Abstract
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues that moral disagreement and widespread moral bias pose a serious problem for moral intuitionism. Seneca’s view that we just recognise the good could be criticised using a similar argument. His approach to argumentation offers a way out, one that may serve as a model for a revisionary intuitionism.
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues that moral disagreement and widespread moral bias pose a serious problem for moral intuitionism. Seneca’s view that we just recognise the good could be criticised using a similar argument. His approach to argumentation offers a way out, one that may serve as a model for a revisionary intuitionism.
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Notes
- 1.
This is a particular use of the word ‘intuitions’ which appears to be popular in meta-ethics. It brackets the question of whether intuitions are fast, phenomenologically distinctive, particularly compelling, and so on.
- 2.
- 3.
Other lines of response have been developed to Sinnott-Armstrong’s argument. Jonathan Smith criticises the details of Sinnott-Armstrong’s case that our moral beliefs are unreliable in [10]. Julia Hermann has questioned Sinnott-Armstrong’s assumption that moral reasoners assign probabilities to their moral beliefs in [4]. As we will see, what is appealing about Seneca’s view is that it, like Huemer’s response, shows how philosophical practice could be altered to take into account the very real concerns that underlie Sinnott-Armstrong’s argument.
- 4.
These ‘arguments’ don’t correspond to many definitions of argument. But their role in Seneca’s philosophical writing—namely, that of rational persuasion—and his systematic study of them alongside things that clearly count as arguments, speak in favour of applying the term.
- 5.
Seneca does not use the word ‘illusions’, but he does say that we are ‘deceived by the things’, for example at EM 45.5–6.
- 6.
De Finibus III.50–54.
- 7.
EM 71.24–36.
- 8.
EM 71.30–34.
- 9.
24.4.
- 10.
24.11–13.
- 11.
My translation of EM 87. Hanc praecedentem causam divitiae habent: inflant animos, superbiam pariunt, invidiam contrahunt, et usque eo mentem alienant ut fama pecuniae nos etiam nocitura delectet [32]. Bona autem omnia carere culpa decet; pura sunt, non corrumpunt animos, non sollicitant; extollunt quidem et dilatant, sed sine tumore. Quae bona sunt fiduciam faciunt, divitiae audaciam; quae bona sunt magnitudinem animi dant, divitiae insolentiam. Nihil autem aliud est insolentia quam species magnitudinis falsa.
- 12.
Presumably we have to be careful here to differentiate a person trying to become virtuous from a person trying to gain approval.
- 13.
Malcolm Schofield has argued, through an appeal to Occham’s razor, that Alexinus was the author of all the Zeno, in [6].
- 14.
83.9.
- 15.
82.10.
- 16.
82.19.
- 17.
82.22.
- 18.
83.27–36.
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Merry, D. (2021). Seneca’s Argumentation and Moral Intuitionism. In: Bjelde, J.A., Merry, D., Roser, C. (eds) Essays on Argumentation in Antiquity. Argumentation Library, vol 39. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-70817-7_12
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