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GRIN, James. Value Judgement: Improving Our Ethical Beliefs. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996. xii + 180 pp. Cloth, $29.95-Griffin's methodological approach to his project of improving ethical beliefs is "to refocus attention on [the lost Classical concern for] the good life;" and ".. . then to reflect on how sound our judgements about it are" (p. 67).
That ethics is about the "good life" implies that there is no strong analogue in ethics to science's goal of an explanatory system (p. 15). Conceptions of the good life are not derived directly from (verifiable) perceptual input, nor do heterogeneous ethical beliefs presume the functional unity of the natural world which underlies science's goal of systematic explanation (p. 124). Thus, Griffin's goal is not to justify a whole set of beliefs, but to discover a restricted set of highly reliable beliefs-"either high relative to other beliefs or high on some absolute scale of security of beliefs" (p. 17)-by which to assess competing moral beliefs. In this manner, we can ultimately "reflect on how sound our judgements about [the good life] are" (p. 67).
However, Griffin does not completely abandon the physical analogue. Instead, he expands naturalism into a hierarchy of explanatory theories for increasingly complex levels of phenomena (pp. 49 and following). He then introduces a level that relies upon such classical concepts as human nature, human interests, and human agency to offer a "best explanation" (pp. 49, 62-3) for the convergence of ethical beliefs, especially when a corresponding convergence of socioeconomic and psychological factors is absent. Therefore, a standard...