RésuméUn argument standard contre le non-cognitivisme va comme suit. Les non-cognitivistes, dit-on, sont théoriquement commis à endosser la doctrine de l'internalisme; or la doctrine de l'internalisme requiert que l'amoraliste soit inconcevable; comme l'amoraliste est concevable, l'internalisme doit être faux; le non-cognitivisme, par conséquent, n'est pas plausible. C'est ce que nous pouvons appeler l' «argument de l'amoraliste». J'essaie de montrer dans cet article que l'argument de léamoraliste ne constitue pas la réfutation décisive du non-cognitivisme que plusieurs réalistes en morale pensent y (...) voir. Mon approche à ce sujet est de développer les implications sémantiques d'une conception d'inspiration empirique du non-cognitivisme. (shrink)

This chapter offers an introduction to naturalist views in contemporary metaethics. Such views attempt to find a place for normative properties (such as goodness and rightness) in the concrete physical world as it is understood by both science and common sense. The chapter begins by introducing simple naturalist conceptual analyses of normative terms. It then explains how these analyses were rejected in the beginning of the 20th Century due to G.E. Moore’s influential Open Question Argument. After this, the chapter considers (...) what good general reasons there are for defending naturalism in metaethics. The bulk of the chapter will then survey new semantic and metaphysical forms of naturalism which in different ways attempt to address Moore’s objection to naturalism. These more recent versions of naturalism—using new resources from philosophy of language, philosophy of mind, metaphysics, philosophy of science and epistemology—attempt to explain why the Open Question Argument fails. (shrink)

Frank Jackson has famously argued that there is no logical space for the view which understands moral properties as non-natural properties of their own unique kind. His argument is based on two steps: firstly, given supervenience and truth-aptness of moral claims, it is always possible to find a natural property which is necessarily co-instantiated with a given moral property, and secondly that there are no distinct necessarily co-instantiated properties. I argue that this second step of the argument must rely on (...) a controversial nominalist view of properties. In contrast, if we accept universals or tropes, there is logical space also for non-natural moral properties even if they are necessarily co-instantiated with natural properties. (shrink)

Nonnaturalist realism is the view that normative properties are unique kind of stance-independent properties. It has been argued that such views fail to explain why two actions that are exactly alike otherwise must also have the same normative properties. Mark Schroeder and Knut Olav Skarsaune have recently suggested that nonnaturalist realists can respond to this supervenience challenge by taking the primary bearers of normative properties to be action kinds. This paper develops their response in two ways. First, it provides additional (...) motivation for the previous claim about the bearers of normative properties by drawing from the work of H. A. Prichard. Second, and more importantly, it formulates a plausible metaphysical framework based on the contemporary trope theory to explain why action kinds would have their second-order properties, including their normative properties, necessarily. (shrink)

Various criteria for the natural/non-natural distinction have been suggested in metaethics. Shafer-Landau first claimed that natural properties are properties that are used in scientific disciplines. But firstly, this definition is not comprehensive, and secondly it is ambiguous; according to the second criterion, two lists must be prepared; the first list includes terms that most people consider to be natural. The terms that are not included in the first list, are transferred to the list of non-natural terms. I argue, however, that (...) this criterion also does not help in distinguishing natural properties from non-natural ones. If we wish to maintain Shafer-Landau’s view, we can find a criterion for natural properties using normative ethics. For example, by accepting Kant’s principle of humanity as a non-natural reality, those descriptive properties that follow from this principle can be the foundational properties for moral properties. But by presenting a serious criticism on Shafer-Landau’s metaethics and accepting views that are invulnerable to this critique, a criterion for the distinction of natural/non-natural in meta-ethics can be found. One of these views is Fitzpatrick’s view, according to which many of the aspects of the world that are empirically investigable are also inherently value-laden. Therefore, the world of human experience is a dual-aspect world. One of these aspects is natural and the other is non-natural. (shrink)

RÉSUMÉ: Un argument standard contre le non-cognitivisme va comme suit. Les noncognitivistes, dit-on, sont théoriquement commis à endosser la doctrine de l’internalisme; or la doctrine de l’internalisme requiert que l’amoraliste soit inconcevable; comme l’amoraliste est concevable, l’internalisme doit être faux; le non-cognitivisme, par conséquent, n’est pas plausible. C’est ce que nous pouvons appeler l’«argument de l’amoraliste». J’essaie de montrer dans cet article que l’argument de l’amoraliste ne constitue pas la réfutation décisive du non-cognitivisme que plusieurs réalistes en morale pensent y (...) voir. Mon approche à ce sujet est de développer les implications sémantiques d’une conception d’inspiration empirique du non-cognitivisme. (shrink)

Most of the essays collected here are essaysinmetaethics seeking in exacting and interesting ways to resolve problems raised by the familiar options in metaethics we outlined in our Introduction. Richard Brandt, for example, forcefully argues, going much against the at least modestly holistic grain of our time, for a foundationalism (noncognitivist though it be) which would be foundational in both metaethics and normative ethics. R.M. Hare makes a brief but systematic defense, which is both spirited and clear, of his prescriptivism (...) (a species of what we, following tradition, have called ‘noncognitivism,’ but which he argues should instead be called ‘nondescriptivism’). His arguments here for his position - call it nondescriptivism or noncognitivism- are directed forcefully against ethical naturalism (descriptivism) and specifically against the naturalism of Philippa Foot. Nicholas Sturgeon and David Copp contribute elaborate and rigorously argued defenses of ethical naturalism, or, as they might prefer to call it, ‘moral realism.’. (shrink)