New Waves in Metaethics

310 Pages·2011·35.751 MB·English

by  Michael Brady (eds.)

New Waves in Philosophy
Series Editors: Vincent F. Hendricks and Duncan Pritchard
Titles include:
Jesus H. Aguilar, Andrei A. Buckareff and Keith Frankish (editors)
NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF ACTION
Michael Brady (editor)
NEW WAVES IN METAETHICS
Otavio Bueno and Oystein Linnebo (editors)
NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS
Boudewijn DeBruin and Christopher F. Zurn (editors)
NEW WAVES IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY
Allan Hazlett (editor)
NEW WAVES IN METAPHYSICS
Vincent F. Hendricks and Duncan Pritchard (editors)
NEW WAVES IN EPISTEMOLOGY
P.D. Magnus and Jacob Busch (editors)
NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE
Yujin Nagasawa and ErikJ. Wielenberg (editors)
NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION
Jan Kyrre Berg Olsen, Evan Selinger and Smen Riis (editors)
NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY
Thomas S. Petersen, Jesper Ryberg and Clark Wolf (editors)
NEW WAVES IN APPLIED ETHICS
Sarah Sawyer (editor)
NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF LANGUAGE
Kathleen Stock and Katherine Thomson-Jones (editors)
NEW WAVES IN AESTHETICS
Nikolaj J. L. L. Pedersen and Cory D. Wright (editors)
NEW WAVES IN TRUTH
Forthcoming:
Thorn Brooks (editor)
NEW WAVES IN ETHICS
Maksymilian Del Mar (editor)
NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF LAW
Greg Restall and Gillian Russell (editors)
NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHICAL LOGIC
Future Volumes:
NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF MIND
NEW WAVES IN FORMAL PHILOSOPHY
New Waves in Philosophy
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Series Standing Order ISBN 978-{}-230-S3798-9 (paperback)
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New Waves in Metaethics
Edited by
Michael Brady
University of Glasgow, UK
palgrave
macmillan
Selection and editorial matter © Michael Brady 2011
Chapters © their individual authors 2011
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-25161-8
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ISBN 978-0-230-25162-5 ISBN 978-0-230-29489-9 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230294899
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
New waves in metaethics / [edited by] Michael Brady.
p. cm.-(New waves in philosophy)
ISBN 978-0-230-25162-5 (pbk.)
1. Ethics. I. Brady, Michael. 1965-
Bj1012.N4862011
170',42-dc22 2010032358
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11
Transferred to Digital Printing 2011
Contents
Notes on Contributors vii
Series Editors' Preface x
Introduction 1
Michael Brady
1 Ethical Non-Naturalism and Normative Properties 7
William J. FitzPatrick
2 Naturalistic Metaethics at Half Price 36
Joshua Gert
3 In Defense of Moral Error Theory 62
Jonas Olson
4 The Myth of Moral Fictionalism 85
Terence Cuneo and Sean Christy
5 Expressivism, Inferentialism and the
Theory of Meaning 103
Matthew Chrisman
6 How Not to Avoid Wishful Thinking 126
Mark Schroeder
7 Internal Reasons and the Motivating Intuition 141
Julia Markovits
8 Beyond Wrong Reasons: The Buck-Passing
Account of Value 166
Ulrike Heuer
9 A Wrong Turn to Reasons? 185
Pekka Viiyrynen
10 Shmagency Revisited 208
David Enoch
11 The Authority of Social Norms 234
Nicholas Southwood
12 Moral Epistemology 249
Alison Hills
v
vi Contents
13 Aesthetics and Particularism 264
Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge
Bibliography 286
Index 299
Contributors
Michael Brady is Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. His main
research interests are in metaethics, philosophy of emotion, and epistemol
ogy. He is editor, with Duncan Pritchard, of Moral and Epistemic Virtues
(Blackwell, 2003), and has published articles in such journals as Philosophical
Studies, Philosophical Quarterly, and American Philosophical Quarterly.
Matthew Chrisman is Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh working on
ethics (especially metaethics), epistemology (especially epistemic norma
tivity), philosophy of language, and philosophy of action. He has published
articles in The Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research, Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Philosophers' Imprint, and Philosophical
Studies.
Sean Christy is a recent graduate of Calvin College in Grand Rapids,
Michigan, where he received a BA in Philosophy. He currently works in the
financial services industry.
Terence Cuneo is Associate Professor at the University of Vermont. He works
primarily in the areas of metaethics and history of modern philosophy. He is
the author of The Normative Web: An Argument for Moral Realism (Oxford
University Press, 2007) and the editor of six volumes, including The Cambridge
Companion to Thomas Reid (with Rene Van Woudenberg) (Cambridge
University Press, 2004) and Foundations of Ethics: An Anthology (with Russ
Shafer-Landau) (Blackwell, 2007).
David Enoch is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Jacob I. Berman
Associate Professor of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He works
primarily in moral, political, and legal philosophy. His papers have been
published in such journals as Ethics, Philosophical Review, Mind, Nous,
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Philosophical Studies, Oxford Studies
in Metaethics, Philosopher's Imprint, Law and Philosophy, Legal Theory, and
Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Law. His book Taking Morality Seriously: A
Defense ofR obust Realism is forthcoming from Oxford University Press.
WilliamJ. FitzPatrick is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy
at the University of Rochester. His work in metaethics focuses on defending
a robust ethical realism involving a non-naturalistic metaphysics of ethical
facts and properties and an external reasons theory that allows for the cate
goricity of moral requirements. In addition to critiquing neo-Kantian con
structivism, neo-Humean theories of reasons, and naturalistic forms of
realism, he has also worked on critiques of appeals to natural teleology and/
vii
vii i Contributors
or evolution in metaethical or ethical arguments. Recent publications in
meta ethics appear in Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Ethics, and Mind.
Joshua Gert is Professor of Philosophy at the College of William and Mary.
His primary research interests are in practical rationality and reasons for
action, ethical theory, and philosophy of color, generally informed by a
Wittgensteinian perspective in philosophy of language. He has published
one book, Brute Rationality: Nonnativity and Human Action (Cambridge
University Press, 2004), and numerous articles on color and value in such
journals as The Philosophical Review, Journal of Philosophy, Noils, Ethics and
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research.
Ulrike Heuer is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Leeds. Her main
interests are in theories of practical reasons, meta ethics, and normative eth
ics. Her recent publications appear in Oxford Studies in Nonnative Ethics,
Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, and Philosophical Studies.
Alison Hills is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Oxford and a
Fellow and Tutor of St John's College. She is interested in all aspects of moral
philosophy. She is the author of The Beloved Self, forthcoming from Oxford
University Press.
Julia Markovits joined the MIT philosophy faculty as an Assistant Professor
in 2009, after spending three years as a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society
of Fellows. Her research focuses on ethics and, more specifically, on ques
tions concerning the nature of moral reasons. She has published articles in
The Philosophical Review and Oxford Studies in Metaethics, and is currently
writing a book providing an internalist defense of universally shared moral
reasons, which will be published by Oxford University Press.
Sean McKeever is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Davidson College. He
works on contemporary moral theory and is co-author, with Michael Ridge,
of Principled Ethics: Generalism as a Regulative Ideal (Oxford University Press,
2006).
Jonas Olson is a Research Fellow and Lecturer at Stockholm University. His
main interests are meta ethics, value theory, and history of moral philoso
phy. He has contributed to several collections and has published articles in
journals such as Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Quarterly,
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Mind, Utilitas, Theoria, Ethical
Theory and Moral Practice, Inquiry, and Ratio.
Michael Ridge is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh.
His research interests include metaethics, especially issues surrounding expres
sivism and the debate over particularism and generalism. He has co-authored
(with Sean McKeever) several articles and a book, Principled Ethics: Generalism
as a Regulative Ideal (Oxford University Press, 2007), on the latter topic.
Contributors ix
Mark Schroeder is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Southern California and author of Slaves of the Passions (Oxford University
Press, 2007), Being For: Evaluating the Semantic Program ofExpressivism (Oxford
University Press, 2008), and Noncognitivism in Ethics (Routledge, 2010). His
articles on metaethics have appeared in Ethics, Nous, Philosophical Studies,
Philosophers' Imprint, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Oxford Studies
in Metaethics, and other journals.
Nicholas Southwood is currently a Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College,
Oxford University, and an assistant professor in the Philosophy Program of
the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University.
He works mainly in moral and political philosophy, with a particular interest
in questions concerning practical reason and normativity. He has published
widely in these areas in journals including Ethics, Nous, Philosophical Studies,
and Politics, Philosophy and Economics. His book, Contractualism and the
Foundations of Morality (Oxford University Press, 2010), defends a distinc
tively deliberative model of contractualism as an account of ultimate grounds
of our moral duties.
Pekka Vayrynen is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Leeds.
He works primarily in metaethics and has published widely in this area in
journals and collections including Ethics, Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research, and Oxford Studies in Metaethics.