Sorting Out Solutions to the Now-What Problem

Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 17 (3) (2020)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

Moral error theorists face the so-called “now-what problem”: what should we do with our moral judgments from a prudential point of view if these judgments are uniformly false? On top of abolitionism and conservationism, which respectively advise us to get rid of our moral judgments and to keep them, three revisionary solutions have been proposed in the literature: expressivism, naturalism, and fictionalism. In this paper, I argue that expressivism and naturalism do not constitute genuine alternatives to abolitionism, of which they are in the end mere variants—and, even less conveniently, variants that are conform to the very spirit of abolitionism as formulated by its proponents. The main version of fictionalism, by contrast, provides us with a recommendation to which abolitionists cannot consistently subscribe. This leaves us with only one revisionary solution to the now-what problem.

Similar books and articles

Reactionary Moral Fictionalism.Jason Dockstader - 2020 - Philosophia 48 (2):519-534.
Abolishing Morality.Richard Garner - 2007 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 10 (5):499-513.
Why Moral Error Theorists Should Become Revisionary Moral Expressivists.Toby Svoboda - 2015 - New Content is Available for Journal of Moral Philosophy (1):48-72.
After Moral Error Theory, After Moral Realism.Stephen Ingram - 2015 - Southern Journal of Philosophy 53 (2):227-248.
Daoist Metaethics.Jason Dockstader - 2019 - Journal of Value Inquiry 53 (2):309-324.
The 'Now What' Problem for error theory.Matt Lutz - 2014 - Philosophical Studies 171 (2):351-371.
Nonassertive Moral Abolitionism.Jason Dockstader - 2019 - Metaphilosophy 50 (4):481-502.
Moral Beliefs for the Error Theorist?François Jaquet & Hichem Naar - 2016 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 19 (1):193-207.
Antirealist expressivism and quasi-realism.Simon Blackburn - 2006 - In David Copp (ed.), The Oxford handbook of ethical theory. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 146--162.
Morality is not good.Samuel Green - 2011 - Emergent Australasian Philosophers 4 (1).
Can the Embedding Problem Be Generalized?Caj Strandberg - 2015 - Acta Analytica 30 (1):1-15.
Internalism and the Frege-Geach Problem.Caj Strandberg - 2019 - Belgrade Philosophical Annual 32:68-91.
The Fictionalist’s Attitude Problem.Graham Oddie & Daniel Demetriou - 2007 - Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 10 (5):485-498.

Analytics

Added to PP
2020-06-08

Downloads
150 (#126,644)

6 months
98 (#47,154)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Author's Profile

François Jaquet
Université de Strasbourg

Citations of this work

Utilitarianism for the Error Theorist.François Jaquet - 2020 - The Journal of Ethics 25 (1):39-55.
Revolutionary Normative Subjectivism.Lewis Williams - forthcoming - Australasian Journal of Philosophy.
Which answers to the now what question collapse into abolitionism (if any)?Wouter Kalf - forthcoming - Inquiry: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Philosophy.
The Goal Problem in the 'Now What' Problem.Xinkan Zhao - 2022 - Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy 21 (3).
Moral Fictionalism and Misleading Analogies.François Jaquet - 2024 - In Richard Joyce & Stuart Brock (eds.), Moral Fictionalism and Religious Fictionalism. Oxford University Press.

Add more citations

References found in this work

Moral Error Theory: History, Critique, Defence.Jonas Olson - 2014 - Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Moral realism.Peter Railton - 1986 - Philosophical Review 95 (2):163-207.
Moral cognitivism and motivation.Sigrún Svavarsdóttir - 1999 - Philosophical Review 108 (2):161-219.
Moral Error Theory.Wouter Floris Kalf - 2015 - Londen, Verenigd Koninkrijk: Palgrave Macmillan.
Spreading the Word: Groundings in the Philosophy of Language.Simon Blackburn - 1984 - British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 36 (2):211-215.

View all 16 references / Add more references