Metaethical Contextualism Defended

Ethics 121 (1):7-36 (2010)
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Abstract

We defend a contextualist account of deontic judgments as relativized both to (i) information and to (ii) standards or ends, against recent objections that turn on practices of moral disagreement. Kolodny & MacFarlane argue that information-relative contextualism cannot accommodate the connection between deliberation and advice; we suggest in response that they misidentify the basic concerns of deliberating agents. For pragmatic reasons, semantic assessments of normative claims sometimes are evaluations of propositions other than those asserted. Weatherson, Schroeder and others have raised parallel objections to standard-relative contextualism; we argue for a parallel solution.

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Author Profiles

Stephen Finlay
Australian Catholic University
Gunnar Björnsson
Stockholm University

Citations of this work

The Importance of Being Rational.Errol Lord - 2013 - Dissertation, Princeton University
Metalinguistic Negotiation and Speaker Error.David Plunkett & Tim Sundell - 2021 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 64 (1-2):142-167.
Metalinguistic negotiations in moral disagreement.Renée Jorgensen Bolinger - 2022 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 65 (3):352-380.
Modal Disagreements.Justin Khoo - 2015 - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy 58 (5):511-534.

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References found in this work

Principia ethica.George Edward Moore - 1903 - Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. Edited by Thomas Baldwin.
Thinking how to live.Allan Gibbard - 2003 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Ethical Intuitionism.Michael Huemer - 2005 - New York: Palgrave Macmillan.
Insensitive Semantics.Herman Cappelen & Ernie Lepore - 2006 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 73 (2):443-450.

View all 38 references / Add more references