Abstracts
The following papers have been accepted for presentation at AAP 2013. If you've just submitted an abstract, it may take a few days to appear.
| Name: Mr Dejan Simkovic |
| Institution: The University of Sydney |
| Title: Clarke and Hume on moral phenomenology: an unlikely alliance against skepticism |
| Abstract: It is common knowledge that Samuel Clarke is one of the primary targets of Hume’s attack on ‘moral rationalism’. What is less known, however, and what can be useful to metaethics in general and moral epistemology in particular, is the fact that Clarke and Hume shared a commitment to reality of ‘moral distinctions’, a commitment of fundamental importance to both philosophers. What is more, this commitment is grounded in yet another commitment found in Clarke’s and Hume’s otherwise radically different theories on the nature of moral discourse and practice. That is, not only did Clarke and Hume aim to show that we can and do acquire knowledge of the distinction between, say, ‘right’ and ‘wrong’, but they both considered moral phenomenology to be of crucial significance in this positive or anti-skeptical project in moral epistemology. Hence, this paper’s purpose is to bring to surface this unlikely and often neglected alliance between Clarke and Hume – call it ‘Clarke-Hume alliance’ – and to suggest that Clarke-Hume alliance can help us to make two points: first, moral phenomenology is neutral to epistemic and ontological debates about the nature of morality; second, it can generate uniform or unified descriptions of moral discourse and practice. |
| Keywords: David Hume, Samuel Clarke, Moral Phenomenology, Skepticism, Moral Epistemology |
