Browsing by Author "Nissinen, Hannu"

In this thesis we present and defend an account of morality, which represents principled particularism. Principled particularism holds that there is no fixed and finite set of finite moral principles, which entails all moral judgements. On the other hand, principled particularism claims that for any particular moral judgement there is a finite set of finite moral principles which entails that judgement. Our version of principled particularism is based on default moral reasons and their logic. Default reasons are divided into foundational and derived default reasons and their logic is nonmonotonic. Foundational default reasons play the role of basic moral beliefs, whereas derived default reasons are based on them. The nonmonotonicity of the logic is caused by the plausible assumption that moral reasons behave holistically - a reason can have a different moral import in different contexts. We also discuss a few rival doctrines, which are either based on certain defeasible moral generalizations or hedged moral principles. We conclude that defeasible generalizations face epistemological problems and hedged moral principles are too weak to capture all of ethics. Finally, we discuss some features in our account and compare it to the well-known method of narrow reflective equilibrium.