Metaethics after Moore This page intentionally left blank Metaethics after Moore edited by TERRY HORGAN and MARK TIMMONS CLARENDON PRESS ● OXFORD 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox26dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © The several contributors 2006 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Metaethics after Moore / edited by Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. 1. Ethics. 2. Moore, G. E. (George Edward), 1873–1958. Principia ethica. I. Horgan, Terry, 1948– II. Timmons, Mark, 1951– BJ37.M47 2006 170(cid:1).42—dc22 2005023277 Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) Ltd., Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn, Norfolk ISBN 0–19–926990–4 978–0–19–926990–7 ISBN 0–19–926991–2 (Pbk.) 978–0–19–926991–4 (Pbk.) 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 PREFACE Since its publication in 1903, G. E. Moore’s Principia Ethica has continued to exert a powerful influence on metaethical enquiry. This volume contains sixteen essays that represent recent work in metaethics after, and in some cases directly inspired by, the work of Moore. Seven of the essays were originally presented at the 2002 Spindel Conference commemorating the one hundredth anniversary of the publication of Principia Ethicaand in celebration of a hun- dred years of metaethics. They are reprinted here (some slightly revised) from the Southern Journal of Philosophy, 41 (2003). Our introduction situates the essays in relation to central themes in Moore’s metaethics. We are grateful to theSouthern Journal of Philosophyfor permission to reprint the papers that appeared in the 2003 supplement. We also wish to thank our editor at Oxford University Press, Peter Momtchiloff, for his guidance and support in our work on this anthology. T.H. and M.T. Tucson, Ariz. This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS List of Contributors ix Introduction 1 Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons 1. How Should Ethics Relate to (the Rest of) Philosophy? Moore’s Legacy 17 Stephen Darwall 2. What Do Reasons Do? 39 Jonathan Dancy 3. Evaluations of Rationality 61 Sigrún Svavarsdóttir 4. Intrinsic Value and Reasons for Action 79 Robert Audi 5. Personal Good 107 Connie S. Rosati 6. Moore on the Right, the Good, and Uncertainty 133 Michael Smith 7. Scanlon versus Moore on Goodness 149 Philip Stratton-Lake and Brad Hooker 8. Opening Questions, Following Rules 169 Paul Bloomfield 9. Was Moore a Moorean? 191 Jamie Dreier 10. Ethics as Philosophy: A Defense of Ethical Nonnaturalism 209 Russ Shafer-Landau 11. The Legacy of Principia 233 Judith Jarvis Thomson 12. Cognitivist Expressivism 255 Terry Horgan and Mark Timmons 13. Truth and the Expressing in Expressivism 299 Stephen Barker viii Contents 14. Normative Properties 319 Allan Gibbard 15. Moral Intuitionism Meets Empirical Psychology 339 Walter Sinnott-Armstrong 16. Ethics Dehumanized 367 Panayot Butchvarov Index 391 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS Robert Audiis Professor of Philosophy and David E. Gallo Chair in Ethics at the University of Notre Dame. His books include The Good in the Right (2004),The Architecture of Reason(2001),Religious Commitment and Secular Reason(2000), and Moral Knowledge and Ethical Character(1997). Stephen Barkeris Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Nottingham. In addition to many articles, he is the author of Renewing Meaning: A Speech- Act Theoretic Approach(2004). He is currently completing a book on an expres- sivisttheory of truth. Paul Bloomfield is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at the University of Connecticut and in addition to many articles in metaethics he is author of Moral Reality(2001). Panayot Butchvarov is the University of Iowa Distinguished Professor of Philosophy. He is the author of Resemblance and Identity(1966),The Concept of Knowledge (1970), Being qua Being: A Theory of Identity, Existence and Predication (1979), Skepticism in Ethics (1989), and Skepticism about the External World(1998). Jonathan Dancyis Professor of Philosophy at the University of Reading and Professor of Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin. He is the author of An Introduction to Contemporary Epistemology(1985),Berkeley: an Introduction (1987), Moral Reasons (1993), Practical Reality (2000), and Ethics without Principles(2004). Stephen Darwall is John Dewey Collegiate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Michigan. His books include The British Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought’: 1640–1740(1995),Philosophical Ethics(1998), and Welfare and Rational Care(2002). Jamie Dreier is Professor of Philosophy at Brown University. He has pub- lished numerous papers on a wide variety of subjects, most recently: ‘Why Ethical Satisficing Makes Sense and Rational Satisficing Doesn’t’, in Satisficing and Maximizing: Moral Theorists on Practical Reason(2004), ‘Relativism and Nihilism’, forthcoming in Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, and ‘Pettit on Preference for Properties and Prospects’, forthcoming in Philosohical Studies. He is editor of Blackwell’s Contemporary Debates in Moral Theory(2005).