Switch to: References

Add citations

You must login to add citations.
  1. The Stuff That Matters.N. G. Laskowski - 2024 - In Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies of Metaethics 19. Oxford University Press USA.
    On one way of talking about a traditional metaethical topic, realists accept that some items appear on the list of what exists in the moral or more broadly normative domain of inquiry. They then divide over whether those items are like what science and experience suggest that all other items on the list of what exists across all domains are like – naturalistic and secular. Reductive naturalists answer this further question affirmatively. Why don’t nonnaturalists? I explore the answer that it’s (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Expressivism and moral independence.Elliot Salinger - 2023 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 108 (1):136-152.
    Metaethical expressivism faces the perennial objection that its commitment to non‐cognitivism about moral judgment renders the view revisionary of our ordinary moral thought. The standard response to this objection is to say that since the expressivist's theoretical commitments about the nature of moral judgment are independent of normative ethics, the view cannot be revisionary of normative ethics. This essay seeks to evaluate the standard response by exploring several senses of independence that expressivism might enjoy from normative ethics. I develop a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Eradicating Theocracy Philosophically.Pouya Lotfi Yazdi - manuscript
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Metaphysical separatism and epistemological autonomy in Frege’s philosophy and beyond.Jim Hutchinson - 2022 - British Journal for the History of Philosophy 30 (6):1096-1120.
    Commentators regularly attribute to Frege realist, idealist, and quietist responses to metaphysical questions concerning the abstract objects he calls ‘thoughts’. But despite decades of effort, the evidence offered on behalf of these attributions remains unconvincing. I argue that Frege deliberately avoids commitment to any of these positions, as part of a metaphysical separatist policy motivated by the fact that logic is epistemologically autonomous from metaphysics. Frege’s views and arguments prove relevant to current attempts to argue for epistemological autonomy, particularly that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • What's the coincidence in debunking?Harjit Bhogal - 2022 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 107 (1):147-167.
    Many moral debunking arguments are driven by the idea that the correlation between our moral beliefs and the moral truths is a big coincidence, given a robustly realist conception of morality.One influential response is that the correlation is not a coincidence because there is a common explainer of our moral beliefs and the moral truths. For example, the reason that I believe that I should feed my child is because feeding my child helps them to survive, and natural selection instills (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Ética: Indagações e Horizontes / Ethics: Inquires and Horizons.Paulo Jesus, Maria Formosinho & Carlos Reis (eds.) - 2018 - Coimbra: Coimbra University Press.
    A presente obra assume-se como um projeto genuinamente interdisciplinar de reflexão ética, interrogando os seus fundamentos e explorando as suas interseções com diversas áreas das Ciências Humanas e Sociais. Reunindo especialistas de distintas áreas, oriundos de países diferentes, o livro tem como fio condutor um diálogo polifónico com o pensamento ético contemporâneo, enraizando-se na tradição crítica que procura refundar a racionalidade prática na construção humana de sentido e, por conseguinte, refutar o niilismo e o relativismo axiológico absoluto.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • The Scope and Limits of Debunking Arguments in Ethics.Shang Long Yeo - 2020 - Dissertation, Australian National University
    Debunking arguments use empirical evidence about our moral beliefs - in particular, about their causal origins, or about how they depend on various causes - in order to reach an epistemic conclusion about the trustworthiness of such beliefs. In this thesis, I investigate the scope and limits of debunking arguments, and their implications for what we should believe about morality. I argue that debunking arguments can in principle work - they are based on plausible epistemic premises, and at least some (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • A critique of strong Anti-Archimedeanism: metaethics, conceptual jurisprudence, and legal disagreements.Pablo A. Rapetti - 2022 - Synthese 200 (2):1-27.
    This paper is divided into two parts. In the first one I distinguish between weak and strong Anti-Archimedeanisms, the latter being the view that metaethics, just as any other discipline attempting to work out a second-order conceptual, metaphysical non-committed discourse about the first-order discourse composing normative practices, is conceptually impossible or otherwise incoherent. I deal in particular with Ronald Dworkin’s famous exposition of the view. I argue that strong Anti-Archimedeanism constitutes an untenable philosophical stance, therefore making logical space for the (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Defending the Kratzerian presuppositional error theory.Elliot Salinger - 2021 - Analysis 81 (4):701–709.
    This paper provides a new solution to the problem of moral permissions for the moral error theory. The problem is that the error theorist seems committed to the claim that all actions are morally permitted, as well as to the contradictory claim that no action is morally permitted. My solution understands the moral error theory as the view that folk moral discourse is systematically in error by virtue of suffering from semantic presupposition failure, which I show is consistent with a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Meta-Ethical Quietism? Wittgenstein, Relaxed Realism, and Countercultures in Meta-Ethics.Farbod Akhlaghi - forthcoming - In Jonathan Beale & Rach Cosker-Rowland (eds.), Wittgenstein and Contemporary Moral Philosophy.
    Ludwig Wittgenstein has often been called a quietist. His work has inspired a rich and varied array of theories in moral philosophy. Some prominent meta-ethicists have also been called quietists, or ‘relaxed’ as opposed to ‘robust’ realists, sometimes with explicit reference to Wittgenstein in attempts to clarify their views. In this chapter, I compare and contrast these groups of theories and draw out their importance for contemporary meta-ethical debate. They represent countercultures to contemporary meta-ethics. That is, they reject in different (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Quasi-Naturalism and the Problem of Alternative Normative Concepts.Camil Golub - 2022 - Journal of Moral Philosophy 19 (5):474-500.
    The following scenario seems possible: a community uses concepts that play the same role in guiding actions and shaping social life as our normative concepts, and yet refer to something else. As Eklund argues, this apparent possibility poses a problem for any normative realist who aspires to vindicate the thought that reality itself favors our ways of valuing and acting. How can realists make good on this idea, given that anything they might say in support of the privileged status of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • On the Possibility of Wholesale Moral Error.Farbod Akhlaghi - 2021 - Ratio 34 (3):236-247.
    The moral error theory, it seems, could be true. The mere possibility of its truth might also seem inconsequential. But it is not. For, I argue, there is a sense in which the moral error theory is possible that generates an argument against both non‐cognitivism and moral naturalism. I argue that it is an epistemic possibility that morality is subject to some form of wholesale error of the kind that would make the moral error theory true. Denying this possibility has (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   4 citations  
  • A New Interpretivist Metasemantics for Fundamental Legal Disagreements.François Schroeter, Laura Schroeter & Kevin Toh - 2020 - Legal Theory 26 (1):62-99.
    What does it take for lawyers and others to think or talk about the same legal topic—e.g., defamation, culpability? We argue that people are able to think or talk about the same topic not when they possess a matching substantive understanding of the topic, as traditional metasemantics says, but instead when their thoughts or utterances are related to each other in certain ways. And what determines the content of thoughts and utterances is what would best serve the core purposes of (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Epoch Relativism and Our Moral Hopelessness.Regina Rini - 2018 - In Sophie Grace Chappell & Marcel van Ackeren (eds.), Ethics Beyond the Limits: New Essays on Bernard Williams' Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. New York: Routledge. pp. 168-187.
    When we look back upon people in past societies, such as slaveholders and colonialists, we judge their actions to have been morally atrocious. Yet we should give some thought to how the future will judge us. Here I argue that future people are likely to regard our behavior as no better than that of the past. If these future people are to be believed, then we are morally hopeless; we have little chance of working out the moral truth for ourselves. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Metaethical Minimalism: A Demarcation, Defense, and Development.Aaron Franklin - 2020 - Dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz
    The aim of this work is to demarcate, develop, and defend the commitments and consequences of metaethical minimalism. Very roughly, this is the position that a commitment to objective moral truths does not require any accompanying ontological commitments. While there are few, if any, who call themselves “metaethical minimalists”, I endeavor to uncover existing articulations of metaethical minimalism which have been presented under different names, attempting to identify the common ground between them. As I interpret the position, all metaethical minimalists (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Contingency inattention: against causal debunking in ethics.Regina Rini - 2020 - Philosophical Studies 177 (2):369-389.
    It is a philosophical truism that we must think of others as moral agents, not merely as causal or statistical objects. But why? I argue that this follows from the best resolution of an antinomy between our experience of morality as necessarily binding on the will and our knowledge that all moral beliefs originate in contingent histories. We can address this antinomy only by understanding moral deliberation via interpersonal relationships, which simultaneously vindicate and constrains morality’s bind on the will. This (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   6 citations  
  • Debunking arguments.Daniel Z. Korman - 2019 - Philosophy Compass 14 (12):e12638.
    Debunking arguments—also known as etiological arguments, genealogical arguments, access problems, isolation objec- tions, and reliability challenges—arise in philosophical debates about a diverse range of topics, including causation, chance, color, consciousness, epistemic reasons, free will, grounding, laws of nature, logic, mathematics, modality, morality, natural kinds, ordinary objects, religion, and time. What unifies the arguments is the transition from a premise about what does or doesn't explain why we have certain mental states to a negative assessment of their epistemic status. I examine (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   31 citations  
  • Metasemantics, Moral Realism and Moral Doctrines.Christine Tiefensee - 2022 - In Mark McBride & Visa A. J. Kurki (eds.), Without Trimmings: The Legal, Moral, and Political Philosophy of Matthew Kramer. Oxford, United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. pp. 189-204.
    In this paper, I consider the relationship between Matthew Kramer’s moral realism as a moral doctrine and expressivism, understood as a distinctly non-representationalist metasemantic theory of moral vocabulary. More precisely, I will argue that Kramer is right in stating that moral realism as a moral doctrine does not stand in conflict with expressivism. But I will also go further, by submitting that advocates of moral realism as a moral doctrine must adopt theories such as expressivism in some shape or form. (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Do ‘Objectivist’ Features of Moral Discourse and Thinking Support Moral Objectivism?Gunnar Björnsson - 2012 - The Journal of Ethics 16 (4):367-393.
    Many philosophers think that moral objectivism is supported by stable features of moral discourse and thinking. When engaged in moral reasoning and discourse, people behave ‘as if’ objectivism were correct, and the seemingly most straightforward way of making sense of this is to assume that objectivism is correct; this is how we think that such behavior is explained in paradigmatically objectivist domains. By comparison, relativist, error-theoretic or non-cognitivist accounts of this behavior seem contrived and ad hoc. After explaining why this (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Melis Erdur’s Moral Argument Against Moral Realism.Joshua Blanchard - 2019 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 22 (2):371-377.
    In a previous volume of Ethical Theory & Moral Practice, Melis Erdur defends the provocative claim that postulating a stance-independent ground for morality constitutes a substantive moral mistake that is isomorphic to the substantive moral mistake that many realists attribute to antirealists. In this discussion paper I reconstruct Erdur’s argument and raise two objections to the general framework in which it arises. I close by explaining why rejecting Erdur’s approach doesn’t preclude normative criticism of metaethical theories.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Attributing error without taking a stand.Caleb Perl & Mark Schroeder - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (6):1453-1471.
    Moral error theory is the doctrine that our first-order moral commitments are pervaded by systematic error. It has been objected that this makes the error theory itself a position in first-order moral theory that should be judged by the standards of competing first-order moral theories :87–139, 1996) and Kramer. Kramer: “the objectivity of ethics is itself an ethical matter that rests primarily on ethical considerations. It is not something that can adequately be contested or confirmed through non-ethical reasoning” [2009, 1]). (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   16 citations  
  • Striking coincidences: How realists should reason about them.Jeroen Hopster - 2019 - Ratio 32 (4):260-274.
    Many metaethicists assume that our normative judgments are both by and large true, and the product of causal forces. In other words, many metaethicists assume that the set of normative judgments that causal forces have led us to make largely coincides with the set of true normative judgments. How should we explain this coincidence? This is what Sharon Street (2006) calls the practical/theoretical puzzle. Some metaethicists can easily solve this puzzle, but not all of them can, Street argues; she takes (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Immoral realism.Max Khan Hayward - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (4):897-914.
    Non-naturalist realists are committed to the belief, famously voiced by Parfit, that if there are no non-natural facts then nothing matters. But it is morally objectionable to conditionalise all our moral commitments on the question of whether there are non-natural facts. Non-natural facts are causally inefficacious, and so make no difference to the world of our experience. And to be a realist about such facts is to hold that they are mind-independent. It is compatible with our experiences that there are (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   17 citations  
  • Being realistic about motivation.Charlie Kurth - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (10):2751-2765.
    T.M. Scanlon’s ‘reasons fundamentalism’ is thought to face difficulties answering the normative question—that is, explaining why it’s irrational to not do what you judge yourself to have most reason to do (e.g., Dreier 2014a). I argue that this difficulty results from Scanlon’s failure to provide a theory of mind that can give substance to his account of normative judgment and its tie to motivation. A central aim of this paper is to address this deficiency. To do this, I draw on (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • Against Minimalist Responses to Moral Debunking Arguments.Daniel Z. Korman & Dustin Locke - 2020 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 15:309-332.
    Moral debunking arguments are meant to show that, by realist lights, moral beliefs are not explained by moral facts, which in turn is meant to show that they lack some significant counterfactual connection to the moral facts (e.g., safety, sensitivity, reliability). The dominant, “minimalist” response to the arguments—sometimes defended under the heading of “third-factors” or “pre-established harmonies”—involves affirming that moral beliefs enjoy the relevant counterfactual connection while granting that these beliefs are not explained by the moral facts. We show that (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   39 citations  
  • How to Measure Moral Realism.Thomas Pölzler - 2018 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology 9 (3):647-670.
    In recent years an increasing number of psychologists have begun to explore the prevalence, causes and effects of ordinary people’s intuitions about moral realism. Many of these studies have lacked in construct validity, i.e., they have failed to measure moral realism. My aim in this paper accordingly is to motivate and guide methodological improvements. In analysis of prominent existing measures, I develop general recommendations for overcoming ten prima facie serious worries about research on folk moral realism. G1 and G2 require (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • Ought to Is: The Puzzle of Moral Science.John Basl & Christian Coons - 2017 - Oxford Studies in Metaethics 12.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Footing the Cost (of Normative Subjectivism).Jack Woods - 2018 - In Jussi Suikkanen & Antti Kauppinen (eds.), Methodology and Moral Philosophy. New York: Routledge.
    I defend normative subjectivism against the charge that believing in it undermines the functional role of normative judgment. In particular, I defend it against the claim that believing that our reasons change from context to context is problematic for our use of normative judgments. To do so, I distinguish two senses of normative universality and normative reasons---evaluative universality and reasons and ontic universality and reasons. The former captures how even subjectivists can evaluate the actions of those subscribing to other conventions; (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • When Do Replies to the Evolutionary Debunking Argument Against Moral Realism Beg the Question?Justin Morton - 2018 - Australasian Journal of Philosophy 97 (2):265-280.
    ABSTRACTSome proponents of the evolutionary debunking argument against moral realism believe that replies that assume substantive moral claims beg the question. In this paper, I give a new account of what's wrong with such replies. On this account, many realists beg the question when they rely on substantive moral claims in their replies to the argument, but naturalists do not. While this account generalizes to some other domains, it allows perceptual and inductive realism to remain undebunked.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Moral realism and reliance on moral testimony.Joshua Blanchard - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (5):1141-1153.
    Moral realism and some of its constitutive theses, e.g., cognitivism, face the following challenge. If they are true, then it seems that we should predict that deference to moral testimony is appropriate under the same conditions as deference to non-moral testimony. Yet, many philosophers intuit that deference to moral testimony is not appropriate, even in otherwise ordinary conditions. In this paper I show that the challenge is cogent only if the appropriateness in question is disambiguated in a particular way. To (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Debunking Arguments in Metaethics and Metaphysics.Daniel Z. Korman - 2019 - In Alvin I. Goldman & Brian P. McLaughlin (eds.), Metaphysics and Cognitive Science. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. pp. 337-363.
    Evolutionary debunking arguments abound, but it is widely assumed that they do not arise for our perceptual beliefs about midsized objects, insofar as the adaptive value of our object beliefs cannot be explained without reference to the objects themselves. I argue that this is a mistake. Just as with moral beliefs, the adaptive value of our object beliefs can be explained without assuming that the beliefs are accurate. I then explore the prospects for other sorts of vindications of our object (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   13 citations  
  • The Nature and Explanatory Ambitions of Metaethics.Tristram McPherson & David Plunkett - 2018 - In Tristram Colin McPherson & David Plunkett (eds.), The Routledge Handbook of Metaethics. New York: Routledge. pp. 1-28.
    This volume introduces a wide range of important views, questions, and controversies in and about contemporary metaethics. It is natural to ask: What, if anything, connects this extraordinary range of discussions? This introductory chapter aims to answer this question by giving an account of metaethics that shows it to be a unified theoretical activ- ity. According to this account, metaethics is a theoretical activity characterized by an explanatory goal. This goal is to explain how actual ethical thought and talk—and what (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   18 citations  
  • Rorty’s Promise in Metaethics.Raff Donelson - 2017 - Contemporary Pragmatism 14 (3):292-306.
    Little attention is given to Richard Rorty’s metaethical views. No doubt this stems from the fact that most commentators are more interested in his metaphilosophical views; most see his metaethical views, offered in scattered passages, as just the downstream runoff from higher-level reflection. This article considers Rorty’s metaethics on their own merits, quite apart from whether his global picture works. I ultimately argue that Rorty’s metaethical outlook is attractive but beset by internal difficulties. Specifically, I contend that Rorty does not (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • The Unity of Grounding.Selim Berker - 2018 - Mind 127 (507):729-777.
    I argue—contra moderate grounding pluralists such as Kit Fine and more extreme grounding pluralists such as Jessica Wilson—that there is fundamentally only one grounding/in-virtue-of relation. I also argue that this single relation is indispensable for normative theorizing—that we can’t make sense of, for example, the debate over consequentialism without it. It follows from what I argue that there is no metaethically-pure normative ethics.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   106 citations  
  • Can the empirical sciences contribute to the moral realism/anti-realism debate?Thomas Pölzler - 2018 - Synthese 195 (11):4907-4930.
    An increasing number of moral realists and anti-realists have recently attempted to support their views by appeal to science. Arguments of this kind are typically criticized on the object-level. In addition, however, one occasionally also comes across a more sweeping metatheoretical skepticism. Scientific contributions to the question of the existence of objective moral truths, it is claimed, are impossible in principle; most prominently, because such arguments impermissibly derive normative from descriptive propositions, such arguments beg the question against non-naturalist moral realism, (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   5 citations  
  • Metaethics in context of engineering ethical and moral systems.Michal Klincewicz & Lily Frank - 2016 - In Michal Klincewicz & Lily Frank (eds.), Metaethics in context of engineering ethical and moral systems. Palo Alto, CA, USA: AAAI Press.
    It is not clear to what the projects of creating an artificial intelligence (AI) that does ethics, is moral, or makes moral judgments amounts. In this paper we discuss some of the extant metaethical theories and debates in moral philosophy by which such projects should be informed, specifically focusing on the project of creating an AI that makes moral judgments. We argue that the scope and aims of that project depend a great deal on antecedent metaethical commitments. Metaethics, therefore, plays (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   2 citations  
  • Ethical Non-naturalism and the Guise of the Good.Francesco Orsi - 2018 - Topoi 37 (4):581-590.
    The paper presents a positive argument for a version of metaphysically light ethical non-naturalism from the nature of mental states such as desires. It uses as its premise the time-honoured, and recently rediscovered, doctrine of the guise of the good, whereby it is essential to desire that the object of desire be conceived as good or as normatively favoured under some description. The argument is that if the guise of the good is a correct theory of desire, then a certain (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   3 citations  
  • Not Just Errors: A New Interpretation of Mackie’s Error Theory.Victor Moberger - 2017 - Journal for the History of Analytical Philosophy 5 (3).
    J. L. Mackie famously argued that a commitment to non-existent objective values permeates ordinary moral thought and discourse. According to a standard interpretation, Mackie construed this commitment as a universal and indeed essential feature of moral judgments. In this paper I argue that we should rather ascribe to Mackie a form of semantic pluralism, according to which not all moral judgments involve the commitment to objective values. This interpretation not only makes better sense of what Mackie actually says, but also (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Expressivism and the Reliability Challenge.Camil Golub - 2017 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 20 (4):797-811.
    Suppose that there are objective normative facts and our beliefs about such facts are by-and-large true. How did this come to happen? This is the reliability challenge to normative realism. As has been recently noted, the challenge also applies to expressivist “quasi-realism”. I argue that expressivism is useful in the face of this challenge, in a way that has not been yet properly articulated. In dealing with epistemological issues, quasi-realists typically invoke the desire-like nature of normative judgments. However, this is (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   11 citations  
  • (1 other version)The Objectivity of Beliefs, Reasonable Disagreement and Political Deliberation.Felipe Oliveira De Sousa - 2013 - Ratio Juris 26 (2):262-281.
    This paper is part of a broader argument that seeks to offer a justification for political authority. It aims to investigate the role of truth in political argument and to place the problem of reasonable disagreement. The argument focuses on the possibility of political deliberation, that figures as a stage of political decision‐making. It has to do with a confrontation between incompatible substantive beliefs which, however, all seem to be reasonable. How can citizens holding incompatible beliefs engage in an enterprise (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • There’s Nothing Quasi About Quasi-Realism: Moral Realism as a Moral Doctrine.Matthew H. Kramer - 2017 - The Journal of Ethics 21 (2):185-212.
    This paper seeks to clarify and defend the proposition that moral realism is best elaborated as a moral doctrine. I begin by upholding Ronald Dworkin’s anti-Archimedean critique of the error theory against some strictures by Michael Smith, and I then briefly suggest how a proponent of moral realism as a moral doctrine would respond to Smith’s defense of the Archimedeanism of expressivism. Thereafter, this paper moves to its chief endeavor. By differentiating clearly between expressivism and quasi-realism, the paper highlights both (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   8 citations  
  • Why realists must reject normative quietism.Daniel Wodak - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (11):2795-2817.
    The last two decades have seen a surge of support for normative quietism: most notably, from Dworkin, Nagel, Parfit and Scanlon. Detractors like Enoch and McPherson object that quietism is incompatible with realism about normativity. The resulting debate has stagnated somewhat. In this paper I explore and defend a more promising way of developing that objection: I’ll argue that if normative quietism is true, we can create reasons out of thin air, so normative realists must reject normative quietism.
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   7 citations  
  • Expressivism and Realist Explanations.Camil Golub - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (6):1385-1409.
    It is often claimed that there is an explanatory divide between an expressivist account of normative discourse and a realist conception of normativity: more precisely, that expressivism and realism offer conflicting explanations of (i) the metaphysical structure of the normative realm, (ii) the connection between normative judgment and motivation, (iii) our normative beliefs and any convergence thereof, or (iv) the content of normative thoughts and claims. In this paper I argue that there need be no such explanatory conflict. Given a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • Irrelevant Influences.Katia Vavova - 2018 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research:134-152.
    We often hear such casual accusations: you just believe that because you are a liberal, a Christian, an American, a woman… When such charges are made they are meant to sting—not just emotionally, but epistemically. But should they? It can be disturbing to learn that one's beliefs reflect the influence of such irrelevant factors. The pervasiveness of such influence has led some to worry that we are not justified in many of our beliefs. That same pervasiveness has led others to (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   79 citations  
  • Normative Reasoning and Moral Argumentation in Theory and Practice.Ryan Gillespie - 2016 - Philosophy and Rhetoric 49 (1):49-73.
    “Morality is relative to culture” is a descriptive claim; many people in many different cultures have different moral beliefs. When one adopts moral relativism, however, the claim accrues a normative dimension, in that what follows from relativity is the flattening out of rightness, of one moral belief being better than another regardless of culture. But in practice, humans rarely, if ever, actually behave as if certain things or beliefs are not better than others, as evidenced in everything from foreign policy (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   1 citation  
  • Nihilism, Nietzsche and the Doppelganger Problem.Charles R. Pigden - 2007 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 10 (5):441-456.
    Nihilism, Nietzsche and the Doppelganger Problem Was Nietzsche a nihilist? Yes, because, like J. L. Mackie, he was an error-theorist about morality, including the elitist morality to which he himself subscribed. But he was variously a diagnostician, an opponent and a survivor of certain other kinds of nihilism. Schacht argues that Nietzsche cannot have been an error theorist, since meta-ethical nihilism is inconsistent with the moral commitment that Nietzsche displayed. Schacht’s exegetical argument parallels the substantive argument (advocated in recent years (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   44 citations  
  • Der kleine Unterschied. Zu den Selbstverhältnissen von Verantwortung und Pflicht.Frieder Vogelmann - 2015 - Zeitschrift für Praktische Philosophie 2 (2):121-164.
    Die Debatte um die Differenz von „Verantwortung“ und „Pflicht“ ist kein bloßer Streit um Wörter, geht es doch um Begriffe, für die der Anspruch erhoben wird, sie seien konstitutiv für moralische Normativität oder gar für Normativität per se. Doch welchen Unterschied macht es, die besondere Bindungskraft von Normativität über Verantwortung oder über Pflicht zu explizieren? Die Genealogie der philosophischen Reflexionen auf Verantwortung lokalisiert die Differenz zwischen Pflicht und Verantwortung in den jeweiligen Selbstverhältnissen, die mit diesen Begriffen verbunden werden. Die Analyse (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark  
  • A Moral Argument Against Moral Realism.Melis Erdur - 2016 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (3):591-602.
    If what is morally right or wrong were ultimately a function of our opinions, then even such reprehensible actions as genocide and slavery would be morally right, had we approved of them. Many moral philosophers find this conclusion objectionably permissive, and to avoid it they posit a moral reality that exists independently of what anyone thinks. The notion of an independent moral reality has been subjected to meticulous metaphysical, epistemological and semantic criticism, but it is hardly ever examined from a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   15 citations  
  • The Intellectual Given.John Bengson - 2015 - Mind 124 (495):707-760.
    Intuition is sometimes derided as an abstruse or esoteric phenomenon akin to crystal-ball gazing. Such derision appears to be fuelled primarily by the suggestion, evidently endorsed by traditional rationalists such as Plato and Descartes, that intuition is a kind of direct, immediate apprehension akin to perception. This paper suggests that although the perceptual analogy has often been dismissed as encouraging a theoretically useless metaphor, a quasi-perceptualist view of intuition may enable rationalists to begin to meet the challenge of supplying a (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark   147 citations  
  • Putting Reasons First: A Defense of Normative Non-Naturalism.Andrew T. Forcehimes - unknown
    Against non-analytic naturalism and quietist realism, I defend a robust form of non-naturalism. The argument proceeds as follows: In the face of extensional underdetermination, quietist realism cannot non-question-beggingly respond to alternative accounts that offer formally identical but substantively different interpretations of what reasons are. They face what we might call the reasons appropriation problem. In light of this problem, quietists ought to abandon their view in favor of robust realism. By permitting substantive metaphysical claims we can then argue, based on (...)
    Download  
     
    Export citation  
     
    Bookmark