Metaethics after Moore

410 Pages·2006·1.74 MB·English

by  Terry Horgan

Metaethics after Moore
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Metaethics after Moore
edited by
TERRY HORGAN
and
MARK TIMMONS
CLARENDON PRESS ● OXFORD
3
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox26dp
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Metaethics after Moore / edited by Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
1. Ethics. 2. Moore, G. E. (George Edward), 1873–1958. Principia ethica.
I. Horgan, Terry, 1948– II. Timmons, Mark, 1951–
BJ37.M47 2006 170(cid:1).42—dc22 2005023277
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Printed in Great Britain
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1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
PREFACE
Since its publication in 1903, G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica has continued
to exert a powerful influence on metaethical enquiry. This volume contains
sixteen essays that represent recent work in metaethics after, and in some cases
directly inspired by, the work of Moore. Seven of the essays were originally
presented at the 2002 Spindel Conference commemorating the one hundredth
anniversary of the publication of Principia Ethicaand in celebration of a hun-
dred years of metaethics. They are reprinted here (some slightly revised) from
the Southern Journal of Philosophy, 41 (2003). Our introduction situates the
essays in relation to central themes in Moore’s metaethics.
We are grateful to theSouthern Journal of Philosophyfor permission to reprint
the papers that appeared in the 2003 supplement. We also wish to thank our
editor at Oxford University Press, Peter Momtchiloff, for his guidance and
support in our work on this anthology.
T.H. and M.T.
Tucson, Ariz.
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CONTENTS
List of Contributors ix
Introduction 1
Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons
1. How Should Ethics Relate to (the Rest of) Philosophy?
Moore’s Legacy 17
Stephen Darwall
2. What Do Reasons Do? 39
Jonathan Dancy
3. Evaluations of Rationality 61
Sigrún Svavarsdóttir
4. Intrinsic Value and Reasons for Action 79
Robert Audi
5. Personal Good 107
Connie S. Rosati
6. Moore on the Right, the Good, and Uncertainty 133
Michael Smith
7. Scanlon versus Moore on Goodness 149
Philip Stratton-Lake and Brad Hooker
8. Opening Questions, Following Rules 169
Paul Bloomfield
9. Was Moore a Moorean? 191
Jamie Dreier
10. Ethics as Philosophy: A Defense of Ethical Nonnaturalism 209
Russ Shafer-Landau
11. The Legacy of Principia 233
Judith Jarvis Thomson
12. Cognitivist Expressivism 255
Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons
13. Truth and the Expressing in Expressivism 299
Stephen Barker
viii Contents
14. Normative Properties 319
Allan Gibbard
15. Moral Intuitionism Meets Empirical Psychology 339
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong
16. Ethics Dehumanized 367
Panayot Butchvarov
Index 391
LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS
Robert Audiis Professor of Philosophy and David E. Gallo Chair in Ethics at
the University of Notre Dame. His books include The Good in the Right
(2004),The Architecture of Reason(2001),Religious Commitment and Secular
Reason(2000), and Moral Knowledge and Ethical Character(1997).
Stephen Barkeris Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Nottingham.
In addition to many articles, he is the author of Renewing Meaning: A Speech-
Act Theoretic Approach(2004). He is currently completing a book on an expres-
sivisttheory of truth.
Paul Bloomfield is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Connecticut and in addition to many articles in metaethics he is author of
Moral Reality(2001).
Panayot Butchvarov is the University of Iowa Distinguished Professor of
Philosophy. He is the author of Resemblance and Identity(1966),The Concept
of Knowledge (1970), Being qua Being: A Theory of Identity, Existence and
Predication (1979), Skepticism in Ethics (1989), and Skepticism about the
External World(1998).
Jonathan Dancyis Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading and
Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of
An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology(1985),Berkeley: an Introduction
(1987), Moral Reasons (1993), Practical Reality (2000), and Ethics without
Principles(2004).
Stephen Darwall is John Dewey Collegiate Professor of Philosophy at the
University of Michigan. His books include The British Moralists and the
Internal ‘Ought’: 1640–1740(1995),Philosophical Ethics(1998), and Welfare
and Rational Care(2002).
Jamie Dreier is Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. He has pub-
lished numerous papers on a wide variety of subjects, most recently: ‘Why
Ethical Satisficing Makes Sense and Rational Satisficing Doesn’t’, in Satisficing
and Maximizing: Moral Theorists on Practical Reason(2004), ‘Relativism and
Nihilism’, forthcoming in Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, and ‘Pettit on
Preference for Properties and Prospects’, forthcoming in Philosohical Studies.
He is editor of Blackwell’s Contemporary Debates in Moral Theory(2005).