Academic

Robinson on Moral Holism

By Lawrence Solum

Luke Robinson has posted Moral Holism, the Additive Fallacy, and the ?Atomistic? Model on the Internet. Here is the abstract:

The ?atomistic? model can model the intuitions that motivate both moral holism?the view that moral valence is variable?and Shelley Kagan?s claim that the additive fallacy is indeed a fallacy. This suggests that we can accept that the additive fallacy is, in fact, a fallacy without rejecting moral atomism; that we can reject both the additive model and the additive assumption without rejecting moral atomism; and that we can resist moral holism by simply allowing that the governing function is non-additive. Against all of this, I argue that the ?atomistic? model is best seen as a mathematical model of moral holism; that if it is seen otherwise, its coherence is in doubt; and that even if it can be shown to be a coherent alternative to moral holism, the latter does a considerably better job of capturing the relevant intuitions. Taken together, these arguments show not only that the moral atomist may well be committed to both the additive model and the additive assumption, and hence to denying that the additive fallacy is a fallacy, but also that the ?atomistic? model is of no use to moral atomists in resisting moral holism.

Full post as published by Legal Theory Blog on April 03, 2008 (boomark / email).