Jonathan Dancy
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Jonathan Peter Dancy (b. 8 May 1946) British philosopher, working on epistemology and on ethics. Currently professor at the University of Reading and at University of Texas at Austin.
Dancy, after having worked on problems of epistemology, and more particularly on the one of perception (argument from illusion), became notorious for his conception of moral philosophy, known as moral particularism (also: ethical particularism). He also defends the idea that reasons motivating actions are to be understood in the framework of a certain holism of reasons, i.e. that the relevancy of reasons is context-dependent: some of them may play a motivating role in one context, but no role at all in some other situations. It is argued that holism of reasons provides a major support for the main claim of Dancy’s particularism, i.e. the non-existence of moral principles.
[edit] Works
- "On Moral Properties", Mind, 1981, XC, pp. 367-385.
- "Ethical Particularism and Morally Relevant Properties", Mind, 1983, XCII, 530-547.
- An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology, Oxford, Blackwell, 1985.
- Moral Reasons, Blackwell, Oxford, 1993.
- Practical Reality, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2000.
- Ethics Without Principles, Oxford : Clarendon Press, New York : Oxford University Press, 2004.
[edit] Links
- "Moral Particularism" – J. Dancy's art. in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
- Publications list
