Indeterminacy in Ethics

Indeterminacy in Ethics

Ratio One-Day Conference

25 April 2015

Philosophers acknowledge that vagueness is pervasive, and there has recently been a lot of  interesting work on vagueness and rational choice. But vagueness seems to raise distinctive problems  for ethical theory in particular. Representative questions include:

• does ethical vagueness have any implications for moral metaphysics?
• if it's implausible that there is a minimum threshold for 'tall', can there be one for 'acceptable  level of charitable donation'?
• if not, can we make sense of indeterminacy in which actions are better or permissible?
• how ought moral agents act under such indeterminacy?

In this one-day conference, we’ll bring together several leading philosophers to discuss this  emerging area of research.

Speakers:

• Sara Bernstein (Duke)
• Cristian Constantinescu (Birkbeck)
• Tom Dougherty (Cambridge)
• JRG Williams (Leeds)

Generously supported by Wiley and the Mind Association. We have tried to keep registration costs as low as possible: £20 for staff, £10 for graduate students, and £5 for undergraduate students.