Contextualism in Ethics

In more than one way, context matters in ethics. Uncontroversially, the ethical status of an action might depend on context: though it is typically wrong not to keep a promise, some contexts make it permissible. More controversially, some have suggested that the meaning or truth-conditions of a moral judgment or moral assertion depend not only on the properties of the act it concerns and the context in which it would be performed, but also on features of the context in which the judgment or assertion is made, such as the standards endorsed by the moral judge. If this view—“metaethical contextualism”—is correct, it might be that when two people both judge that abortions must be banned, one judge might be correct whereas the other is mistaken, because they accept different fundamental norms. This would undermine the idea that there are unique correct answers to moral questions. Sections discuss (i) the context-dependence of ‘good’ and ‘ought’, (ii) how such context-dependence might support metaethical contextualism, and (iii) the prospects for a contextualist account of the categoricality of moral judgments, their connection to moral motivation, and disagreement between judges who accept different fundamental norms