[SydPhil] Title and Abstract for Andrew Sepielli, April 6 Sydney Uni

[Brian Hedden]

Hi everyone,

Below is the title and abstract for Andrew Sepielli's (Toronto) department seminar talk at Sydney Uni, next Wed April 6 from 1-2:30pm in the Muniment Room, Quadrangle Building. See you all there!

--Brian

Pragmatism and the 'Problem with Ethics'

This paper is part of a larger project in "therapeutic metaethics" -- i.e. metaethics done with the aim of helping us to overcome socio-psychological maladies like nihilism, anomie, disenchantment, and so on. Ethics differs from paradigmatically factual domains of inquiry in ways that prompt some people to label it as "not objective" or to say that there's a "problem with ethics". Moral realists have tended to offer explanations of these differences which do not fully account for them. Non-cognitivists and especially error theorists do a better job -- though by no means a perfect job -- of explaining these differences, but their views are objectionable both on theoretical grounds and on the ground that accepting them creates a hospitable climate for nihilism, anomie, and the rest. In this paper, I offer a pragmatist explanation of some manifest differences between ethics and paradigmatically factual domains, acceptance of which is less conducive to nihilism, etc.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://mailman.sydney.edu.au/pipermail/sydphil/attachments/20160331/c037467c/attachment-0002.html>