Conflicts to Face When Values Conflict

Abstract

Values in an age of globalization are sure to come into conflict. This cannot but be the case, since values come into conflict in all ages. But for sheer extent of conflict among values, an age of globalization can be expected to usher in a brave new world. Meetings, expansions, and interminglings of cultures have always added to current stocks of conflicting values. Histories of Greece and Rome from Herodotus to Gibbon provide showcases for such conflicts. But histories of anywhere, at any time, whether of Europe, the Middle East, East Asia, South Asia, Africa, or the Americas can be counted on to do the same. Globalization just ups the ante, as it were, though the up is so great that it does not take an unhappy philosopher to fear a crash. Philosophers, in a broad range of moods, may do much to address conflicts to face when values conflict. We need to keep clear two contexts of moral deliberation. 1 As philosophers of science used to draw a distinction between a context of discovery and a context of justification in science, so moral philosophers should draw a distinction between a context of moral decision-making and a context of moral justification. In an epsitemically transparent world without barriers or impediments to complete considerations of moral matters, the two contexts might come together. For what used to be called ideal observers, the context of moral decision-making might just merge into the context of moral justification. For the rest of us in the world as we find it, the contexts are commonly not the same. The point can be broadened to take in evaluative deliberation in general. For epistemic reasons, we need to take care to distinguish the context of evaluative decision-making from the context of evaluative justification. The case that can be made for what may be called precepts and exemplars in the context of moral decision-making holds as well for the context of evaluative decision-making in general. Investigations of the context of evaluative decision-making and the sorts of precepts and exemplars that might be promoted are likely to be highly