Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism

Description

David Enoch develops, argues for, and defends Robust Realism--a strongly realist and objectivist view of ethics and normativity, according to which there are perfectly universal and objective moral truths. He offers elaborate positive arguments for the view, and asserts that no other metaethical position can vindicate our taking morality seriously. Cover Contents Acknowledgments 1. The View, the Motivation, the Book 1.1. The view 1.2. The motivation 1.3. The book 1.4. How I do philosophy 2. The Argument from the Moral Implications of Objectivity (or Lack Thereof ) 2.1. The normative premise: IMPARTIALITY 2.2. A normative argument against Caricaturized Subjectivism 2.3. Generalizing: response-dependence 2.4. Generalizing even further: expressivism 2.5. Generalizing further still? 2.6. Objectivity again 2.7. Appendix: neutrality 3. The Argument from the Deliberative Indispensability of Irreducibly Normative Truths 3.1. Harman’s Challenge 3.2. Parsimony 3.3. Indispensability – explanatory and otherwise 3.4. The move from indispensability to (justified) belief 3.5. Indispensability: some details 3.6. Deliberation and intrinsic indispensability 3.7. Deliberation and the instrumental indispensability of normative truths 3.8. (Further) supporting the indispensability premise: eliminating alternatives 3.9. Conclusion 4. And Now, Robust Metaethical Realism 4.1. Morality and normativity 4.2. If you’re already a Robust Metanormative Realist, why not also go for Robust Metaethical Realism? 4.3. Categorical reasons 4.4. In the other direction: if, for instance, you already reject metaethical expressivism, why not also reject metanormative expressivism? 4.5. Robust Metaethical Realism: going all the way 5. Doing with Less 5.1. Naturalism, after all 5.2. Fictionalism and error theory 5.3. Quietism 6. Metaphysics 6.1. Sheer queerness 6.2. Supervenience 7. Epistemology 7.1. How not to understand the epistemological challenge 7.2. How to understand the epistemological challenge: explaining correlations 7.3. Interlude: Street’s Darwinian Dilemma 7.4. How to cope with the epistemological challenge 7.5. Generalizing 7.6. A quick and unsatisfying thought about semantic access 8. Disagreement 8.1. Worries we can dispense with rather quickly 8.2. From actual disagreement, by inference to the best explanation, to the denial of Robust Realism 8.3. Undermining the support agreement would have lent to realism 8.4. From disagreement, via the absence of semantic access, to the denial of Robust Realism 8.5. From disagreement, via internalism, to the denial of Robust Realism 8.6. From the absence of a method, deductively or by inference to the best explanation, to the denial of Robust Realism 8.7. From possible rationally irresolvable disagreement, deductively or by inference to the best explanation, to the denial of Robust Realism 8.8. From disagreement, via the absence of epistemic access, to the denial of realism 8.9. Conclusion, and a note on higher-order arguments from disagreement 9. Motivation 9.1. Acting for a (specific) reason 9.2. Practicality 9.3. Why be moral? And why do what I have reason to do? 9.4. Judgment-internalism 9.5. Existence-internalism 10. Tallying Plausibility Points References Index A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W Y Z