Jonas Olson presents a critical survey of moral error theory, the view that there are no moral facts and so all moral claims are false. Part I explores the historical context of the debate; Part II assesses J. L. Mackie's famous arguments; Part III defends error theory against challenges and considers its implications for our moral thinking.

Non-cognitivism is a variety of irrealism about ethics with a number of influential variants. Non-cognitivists agree with error theorists that there are no moral properties or moral facts. But rather than thinking that this makes moral statements false, noncognitivists claim that moral statements are not in the business of predicating properties or making statements which could be true or false in any substantial sense. Roughly put, noncognitivists think that moral statements have no truth conditions. Furthermore, according to non-cognitivists, when people (...) utter moral sentences they are not typically expressing states of mind which are beliefs or which are cognitive in the way that beliefs are. Rather they are expressing non-cognitive attitudes more similar to desires, approval or disapproval. Cognitivism is the denial of non-cognitivism. Thus it holds that moral statements do express beliefs and that they are apt for truth and falsity. But cognitivism need not be a species of realism since a cognitivist can be an error theorist and think all moral statements false. Still, moral realists are cognitivists insofar as they think moral statements are apt for truth and falsity and that many of them are in fact true. (shrink)

Just as we can be more or less certain about empirical matters, we can be more or less certain about normative matters. Recently, it has been argued that this is a challenge for noncognitivism about normativity. Michael Smith presented the challenge in a 2002 paper and James Lenman and Michael Ridge responded independently. Andrew Sepielli has now joined the rescue operation. His basic idea is that noncognitivists should employ the notion of being for to account for normative certitude. We shall (...) argue that the being for account of normative certitude is vulnerable to many problems shared by other noncognitivist theories. Furthermore, we shall argue that Sepielli’s account has its own problems: His favored normalization procedure for degrees of being for has highly problematic implications. (shrink)

Are there such things as moral truths? How do we know what we should do? And does it matter? Constructivism states that moral truths are neither invented nor discovered, but rather are constructed by rational agents in order to solve practical problems. While constructivism has become the focus of many philosophical debates in normative ethics, meta-ethics and action theory, its importance is still to be fully appreciated. These new essays written by leading scholars define and assess this new approach in (...) ethics, addressing such questions as the nature of constructivism, how constructivism improves our understanding of moral obligations, how it accounts for the development of normative practices, whether moral truths change over time, and many other topics. The volume will be valuable for advanced students and scholars of ethics and all who are interested in questions about the foundation of morality. (shrink)

Normative judgments involve two gradable features. First, the judgments themselves can come in degrees; second, the strength of reasons represented in the judgments can come in degrees. Michael Smith has argued that non-cognitivism cannot accommodate both of these gradable dimensions. The degrees of a non-cognitive state can stand in for degrees of judgment, or degrees of reason strength represented in judgment, but not both. I argue that (a) there are brands of noncognitivism that can surmount Smith’s challenge, and (b) any (...) brand of non-cognitivism that has even a chance of solving the Frege–Geach Problem and some related problems involving probabilistic consistency can also thereby solve Smith’s problem. Because only versions of non-cognitivism that can solve the Frege–Geach Problem are otherwise plausible, all otherwise plausible versions of noncognitivism can meet Smith’s challenge. (shrink)

Some philosophers have recently argued that decision-makers ought to take normative uncertainty into account in their decisionmaking. These philosophers argue that, just as it is plausible that we should maximize expected value under empirical uncertainty, it is plausible that we should maximize expected choice-worthiness under normative uncertainty. However, such an approach faces two serious problems: how to deal with merely ordinal theories, which do not give sense to the idea of magnitudes of choice-worthiness; and how, even when theories do give (...) sense to magnitudes of choice-worthiness, to compare magnitudes of choice-worthiness across different theories. Some critics have suggested that these problems are fatal to the project of developing a normative account of decision-making under normative uncertainty. The primary purpose of this article is to show that this is not the case. To this end, I develop an analogy between decision-making under normative uncertainty and the problem of social choice, and then argue that the Borda Rule provides the best way of making decisions in the face of merely ordinal theories and intertheoretic incomparability. (shrink)

I explore the prospects of capturing and explaining, within a non-cognitivist framework, the enkratic principle of rationality, according to which rationality requires of N that, if N believes that she herself ought to perform an action, φ, N intends to φ. Capturing this principle involves making sense of both the possibility and irrationality of akrasia – of failing to intend in accordance with one’s ought thought. In the first section, I argue that the existing non-cognitivist treatments of enkrasia/akrasia by Allan (...) Gibbard and Michael Ridge are not satisfying. In the second section, I propose that non-cognitivists should perhaps say roughly the following: to think that one ought to φ is to prefer φ-ing to the alternative courses of action, or to have a stronger desire to φ than to choose any alternative action. I outline an account of the strength of desire, which allows for the possibility of intending to act against one’s strongest desires, and makes it intelligible why rationality would nevertheless require that one’s strongest desires and intentions be aligned. This would allow the non-cognitivist to explain how akrasia is both possible and irrational. In the last section, I briefly suggest that this leaves non-cognitivists in a nice position in comparison to at least some of the competition, when it comes to capturing enkrasia. (shrink)

I argue that in order to account for normative uncertainty, an expressivist theory of normative language and thought must accomplish two things: Firstly, it needs to find room in its framework for a gradable conative attitude, degrees of which can be interpreted as representing normative uncertainty. Secondly, it needs to defend appropriate rationality constraints pertaining to those graded attitudes. The first task – finding an appropriate graded attitude that can represent uncertainty – is not particularly problematic. I tackle the second (...) task by exploring whether we can devise expressivist versions of the standard arguments used to support rationality constraints on degrees of uncertainty, Dutch book arguments and accuracy-dominance arguments. I show that we can do so, but that the resulting arguments don’t support the same rationality constraints as the original versions of the arguments. (shrink)

We sometimes seem to face fundamental moral uncertainty, i.e., uncertainty about what is morally good or morally right that cannot be reduced to ordinary descriptive uncertainty. This phenomenon raises a puzzle for noncognitivism, according to which moral judgments are desire-like attitudes as opposed to belief-like attitudes. Can a state of moral uncertainty really be a noncognitive state? So far, noncognitivists have not been able to offer a completely satisfactory account. Here, we argue that noncognitivists should exploit the formal analogy between (...) moral uncertainty and moral multi-objective decision problems. Our ‘multi-objective story’ enables noncognitivists to save our moral uncertainty thought and talk by explaining how the underlying phenomenon could be noncognitive. (shrink)

In this paper I present an account of a distinctive form of ‘practical’ or ‘deliberative’ uncertainty that has been central in debates in both ethics and metaethics. Many writers have assumed that such uncertainty concerns a special normative question, such as what we ought to do ‘all things considered.’ I argue against this assumption and instead endorse an alternative view of such uncertainty, which combines elements of both metaethical cognitivism and non-cognitivism. A notable consequence of this view is that even (...) if there are objective and irreducible truths about how we ought to act, all things considered, the ‘central deliberative question,’ as it’s sometimes called, doesn’t concern such truths. Instead, that question doesn’t have a true answer. (shrink)

How ought you to evaluate your options if you're uncertain about what's fundamentally valuable? A prominent response is Expected Value Maximisation (EVM)—the view that under axiological uncertainty, an option is better than another if and only if it has the greater expected value across axiologies. But the expected value of an option depends on quantitative probability and value facts, and in particular on value comparisons across axiologies. We need to explain what it is for such facts to hold. Also, EVM (...) is by no means self-evident. We need an argument to defend that it’s true. This book introduces an axiomatic approach to answer these worries. It provides an explication of what EVM means by use of representation theorems: intertheoretic comparisons can be understood in terms of facts about which options are better than which, and mutatis mutandis for intratheoretic comparisons and axiological probabilities. And it provides a systematic argument to the effect that EVM is true: the theory can be vindicated through simple axioms. The result is a formally cogent and philosophically compelling extension of standard decision theory, and original take on the problem of axiological or normative uncertainty. (shrink)

Quasi-realists aspire to accommodate core features of ordinary normative thought and discourse in an expressivist framework. One apparent such feature is that we can be more or less confident in our normative judgments—they vary in credence. Michael Smith has argued that quasi-realists cannot plausibly accommodate these distinctions simply because they understand normative judgments as desires, but desires lack the structure needed to distinguish these three features. Existing attempts to meet Smith’s challenge have accepted Smith’s presupposition that the way to meet (...) the challenge is to show that normative judgments have more structure than they initially seem to have. I argue that accepting this presupposition is accepting too much. The orthodox view of certitude, insofar as there is one, understands certitude very roughly in terms of counterfactual betting behaviour. Counterfactual betting behaviour, though, is not in any useful sense a structural feature of a given judgment. It is rather a more holistic feature of a given agent’s cognitive system. Insofar as it can meet the other challenges it faces, quasi-realism can characterize credences in terms of counterfactual betting behaviour and effectively say exactly what many realists will want to say about credences, thus meeting Smith’s challenge much more directly. (shrink)

This article is a response to critical articles by Daan Evers, Bart Streumer, and Teemu Toppinen on my book Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence. I will be concerned with four main topics. I shall first try to illuminate the claim that moral facts are queer, and its role in the argument for moral error theory. In section 2, I discuss the relative merits of moral error theory and moral contextualism. In section 3, I explain why I still find the (...) queerness argument concerning supervenience an unpromising argument against non-naturalistic moral realism. In section 4, finally, I reconsider the question whether I, or anyone, can believe the error theory. (shrink)

I argue that there are cases in which ecumenical expressivism cannot distinguish between endorsement of certain trivial and substantive normative judgments. I consider the extent to which this problem generalizes across different formulations of the ecumenical view. I suggest that we may not be able to escape the problem if we hope to retain the ability to solve the Frege-Geach problem in the way promised by ecumenical expressivism.

ABSTRACTIt has been objected to moral non-cognitivism that it cannot account for fundamental moral uncertainty. A person is derivatively uncertain about whether an act is, say, morally wrong, when her certainty is at bottom due to uncertainty about whether the act has certain non-moral, descriptive, properties, which she takes to be wrong-making. She is fundamentally morally uncertain when her uncertainty directly concerns whether the properties of the act are wrong-making. In this paper we advance a new reply to the objection (...) to non-cognitivism, immune to the problems afflicting earlier replies. First, we argue that fundamental moral uncertainty is best understood as classificatory uncertainty, since the psychological factors behind fundamental moral uncertainty are analogous to the factors behind fundamental uncertainty regarding descriptive, non-moral, matters, and fundamental descriptive uncertainty is naturally understood as classificatory uncertainty. We call this the classification account... (shrink)

What should we do when we are not certain about what we morally should do? There is a long history of theorizing about decision-making under empirical uncertainty, but surprisingly little has been written about the moral uncertainty expressed by this question. Only very recently have philosophers started to systematically address the nature of such uncertainty and its impacts on decision-making. This paper addresses the main problems raised by moral uncertainty and critically examines some proposed solutions.

Accommodating degrees of moral certitude is a serious problem for non-cognitivism about ethics. In particular, non-cognitivism has trouble accommodating fundamental moral certitude. John Eriksson and Ragnar Francén Olinder [2016] have recently proposed a solution. In fact, Eriksson and Francén Olinder offer two different proposals—one ‘classification’ account and one ‘projectivist’ account. We argue that the classification account faces the same problem as previous accounts do, while the projectivist account has unacceptable implications. Non-cognitivists will have to look elsewhere for a plausible solution (...) to the problem of accommodating fundamental moral certitude. (shrink)

Just as we can be more or less certain that there is extraterrestrial life or that Goldbach’s conjecture is correct, we can be more or less certain about normative matters, such as whether euthanasia is permissible or whether utilitarianism is true. However, accommodating the phenomenon of degrees of normative certitude is a difficult challenge for non-cognitivist and expressivist views, according to which normative judgements are desire-like attitudes rather than beliefs. Several attempts have been made on behalf of non-cognitivism and expressivism (...) to meet the challenge Studies in metaethics, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007; Sepielli in Philos Stud 160: 191–207, 2012; Eriksson and Francén Olinder in Aust J Philos 94: 719–735, 2016). These attempts have all been found wanting. Michael Ridge has recently offered a quasi-realist solution, according to which expressivists can say exactly what cognitivists say about certitude, including normative certitude. In this paper, we explain the basic problem and Ridge’s quasi-realist solution. We then argue that the quasi-realist account of normative certitude faces severe difficulties that do not arise for cognitivist accounts, according to which normative judgements are beliefs. (shrink)

According to noncognitivism, normative beliefs are just desire-like attitudes. While noncognitivists have devoted great effort to explaining the nature of normative belief, they have said little about all of the other attitudes we take towards normative matters. Many of us desire to do the right thing. We sometimes wonder whether our conduct is morally permissible; we hope that it is, and occasionally fear that it is not. This gives rise to what Schroeder calls the 'Many Attitudes Problem': the problem of (...) developing a plausible noncognitivist account of the full range of attitudes that we take towards normative matters. This paper explores the problem and proposes a solution. (shrink)

The topic of this thesis is axiological uncertainty – the question of how you should evaluate your options if you are uncertain about which axiology is true. As an answer, I defend Expected Value Maximisation (EVM), the view that one option is better than another if and only if it has the greater expected value across axiologies. More precisely, I explore the axiomatic foundations of this view. I employ results from state-dependent utility theory, extend them in various ways and interpret (...) them accordingly, and thus provide axiomatisations of EVM as a theory of axiological uncertainty. (shrink)

This is a draft of a chapter for the Routledge Handbook of Metaethics, edited by David Plunkett and Tristram McPherson. I offer an overview of hybrid views in metaethics, with main focus on hybrid cognitivist views such as those defended by Daniel Boisvert and David Copp, and on hybrid expressivist views such as those defended by Michael Ridge and myself.

Moral nihilism is the view that there are no moral facts or moral truths. It is the ontological component of moral error theory, which is the best-known and most comprehensive metaethical theory that involves moral nihilism. My main aim is to discuss some consequences of endorsing moral error theory or believing to some degree that moral error theory is true. In §2, I consider the implications for ordinary moral thought and discourse and the epistemological consequences for moral theorizing. In §3, (...) I consider a recent challenge, according to which moral judgments do not have the epistemic profile that moral error theory alleges. I shall argue in §3–5 that the challenge can be met and that there is evidence that moral error theory is in fact correct about the epistemic profile of moral judgments. (shrink)

What is it that we are doing when we make ethical claims and judgments, such as the claim that we morally ought to assist refugees? This dissertation introduces and defends a novel theory of ethical thought and discourse. I begin by identifying the surface features of ethical thought and discourse to be explained, including the realist and cognitivist (i.e. belief-like) appearance of ethical judgments, and the apparent close connection between making a sincere ethical judgment and being motivated to act on (...) it. I examine prominent attempts to explain these features, with a focus on recent ‘hybrid’ theories combining elements of expressivism and cognitivism. Despite their initial promise, I argue that extant hybrid theories are nevertheless committed to problematic semantic, metasemantic, or pragmatic assumptions. I then discuss what I take to be the strongest existing option, ethical neo-expressivism (Bar-On and Chrisman, 2009; Bar-On, Chrisman, and Sias, 2014), and develop it into an explicitly hybrid theory proposing that ethical judgments incorporate both motivationally-charged affective states and moral beliefs. I then supplement this account with a theory of the proper function (following Millikan, 1984) of ethical claims and judgments, arguing that they function simultaneously to track the morally salient features of social situations, and to coordinate our behavior around these features. Finally, I defend one of the cognitivist commitments of the theory – namely, that objective moral knowledge is possible – by applying recent work on the epistemology of fundamental or ‘core’ intellectual commitments (Lynch, 2012; Pritchard, 2016) to the moral realm. (shrink)

According to the traditional Bayesian view of credence, its structure is that of precise probability, its objects are descriptive propositions about the empirical world, and its dynamics are given by conditionalization. Each of the three essays that make up this thesis deals with a different variation on this traditional picture. The first variation replaces precise probability with sets of probabilities. The resulting imprecise Bayesianism is sometimes motivated on the grounds that our beliefs should not be more precise than the evidence (...) calls for. One known problem for this evidentially motivated imprecise view is that in certain cases, our imprecise credence in a particular proposition will remain the same no matter how much evidence we receive. In the first essay I argue that the problem is much more general than has been appreciated so far, and that it’s difficult to avoid without compromising the initial evidentialist motivation. The second variation replaces descriptive claims with moral claims as the objects of credence. I consider three standard arguments for probabilism with respect to descriptive uncertainty—representation theorem arguments, Dutch book arguments, and accuracy arguments—in order to examine whether such arguments can also be used to establish probabilism with respect to moral uncertainty. In the second essay, I argue that by and large they can, with some caveats. First, I don’t examine whether these arguments can be given sound non-cognitivist readings, and any conclusions therefore only hold conditional on cognitivism. Second, decision-theoretic representation theorems are found to be less convincing in the moral case, because there they implausibly commit us to thinking that intertheoretic comparisons of value are always possible. Third and finally, certain considerations may lead one to think that imprecise probabilism provides a more plausible model of moral epistemology. The third variation considers whether, in addition to conditionalization, agents may also change their minds by becoming aware of propositions they had not previously entertained, and therefore not previously assigned any probability. More specifically, I argue that if we wish to make room for reflective equilibrium in a probabilistic moral epistemology, we must allow for awareness growth. In the third essay, I sketch the outline of such a Bayesian account of reflective equilibrium. Given that this account gives a central place to awareness growth, and that the rationality constraints on belief change by awareness growth are much weaker than those on belief change by conditionalization, it follows that the rationality constraints on the credences of agents who are seeking reflective equilibrium are correspondingly weaker. (shrink)