I defend normative realism—the claim that there are mind-independent, absolute normative facts—mostly by arguing against its rivals. Against mind-dependent theories of normativity, I argue that at least one highly influential version of such a view, Lewis's dispositional theory of value, is subject to at least three severe problems: the problem of the implausible contingency of value, the problem of ideal conditions, and the problem of lack of convergence. Against relativistic conceptions of normativity, I argue that either they fail to evade (...) a commitment to absolute normative truths, or they fail to distinguish themselves from Nihilism. Finally, against Nihilism, I argue that it is not a coherent option at least for the normative domain of rationality, since facts about rationality are presupposed by any judgment, including any judgment meant to express a skepticism about facts about rationality. (shrink)

According to alethic pluralism, sentences belonging to different domains of discourse can be true by having different alethic (i.e., truth-constituting) properties. Against this pluralistic view, Jamin Asay has recently argued that pluralists' appeal to multiple alethic properties is ill-motivated because the main advantages of pluralism can already be obtained within the framework of standard truthmaker theory. In response to this objection, this paper argues that Asay's claim does not hold with respect to one of the central advantages of pluralism, namely, (...) the ability to offer a proper understanding of the realism/anti-realism debate. This is because, first, when simply construed, truthmaker theory can only provide an inadequate understanding of the debate, and second, when construed in certain ways that allow it to avoid inadequacy, it becomes committed to multiple alethic properties. (shrink)

A prevalent assumption in metaethics is that people believe in moral objectivity. If this assumption were true then people should believe in the possibility of objective moral progress, objective moral knowledge, and objective moral error. We developed surveys to investigate whether these predictions hold. Our results suggest that, neither abstractly nor concretely, people dominantly believe in the possibility of objective moral progress, knowledge and error. They attribute less objectivity to these phenomena than in the case of science and no more, (...) or only slightly more, than in the cases of social conventions and personal preferences. This finding was obtained for a regular sample as well as for a sample of people who are particularly likely to be reflective and informed (philosophers and philosophy students). Our paper hence contributes to recent empirical challenges to the thesis that people believe in moral objectivity. (shrink)

Nobody doubts that culture plays a decisive role in understanding human forms of life. But it is unclear how this decisive role should be integrated into a comprehensive explanatory model of human behaviour that brings together naturalistic and social-scientific perspectives. Cultural difference, cultural learning, cultural determination do not mix well with the factors that are normally given full explanatory value in the more naturalistic approaches to the study of human behaviour. My purpose in this paper is to alert to some (...) of the theoretical vulnerabilities or concerns that the cross-cultural study of mind and behaviour might entail. I classify these theoretical concerns into three, loosely defined, categories: epistemological, ontological and ethical. The first have to do with what in anthropology was once labelled as ‘butterfly collecting’. What kind of supplementary, or additional, general theoretical knowledge do we produce when we add to the research different, particularistic, culturally determined, ways of knowing? Ontological concerns refer to the underlying reality that those ways of knowing are meant to disclose. If there are so many ways of knowing the world, where is the reality to be known? Ethical concerns are those entailed in the forms of ‘othering’ that unqualified cross-cultural research is likely to produce in research participants. (shrink)

We call systematic disputes that are particularly hard to resolve deep disagreements. We can divide most theories of deep disagreements in analytic epistemology into two camps: the Wittgensteinian view and the fundamental epistemic principles view. This essay analyzes how both views deal with two of the most pressing issues a theory of deep disagreement must address: their source and their resolution. After concluding that the paradigmatic theory of each camp struggles on both fronts, the essay proceeds to show that, despite (...) their differences, these theories share some core assumptions and think of deep disagreements similarly: as grounded in fundamental epistemic differences between the parties. This underlying conception of deep disagreements the author calls “the fundamental model.” The essay provides reasons to be wary of this conception, and hence, mainstream epistemologists’ treatment of the issue. (shrink)

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 (...) three unwelcome consequences such that allowing for and explaining it is an adequacy condition on meta‐ethical theories. Non‐cognitivism and moral naturalism, I argue, cannot capture the epistemic possibility of wholesale moral error and so are false. My argument additionally provides independent reason to accept Derek Parfit's claim that if moral non‐naturalism is false then nothing matters. I conclude that whether wholesale moral error is epistemically possible may be, in Richard Rorty's words, ‘one of those issues which puts everything up for grabs at once’ and that even if so, and even if non‐cognitivists and moral naturalists remain unmoved by an argument based upon it, this only helps to highlight the significance of my argument. (shrink)

What does logic tells us how about we ought to reason? If P entails Q, and I believe P, should I believe Q? I will argue that we should embed the issue in an independently motivated contextualist semantics for ‘ought’, with parameters for a standard and set of propositions. With the contextualist machinery in hand, we can defend a strong principle expressing how agents ought to reason while accommodating conflicting intuitions. I then show how our judgments about blame and guidance (...) can be handled by this machinery. (shrink)

This paper champions the view (REG) that the concept of a normative reason for an agent S to perform an action A is that of an explanation why it would be good (in some way, to some degree) for S to do A. REG has numerous virtues, but faces some significant challenges which prompt many philosophers to be skeptical that it can correctly account for all our reasons. I demonstrate how five different puzzles about normative reasons can be solved by (...) attention to the concept of goodness, and in particular observing the ways in which it—and consequently, talk about reasons—is sensitive to context (ends and information). Rather than asking simply whether or not certain facts are reasons for S to do A, we need to explore the contexts in which it is and is not correct to describe a certain fact as “a reason” for S to do A. These five puzzles concern: (1) reasons for attitudes of the “right kind”, (2) evidence as reasons, (3) normative facts as reasons, (4) subjective reasons, and (5) attitudes as reasons. (shrink)

A familiar claim, meant as a challenge to moral knowledge, is that we can credibly accept putative moral facts just in case they explain natural facts. This paper critically addresses Elizabeth Tropman’s response to a version of that claim. Her response has interest partly because it falls within, and extends, an influential philosophical tradition – that of trying to expose (some) skeptical challenges as spurious or ill-conceived. Also, Tropman’s target is not just any version of the claim just mentioned. It (...) is Gilbert Harman’s classic version, according to which putative moral facts must earn credibility by explaining the formation of moral beliefs. This version has wide influence, and variations of it can arise in many areas. Tropman’s response is thus well worth attention. (shrink)

This paper responds to comments on my 2014 book Confusion of Tongues by Alex Worsnip, Janice Dowell, and Glen Koehn. I first address Worsnip’s case for contextualism without relativism. Next I address Dowell’s and Worsnip’s scepticism about whether COT succeeds in providing an analytic reduction of the normative, and Dowell’s recommendation to pursue an alternative, synthetic method. I then consider Worsnip’s comments on COT’s implications for normative ethical theory, and end by responding to Koehn’s challenges to the details of my (...) end-relational semantics and treatment of the notion of final value. (shrink)

ABSTRACT The philosophical tradition approaches to morals have their grounds predominantly on metaphysical and theological concepts and theories. Among the traditional ethics concepts, the most prominent is the Divine Command Theory (DCT). As per the DCT, God gives moral foundations to the humankind by its creation and through Revelation. Morality and Divinity are inseparable since the most remote civilization. These concepts submerge in a theological framework and are largely accepted by most followers of the three Abrahamic traditions: Judaism, Christianity, and (...) Islam: the greatest part of the human population. Holding faith and Revelation for its grounds, the Divine Command Theories are not strictly subject to the demonstration. The opponents to the Divine Command conception of morals, grounded in the impossibility of demonstration of its metaphysical and religious assumptions, have tried for many centuries (albeit unsuccessfully) to devalue its importance. They held the argument that it does not show material evidence and logical coherence and, for this reason, cannot be taken into account for scientific nor philosophical purposes. It is just a belief and, as so, should be understood. Besides these extreme oppositions, many other concepts contravene the Divine Command theories, in one or another way, in part or in full. Many philosophers and social scientists, from the classic Greek philosophy up to the present date, for instance, sustain that morality is only a construct, and thus culturally relative and culturally determined. However, this brings many other discussions and imposes the challenge to determine what is the meaning of culture, which elements of culture are morally determinant, and finally, what are the boundaries of such relativity. Moral determinists claim that everything related to human behavior, including morality, is determined, once free will does not exist. More recently, modern thinkers argued that there is a strict science of morality. However, the scientific method alone, despite explaining several facts and evidence, cannot enlighten the entire content and full meaning of ethics. Morals’ understanding requires a broader perception, and an agreement among philosophers, which they have never achieved. All of these questions have many different configurations depending on each philosophical strand, and start complex analysis and endless debates, as long as many of them are reciprocally conflictive. The universe and the atmosphere involving this thesis are the dominions of all these conceptual conflicts, observed from an objective and evolutionary standpoint. Irrespective of this circumstance and its intrinsic importance, however, these questions are far distant from the methodological approach of an analytical discussion on objective morals, what is, indeed, the aim and scope of this work. We should briefly revisit these prominent traditional theories because this thesis shelters a comparative study, and its assumptions at least differ profoundly from all traditional theories. Therefore, it becomes necessary offering direct and specific elements of comparison to the reader, for the right criticism, dispensing interruptive researches. However, even revisiting the traditional theories, for this comparative and critical exposure purpose, they will be kept by the side of our main concerns, as “aliena materia.” Irrespective of the validity of any or all of the elements of this discussion, and their meaning as the philosophical universe of this thesis, the purpose of this work is demonstrating and justifying the existence and meaning of prehistoric moral archetypes arisen directly from the very first social needs and efforts for survival. These archetypes are the definition of the essential foundation of ethics, its aggregation to the collective unconscious and corresponding logic organization and transmission to evolutionary stages of the human genome and different relations space-time, irrespective of any contemporary experience of the individuals. The system defined by these archetypes composes an evolutionary human social model. Is this a metaethical position? Yes, it is. Moreover, as in any metaethical reasoning, we should look carefully for the best and coherent routes, as the Analytical Philosophy offers them. Thus, this work should reasonably demonstrate that morals are not a cultural product of the civilized men or modern societies and that despite being subject to several cultural relative aggregations and subtractions, its essential foundations are archetypal and have never structurally changed. This reasoning induces that morality is an original attribute of the “homo sapiens”; it is not a property and nor an accident: it integrates the human essence and belongs to the realm of the ontological human identity. The human phenomena is a continuing process, playing its role between random determination and free will, and we need to question how morality began and how did it come to us in the present. (shrink)

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 (...) the common, underlying structure of the arguments and the different strategies for motivating and resisting the premises of debunking arguments. (shrink)

It has seemed, to many, that there is an important connection between the ways in which some theoretical posits explain our observations, and our reasons for being ontologically committed to those posits. One way to spell out this connection is in terms of what has become known as the explanatory criterion of ontological commitment. This is, roughly, the view that we ought to posit only those entities that are indispensable to our best explanations. Our primary aim is to argue that (...) the moral nonnaturalist places herself in an invidious position if she simply accepts that the nonnatural moral facts that she posits are not explanatory. Instead, we offer the nonnaturalist an alternative strategy for dealing with moral explanations. The strategy is to retain the explanatory criterion of ontological commitment and maintain that moral properties are, in fact, explanatory. The explanations they provide are not causal explanations; instead, moral properties make a non-causal difference to the physical facts. (shrink)

Lay persons may have intuitions about morality's objectivity. What do these intuitions look like? And what are their causes and consequences? In recent years, an increasing number of scholars have begun to investigate these questions empirically. This article presents and assesses the resulting area of research as well as its potential philosophical implications. First, we introduce the methods of empirical research on folk moral objectivism. Second, we provide an overview of the findings that have so far been made. Third, we (...) raise a number of methodological worries that cast doubt upon these findings. And fourth, we discuss ways in which lay persons' intuitions aboutmoral objectivity may bear on philosophical claims. (shrink)

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 (...) argument should be taken seriously (recent arguments notwithstanding), I argue that it is nevertheless undermined by considerations of moral disagreement. Even if the metaphysical, epistemic and semantic commitments of objectivism provide little or no evidence against it, and even if the alternative explanations of ‘objectivist’ traits of moral discourse and thinking are speculative or contrived, objectivism is itself incapable of making straightforward sense of these traits. Deep and widespread moral disagreement or, rather, the mere appearance of such disagreement, strongly suggests that the explanations operative in paradigmatically objective discourse fail to carry over to the moral case. Since objectivism, no less than relativism, non-cognitivism and error-theories, needs non-trivial explanations of why we behave ‘as if’ objectivism were correct, such behavior does not presently provide reason to accept objectivism. (shrink)

This 183-page introductory part of my dissertation is an overview of some key debates in philosophical moral psychology and its methodology.

Many take the claim that you cannot ‘get’ an ‘ought’ from an ‘is’ to imply that non- moral beliefs are by themselves incapable of justifying moral beliefs. I argue that this is a mistake and that the position that moral beliefs are justified exclusively by non-moral beliefs—a view that I call moral inferentialism—presents an attractive non-sceptical moral epistemology.

In 2006, United Nations Human Rights Council was tasked to establish a new human rights monitoring mechanism: Universal Periodic Review process. The objective of this process is to promote and protect the universality of all human rights issues and concerns via a dialogical peer review process. The primary aim of this investigation is to ask the following question: has this claim of promoting and protecting the universality of the human rights been met, or challenged, during state reviews in the UPR (...) process? The issue of polygamy has been selected as the focus for this investigation to be used, primarily, as a tool to undertake an in-depth analysis of the discussions held during state reviews in the review process. In addition, this paper will employ scholarly debates between universalism and cultural relativism, as well as the sophisticated and nuanced approaches that fall in between the polarised opposites, to analyse the discussions held on human rights during state reviews. Ultimately, the findings and discussion of this investigation will provide a unique and valuable insight to the work and operation of the UPR process, so far. (shrink)

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, (...) science cannot inform conceptual accounts of moral judgements, and the conceptual is logically prior to the empirical. My main aim in this paper is to clarify and critically assess these four objections. Moreover, based on this assessment, I will formulate four general requirements that science-based arguments in favor of moral realism and anti-realism should meet. It will turn out that these arguments are limited in several ways, and that some existing arguments have been unsound. Yet it is still possible in principle for the empirical sciences to contribute to the moral realism/anti-realism debate. (shrink)

What is the relation between the concept good and more specific or ‘thick’ concepts such as admirable or courageous? I argue that good or more precisely good pro tanto is a general concept, but that the relation between good pro tanto and the more specific concepts is not that of a genus to its species. The relation of an important class of specific evaluative concepts, which I call ‘affective concepts’, to good pro tanto is better understood as one between a (...) determinable and its determinates, whereas concepts such as courageous can be analysed in terms of affective concepts and purely descriptive concepts. (shrink)

Causal contextualism holds that sentences of the form ‘c causes e’ have context-sensitive truth-conditions. We consider four arguments invoked by Jonathan Schaffer in favor of this view. First, he argues that his brand of contextualism helps solve puzzles about transitivity. Second, he contends that how one describes the relata of the causal relation sometimes affects the truth of one’s claim. Third, Schaffer invokes the phenomenon of contrastive focus to conclude that causal statements implicitly designate salient alternatives to the cause and (...) effect. Fourth, he claims that the appropriateness of a causal statement depends on what is contextually taken for granted or made salient. We show that causal invariantism can explain these linguistic data at least as well as contextualism. We then argue that pace Schaffer, some causal sentences are always correct and can never be plausibly denied, regardless of the context. (shrink)

Moral disagreement is widely held to pose a threat for metaethical realism and objectivity. In this paper I attempt to understand how it is that moral disagreement is supposed to present a problem for metaethical realism. I do this by going through several distinct (though often related) arguments from disagreement, carefully distinguishing between them, and critically evaluating their merits. My conclusions are rather skeptical: Some of the arguments I discuss fail rather clearly. Others supply with a challenge to realism, but (...) not one we have any reason to believe realism cannot address successfully. Others beg the question against the moral realist, and yet others raise serious objections to realism, but ones that—when carefully stated—can be seen not to be essentially related to moral disagreement. Arguments based on moral disagreement itself have almost no weight, I conclude, against moral realism. (shrink)

Situationists such as John Doris, Gilbert Harman, and Maria Merritt suppose that appeal to reliable behavioral dispositions can be dispensed with without radical revision to morality as we know it. This paper challenges this supposition, arguing that abandoning hope in reliable dispositions rules out genuine trust and forces us to suspend core reactive attitudes of gratitude and resentment, esteem and indignation. By examining situationism through the lens of trust we learn something about situationism (in particular, the radically revisionary moral implications (...) of its adoption) as well as something about trust (in particular, that the conditions necessary for genuine trust include a belief in a capacity for robust dispositions). (shrink)

I argue that all rights exist by convention. According to my definition, a right exists by convention just in case its justification appeals to the rules of a socially shared pattern of acting. I show that our usual justifications for rights are circular, that a right fulfills my criterion if all possible justifications for it are circular, and that all existing philosophical justifications for rights are circular or fail. We find three non-circular alternatives in the literature, viz. justifications of rights (...) by consequences, by autonomy or by divine commands. I show that all three alternatives fail, and I conclude that all rights exist by convention. This ontological result has a surprising and beneficial consequence. A common argument against conventionalism is that it implies cultural relativism. I finish by showing that the suggested conventionalism is incompatible with cultural relativism. (shrink)

Sociologists often ask why particular groups of people have the moral views that they do. I argue that sociology’s empirical research on morality relies, implicitly or explicitly, on unsophisticated and even obsolete ethical theories, and thus is based on inadequate conceptions of the ontology, epistemology, and semantics of morality. In this article I address the two main problems in the sociology of morality: (1) the problem of moral truth, and (2) the problem of value freedom. I identify two ideal–typical approaches. (...) While the Weberian paradigm rejects the concept of moral truth, the Durkheimian paradigm accepts it. By contrast, I argue that sociology should be metaphysically agnostic, yet in practice it should proceed as though there were no moral truths. The Weberians claim that the sociology of morality can and should be value free; the Durkheimians claim that it cannot and it should not. My argument is that, while it is true that factual statements presuppose value judgments, it does not follow that sociologists are moral philosophers in disguise. Finally, I contend that in order for sociology to improve its understanding of morality, better conceptual, epistemological, and methodological foundations are needed. (shrink)

Does Duncan Kennedy successfully cannibalize jurisprudence? He attempts to do it by demonstrating the inexistence of rightness in legal argumentation. If there is no right legal argument, then there is no right answer in adjudication, adjudication is not a rational enterprise and legal doctrine cannot be said to be a science. It can be shown that skepticism is self-defeating. Duncan Kennedy can avoid self defeat only because he actually believes in a lot of legal arguments. His thesis that judges decide (...) questions of policy without any methodology that distinguishes them from legislators does not hold. Judicial reasoning is subject to constraints that do not affect legislators. It must be based on the sources of law and is limited by rules of procedure. Even when the judges have ‘interstitial’ legislative powers they are, unlike the legislator, bound to fit the system and their decisions are considered in procedure from the perspective of the right answer doctrine. The only work that can convincingly refute the skeptic argument against legal science is the reconstruction of jurisprudence as a scientific enterprise. Such work is beyond the scope of any single paper. The article aims to give some inspirations for such a task. (shrink)

Our moral convictions cannot, on the face of it, count in evidence against scientific claims with which they happen to conflict. Moral anti-realists of whatever stripe can explain this easily: science is immune to moral refutation because moral discourse is defective as a trustworthy source of true and objective judgments. Moral realists, they can add, are unable to explain this immunity. After describing how anti-realists might implement this reasoning, the paper argues that the only plausible realist comeback turns on the (...) practical nature of moral reasoning. This comeback, however, places significant constraints on the structure of evidence for moral judgments. These constraints cannot be met by coherentist defenders of reflective-equilibrium methodology or by anyone sympathetic to bottom-up, case-driven foundationalism, including those who claim we have perceptual or perception-like access to moral truths. Unfortunately for realists in these categories, alternative realism-friendly accounts of science’s apparent moral immunity are unpromising. These neither explain nor explain away our unwillingness to infer an is from an ought, as Hume might have put it. Science’s apparent immunity to moral refutation therefore poses a serious problem for any realist unhappy with top-down, theory-driven conceptions of the structure of moral evidence. (shrink)

It is generally believed that moral reductionism is immune from notorious problems in moral metaphysics and epistemology, such as the problem of moral explanation – it is at least on this dimension that moral reductionism scores better than moral anti- reductionism. However, in this article I reject this popular view. First, I argue that moral reductionism fails to help vindicate the explanatory efficacy of moral properties because the reductionist solution is either circular or otiose. Second, I attempt to show that (...) a successful vindication, if any, of moral explanation requires moral-descriptive irreducibility. My discussion thus raises an explanatory challenge to moral reductionism. (shrink)

Presents the author's evolving views of the best current positions on certain core philosophical and psychological problems as they developed over time. These positions together suggest a skeptical or nihilist perspective modified by evolutionary psychology and contemporary philosophy that embraces our desire to live as best we can and the relative and psychological reality of values, free will and other phenomena while recognizing limitations on their foundations and our understanding. The below makes no claims to originality for most of the (...) ideas expressed, drawing on a range of mostly unreferenced texts that will be familiar to philosophers and psychologists working in this area. (shrink)

Philosophical theorizing is often, either tacitly or explicitly, guided by intuitions about cases. Theories that accord with our intuitions are generally considered to be prima facie better than those that do not. However, recent empirical work has suggested that philosophically significant intuitions are variable and unstable in a number of ways. This variability of intuitions has led naturalistically inclined philosophers to disparage the practice of relying on intuitions for doing philosophy in general (e.g. Stich & Weinberg 2001) and for doing (...) moral philosophy in particular (Appiah 2008; Doris & Stich 2005; Horowitz 1998; Nadelhoffer & Feltz 2008; Sinnott Armstrong 2008). In this paper, we will draw on naturalistic considerations to offer some solace to philosophers who rely on intuitions. We wouldn’t call this a defense of intuitions, exactly, since we are sympathetic with much of the naturalists’ critique. But we want to introduce into the debate some neglected naturalistic reasons to be optimistic about intuitions, focusing especially on ethical intuitions. (shrink)

Disagreement is common: even informed, intelligent, and generally reasonable people often come to different conclusions when confronted with what seems to be the same evidence. Can the competing conclusions be reasonable? If not, what can we reasonably think about the situation? This volume examines the epistemology of disagreement. Philosophical questions about disagreement arise in various areas, notably politics, ethics, aesthetics, and the philosophy of religion: but this will be the first book focusing on the general epistemic issues arising from informed (...) disagreement. Ten leading philosophers offer specially written essays which together will offer a starting-point for future work on this topic. (shrink)

According to the orthodox account of meaning and translation in the literature, meaning is a property of expressions of a language, and translation is a matching of synonymous expressions across languages. This linguistic account of translation gives rise to well-known skeptical conclusions about translation, objectivity, meaning and truth, but it does not conform to our best translational practices. In contrast, I argue for a textual account of meaning based on the concept of a TEXT-TYPE that does conform to our best (...) translational practices. With their semantic function in view, text-types are Archimedean points for their respective disciplines. The text-type of philosophy is no exception. Culture-transcendent conceptual analysis can proceed on firm footing without having to deny the reality of radical cultural and linguistic difference by treating components of text-types as the concepts to be analyzed. Analyses of central philosophical concepts are provided as a means of adjudicating philosophical controversy. (shrink)

The idea that normative statements implicitly refer to standards has been around for quite some time. It is usually defended by normative antirealists, who tend to be attracted to Humean theories of reasons. But this is an awkward combination: 'A ought to X' entails that there are reasons for A to X, and 'A ought to X all things considered' entails that the balance of reasons favours X-ing. If the standards implicitly referred to are not those of the agent, then (...) why would these entailments hold? After all, Humeanism says that 'A has a reason to X' is true if and only if A has some desire which is furthered by X-ing. In this paper, I develop a standard-relational theory of 'ought' and a non-Humean theory of reasons (oughtism). Together, they explain why 'A ought to X' entails not only that there are reasons for A to X, but also that the balance of reasons favours X-ing. The latter explanation depends on a theory of weight, in which the weight of a reason depends on the position of a rule (standard) in an order of priorities. The theories are truth-conditional, but do not require objective normative facts for the truth of 'ought' judgments and judgments about reasons. (shrink)

The main aim of this thesis is to defend moral realism. In chapter 1, I argue that moral realism is best understood as the view that moral sentences have truth-value, there are moral properties that make some moral sentences true, and moral properties are not reducible to non- moral properties. Realism is contrasted with non-cognitivism, error-theory and reductionism, which, in brief, deny, and, respectively. In the introductory chapter, it is also argued that there are some prima facie reasons to assume (...) that non-cognitivism and error-theory are erroneous. In chapters 2 and 3, I suggest that the two main forms of reductionism, analytic and synthetic reductionism, are mistaken. In chapter 4, I argue that the considerations in the previous chapters in relation to non-cognitivism, error-theory and reductionism provide support to moral realism. It is also suggested that these considerations make it plausible to hypothesise that moral properties depend on non- moral properties in a way I refer to as ‘the realist formula’. The realist formula confirms moral realism since it implies that moral properties are not reducible to non- moral properties. In chapters 5, 6 and 7, I argue that moral realism, much owing to the realist formula, is able to explain significant meta-ethical issues regarding moral disagreement, moral reason and moral motivation. Among other things, externalism concerning moral motivation is defended. The explanatory value of moral realism in relation to these meta-ethical issues is taken to suggest that this view is preferable to non-cognitivism, error-theory and reductionism. Some of the meta-ethical issues discussed in these chapters, particularly moral disagreement and motivation, have been thought to provide support to non-cognitivism and error-theory. I maintain that since realism, unlike reductionism, is able to counter these arguments, it justifies us in upholding the view that moral sentences have truth-value and the view that there are moral properties. In chapter 8, various objections against realism with regard to the dependence of moral properties on non- moral properties are responded to. In chapter 9, I consider an influential argument to the effect that moral properties are not involved in causal explanations. I maintain that this argument fails and that it therefore is reasonable to assume that moral properties are natural properties. However, the discussions in chapters 8 and 9 also suggest that moral realism might face problems that cannot be thoroughly discussed in this thesis. (shrink)

According to one sort of epistemic relativist, normative epistemic claims (e.g., evidence E justifies hypothesis H) are never true or false simpliciter, but only relative to one or another epistemic system. In chapter 6 of Fear of Knowledge, Paul Boghossian objects to this view on the ground that its central notions cannot be explained, and that it cannot account for the normativity of epistemic discourse. This paper explores how the dogged relativist might respond.

Moral error theory of the kind defended by J. L. Mackie and Richard Joyce is premised on two claims: (1) that moral judgements essentially presuppose that moral value has absolute authority, and (2) that this presupposition is false, because nothing has absolute authority. This paper accepts (2) but rejects (1). It is argued first that (1) is not the best explanation of the evidence from moral practice, and second that even if it were, the error theory would still be mistaken, (...) because the assumption does not contaminate the meaning or truth-conditions of moral claims. These are determined by the essential application conditions for moral concepts, which are relational rather than absolute. An analogy is drawn between moral judgements and motion judgements. (shrink)

On the face of it, some of our knowledge is of moral facts (for example, that this promise should not be broken in these circumstances), and some of it is of non-moral facts (for example, that the kettle has just boiled). But, some argue, there is reason to believe that we do not, after all, know any moral facts. For example, according to J. L. Mackie, if we had moral knowledge (‘‘if we were aware of [objective values]’’), ‘‘it would have (...) to be by some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways of knowing everything else’’(1977,p.38).But wehavenosuchspecialfaculty.So,wehavenomoralknowledge. Following Mackie, let us distinguish two questions: Q1: Assuming that we have moral knowledge, how do we have it? Q2: Do we in fact have any moral knowledge? In response to the first question, I argue that if we have moral knowledge, we have some of it in the same way we have knowledge of our immediate environment: by perception. Many people think that this answer leads to moral skepticism, because they think that we obviously cannot have moral knowledge by perception. But I will argue that this is incorrect. The plan for the paper is as follows. In Sections 2–4, I work up to my answer to Q1 by considering rivals. In Section 5, I explain what marks my answer to Q1 as a distinctive view, and defend it. In Section 6, I briefly discuss how this answer to Q1 affects what we say in response to Q2. (shrink)

Moral disagreement has long been thought to create serious problems for certain views in metaethics. More specifically, moral disagreement has been thought to pose problems for any metaethical view that rejects relativism—that is, for any view that implies that whenever two thinkers disagree about a moral question, at least one of those thinkers’ beliefs about the question is not correct. In this essay, I shall outline a solution to one of these problems. As I shall argue, it turns out in (...) the end that this problem is not really a special problem about moral disagreement at all: it is a general problem about disagreement as such. For this reason, in the later sections of this essay, I shall turn to some general questions in epistemology, about the epistemic significance of disagreement. (shrink)

Moral relativism is an attractive position, but also one that it is difficult to formulate. In this paper, we propose an alternative way of formulating moral relativism that locates the relativity of morality in the property that makes moral claims true. Such an approach, we believe, has significant advantages over other possible ways of formulating moral relativism. We conclude by considering a few problems such a position might face.

Epistemic subjectivism, as I am using the term, is a view in the same spirit as relativism, rooted in skepticism about the objectivity or universality of epistemic norms. I explore some ways that we might motivate subjectivism drawing from some common themes in analytic epistemology. Without diagnosing where the arguments go wrong, I argue that the resulting position is untenable.

The precise and proper territorial boundaries of skepticism, relativism, and pluralism have been perennial topics of debate in philosophy. Very few philosophers endorse these positions in an unqual...

According to the argument from moral disagreement, the existence of widespread or persistent moral disagreement is best explained by, and thus supports, the view that there are no objective moral truths. One of the most common charges against this argument is that it “overgeneralises”: it implausibly forces its proponents to also deny the existence of objective truths about certain matters of physics, history, philosophy, etc. (“companions in guilt” objections) or even about the argument’s own conclusion or its own soundness (“self-defeat” (...) objections). My aim in this article is to provide a detailed clarification and assessment of this overgeneralisation charge. Various (mostly empirical) issues relevant to assessing the above objections have so far not been sufficiently investigated. Nevertheless, there are good reasons to believe that realists have exaggerated the significance of their overgeneralisation charge. Both its companions in guilt and its self-defeat versions likely fail. (shrink)

One argument that has been suggested for conventionalism about personal identity is that it captures that certain disagreements about personal identity seem irresolvable, without being committed to the view that these disagreements are merely verbal. In this paper, I will take the considerations about disagreement used to motivate conventionalism seriously. However, I will use them to motivate a very different, novel, and as yet unexplored view about personal identity. This is the view that personal identity is a non-representational concept, the (...) nature of which isn’t to be accounted for in terms of what entity it represents, but its non-representational role. I highlight that we find structurally very similar concerns about disagreement in another philosophical debate, namely in meta-ethics. But, in meta-ethics, such sorts of considerations are, traditionally, thought to support one distinctive view: meta-ethical expressivism, a non-representational view about normative thought and discourse. This suggests that we should take a similar view seriously for personal identity. I also develop what such an unfamiliar view might look like, using expressivism as a template. On this view, judgements about personal identity are plans that regulate who to hold accountable. (shrink)

There seem to be cases where A believes p, and B believes not-p, but neither makes a mistake. This is known as faultless disagreement. According to the epistemic account, in at least some cases of faultless disagreement either A or B must believe something false, and the disagreement is faultless in the sense that each follows the epistemic norm. Recently, philosophers have raised various objections to this account. In this paper, I propose a new version of the epistemic account and (...) show how it can handle those objections. (shrink)

According to unconditional motivational internalism, there is an a priori constraint on an agent's forming a sincere moral judgement, namely that she is, at least to some minimal extent, motivated to act as it dictates. In order to undermine this internalist position, proponents of motivational externalism typically appeal to the possibility of the amoralist—i.e. an individual who makes sincere moral judgements, but who is completely unmoved to act accordingly. This strategy is known as the challenge of amoralism. Against this strategy, (...) I will argue that in order to represent a genuine case of amoralism, and a credible counterexample to unconditional motivational internalism, an agent would have to simultaneously satisfy an epistemically inconsistent set of conditions. Thus, the conclusion I will attempt to defend in this paper is that the challenge of amoralism does not succeed in posing a legitimate threat to unconditional motivational internalism. (shrink)

Moral realists believe that there are objective moral truths. According to one of the most prominent arguments in favour of this view, ordinary people experience morality as realist-seeming, and we have therefore prima facie reason to believe that realism is true. Some proponents of this argument have claimed that the hypothesis that ordinary people experience morality as realist-seeming is supported by psychological research on folk metaethics. While most recent research has been thought to contradict this claim, four prominent earlier studies (...) indeed seem to suggest a tendency towards realism. My aim in this paper is to provide a detailed internal critique of these four studies. I argue that, once interpreted properly, all of them turn out in line with recent research. They suggest that most ordinary people experience morality as “pluralist-” rather than realist-seeming, i.e., that ordinary people have the intuition that realism is true with regard to some moral issues, but variants of anti-realism are true with regard to others. This result means that moral realism may be less well justified than commonly assumed. (shrink)

Moral platonism, the claim that moral entities are both objective and prescriptive, is generally thought to be a dead end. In an attempt to defend a moderate form of moral platonism or more precisely platonism about values, I first argue that several of the many versions of this doctrine are not committed to ontological extravagances. I then discuss an important objection due to John McDowell and developed by Michael Smith, according to which moral platonism is incoherent. I argue that objectivism (...) is compatible with the claim that certain ways of being aware of values, namely those involving emotions, are motivating. (shrink)