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7 - The content of ethics: expressivism, error theory, objectivism again

Timothy Chappell
Affiliation:
Open University
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Summary

Knowing is seeing.

(John Locke, Of the Conduct of the Understanding, §24)

When we talk about ethics, what are we talking about? This simple question might seem especially pressing for the ethical subjectivist, whose view is that there is – basically – no moral reality, no ethical truth or falsehood. If so, then the subjectivist needs to help us to understand what is going on in ordinary life, where we often seem to talk fairly confidently as if there were such a thing as moral reality.

The same question is an important one for the ethical objectivist too. If ethical objectivism is true, then there is such a thing as moral reality, moral truth and falsehood. But we naturally want to know more than that. We want to know something about the nature of this alleged moral reality. We want the ethical objectivist to tell us, not just that some ethical judgements are objectively true, but also what makes them objectively true: what reasons or grounds there are for the claim of objective truth.

It is this question of the content of ethical claims, a question that faces subjectivists and objectivists alike, that I shall focus on in this chapter. I shall begin with the two main subjectivist answers to this question, which can be explored under the headings expressivism and error theory (§§7.1–7.2). Then I shall turn to five kinds of answer that ethical objectivists have offered: the divine-command view (§7.3), perceptualism (§7.4) and biological naturalism, welfarist naturalism, and rationalism (§7.5). First, then, expressivism.

Type
Chapter
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Ethics and Experience
Life Beyond Moral Theory
, pp. 73 - 96
Publisher: Acumen Publishing
Print publication year: 2009

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