Provides a comprehensive introduction to the major philosophical theories attempting to explain the workings of language.

Part I The Imperative Mood 'Virtue, then, is a disposition governing our choices '. ARISTOTLE, Eth. Nic. 36 Prescriptive Language. ...

First published in 1903, this volume revolutionized philosophy and forever altered the direction of ethical studies. A philosopher’s philosopher, G. E. Moore was the idol of the Bloomsbury group, and Lytton Strachey declared that Principia Ethica marked the rebirth of the Age of Reason. This work clarifies some of moral philosophy’s most common confusions and redefines the science’s terminology. Six chapters explore: the subject matter of ethics, naturalistic ethics, hedonism, metaphysical ethics, ethics in relation to conduct, and the ideal. Moore's (...) simplicity of style and precise use of everyday language exercised an enormous influence on the development of analytic philosophy, and they contribute to the continuing resonance of his compelling arguments. (shrink)

J. L. Mackie argued that if there were objective moral properties or facts, then the supervenience relation linking the nonmoral to the moral would be metaphysically queer. Moral realists reply that objective supervenience relations are ubiquitous according to contemporary versions of metaphysical naturalism and, hence, that there is nothing especially queer about moral supervenience. In this paper we revive Mackie's challenge to moral realism. We argue: (i) that objective supervenience relations of any kind, moral or otherwise, should be explainable rather (...) than sui generis; (ii) that this explanatory burden can be successfully met vis-à-vis the supervenience of the mental upon the physical, and in other related cases; and (iii) that the burden cannot be met for (putative) objective moral supervenience relations. (shrink)

The functionalist view of the nature of the mind is now widely accepted. Like behaviorism and physicalism, functionalism seeks to answer the question "What are mental states?" I shall be concerned with identity thesis formulations of functionalism. They say, for example, that pain is a functional state, just as identity thesis formulations of physicalism say that pain is a physical state.

First published in Great Britain in 1948, this book examines the definition of goodness as being distinct from the question of What things are good? Although less immediately and obviously practical, Dr. Ewing argues that the former question is more fundamental since it raises the issue of whether ethics is explicable wholly in terms of something else, for example, human psychology. Ewing states in his preface that the definition of goodness needs to be confirmed before one decides on the place (...) value is to occupy in our conception of reality or on the ultimate characteristics which make one action right and another wrong. This book discusses these issues. (shrink)

The Right and the Good, a classic of twentieth-century philosophy by the eminent scholar Sir David Ross, is now presented in a new edition with a substantial introduction by Philip Stratton-Lake, a leading expert on Ross. Ross's book is the pinnacle of ethical intuitionism, which was the dominant moral theory in British philosophy for much of the nineteenth and early twentieth century. Intuitionism is now enjoying a considerable revival, and Stratton-Lake provides the context for a proper understanding of Ross's great (...) work today. (shrink)

D. H. Hodgson has argued that among highly knowledgeable and rational act-Utilitarians there is no non-Circular reason to be truthful or to expect truthfulness from others; wherefore these utilitarians forfeit the benefits of communication. I reply that hodgson goes wrong by tacitly assuming that his utilitarians have no premises to reason from except those that hodgson lays down in specifying the example under consideration.