Atheist Ethicist

A new year. A year of transition. This year I will: (1) Defend my master's thesis (2) Hopefully be accepted into the PhD program i...

In my previous post, Metaethics 0010: Michael Smith's Moral Realism , I took issue with Michael Smith's claim that ends are subject ...

Michael Smith is concerned with a tension that we see in our use of moral terms. First, we seem to be using moral terms to express facts. ...

Peter Railton is what, among moral philosophers, is a naturalist. He holds that moral properties can be reduced to natural properties. Of ...

Peter Railton, "Naturalism and Prescriptivity," Social Philosophy and Policy , 7 (1989) has what is considered to be a substantial...

Whatsoever is the object of any man's desire, that it is which he for his part call Good, and the object of his aversion, Evil.Thomas Ho...

This will likely be one of several posts in this series that just jot down some random pieces of information that I encounter in my reading....

This posting is a reworking of an original post where I commented on the metaethical theory of Allan Gibbard. It is such a significant rewri...

This posting is inspired by Michael Ridge's article, "Ecumenical Expressivism: Finessing Frege," Ethics, Vol. 116, No. 2 (Janu...

One of the things that G.E. Moore is noted for is his "isolation test" of intrinsic value. As Hurka reported in British Ethical ...

I, and others, typically speak as if there are two major types of value - means and ends. Within desirism, desires themselves provide the en...

Choosing is about making plans, according to Allan Gibbard. G.E. Moore's Mistake As has been the case with non-cognivist, Gibbard st...

What follows is, in my view, one of the most powerful arguments against the claim that moral statements are not capable of being true or fal...

Expressionism holds that moral statements express attitudes - much like slapping one's hand on the table top expresses anger. And, like ...

Richard M. Hare held that moral claims are not sentences at all. They are commands. The statement that "lying is wrong" is like th...