-consciousness. Truth, appropriateness, correctness, etc. find the ground of their validity in this transcendental I, which must not be confused with the empirical I (Petra and Peter Müller, with their virtuous character and valuable attitudes). Moral validity (x is good, appropriate, valuable, etc.) and epistemic validity (y is true) therefore cannot find their justification in empirical consciousness. For (1) the plurality of empirically conscious validity claims leads from factual diversity to internal (and then external) dissent. Consensus thus becomes (2) possible (and unavoidable) only if the dissent is interpreted such that the empirical subjects (I's) fall short of their actual cognitive possibilities as long as they interpret themselves merely as empirical consciousnesses (as perhaps Locke does). Only (3) in the unity of the transcendental I, which makes possible the many different, ordered, and flowing states of consciousness of the empirical I, can questions of validity be resolved. In a rather formal sense, it is self-consciousness as an unchanging unity in which the empirical states of consciousness are ordered categorically and by the understanding according to general concepts and laws. Transcendental psychology traces theoretical and practical knowledge back to the "structure of subjectivity." (There are several different theories of subjectivity in philosophy's creative workshop.) The structure of subjectivity is necessary and universal and thereby secures intersubjective validity claims for empirical subjects. These intersubjective validity claims also include the antipluralistic, noncontradictory, systematic validity of morality. Our knowledge of it is not immediately present in empirical experience but is acquired in the course of a purifying argumentation (critique). In ethics, this is then called "pure practical reason." Whether such a thing exists, however, is disputed. Philosophical interest in "structures of subjectivity" is always derived from a philosophical need for categorical or universal validity of morality, or for the systematicity of ethics (everything fits together without contradiction within a comprehensive conceptual unity of holistic thought). It is therefore invariably antipluralistic and incompatible with the contingency of the evaluative experience of empirical consciousness and with Historical Experience as a justificatory resource of common sense.

type vs. token  The distinction between type (type) and occurrence (token) is a useful conceptual instrument of analytic philosophy of language. It distinguishes the ontological meaning of statements. For example, there are two true answers to the question of how many animals are in a meadow containing 5 cows, 3 pigs, and 70 ants. By type, there are 3. By token, there are 78. If an ethicist defines the virtue of persons such that reason, with the aid of affects, should control desire, then reason, affects, and desire are, on the one hand, tokens: in particularist moral psychologies, the control of desires is initially an ontological occurrence (modules or functional domains exert causal effects upon one another). Since one has no immediate consciousness of these "modules," however, one can also ask whether a particular state of consciousness, as an occurrence, is an expression of one capacity or another and therefore falls under one or another type of consciousness.

Universalism  Validity in ethics is universal if it is noncontingent in four respects: what is right, good, appropriate, or valuable must apply independently of (a) temporal, (b) spatial, and (c) distributive changes. The universal character of validity is best understood by considering that universal norms apply (d) "categorically"—they apply "unconditionally." Whatever is valid is valid always, everywhere, and for everyone. These conditions are not formal, however; rather, they concern a sense that validity is "uncompromising." Noncontingency in this sense detaches moral validity from a common sense that, as an ethics, develops its concept of validity in terms of Historical Experience. Historical Experience is contingent. Some ethics advocate universalism in this sense (a–d). Universality must, however, be distinguished from two further pairs of opposites: (1) generality vs. specificity, (2) abstractness vs. concreteness. (ad 1) Validity claims for which universality is asserted are often formulated in highly general terms ("Lying is forbidden!"). But the norm could also state: Lying is permitted for blue-eyed persons in Paris in all emergencies occurring on the morning of a sunny day. This norm would be specific, but could (depending on the ethics) apply universally in the a-b-c-d sense. For the fact that something applies to someone with respect to something and under certain conditions does not yet necessarily make the character of its validity contingent. (ad 2) Because of their revisionist character, universalist concepts of validity are often regarded as abstract. This means that the experience of universal validities depends only on a particular type of experience, rather than on a person's entire (concrete) evaluative experience. Yet no one has so far clearly demonstrated that the validity claims of common sense cannot be universal in the a-b-c-d sense. (The validity of idiopsychological pleasure is certainly "uncompromising.") For although Historical Experience is contingent, and hence so is validity in a common-sense ethics, there may also be a noncontingent realm of ideas (cf. Chapter 9, Platonic value ethics) to which we must relate ourselves anew time and again (and thus contingently). Concrete ethics can be universalist, provided one does not require moral validity to be universal (a) always, (b) everywhere, (c) for everyone, (d) uncompromisingly, and (e) in every respect.

Reason  Reason is (a) a particular type of mental phenomenon in the sense of empirical psychology (consciousness), or (b) a more or less universal principle of validity, or (c) the moral value of impartiality, or (d) an ambivalent principle for imperatives in action. (regarding a) As a type of experience, reason can best be reconstructed within the framework of particularist moral psychologies: In experiences of addiction, reason often struggles against desire. However, there are also affects for whose emotional and motivational aspects rational conceptions are constitutive. Thus, the philosophical claim that reason exists as distinct from other types of mental phenomena is not without alternatives. (regarding b) In ethics, reason appears particularly useful as a justificatory resource. By analogy with rational thought in logic or mathematics, an ethics of reason is intended to provide uniform answers, across the boundaries of individuals and cultures, to questions concerning the binding force of practical orientation. The same reason (cf. a) is accessible to every rational being as a justificatory resource that is intersubjectively intelligible and equally binding. The binding force of reason is often characterized as universal. Reason in this sense limits the complexity and creativity of moral consciousness (everyday morality, historical experience). To this extent, reason as a justificatory principle within a theory of validity is useful in conflicts with grave morally explosive potential. Yet it repeatedly happens that one person’s universal reason says “Yes!” while another’s says “No!”. (regarding c) Owing to the intersubjective validity of reason in some philosophical articulations of this concept, it affords anyone who adopts its perspective an impartial view of moral matters (moral point of view). Thus, wherever impartiality is morally required, one should perhaps make use of one’s reason. (regarding d) Reason and rationality are often distinguished from one another, with the latter then understood as “instrumental” reason. In deontological ethics, reason is the capacity for moral insight that, when successfully exercised, enables everyone to recognize what their duty consists in. Although duties cannot be derived from reason, reason is our epistemic access to our duties. In acting from duty, there is then a necessarily justificatory and necessarily motivating relation between the moral value of the action and the action itself. As the source of our conceptions of duty, reason supplies unconditional imperatives. Actions can, however, also be characterized as rational in another sense: If one wishes to achieve this or that end, then this or that may appear useful, appropriate, or valuable. And there may be alternative ways of achieving the end, among which one can make a reasoned choice. Thus, the rational imperatives of action are (i) not necessarily bound to the moral quality of the ends and (ii) not necessarily bound to the ends in a one-to-one manner. Because their rationality is conditional in this way, they are called hypothetical imperatives. Whether unconditional imperatives truly exist is disputed. For, with reference to (b) and (c), the universality and impartiality of reason could also be interpreted as our instrument for realizing a social community of equals. There is some reason to think that both (b, c) are sometimes necessary to realize equality. Yet the social value of equality is historically contingent. In the morality of estate-based societies, reason serves a particular and partisan inequality. In this sense, can be interpreted as hypothetical imperatives that may be regarded as non-hypothetical only because we are, as a matter of principle, unwilling to call the value of equality into question. (Other respectable cultures, and we ourselves at other times, do so, however!)

Value  Value-perception

Value-perception  Value-perception is a coined term modeled on perception. One experiences oneself as a person who, in life, is confronted with situations, other persons, the world as a whole, and an infinite abundance of “things.” This confrontation is an experience of everything we encounter (intuition). Yet these things do not merely confront us; we also evaluate them (in the sense of feelings or affects). In the broad sense, value-perception is nothing other than evaluative experience. In the narrower sense, it is understood as evaluative experience qua moral experience. Whether value-perception is interpreted narrowly or broadly also depends on whether one holds that every experience is morally evaluative. Values are the objects of value-perception.

Evaluation  Value-perception