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Afterword: Whither Moral Philosophy?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Jocelyne Couture
Affiliation:
Université du Québec à Montréal
Kai Nielsen
Affiliation:
University of Calgary and Concordia University
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Extract

Most of the essays collected here are essays in metaethics seeking in exacting and interesting ways to resolve problems raised by the familiar options in metaethics we outlined in our Introduction. Richard Brandt, for example, forcefully argues, going much against the at least modestly holistic grain of our time, for a foundationalism (noncognitivist though it be) which would be foundational in both metaethics and normative ethics. R.M. Hare makes a brief but systematic defense, which is both spirited and clear, of his prescriptivism (a species of what we, following tradition, have called ‘noncognitivism,’ but which he argues should instead be called ‘nondescriptivism’). His arguments here for his position - call it nondescriptivism or noncognitivism- are directed forcefully against ethical naturalism (descriptivism) and specifically against the naturalism of Philippa Foot. Nicholas Sturgeon and David Copp contribute elaborate and rigorously argued defenses of ethical naturalism, or, as they might prefer to call it, ‘moral realism.’

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1995

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