Bookforum Omnivore - Is Morality Rational?

Here is an interesting collection of links from Bookforum's Omnivore blog on morality, examined from a variety of angles.


Is morality rational?

JAN 25 2013 

9:00AM

• Pui Yee June Chan (Hong Kong): Consequentializing and Deontology. 
• Amos Schurr, Ilana Ritov, Yaakov Kareev and Judith Avrahami (HUJ): Is That the Answer You Had in Mind? 
• The Effect of Perspective on Unethical Behavior. From the Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy, Richard Rowland (Reading): Moral Error Theory and the Argument from Epistemic Reasons; and Russ Shafer-Landau (Wisconsin): Evolutionary Debunking, Moral Realism and Moral Knowledge. 
• How did morality originate? Dennis L. Krebs and Kaleda K. Denton review Moral Origins: The Evolution of Virtue, Altruism, and Shame by Christopher Boehm. 
• Doves devoured, the serpent remains: A review essay on the need for a scientific critique of ethics by Paul Christopher Gray. 
• Michael Shermer on the is-ought fallacy of science and morality. 
• From FiveBooks, an interview with David Edmonds on ethical problems. 
• Dina Mendonca reviews Moralism: A Study of a Vice by Craig Taylor. 
• Is morality rational? Michael Hauskeller investigates. 
• Jaana Woiceshyn on why income inequality is moral. 
• Micah Mattix on the morality of modern cycling. 
• Reading Jane Austen as a moral philosopher: Thomas Rodham keenly observes Jane Austen’s exacting ethical expertise.

Here is a little bit from the title essay, Is Morality Rational by Michael Hauskeller (it's only a two-page rebuttal to his critics):

I have no problem with minimal rationality. In fact, I occasionally use it myself. What I maintain is not that moral arguments cannot, or should not, be rational in that sense, but rather that the premises on which moral arguments rest cannot be, in a strict sense, rationally justified. Certain conclusions may follow logically from certain premises, but those premises are not themselves founded on logic or are self-evidently true in the sense that it would be irrational or clearly unreasonable to contest their validity. And although I accept the need to maintain minimal rationality, I also believe that it is easy (and potentially dangerous) to overestimate the importance of it. In moral philosophy whether a conclusion follows logically from certain premises is less important than whether those premises are really as unobjectionable as they tend to be presented as. More often than not, emphasising the “minimal rationality” of an argument serves to conceal the weakness of its premises.