Ethics

Advanced

Graduate level. Metatheory, technical variants, and disputes that are still open, with the primary literature named rather than gestured at.

The Frege-Geach Problem and Quasi-RealismPlanned
Why an attitude-expressing semantics struggles in unasserted contexts, and what quasi-realism claims to earn back
26 min
Moral Twin Earth and the Reference of Moral TermsPlanned
The objection that a causal semantics for moral words makes two communities talk past each other rather than disagree
24 min
Moral Supervenience and What Explains ItPlanned
Everyone agrees the moral cannot vary without the natural varying. The dispute is over who gets to explain that
23 min
Buck-Passing and the Wrong Kind of ReasonPlanned
Analysing value as reasons for attitudes, and the demon who gives you a reason to admire the wrong thing
22 min
Humean and Kantian ConstructivismPlanned
Moral truth as the output of a procedure, and the split over which procedure and why it binds
24 min
Constitutivism and the Normative QuestionPlanned
Deriving normative authority from what agency already is, and the reply that one could always settle for being a shmagent
27 min
Rational Requirements: Wide Scope and Narrow ScopePlanned
Where the operator attaches in 'if you intend the end, take the means', and why bootstrapping turns on the answer
25 min
Particularism and Holism About ReasonsPlanned
The claim that a consideration counting in favour here can count against there, and what that leaves of moral principles
23 min
Agent-Relative Reasons and the Paradox of DeontologyPlanned
Why a constraint forbids an act that would prevent more acts of the very same kind
24 min
Moral LuckPlanned
How luck in results, circumstances, and constitution collides with the control principle
20 min
Aggregation and the Separateness of PersonsPlanned
Whether summing benefits across people ignores that each person's life is their own, and what limited aggregation offers instead
24 min
Incommensurability, Incomparability, and ParityPlanned
The small improvement argument, and the case for a fourth comparative relation beyond better, worse, and equal
22 min
Population EthicsPlanned
The total view, the repugnant conclusion, and the person-affecting intuitions that every proposed escape route gives up
27 min
Evolutionary Debunking and the Darwinian DilemmaPlanned
Whether an evolutionary story about our moral beliefs undercuts their claim to track anything, and what a third factor would have to do
22 min
Moral Uncertainty and Intertheoretic ComparisonPlanned
How to act without knowing which moral theory is correct, and whether two theories' verdicts can be put on one scale at all
23 min