MORAL DISUNITARIANISM

This paper puts forward and develops a position called moral disunitarianism, according to which moral generalities, to the extent that they exist, are at best domain-specific. Unlike the particularist, the disunitarian is open to some forms of ethical theorizing, although such theorizing will always have to be specialized and divided into distinct areas, e.g., biomedical ethics, business ethics, the ethics of war (and so on). Two main arguments for disunitarianism are discussed, one starting in recent research in psychology, the other in the need to make sense of moral dilemmas. It is suggested that while these arguments are far from conclusive, they still provide reason to take disunitarianism seriously as a meta-normative position.