Description
"Moral realism" is a family of theories of morality united by the idea that there are moral facts--facts about what is right or wrong or good or bad--and that morality is not simply a matter of personal preferences, emotions, attitudes, or sociological conventions. The fundamental thought underlying moral realism can be expressed as a parity thesis. There are many kinds of facts, including physical, psychological, mathematical, temporal, and moral facts. So understood, moral realism can be distinguished from a variety of anti-realist theories including expressivism, non-cognitivism, and error theory.The Handbook is divided into four parts, the first of which contains essays about the basic concepts and distinctions which characterize moral realism. The subsequent parts contain essays first defending the idea that morality is a naturalistic phenomenon like other subject matters studied by the empirical sciences; second, that morality is a non-natural phenomenon like logic or "pure rationality"; and the final section is dedicated to those theories which deny the usefulness of the natural/non-natural distinction. The twenty-five commissioned essays cover the field of moral realism in a comprehensive and highly accessible way.
Table of Contents
IntroductionPaul Bloomfield and David CoppI. ABOUT MORAL REALISM AND ITS VARIETIES1. Defining Moral RealismJennifer Foster and Mark Schroeder2. Metaphysical Structure for Moral RealistsTristram McPherson3. Moral Realism and ObjectivitySigrún Svavarsdóttir4. Epistemology for RealistsSarah McGrath5. The Bearing of Moral Rationalism on Moral RealismMichael Smith6. Does Anything We Care About Distinguish the Non-Natural from the Natural?Mark van Roojen7. Ethical Naturalism, Non-Naturalism, and In BetweenRalph Wedgwood8. Can a Moral Judgment be Moorean?William Lycan9. Real EthicsSimon BlackburnII. NATURALISM10. Ethical Naturalism: Problems and ProspectsLouise Antony and Ernesto Garcia11. Ethical Realism and Robust NormativityDavid Copp12. Moral FunctionalismFrank Jackson and Philip Pettit13. Function, Fitness, FlourishingPaul Bloomfield14. Realism about the Good-For Human BeingsL. Nandi TheunissenIII. NON-NATURALISM15. Moral Conceptual TruthsJohn Bengson, Terence Cuneo, and Russ Shafer-Landau16. Five Kinds of Epistemic Arguments against Robust Moral RealismJoshua Schecter17. The Explanatory Roles of Moral Facts and the Case for Moral RealismRobert Audi18. Derek Parfit's Non-Naturalist CognitivismRoger Crisp19. Ardent Moral Realism and the Value-Laden WorldWilliam J. FitzPatrick20. Oh, All the Wrongs I Could Have Performed!David Enoch and Itamar Weinshtock-SaadonIV. NEITHER NATURALISM NOR NON-NATURALISM21. Response-Dependent RealismMark LeBar22. Deflationary Meta-ethicsPaul Horwich23. On the Properties of Quietism and RobustnessMatthew H. Kramer24. Prospects for a Quietist Moral RealismMark D. Warren and Amie L. Thomasson25. Moral Anti-ExceptionalismTimothy Williamson
