metaethics

Given that the main purpose of this contribution is to vindicate the moral error theory and given that Nietzsche's metaethical stance plays no necessary part in this defense, the discussion of whether Nietzsche was an error theorist seems beside the point and somehow distracts the attention from the main focus.

The author argues that one may be a metaethical realist while employing the notion of good of a kind to the exclusion of good simpliciter; he calls such a view "kindism." He distinguishes between two varieties of kindism, explicates the details of one of those varieties, and defends (that variety of) kindism against possible objections.

Narveson's text seeks both to combine a discussion of metaethical issues, some of which require a lot of important distinctions that can be difficult to grasp, with a survey of normative theories of morality in his sense, and to offer a normative theory of his own, a libertarian social contract theory.

ALLISON POSTELL, "What Comes Naturally: The Metaethical Foundations of Virtue Ethics." Adviser: Lance Simmons.

With this metaethical analysis in place, environmental ethics can best be understood by appeal to artificial virtues, on par with Hume's account of justice, whereby sympathy and convention predispose humans to exercise 'modesty and thoughtfulness' in their relations with the environment (68).

Divided into ten chapters, the book alternates between a thematic treatment of ethical and metaethical issues stemming from Levinas's thought and a series of comparative studies that relate Levinas's thought to that of other philosophers and Talmudic scholars, both ancient and modern.

In his commentary, Mark Timmons concedes this point, but argues that this is not the only metaethical position available to the deontologist: one can defend a constructivist position, in the kind of metaethics defended by Tim Scanlon.

Metaethical: It is wrong to torture puppies because virtuous agents would not perform such actions (or would disapprove of them in some fashion), and such actions would thus possess the property of moral wrongness.

This paper considers two (related) objections to metaethical nonnaturalism.