Ethical Inquiry with Non-Epistemic Aims? (Co-authored with Tristram McPherson)

David Plunkett (Dartmouth College)

ABSTRACT: Most recent philosophical work on inquiry takes it to have a distinctively epistemic aim, such as promoting understanding, knowledge, or true beliefs. However, many philosophers have long thought – or at least have been tempted by – the idea that (at least) distinctively ethical inquiry should aim at something practical as well. We explore this idea, and introduce a broad framework for evaluating it. Our discussion highlights potentially illuminating ways of understanding, or further developing, existing positions within ethical theory, including ideas tied to contractualism, critical theory, and feminism. Moreover, it makes salient relatively neglected normative questions for further research; questions about what we should aim to do in ethical theory, as well as which concepts we should use within it.