Is metaethics morally neutral?

Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 87 (1):24–44 (2006)
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Abstract

I argue, contra Dreier, Blackburn, and others, that there are no morally neutral metaethical positions. Every metaethical position commits you to the denial of some moral statement. So, for example, the metaethical position that there are no moral properties commits you to the denial of the moral conjunction of 1) it is right to interfere violently when someone is wrongly causing massive suffering and 2) it is wrong to interfere violently when only non-moral properties are at stake. The argument generalizes to all metaethical positions

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Jeremy Fantl
University of Calgary

Citations of this work

Conceptual evaluation: epistemic.Alejandro Pérez Carballo - 2019 - In Alexis Burgess, Herman Cappelen & David Plunkett (eds.), Conceptual Engineering and Conceptual Ethics. New York, USA: Oxford University Press. pp. 304-332.
Expressivism and moral independence.Elliot Salinger - 2023 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 108 (1):136-152.
How to be impartial as a subjectivist.Emad H. Atiq - 2016 - Philosophical Studies 173 (3):757-779.

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References found in this work

Moral realism: a defence.Russ Shafer-Landau - 2003 - New York: Oxford University Press.
Thinking how to live.Allan Gibbard - 2003 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Freedom and reason.Richard Mervyn Hare - 1963 - Oxford,: Clarendon Press.

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