Ethics Without Principles

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Abstract
The book is in three parts. The first part discusses the nature of contributory reasons, set in the more general context of normative theory. It introduces and defends a distinction between reasons and enabling conditions, and considers some other roles that considerations that are morally relevant but not reasons might play. It also asks which meta-ethical positions have the tools necessary to capture the role of contributory reasons. The second part uses these results to argue for holism in the theory of reasons, and to construct an argument from that holism to particularism in ethics, which is characterised as the view that moral thought and judgement in no way depend on a suitable provision of moral principles. There is also a chapter on the epistemology of moral reasons, from a particularist point of view. The third part is concerned with the theory of value, in particular with a form of holism there which is analogous to holism in the theory of reasons. There is a final chapter on holism in the theory of choice.

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