Cecilie Eriksen

Moral certainty is a growing research area in philosophy with implications for current debates on hinge epistemology, moral change and deep moral disagreements. Despite several distinctive lines of disagreement, two assumptions are shared in the current discussion of moral certainty. The first is the acknowledgement of Wittgenstein's work On Certainty as the main source of inspiration. The second is the understanding that Wittgenstein's later writings do not feature any work on the topic of moral certainty. In this article, we challenge the latter standard assumption. We show that Wittgenstein did consider examples of moral certainty and can also be said to have a conception of moral certainty in his later writings. This paves the way for future scholars to turn to Wittgenstein's writings not only as a source of inspiration for work on moral certainty, but also as a direct source of insight into this specific topic.

In this chapter, we propose that contextual ethics combines two commitments. One is the minimalistic metaethical assumption that ethics arises as part of and can only be approached through an understanding of a specific context and thus is irreducibly shaped by context, and the other is a commitment to a way of doing work in moral philosophy that honours this metaethical view by acknowledging that investigating and describing a moral issue in context and understanding the normative challenges it poses are two sides of the same coin. To provide some background for these commitments, we describe the historical roots of a contextualised approach to ethics and provide an overview of some major influences. We then offer one way to spell out the two core commitments. The metaethical commitment is developed in terms of a rejection of the ideas of a moral domain and a settled fact-value dichotomy combined with a commitment to the contextuality of ethics that brings out how in moral philosophy, descriptive and normative work is connected. The methodological commitment is developed through a survey of some of the many different ways in which context can be brought into prominence in philosophical investigations. In general, we aim to provide a framework for contextual ethics that shows the importance, and indeed necessity, of increased attention to context in contemporary philosophy.

The philosophy of science has long debated the methodological challenges associated with employing historical case studies. Among the key challenges encountered in undertaking this form of contextual philosophy of science are ‘construction bias’ and ‘selection bias’. In this chapter, I contend that these methodological concerns can be pertinent to moral philosophers who utilize case studies within the family of approaches comprising the field of contextual ethics. However, the chapter is also a text experiment.

The power of technology to transform religions, science, and political institutions has often been presented as nothing short of revolutionary. Does technology have a similarly transformative influence on societies’ morality? Scholars have not rigorously investigated the role of technology in moral revolutions, even though existing research on technomoral change suggests that this role may be considerable. In this paper, we explore what the role of technology in moral revolutions, understood as processes of radical group-level moral change, amounts to. We do so by investigating four historical episodes of radical moral change in which technology plays a noteworthy role. Our case-studies illustrate the plurality of mechanisms involved in technomoral revolutions, but also suggest general patterns of technomoral change, such as technology’s capacity to stabilize and destabilize moral systems, and to make morally salient phenomena visible or invisible. We find several leads to expand and refine conceptual tools for analysing moral change, specifically by crystallizing the notions of ‘technomoral niche construction’ and ‘moral payoff mechanisms’. Coming to terms with the role of technology in radical moral change, we argue, enriches our understanding of moral revolutions, and alerts us to the depths of which technology can change our societies in wanted and unwanted ways.

Moral certainty refers to those aspects of morality- moral acting, feeling, and thinking-that are beyond doubt, explanation, and justification. The essays in this book explore the concept of moral certainty and its application and usefulness in contemporary moral debates. The notion of moral certainty, which is inspired by the philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein, is emerging as a key reference point in contemporary moral philosophy. An investigation of the implications of moral certainty is called for, given that so many discussions in moral philosophy concern the possibility of justifying our moral beliefs. The concept of moral certainty also feeds directly into the emerging field of hinge epistemolo,gy. The chapters in this volume tackle the following issues: meta-questions around whether and how we can make sense of the concept of moral certainty; the role of moral certainty in contemporary debates on gender, racism, bias and historically unjust practices; ways in which radical change in society engendered by new technologies might affect moral certainties; the role of the notion of moral certainty in the debates on free will and moral responsibility. Philosophical Perspectives on Moral Certainty will appeal to researchers and advanced students working on ethics and moral philosophy, epistemology, philosophy of technology, and Wittgenstein.

A prominent trend in moral philosophy today is the interest in the rich textures of actual human practices and lives. This has prompted engagements with other disciplines, such as anthropology, history, literature, law and empirical science, which have produced various forms ofcontextual ethics. These engagements motivate reflections on why and how context is important ethically, and such metaethical reflection is what this article undertakes. Inspired by the work of the later Wittgenstein and the Danish theologian K.E. Løgstrup, I first describe one of the ways in which context plays a central role with regard to ethical meaning and normativity. I then examine how ‘context’ is to be defined, and finally I discuss some of the questions which arise when giving context prominence in ethics – namely, how to delimit the scope of relevant context, the relevant traits of a particular context and what ‘the ethical’ is.

“Don’t think, but look!” (Wittgenstein 2009: § 66). This insistient advice has served as methodological inspiration for several influential thinkers in the broad range of ‘empirically informed’ philosophy, which has flourished over the last decades. There is, however, a worrisome tension between Wittgenstein’s work and these turns to practices, history, science, field work, and everyday life: Wittgenstein is in general doing something different from what the thinkers who claim to be inspired by him are doing. An argument for the legitimacy of the move from Wittgenstein to empirically informed philosophy is so far missing in the literature. This article shows how this move can be justifiable within a Wittgensteinian frame, philosophically beneficial, and at times even necessary.

In the last few decades, several philosophers have written on the topic of moral revolutions, distinguishing them from other kinds of society-level moral change. This article surveys recent accounts of moral revolutions in moral philosophy. Different authors use quite different criteria to pick out moral revolutions. Features treated as relevant include radicality, depth or fundamentality, pervasiveness, novelty and particular causes. We also characterize the factors that have been proposed to cause moral revolutions, including anomalies in existing moral codes, changing honour codes, art, economic conditions and individuals or groups. Finally, we discuss what accounts of moral revolutions have in common, how they differ and how moral revolutions are distinguished from other kinds of moral change, such as drift and reform.