Moral Vagueness in a Mind-Independent World

Purpose and goal:

The main objective of the project is to show that its central hypothesis holds, namely: that if a leading view in meta-ethics (viz., robust moral realism) is true, then the two leadings theories of vagueness (epistemicism and indeterminacism) have distinct and significant implications for decision-making when those theories are extended to the moral domain. To confirm the main hypothesis, the project proposed several sub-hypotheses.

The six months of funding provided by Vinnova allowed to test one of these sub-hypotheses (see below for more on it). Expected results and effects:

The sub-hypothesis that the six months of funding provided by Vinnova allowed to test was the following: that indeterminacism, despite coming in two versions (a semantic version and a metaphysical version), yields the same account of decision-making under moral vagueness. This sub-hypothesis is the subject matter of the first paper coming out of the project, which is currently at an advance stage of development and being prepared for presentation at Uppsala’s Higher Seminar in Theoretical Philosophy. After being presented and revised, it will be submitted to an academic journal.

Approach and implementation:

The project is split into four Work Packages (the first three for research and the fourth for outreach). One of the research WPs (viz., WP2) is expected to last twelve months, and it was with this WP that research on the project began. The six months of Vinnova funding were thus spent implementing the first six months of this WP. (The remaining WPs of the project will be implemented, and its remaining sub-hypotheses tested, with the funding provided by the EU, under whose MSCA funding scheme the project will carry on from 2022-05-01 until 2024-04-30.)