Metaethical Contextualism Defended -Ethics format 7-7-10

Metaethical Contextualism

An important function of language is to create and develop interpersonal relationships in communication. In inquiry we share and coordinate our beliefs about how the world is. But we also take a stance and socially orient ourselves toward possible acts, attitudes, and states of affairs. We evaluate possibilities as desirable, appropriate, horrible, trivial, permissible, wonderful. We make deman...

The moral significance of the therapy-enhancement distinction in human genetics.

The therapy-enhancement distinction occupies a central place in contemporary discussions of human genetics and has been the subject of much debate.1–7 At a recent conference on gene therapy policy, scientists predicted that within a few years researchers will develop techniques that can be used to enhance human traits.8 In thinking about the morality of genetic interventions, many writers have ...

Knowledge and Presuppositions∗

The paper explicates a new way to model the context-sensitivity of ‘knows’, viz. a way that suggests a close connection between the content of ‘knows’ in a context C and what is pragmatically presupposed in C. After explicating my new approach in the first half of the paper and arguing that it is explanatorily superior to standard accounts of epistemic contextualism, the paper points, in its se...

Contextualism in Ethics, draft 2017

Parfit's Mistaken Metaethics

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...