Thinking Beyond Intuition.

This paper presents a critical examination of Alan Gewirth’s Principle of Generic Consistency (PGC), a prominent transcendental argument for the logical necessity of a universal morality. Gewirth contends that from the inescapable fact of purposive agency, any rational agent is dialectically compelled to accept the rights of all other agents to freedom and well-being. We argue that this conclusion, while seemingly rigorous, is ultimately unpersuasive. The PGC’s claim to objectivity rests on two problematic moves: first, it conflates the inescapable nature of agency with an optional commitment to a robust, universalist conception of rationality; and second, it contains an illicit generalization from an agent’s first-person valuation of their own necessary goods to a universal moral valuation of those goods for all agents. By situating these objections within the broader philosophical debate, we conclude that the PGC fails to establish moral realism and, at best, exemplifies a form of Kantian constructivism; a system an agent is not logically compelled to adopt.

This paper presents a systematic critique of moral realism, the metaethical thesis that there exist stance-independent, objective moral facts. While this position holds considerable intuitive and practical appeal—purportedly grounding universal condemnation of harm and underwriting the force of normative claims—we shall argue that it is ultimately untenable upon closer philosophical scrutiny. The argument proceeds along two primary axes of critique. First, we advance an ontological objection, contending that moral realism posits the existence of metaphysically “queer” properties for which there is no coherent account. Second, we present an epistemological objection, arguing that the fact of persistent and fundamental moral disagreement is better explained by an anti-realist thesis than by the realist’s claim of access to objective truths. We conclude that abandoning moral realism does not entail a descent into nihilism or arbitrary relativism; rather, it clears the ground for a more intellectually honest and pragmatically sound constructivist approach to ethics as a human project.

The concept of libertarian free will—the capacity of an agent to make choices uncoerced by the antecedent causal chain—remains a deeply intuitive and foundational assumption in much of our legal, ethical, and social discourse. This essay advances a two-part argument against this conception. First, we contend that libertarian free will is metaphysically incoherent, collapsing under the dilemma of determinism versus indeterminism. Neither a causally determined universe nor one infused with genuine randomness provides the logical space for an agent to be the ultimate, self-caused author of their actions. Second, we present a normative argument that the widespread belief in this form of freedom is not only unnecessary for a robust system of ethics and accountability but is actively detrimental, particularly in its underwriting of retributive theories of justice. We conclude by proposing an alternative framework wherein agency and responsibility are reconceptualized in a manner compatible with naturalism, leading to a more compassionate and effective approach to social policy.