Realism and Constructivism in Twentieth-Century Moral Philosophy

Journal of Philosophical Research 28 (9999):99-122 (2003)
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Abstract

In this paper I trace the development of one of the central debates of late twentieth-century moral philosophy—the debate between realism and what Rawls called “constructivism.” Realism, I argue, is a reactive position that arises in response to almost every attempt to give a substantive explanation of morality. It results from the realist’s belief that such explanations inevitably reduce moral phenomena to natural phenomena. I trace this belief, and the essence of realism, to a view about the nature of concepts—that it is the function of all concepts to describe reality. Constructivism may be understood as the alternative view that a normative concept refers schematically to the solution to a practical problem. A constructivist account of a concept, unlike a traditional analysis, is an attemptto work out the solution to that problem. I explain how the philosophies of Kant and Rawls can be understood on this model.

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Grounding practical normativity: going hybrid.Ruth Chang - 2013 - Philosophical Studies 164 (1):163-187.
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Against quietist normative realism.Tristram McPherson - 2011 - Philosophical Studies 154 (2):223-240.
Constructivism in metaethics.Carla Bagnoli - 2017 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

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