Parfit's Mistaken Metaethics
نویسنده
چکیده
In the first volume of On What Matters, Derek Parfit defends a distinctive metaethical view, a view that specifies the relationships he sees between reasons, facts, beliefs, desires, aims, actions, and values. Parfit's metaethical view is a version of what he calls 'Objectivism', and he explicitly argues not just for his preferred version of Objectivism, but against all versions of Subjectivism, the metaethical view with which Objectivism is contrasted. Parfit's arguments for Objectivism, and his criticisms of Subjectivism, seem to me to be mistaken, so my aim is to identify where the mistakes lie. Though I do not expect Parfit to agree with me that the mistakes I identify are mistakes, I proceed on the assumption that this does not matter. The best we can do when we engage with philosophers like Parfit, whose detailed metaethical views are part and parcel of a comprehensive worldview with mutually supporting parts, is to state very carefully where our fundamental disagreements with them lie.
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