Some philosophers writing on the possibility of faultless disagreement have argued that the only way to account for the intuition that there could be disagreements which are faultless in every sense is to accept a relativistic semantics. In this article we demonstrate that this view is mistaken by constructing an absolutist semantics for a particular domain – aesthetic discourse – which allows for the possibility of genuinely faultless disagreements. We argue that this position is an improvement over previous absolutist responses (...) to the relativist's challenge and that it presents an independently plausible account of the semantics of aesthetic discourse. (shrink)

I show that an overlooked feature of our moral life—moral status—provides a route to vindicating naturalist moral realism in much the same way that the Humean theory of motivation and judgment internalism are used to undermine it. Moral status presents two explanatory burdens for metaethical views. First, a given view must provide an ecumenical explanation of moral status, which does not depend on the truth of its metaethical claims (say, that there are mind-independent facts about moral status). Second, its explanation (...) must be consistent with persistent normative ethical disagreement about what constitutes moral status. I conclude that naturalist moral realism succeeds, while quasi-realism fails because it cannot meet the latter requirement. This argument has three results: we have a new route for metaethical vindication more generally and for naturalist moral realism in particular; quasi-realism's plausibility is undermined by an inability to explain disagreement, but not for the familiar reasons. (shrink)