Skepticism About Praiseworthiness

According to an everyday idea, we usually deserve moral blame for our misconduct and moral praise for our good deeds. The philosophical position of Responsibility Skepticism denies this. It says that there is good reason to doubt that we humans ever deserve moral blame or praise because there is good reason to believe that we arent morally responsible for our actions. The project Skepticism about Praiseworthiness is concerned with the part of Responsibility Skepticism that doubts that we ever deserve moral praise. The skeptical position about deserved blame has received considerable attention in the philosophical literaturefar more so than the skeptical position about deserved praise (Skepticism about Praiseworthiness). Much time and energy have been dedicated to spelling out how, exactly, the terms moral blame and deserve are to be understood and which arguments speak for and against the view that we deserve moral blame for our conduct in the relevant sense. Usually, the authors assume either explicitly or implicitly that what they say about moral blame applies, with minimal modifications, to moral praise as well. The project is based on the contention that this is a mistake. It regards Skepticism about Praiseworthiness as a research topic in its own right with the potential to expand and sharpen our understanding of Responsibility Skepticism in general. The project assumes neither the truth nor the falsity of the thesis of Skepticism about Praiseworthiness. Rather, the aim is to develop the best version of this thesis and to investigate its implications and plausibility. A starting point of the project is the widespread view that deserve is to be understood in terms of justice. Skeptics thus hold that it is unjust to morally blame people because they dont deserve moral blame. Usually, skeptics say the same thing about deserved praise: it is unjust to morally praise people because they dont deserve moral praise. The core idea of the project is that this position about moral praise is implausible. Just because a person doesnt deserve praise, this doesnt mean that praising her inflicts an injustice on her. The projects goal is to develop a different, more plausible version of Skepticism about Praiseworthiness. According to the hypothesis to be substantiated in the project, skeptics should say that it is not unjust not to praise people. This idea will be spelled out in detail with the aim of showing that it is more plausible than the alternative skeptics typically endorse and that it has significant implications and differences to the skeptical position about deserved blame.

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