Ross F. Patrizio

This paper examines the nature of the specific grasp involved in moral understanding. After discussing Hills's ability account of that central component of moral understanding in light of problematic cases, I argue that moral grasp is best conceived of as a type of knowledge that is grounded in a subject's moral appreciation. I then show how and why the relevant notion of moral appreciation is connected to moral virtues and to one's affective and motivational engagement with moral reasons. Finally, I discuss the connection between moral appreciation and a subject's ability to offer moral explanations in relation to the debate between pessimists and optimists about moral understanding's testimonial transmission.

This article takes issue with two prominent views in the current debate around epistemic partiality in friendship. Strong views of epistemic partiality hold that friendship may require biased beliefs in direct conflict with epistemic norms. Weak views hold that friendship may place normative expectations on belief formation but in a manner that does not violate these norms. It is argued that neither view succeeds in explaining the relationship between epistemic norms and friendship norms. Weak views inadvertently endorse a form of motivated reasoning, failing to resolve the normative clash they seek to avoid. Strong views turn out to be incoherent once we consider the question of whether the requirement to form an epistemically partial belief is independent of whether the belief in question would be true. It is then argued that an epistemology of friendship should recognise the special role that understanding plays in friendship. On this view, friendship normatively requires understanding the truth about our friends. This entails that epistemic partiality, far from being a requirement, is in fact at odds with good friendship.

Practice-dependent approaches to moral responsibility appeal to our practices of moral responsibility in order to identify and justify the conditions for holding each other responsible. Yet, our practices are shaped by oppressive norms. For example, attributions of praise can be shaped by ableist norms, antifat norms, and norms of toxic positivity. I argue that such cases pose methodological and justificatory challenges for practice-dependent approaches of various stripes. In considering what resources these approaches might have to confront these challenges, I formulate some supplementary norms for theorizing about our practices of moral responsibility and for structuring those practices themselves. This paper makes the following novel contributions: First, it advances examples that show that reactive attitudes can be oppressive irrespective of patterns of comparative distribution. Second, it articulates the implications of oppressive reactive attitudes for a range of post-Strawsonian approaches to moral responsibility. Third, it more fully articulates the norms that ought to shape our responsibility practices and locates them in relation to two recently proposed approaches to moral responsibility, from Shoemaker and Ciurria.

It's often thought that when we reason to new judgments in inference, we aim at believing the truth, and that this aim of ours can explain important psychological and normative features of belief. I reject this picture: the structure of aimed activity shows that inference is not guided by a truth‐aim. This finding clears the way for a positive understanding of how epistemic goods feature in our doxastic lives. We can indeed make sense of many of our inquisitive and deliberative activities as undertaken in pursuit of such goods; but the evidence‐guided inferences in which those activities culminate will require a different theoretical approach.