Statements about a person's good slip into and out of our ordinary discourse about the world with nary a ripple. Such statements are objects of belief and assertion, they obey the rules of logic, and they are often defended by evidence and argument. They even participate in common-sense explanations, as when we say of some person that he has been less subject to wild swings of enthusiasm and disappointment now that, with experience, he has gained a clearer idea of what (...) is good for him. Statements about a person's good present themselves as being about something with respect to which our beliefs can be true or false, warranted or unwarranted. Let us speak of these features as the descriptive side of discourse about a person's good. (shrink)

By distinguishing between pragmatic and semantic aspects of emotivism, and by distinguishing between inflationary and deflationary conceptions of truth conditions, this paper defends emotivism against a series of objections. First, it is not the case (as Blackburn has argued) that emotivism must explain the appearance that moral sentences have truth conditions. Second, it is not the case (as Boghossian has argued) that emotivism presupposes that non-moral sentences have inflationary truth conditions. Finally, it is not the case (as Geach and Blackburn (...) have argued) that emotivism is inconsistent with the validity of certain simple arguments. (shrink)

The criterion of truth is the measure of the truthfulness and reliability of our knowledge. It is also the basis for determining the correctness of our concepts and how much our perceptions, ideas, and concepts accord with objective reality. Idealism holds to the idea that the criterion of truth does not involve the integration between theory as created by human intelligence and objective reality, but rather that the criterion of truth involves the "clarity and correctness" of perception, viewpoints, and concepts (...) by the subject. For instance, the Machists 1 think that the criterion of truth is experience, however, they neither interpret experience from a materialistic viewpoint, nor view experience as the result of humans interacting with nature as they reform it. The Machists view experience as a summary of perceptions and as the subjective experience of humans. In this sense, perception must be tested by perception itself. In attempting to escape the trap of solipsism , they proposed "collective experience" as the criterion of truth. According to such a view, anything that involves "common significance," that is, anything acknowledged by everyone, is the truth. Lenin exposed the absurdity of idealist theory by pointing out that by following the view of "socially formed experience" it is very easy to consider as normal the most absurd and farcical notions, such as ghosts, for such beliefs are also a form of human "experience." Religion also possesses a "common significance," for innumerable people believe in ghosts and miracles, etc. Nevertheless, religion does not become the truth because of this. The concept of the "criterion of truth" held by the Machists played a dominant role in modern bourgeois philosophy. Jean Jacques Rousseau and John Dewey, along with other reactionaries in philosophy all denied scientific criteria. They would rather that the masses remain ignorant of how to understand and determine the truth. (shrink)

North .—What is the trouble about moral facts? When someone denies that there is an objective moral order, or asserts that ethical propositions are pseudo-propositions, cannot I refute him by saying: “You know very well that Brown did wrong in beating his wife. You know very well that you ought to keep promises. You know very well that human affection is good and cruelty bad, that many actions are wrong and some are right”? West .—Isn't the trouble about moral facts (...) another case of trouble about knowing, about learning? We find out facts about the external world by looking and listening; about ourselves, by feeling; about other people, by looking and listening and feeling. When this is noticed, there arises a wish to say that the facts are what is seen, what is heard, what is felt; and, consequently, that moral facts fall into one of these classes. So those who have denied that there are “objective moral characteristics” have not wanted to deny that Brown's action was wrong or that keeping promises is right. (shrink)

A discussion of T M Scanlon's contractualism as a foundational account of the nature of morality. The article discusses how contractualism provides an account of moral truth and objectivity that is based in an idealization of moral reasoning. It then develops contractualism's account of moral motivation to show how it provides a way to understand obscure but central aspects of Kantian views: the claims that moral reasons are of a special kind, and that moral motives have a basis in practical (...) reason. This account is contrasted with human conceptions of moral motivation, which are argued to be incapable of accounting for the stringency of moral reasons and obligations. (shrink)