The Case for a Mixed Verdict on Ethics and Epistemology

Philosophical Topics 38 (2):181-204 (2010)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

An increasingly popular strategy among critics of ethical anti-realism is to stress that the traditional arguments for that position work just as well in the case of other areas. For example, on the basis of that claim, it has recently been claimed that ethical expressivists are committed to being expressivists also about epistemic judgments (including the judgment that it is rational to believe in ethical expressivism). This in turn is supposed to seriously undermine their position. The purpose of my paper is to examine this challenge. I argue that, in spite of the many similarities between the discourses, there are also crucial differences and that those differences justify a mixed verdict about them.

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 92,347

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Disagreement: Ethics and Elsewhere.Folke Tersman - 2014 - Erkenntnis 79 (S1):55-72.
The insanity plea: Szaszian ethics and epistemology.Lee S. Weinberg & Richard E. Vatz - 1982 - Theoretical Medicine and Bioethics 3 (3):417-433.
Mixed-up meta-ethics.Walter Sinnott-Armstrong - 2009 - Philosophical Issues 19 (1):235-256.
Reaching a verdict.David W. Green & Rachel McCloy - 2003 - Thinking and Reasoning 9 (4):307 – 333.
Unprincipled Ethics.David McNaughton & Piers Rawling - 2000 - In Brad Hooker & Margaret Olivia Little (eds.), Moral particularism. New York: Oxford University Press.
Is even thought compositional?Lenny Clapp - 2012 - Philosophical Studies 157 (2):299-322.
Expressivism and the practicality of moral convictions.Neil Sinclair - 2007 - Journal of Value Inquiry 41 (2-4):201-220.
Deontology in ethics and epistemology.Anthony Robert Booth - 2008 - Metaphilosophy 39 (4-5):530-545.
The 'baby Brown' case and the Dr Arthur verdict.J. A. Davis - 1985 - Journal of Medical Ethics 11 (3):159-160.
Varieties of Expressivism.Dorit Bar-On & James Sias - 2013 - Philosophy Compass 8 (8):699-713.
Felix culpa: Luck in ethics and epistemology.Guy Axtell - 2003 - Metaphilosophy 34 (3):331--352.

Analytics

Added to PP
2013-09-04

Downloads
67 (#244,600)

6 months
19 (#138,842)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

Folke Tersman
Uppsala University

Citations of this work

"Moral Disagreement".Folke Tersman - 2021 - The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Disagreement: Ethics and Elsewhere.Folke Tersman - 2014 - Erkenntnis 79 (S1):55-72.

Add more citations

References found in this work

A Darwinian dilemma for realist theories of value.Sharon Street - 2006 - Philosophical Studies 127 (1):109-166.
“How to Be a Moral Realist.Richard Boyd - 1988 - In G. Sayre-McCord (ed.), Essays on Moral Realism. Cornell University Press. pp. 181-228.
The Humean theory of motivation.Michael Smith - 1987 - Mind 96 (381):36-61.

View all 11 references / Add more references