I argue that relaxed moral realists are not ontologically committed to moral properties. Regardless of whether we tie ontological commitment to quantification, entailment, or truthmaking, if moral properties are not explanatory (as relaxed realists claim), then moral truths do not require moral properties. This permits a nominalist form of relaxed realism that is both simpler and more ecumenical than extant formulations. The possibility of such a position places pressure on the ontology of competing views—and helps focus attention on the critical (...) and underexplored explanatory element of the relaxed realist’s program. (shrink)

Political realists have argued that ‘the political’ is an autonomous domain with its own distinctive concepts, distinctive methodology, and distinctive ‘source of normativity’. I here explore the metanormative commitments of realism (of the radical realist branch, in particular) and question the viability of exploring the ontology of the normative altogether. I argue that the escape into the metanormative realm was something of a wrong turn within the realism debates – an intellectual error. My central argument, building on recent metatheoretical work (...) on normativity, is meant to discredit the sheer possibility of metanormative distinctness. If realists can neither prove metanormative, nor traditional, nor methodological distinctness, there is a valid question as to its standing. I speculate, perhaps realism is little more than a new semantic label for ‘continental’ practices of social analysis as they leak into the analytic tradition. But then again it can be argued that most contemporary continental thought, and certainly much of what passes as critical theory these days, is thoroughly moralist, anti-positivist, and postmodern, and those sentiments are not shared by radical realists, who are, or so I’ll argue, far more faithful to the modernist tradition of social theory. (shrink)

Parfit (2011, 2017) denies that committing to the existence of reasons is ontologically costly. To motivate his denial, Mintz-Woo (2018) thinks Parfit forwards two arguments: the plural senses argument from elimination and the argument from empty ontology. Mintz-Woo believes he has ‘debunked’ both arguments. In what follows, we do three things. First, we argue that his objections to the arguments fail or at best miss the point. Second, we argue that even if our independent responses fail, his responses meet an (...) unfortunate dilemma. Lastly, we address his concerns about the relationship between Parfit’s ontology and truth. (shrink)

I offer an account of normative belief designed specifically for relaxed realists. This proposal not only gives relaxed realists an explicitly robust account of normative belief but also distinguishes their theory from related theories, notably quasi-realist ones. In doing so, it addresses a dilemma raised in the literature against relaxed realist theories.

Non-Realist Cognitivism is a meta-ethical theory that is supposedly objectionably unclear. Recently, Farbod Akhlaghi (2022) has provided a novel exposition of Parfit’s Non-Realist Cognitivism that employs truthmaker theory to clarify it. He illustrates that such clarification leads the non-realist cognitivist into a dilemma: either the theory has to accept truthmaker maximalism, rendering the theory inconsistent, or it has to let go of truthmaking altogether. He also attempts to undercut a “partners-in-innocence” strategy that the non-realist cognitivist utilizes to motivate the key (...) assumption of Non-Realist Cognitivism: that normative truths are truthmaker gaps. In this paper, we do three things in reply to Akhlaghi. First, we show how most of his attempts to disqualify candidate partners-in-innocence fail, or at best miss the point. Second, we provide a case for a partner-in-innocence Akhlaghi never covers, though inadvertently mentions. Third, we outline how the non-realist cognitivist could reply to Akhlaghi’s dilemma in a way that allows Non-Realist Cognitivism to come out unscathed. (shrink)

Recently, non-realist cognitivism has been charged with failing to meet various semantic challenges. According to one such challenge, the non-realist cognitivist must provide a substantive non-trivial account of the meaning and truth conditions of moral claims. In this paper, we discuss the various strategies proposed to overcome this challenge. Our aim is to propose a new semantics, a Meinongian referential semantics that is based on truthmaker theory. The consequences of our proposal are two-fold. First, it alleviates objections raised against previous (...) Meinongian semantic approaches. Second, adopting the novel semantics highlights great theoretical flexibility of non-realist cognitivism. (shrink)