Dr David Faraci david.n.faraci@durham.ac.uk
Associate Professor
Brown on Mackie: Echoes of the Lottery Paradox
Faraci, David
Authors
Abstract
In “The possibility of morality,” Phil Brown considers whether moral error theory is best understood as a necessary or contingent thesis. Among other things, Brown contends that the argument from relativity, offered by John Mackie—error theory’s progenitor—supports a stronger modal reading of error theory. His argument is as follows: Mackie’s is an abductive argument that error theory is the best explanation for divergence in moral practices. Since error theory will likewise be the best explanation for similar divergences in possible worlds similar to our own, we may conclude that error theory is true at all such worlds, just as it is in the actual world. I contend that Brown’s argument must fail, as abductive arguments cannot support the modal conclusions he suggests. I then consider why this is the case, concluding that Brown has stumbled upon new and interesting evidence that agglomerating one’s beliefs can be epistemically problematic—an issue associated most famously with Henry Kyburg’s lottery paradox.
Citation
Faraci, D. (2012). Brown on Mackie: Echoes of the Lottery Paradox. Philosophia, 41(3), 751-755. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-012-9397-y
Journal Article Type | Article |
---|---|
Acceptance Date | Sep 24, 2012 |
Online Publication Date | Oct 6, 2012 |
Publication Date | Oct 6, 2012 |
Deposit Date | Aug 31, 2018 |
Publicly Available Date | Mar 28, 2024 |
Journal | Philosophia |
Print ISSN | 0048-3893 |
Electronic ISSN | 1574-9274 |
Publisher | Springer |
Peer Reviewed | Peer Reviewed |
Volume | 41 |
Issue | 3 |
Pages | 751-755 |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-012-9397-y |
Files
Accepted Journal Article
(190 Kb)
PDF
Copyright Statement
This is a post-peer-review, pre-copyedit version of an article published in Philosophia. The final authenticated version is available online at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11406-012-9397-y
You might also like
On Leaving Space for Altruism
(2021)
Journal Article
Review of Methodology and Moral Philosophy
(2019)
Journal Article
Moral Perception and the Reliability Challenge
(2019)
Journal Article
Groundwork for an Explanationist Account of Epistemic Coincidence
(2019)
Journal Article
Wage Exploitation and the Nonworseness Claim: Allowing the Wrong, to Do More Good
(2019)
Journal Article
Downloadable Citations
About Durham Research Online (DRO)
Administrator e-mail: dro.admin@durham.ac.uk
This application uses the following open-source libraries:
SheetJS Community Edition
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
PDF.js
Apache License Version 2.0 (http://www.apache.org/licenses/)
Font Awesome
SIL OFL 1.1 (http://scripts.sil.org/OFL)
MIT License (http://opensource.org/licenses/mit-license.html)
CC BY 3.0 ( http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/)
Powered by Worktribe © 2024
Advanced Search