Abstract

This dissertation analyzes two recent attempts at developing a cognitivist, yet ontologically uncontroversial, account of moral value. The first I call "Wittgensteinian" due to the influence of Ludwig Wittgenstein's later philosophy on representative authors; the second is Jurgen Habermas' discourse ethics. Although these positions differ in many important respects, they found their analyses on a shared pragmatic assumption. Specifically, they maintain that understanding what is involved in moral reasoning, and thereby the comprehension of moral value, amounts to understanding the rules that govern the meaning and acceptance of moral judgments within a language community. I conclude that Wittgensteinian insights support several informative criticisms of Habermas' theory. ;Although I do not attribute any specific views to Wittgenstein himself, I identify, on the basis of a few strands of his later thought, a number of theses which contribute to a promising account of moral value. To the extent that moral claims are, in Wittgenstein's terms, grammatically autonomous from empirical or scientific judgments, I argue that the process of moral judgment involves the perception of distinct patterns of natural events that serve as reasons to think, act, or behave in a certain manner. This account is immune from the rehearsed objection that Wittgensteinian approaches endorse a problematic form of ethical relativism. ;Habermas' account of moral judgment is premised on the contention that the meaning of moral claims can be universally reconstructed in terms of what judgments could survive an idealized process of argumentation. In addition to being skeptical that the forms of reasoning encapsulated in moral judgments can be described in universal terms, I contend that Habermas' project fails to adequately address the role and importance of particular cases in moral judgment. I conclude that a Wittgensteinian approach may be interested in the role of argumentative discourse in the resolution of disputes; however, this interest is substantive rather than procedural. Argumentation can be part of a larger set of ethical commitments rather than a necessary precondition to moral reasoning as such