4 ms·

That's... kinda not a very good description of the major contemporary schools of thought on metaethics. I don't know if any respected analytic philosophers tak

by Eliezer 12y ago

That's... kinda not a very good description of the major contemporary schools of thought on metaethics. I don't know if any respected analytic philosophers take moral relativism seriously as philosophy; you can't ground the foundational meaning of the word 'good' as 'different cultures think different things are good', since there's no base case for the recursion. Well-known mainstream positions in metaethics hold that moral language is not meant to express statements which are either true or false, i.e., it is not semantic or truth-apt; but I have no idea what it would mean for 'good' to be defined as 'different cultures think different things are good'. What's the difference between 'good' and 'fzoom', then? This appears both well-written and standard: http://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/thought_and_writing/philosophy/An%20Introduction%20to%20Contemporary%20Metaethics.pdf http://cdn.preterhuman.net/texts/thought_and_writing/philoso... I'd refer you to my own writings on the subject but I don't think they've been very productive in practice of understanding, so I'll leave you with a reference to the standard literature, and remark that the correct analysis (using standard nomenclature, which is somewhat misleading) is obviously moral cognitivism::strong cognitivism::moral realism::naturalist reductionism.

baddox 12y ago
> I don't know if any respected analytic philosophers take moral relativism seriously as philosophy; you can't ground the foundational meaning of the word 'good' as 'different cultures think different things are good', since there's no base case for the recursion. Wouldn't the meaning of "good" be "considered to be good by the given culture, group, or individual"? > Well-known mainstream positions in metaethics hold that moral language is not meant to express statements which are either true or false, i.e., it is not semantic or truth-apt; Do you have any data on the percentage of philosophers who subscribe to various beliefs? It sounds like you're describing non-cognitivism, which I'm fairly familiar with, although I didn't think it was a widely accepted view.
- wfn 12y ago
  Take a look at PhilPapers Surveys, maybe: http://philpapers.org/surveys/ http://philpapers.org/surveys/ the rough gist (from http://philpapers.org/archive/BOUWDP.pdf http://philpapers.org/archive/BOUWDP.pdf) seems to be 14. Meta-ethics: moral realism 56.4%; moral anti-realism 17. Moral judgment: cognitivism 65.7%; non-cognitivism 17.0%; other 17.3%. The results are also here: http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl (set response grain to "fine" as the note at the top suggests) correlation results should also be interesting.
gone35 12y ago
I don't know if any respected analytic philosophers take moral relativism seriously (...) Well, many contemporary metaethicists argue that forms of moral relativism undergird / best justify non-cognivitism [1,2], for one. Also Gilbert Harman [3] and David Wong [4] have proposed that forms of moral relativism are associated with naturalism (!), and their work overall is an excellent reference I strongly recommend you check out. [1] http://stanford.library.usyd.edu.au/entries/moral-relativism/ http://stanford.library.usyd.edu.au/entries/moral-relativism... [2] http://stanford.library.usyd.edu.au/entries/moral-cognitivism/ http://stanford.library.usyd.edu.au/entries/moral-cognitivis... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Harman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Harman [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wong_(philosopher) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wong_(philosopher)

by Eliezer 12y ago

baddox 12y ago

> I don't know if any respected analytic philosophers take moral relativism seriously as philosophy; you can't ground the foundational meaning of the word 'good' as 'different cultures think different things are good', since there's no base case for the recursion. Wouldn't the meaning of "good" be "considered to be good by the given culture, group, or individual"? > Well-known mainstream positions in metaethics hold that moral language is not meant to express statements which are either true or false, i.e., it is not semantic or truth-apt; Do you have any data on the percentage of philosophers who subscribe to various beliefs? It sounds like you're describing non-cognitivism, which I'm fairly familiar with, although I didn't think it was a widely accepted view.

wfn 12y ago
Take a look at PhilPapers Surveys, maybe: http://philpapers.org/surveys/ http://philpapers.org/surveys/ the rough gist (from http://philpapers.org/archive/BOUWDP.pdf http://philpapers.org/archive/BOUWDP.pdf) seems to be 14. Meta-ethics: moral realism 56.4%; moral anti-realism 17. Moral judgment: cognitivism 65.7%; non-cognitivism 17.0%; other 17.3%. The results are also here: http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl http://philpapers.org/surveys/results.pl (set response grain to "fine" as the note at the top suggests) correlation results should also be interesting.

gone35 12y ago

I don't know if any respected analytic philosophers take moral relativism seriously (...) Well, many contemporary metaethicists argue that forms of moral relativism undergird / best justify non-cognivitism [1,2], for one. Also Gilbert Harman [3] and David Wong [4] have proposed that forms of moral relativism are associated with naturalism (!), and their work overall is an excellent reference I strongly recommend you check out. [1] http://stanford.library.usyd.edu.au/entries/moral-relativism/ http://stanford.library.usyd.edu.au/entries/moral-relativism... [2] http://stanford.library.usyd.edu.au/entries/moral-cognitivism/ http://stanford.library.usyd.edu.au/entries/moral-cognitivis... [3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Harman http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert_Harman [4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wong_(philosopher) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Wong_(philosopher)