Abstract

Daniel C. Maguire (1978, 1982) has presented a moral theory based on affective experiences. He sees this sort of theory as protection against ethical relativism as well as leading toward a morality necessarily based on religion. Along the way, ethical reductionism is discarded. This paper argues that precisely the opposite has happened. Maguire is open to the charge of ethical relativism and so loses religion as a base. A sense can be given to ethical reductionism and to what Maguire terms "the intellectual fallacy" such that the reductionism is no enemy and the fallacy, no fallacy.