Search Results

According to one dimension of the generalist tradition, moral principles are built into the very meaning of moral predicates. They are analytic truths, and thus anyone who is in fact competent with a given moral concept is (perhaps implicitly) committed to the associated principle that spells out the object to which the concept applies. On this view, certain moral principles are constitutive of moral thought and judgment; this view is called ‘constitutive generalism’. This chapter defends a form of generalism and it argues against constitutive generalism by deploying a version of G. E. Moore’s Open Question Argument.

In chapters 4 and 5 of his 1998 book From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis, Frank Jackson propounds and defends a form of moral realism that he calls both ‘moral functionalism’ and ‘analytical descriptivism’. This chapter argues that this metaethical position, referred to as ‘analytical moral functionalism’, is untenable. It does this by applying a generic thought-experimental deconstructive recipe that has been used against other views that posit moral properties and identify them with certain natural properties — a recipe that is applicable to virtually any metaphysically naturalist version of moral realism. The recipe deploys a scenario called Moral Twin Earth.

This chapter gives an account of what cognitivism in ethics is and argues that the a priori global nature of the supervenience of the ethical on the descriptive requires cognitivists in ethics to identify ethical properties with descriptive ones. It argues that we can locate ethical properties with descriptive ones in terms of the role ethical properties play in folk morality, a view of ethics I call, with Philip Pettit, ‘moral functionalism’.

This chapter presents a double agenda, the topics of which share a complementary nature. The first agendum is to shed light on some issues relating to the “Canberra Plan,” while focusing not on generic issues but on matters specific to the distinctively evaluative and normative domain of ethics. The second agendum is to promote a view referred to as quasi-relativism. Here Frank Jackson’s version of “moral functionalism,” is discussed, especially as it is set out in his work From Metaphysics to Ethics. The chapter looks at Jackson’s views and considers a variety of issues that are relevant. According to this chapter, the view expressed here emerges naturally if one takes a paradigmatically “Canberra Plan” view such as Jackson’s, acknowledges certain problems for it, and revises the view accordingly.

A unifying semantics for the word ‘good’ is offered for its nonmoral uses. A common underlying logical syntax is identified: ‘good’ expresses a relation between two propositions with a background index of information. Goodness (for e) is analyzed as the relation of increasing the probability of an end e, where the relevant end varies by context. Neo-Aristotelian moral functionalism is rejected on linguistic grounds. Other issues discussed include the agent-relativity of value, gradable adjectives, the value of objects, a distinction between objective and subjective value, signatory and instrumental value, and the relationship between value and interests.