Andrew Sneddon

Alternative motivation: a new challenge to moral judgment internalism

Internalists argue that there is a necessary connection between motivation and moral judgment. The examination of cases plays an important role in philosophical debate about internalism. This debate has focused on cases concerning the failure to act in accordance with a moral judgment, for one reason or another. I call these failure cases. I argue that a different sort of case is also relevant to this debate. This sort of case is characterized by (1) moral judgment and (2) behavior that accords with the content of the moral judgment but that has been performed not because of the moral judgment. Instead it is due to some other source of motivation. I call these alternative motivation cases. I distinguish two sorts of alternative motivation cases, and I argue that externalists have natural explanations of these cases. By contrast, extant internalist accounts of failure cases are inadequate when applied to alternative motivation cases.

Naturalistic Study of Culture

In Explaining Culture (1996), Dan Sperber argues for the naturalization of anthropology through conjunction with cognitive psychology. Culture is to be explained in terms of the production and spread of representations. I charge Sperber with two errors. First, his view of culture, given in terms of thoughts natives have about their social settings, is too inert. By contrast, to participate in a culture is to do things as much as it is to have thoughts. Second, Sperber focuses on the wrong sort of mental representations for his naturalization project. Instead of propositional knowledge, I argue we should be much more concerned with know-how, which is easily linked to the culturally specific skills deployed in participation in a culture. Through development of these charges, an alternative way of studying culture naturalistically is developed. This conception, unlike Sperbers, does not amount to the psychologization of anthropology.

Consent and the Acquisition of Organs for Transplantation

HEC Forum (2009) 21(1): 55–69DOI 10.1007/s10730-009-9087-8

A New Kantian Response to Maxim-Fiddling

There has long been a suspicion that Kants test for the universalizability of maxims can be easily subverted: instead of risking failing the test, design your maxim for any action whatsoever in a manner guaranteed to pass. This is the problem of maxim-fiddling. The present discussion of this problem has two theses: 1] That extant approaches to maxim-fiddling are not satisfactory; 2] That a satisfactory response to maxim-fiddling can be articulated using Kantian resources, especially the first two formulations of the categorical imperative. This approach to maxim-fiddling draws our attention to a Kantian notion of an offence against morality itself that has largely been overlooked.

Prioritizing Non-Human Bioengineering

S. M. Liao, A. Sandberg, and R. Roache (2012) make a persuasive case for adding human engineering (HE) to the options we should be considering to respond to climate change. They are particularly concerned to recommend the engineering of humans over ‘geoengineering’. However, they overlook an important option: the use of engineering technologies to change non-human species, ‘non-human bioengineering’ (NHBE). Although the domain NHBE includes more than animal species, the present focus will mostly be on non-human animals. Here are the reasons for adding NHBE to the array of engineering options considered by Liao et al. (2012):

Interpreting Sperber: A Response

In ‘Naturalistic Study of Culture’ (2003), I criticized the account of the explanation of culture that Dan Sperber offers in Explaining Culture(1996). I argued that Sperber unduly overemphasized the explicit propositional, or propositionally expressible, beliefs of native members of cultures to be explained. The result was a neglect of the importance of skills and overt activities in the constitution of a culture, and of the tacitly represented know-how that is an important part of the cognitive underpinning of such skills and activity. In his response, Sperber (2003) argues that I have badly misrepresented his position. He claims that he does not represent culture as inert. Moreover, he claims to give a very important role to tacit representations in the explanation of culture. Further, he objects to my characterization of his position as reductive. He cites portions of Explaining Culture in response to my criticisms. My present purpose is to examine Explaining Cultureclosely to show that I did not misrepresent Sperber’s position, and that therefore my original arguments stand.