This volume brings together ten essays in metaethics that I have written over the past decade. Three are previously unpublished. All of them aim in one way or another to defend the viability of a naturalistic and realistic account of the nature of morality. They discuss problems for naturalism, chiefly the problem of explaining the normativity of moral judgment, and they suggest or defend solutions to the problems.

The point of reprinting the articles is that, taken together, and with the addition of the three new essays, they develop a systematic defense of moral naturalism. Moreover, some of them initially appeared in out-of-the-way places. I see difficulties in each of them, certainly in the previously published essays, difficulties that I wish I had noticed much earlier. I have largely resisted the temptation to make substantive changes, however, because some people will have read the original versions of the essays and I did not want to cause confusion about my views. For this reason, the seven previously published essays in the book are reproduced largely without alteration, except for minor changes. I have changed the style of the notes, and I have added a few substantive notes. Because of this, the notes have been renumbered in some cases. When I wrote the essays, I intended them to be read individually, which means that some points are repeated in more than one, but the result is that each of the chapters in the book can be understood without reading any of the others.