Tenure
October 7 – November 1, 2019
Eric Campbell
Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of Maryland, Baltimore County
Eric Campbell is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. He received his doctorate in philosophy from the University of California, San Diego, and spent a year as a Visiting Professor in the McDonough School of Business and Department of Philosophy at Georgetown University. His current research is focused on developing and integrating multiple strands of a large project in metaethics, the unifying aim of which is to promote the cultivation of self-awareness in ethics.
One strand of this project consists of arguing that all ethical judgments are made from the perspective of actual human desires or concerns. Another offers a critical evaluation of moral discourse, with an emphasis on the ‘categorical,’ or attitude-transcendent character of paradigmatic moral judgments, and the central roles that punitive reactive attitudes and self- and social signaling play in our moral thought and talk. The final strand consists of arguing for a new methodology for metaethical inquiry, according to which metaethicists would investigate the functions of ethical concepts as part of a larger effort to improve our conceptual repertoire. His critique of moral discourse aims to exemplify this methodology, arguing that a central function of moral concepts is to stabilize and strengthen the practical attitudes associated with norm-adherence, and that this function relies on inhibiting awareness of the nature of the motivations that generate moral judgments, often leading us to unwittingly undermine our deepest values. Future research plans include an effort to integrate nonconceptual bodily awareness, especially as developed in Vipassana meditation, into a larger ethical-spiritual project centered on cultivating awareness.
Events
Wednesday, October 30, 2019
3:30-5:30 pm
Haldeman 41 (Kreindler Conference Hall)
Sapientia Lecture Series:
Pragmatic Naturalism: A New Methodology for Metaethics and Metamorals
Nearly 150 years ago, Nietzsche recommended and attempted an evaluation of the value of our inherited concepts, especially moral concepts. Since such concepts have plausibly been developed and maintained by nonnormative forces of selection and ideology, he suggested that this project in conceptual ethics be undertaken from a skeptical perspective. Eric Campbell argues that this project ought to be a central part of metaethics, and for pragmatic naturalism as a methodology for pursuing it. Pragmatic naturalism has two primary goals. The first is to provide functional explanations of problematic or otherwise interesting philosophical concepts. The second is to draw on these use-explanations in order to do conceptual ethics. He tries to show that three widespread and interacting assumptions obscure the importance of the project that Nietzsche recommended, and that pragmatic naturalism is a promising methodology for undertaking it. The first assumption is that investigating the semantics of moral discourse is an important part of doing moral metaphysics, since such an approach can play a vital role in defending or defeating moral error theory. The second is that error theory is a necessary prelude to any systematic critique of moral discourse. The third is, in the words of Richard Joyce, “the unexamined assumption that morality is a Good Thing without which we’d all be worse off.” He tries to show that a skeptical and pragmatically naturalistic approach to metamorals can illuminate what is wrong with these assumptions. In particular, he tries to show how these assumptions have combined to obscure the fact that several metaethical views purporting to vindicate moral discourse by protecting it from error theory not only fail to vindicate it, but strongly support the most common normative critique of moral discourse, namely that it systematically inhibits important forms of self-awareness, resulting in myriad downstream pathologies.
