Sorting Out Solutions to the Now-What Problem

Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 17 (3) (2020)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Moral error theorists face the so-called “now-what problem”: what should we do with our moral judgments from a prudential point of view if these judgments are uniformly false? On top of abolitionism and conservationism, which respectively advise us to get rid of our moral judgments and to keep them, three revisionary solutions have been proposed in the literature: expressivism, naturalism, and fictionalism. In this paper, I argue that expressivism and naturalism do not constitute genuine alternatives to abolitionism, of which they are in the end mere variants—and, even less conveniently, variants that are conform to the very spirit of abolitionism as formulated by its proponents. The main version of fictionalism, by contrast, provides us with a recommendation to which abolitionists cannot consistently subscribe. This leaves us with only one revisionary solution to the now-what problem.

Author's Profile

François Jaquet
Université de Strasbourg

Analytics

Added to PP
2020-06-08

Downloads
143 (#80,881)

6 months
91 (#49,036)

Historical graph of downloads since first upload
This graph includes both downloads from PhilArchive and clicks on external links on PhilPapers.
How can I increase my downloads?