Metaethics: A Contemporary Introduction

ISBN-13: 9780415894418 / Angielski / Twarda / 2015 / 310 str.

Mark Van Roojen

Opis

Metaethics: A Contemporary Introduction provides a solid foundation in metaethics for advanced undergraduates by introducing a series of puzzles that most metaethical theories address. These puzzles involve moral disagreement, reference, moral epistemology, metaphysics, and moral psychology. From there, author Mark van Roojen discusses the many positions in metaethics that people will take in reaction to these puzzles. Van Roojen asks several essential questions of his readers, namely: What is metaethics? Why study it? How does one discuss metaethics, given its inherently controversial nature? Each chapter closes with questions, both for reading comprehension and further discussion, and annotated suggestions for further reading.

Spis treści

Acknowledgments. 1. Introduction. 2. A Subject Matter for Ethics. 3. Moral Epistemology and the Empirical Under-Determination of Ethical Theory. 4. The Practicality of Morality and the Humean Conception of Reason and Motivation 5. Error Theory. 6. Simple Subjectivism. 7. The Cognitivist Heirs of Simple Subjectivism – Ideal Observers and Ideal Agents. 8. Noncognitivist Heirs of Simple Subjectivism. 9. Fictionalism. 10. Externalist Backlash. 11. Scientific Naturalism I: Cornell Realism. 12. Scientific Realism II: Moral Functionalism and Network Analyses. 13. Nonnaturalism and Anti-Reductionism. 14. Odds, Ends and Morals. Glossary

O autorze

Mark van Roojen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln. He works primarily in ethics and metaethics but remains interested in the rest of philosophy. His most widely read papers are on moral rationalism, expressivism, moral psychology, and the semantics of moral terms.