Abstract

This work centers around the relations between moral beliefs and the motivational and affective states which characteristically accompany them, and what those relations tell us about the nature of moral beliefs themselves. Specifically, I argue for five conclusions. First, moral-conative relations are far more complex than is typically realized. Secondly, certain relations to conations are both necessary and sufficient for moral beliefs. Third, given the complexity of moral-conative relations, it is easy to mistake those necessary and sufficient conditions for ones which actually do not obtain . Fourth, the moral-conative relations which do obtain turn out to comport well with an account of moral beliefs as being straightforwardly true or false, requiring nothing beyond the natural world for their truth, and having the same truth-conditions regardless of their context. Fifth, that account of moral beliefs is plausible, and has been rejected in large part because philosophers have posited moral-conative relations which don't actually obtain