Aline Dammel

The world in which we move as human agents is, in crucial respects, a deeply personal one. Perceptions of meaning and significance, as well as pathways for action, are partly shaped by each person's idiosyncratic psychological constitution. This insight, long familiar to psychoanalytically inclined thinkers, also plays a central role in the moral philosophy of Iris Murdoch. The aim of this paper is to highlight this point of connection between psychoanalytical thinking and Murdochian moral philosophy, thereby presenting Murdoch as a prime source of inspiration for building bridges between areas of philosophy that are often assumed to be opposed or playing different games altogether. Thus, Murdoch's repeated emphasis--despite her commitment to the impersonal reality of the Good--on the often highly personal, or even private, dimension of moral insight and action will be reconsidered in a new interpretive framework.

When we use so-called predicates of personal taste to talk about an object, we express our subjective experience of the object. There is no objective truth about whether a given thing is, say, funny. I shall argue that it can make sense to argue about matters of taste anyway because (a) there are good reasons to want to change our interlocutor’s relevant experience, and (b) disputes about taste can bring about such a change. These reasons can be moral or political. My argument serves to connect debates in the philosophy of language, social epistemology, and ideology theory in illuminating ways.