New Waves in Philosophy Series Editors: Vincent F. Hendricks and Duncan Pritchard Titles include: Jesus H. Aguilar, Andrei A. Buckareff and Keith Frankish (editors) NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF ACTION Michael Brady (editor) NEW WAVES IN METAETHICS Otavio Bueno and Oystein Linnebo (editors) NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF MATHEMATICS Boudewijn DeBruin and Christopher F. Zurn (editors) NEW WAVES IN POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY Allan Hazlett (editor) NEW WAVES IN METAPHYSICS Vincent F. Hendricks and Duncan Pritchard (editors) NEW WAVES IN EPISTEMOLOGY P.D. Magnus and Jacob Busch (editors) NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF SCIENCE Yujin Nagasawa and ErikJ. Wielenberg (editors) NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Jan Kyrre Berg Olsen, Evan Selinger and Smen Riis (editors) NEW WAVES IN PHILOSOPHY OF TECHNOLOGY Thomas S. 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Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd, Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS, England New Waves in Metaethics Edited by Michael Brady University of Glasgow, UK palgrave macmillan Selection and editorial matter © Michael Brady 2011 Chapters © their individual authors 2011 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-25161-8 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No portion of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, Saffron House, 6-10 Kirby Street, London EC1N 8TS. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The authors have asserted their rights to be identified as the authors of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First published 2011 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Palgrave Macmillan in the UK is an imprint of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan in the US is a division of St Martin's Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN 978-0-230-25162-5 ISBN 978-0-230-29489-9 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230294899 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. Logging, pulping and manufacturing processes are expected to conform to the environmental regulations of the country of origin. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data New waves in metaethics / [edited by] Michael Brady. p. cm.-(New waves in philosophy) ISBN 978-0-230-25162-5 (pbk.) 1. Ethics. I. Brady, Michael. 1965- Bj1012.N4862011 170',42-dc22 2010032358 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 Transferred to Digital Printing 2011 Contents Notes on Contributors vii Series Editors' Preface x Introduction 1 Michael Brady 1 Ethical Non-Naturalism and Normative Properties 7 William J. FitzPatrick 2 Naturalistic Metaethics at Half Price 36 Joshua Gert 3 In Defense of Moral Error Theory 62 Jonas Olson 4 The Myth of Moral Fictionalism 85 Terence Cuneo and Sean Christy 5 Expressivism, Inferentialism and the Theory of Meaning 103 Matthew Chrisman 6 How Not to Avoid Wishful Thinking 126 Mark Schroeder 7 Internal Reasons and the Motivating Intuition 141 Julia Markovits 8 Beyond Wrong Reasons: The Buck-Passing Account of Value 166 Ulrike Heuer 9 A Wrong Turn to Reasons? 185 Pekka Viiyrynen 10 Shmagency Revisited 208 David Enoch 11 The Authority of Social Norms 234 Nicholas Southwood 12 Moral Epistemology 249 Alison Hills v vi Contents 13 Aesthetics and Particularism 264 Sean McKeever and Michael Ridge Bibliography 286 Index 299 Contributors Michael Brady is Senior Lecturer at the University of Glasgow. His main research interests are in metaethics, philosophy of emotion, and epistemol ogy. He is editor, with Duncan Pritchard, of Moral and Epistemic Virtues (Blackwell, 2003), and has published articles in such journals as Philosophical Studies, Philosophical Quarterly, and American Philosophical Quarterly. Matthew Chrisman is Lecturer at the University of Edinburgh working on ethics (especially metaethics), epistemology (especially epistemic norma tivity), philosophy of language, and philosophy of action. He has published articles in The Journal of Philosophy, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Philosophers' Imprint, and Philosophical Studies. Sean Christy is a recent graduate of Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where he received a BA in Philosophy. He currently works in the financial services industry. Terence Cuneo is Associate Professor at the University of Vermont. He works primarily in the areas of metaethics and history of modern philosophy. He is the author of The Normative Web: An Argument for Moral Realism (Oxford University Press, 2007) and the editor of six volumes, including The Cambridge Companion to Thomas Reid (with Rene Van Woudenberg) (Cambridge University Press, 2004) and Foundations of Ethics: An Anthology (with Russ Shafer-Landau) (Blackwell, 2007). David Enoch is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Jacob I. Berman Associate Professor of Law at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. He works primarily in moral, political, and legal philosophy. His papers have been published in such journals as Ethics, Philosophical Review, Mind, Nous, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Philosophical Studies, Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Philosopher's Imprint, Law and Philosophy, Legal Theory, and Oxford Studies in the Philosophy of Law. His book Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense ofR obust Realism is forthcoming from Oxford University Press. WilliamJ. FitzPatrick is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Rochester. His work in metaethics focuses on defending a robust ethical realism involving a non-naturalistic metaphysics of ethical facts and properties and an external reasons theory that allows for the cate goricity of moral requirements. In addition to critiquing neo-Kantian con structivism, neo-Humean theories of reasons, and naturalistic forms of realism, he has also worked on critiques of appeals to natural teleology and/ vii vii i Contributors or evolution in metaethical or ethical arguments. Recent publications in meta ethics appear in Oxford Studies in Metaethics, Ethics, and Mind. Joshua Gert is Professor of Philosophy at the College of William and Mary. His primary research interests are in practical rationality and reasons for action, ethical theory, and philosophy of color, generally informed by a Wittgensteinian perspective in philosophy of language. He has published one book, Brute Rationality: Nonnativity and Human Action (Cambridge University Press, 2004), and numerous articles on color and value in such journals as The Philosophical Review, Journal of Philosophy, Noils, Ethics and Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Ulrike Heuer is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Leeds. Her main interests are in theories of practical reasons, meta ethics, and normative eth ics. Her recent publications appear in Oxford Studies in Nonnative Ethics, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, and Philosophical Studies. Alison Hills is Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Oxford and a Fellow and Tutor of St John's College. She is interested in all aspects of moral philosophy. She is the author of The Beloved Self, forthcoming from Oxford University Press. Julia Markovits joined the MIT philosophy faculty as an Assistant Professor in 2009, after spending three years as a Junior Fellow at the Harvard Society of Fellows. Her research focuses on ethics and, more specifically, on ques tions concerning the nature of moral reasons. She has published articles in The Philosophical Review and Oxford Studies in Metaethics, and is currently writing a book providing an internalist defense of universally shared moral reasons, which will be published by Oxford University Press. Sean McKeever is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Davidson College. He works on contemporary moral theory and is co-author, with Michael Ridge, of Principled Ethics: Generalism as a Regulative Ideal (Oxford University Press, 2006). Jonas Olson is a Research Fellow and Lecturer at Stockholm University. His main interests are meta ethics, value theory, and history of moral philoso phy. He has contributed to several collections and has published articles in journals such as Australasian Journal of Philosophy, Philosophical Quarterly, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Mind, Utilitas, Theoria, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, Inquiry, and Ratio. Michael Ridge is Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Edinburgh. His research interests include metaethics, especially issues surrounding expres sivism and the debate over particularism and generalism. He has co-authored (with Sean McKeever) several articles and a book, Principled Ethics: Generalism as a Regulative Ideal (Oxford University Press, 2007), on the latter topic. Contributors ix Mark Schroeder is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Southern California and author of Slaves of the Passions (Oxford University Press, 2007), Being For: Evaluating the Semantic Program ofExpressivism (Oxford University Press, 2008), and Noncognitivism in Ethics (Routledge, 2010). His articles on metaethics have appeared in Ethics, Nous, Philosophical Studies, Philosophers' Imprint, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, Oxford Studies in Metaethics, and other journals. Nicholas Southwood is currently a Junior Research Fellow at Jesus College, Oxford University, and an assistant professor in the Philosophy Program of the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. He works mainly in moral and political philosophy, with a particular interest in questions concerning practical reason and normativity. He has published widely in these areas in journals including Ethics, Nous, Philosophical Studies, and Politics, Philosophy and Economics. His book, Contractualism and the Foundations of Morality (Oxford University Press, 2010), defends a distinc tively deliberative model of contractualism as an account of ultimate grounds of our moral duties. Pekka Vayrynen is Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Leeds. He works primarily in metaethics and has published widely in this area in journals and collections including Ethics, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and Oxford Studies in Metaethics.