Does Anything Really Matter? Essays on Parfit on Objectivity
Does Anything Really Matter? Essays on Parfit on Objectivity
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Abstract
Ethical subjectivism or skepticism, in one form or another, has dominated moral philosophy for the past eighty years. In On What Matters Derek Parfit rejects all forms of subjectivism in ethics, as well as ethical naturalism. Instead he argues that there are objective, non-natural normative truths. If there are no such truths, he claims, nihilism awaits and his life has been wasted, as have the lives of all those who have spent their time trying to work out what we ought to do. In defending this position, Parfit criticizes, sometimes sharply, many leading contemporary philosophers. In this volume Peter Railton, Mark Schroeder, Frank Jackson, Allan Gibbard, Simon Blackburn, Michael Smith, Sharon Street, and Stephen Darwall reply to Parfit’s criticisms of their views, and in so doing shed light not only on Parfit’s position, but also on the long-running debate about whether there can be objectively true normative statements. Additional essays on Parfit’s defence of ethical objectivism are contributed by Larry S. Temkin, Bruce Russell, Richard Yetter Chappell, Andrew Huddleston, and Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek, and Peter Singer. These essays, along with Parfit’s responses (available in this book’s companion volume, On What Matters, Volume Three) greatly advance the debate about the possibility of truth in ethics. Taken together, the two volumes achieve something rare in philosophical disputes, for they show that sometimes such exchanges, rather than merely consolidating opposing positions, do bring opponents closer to agreement.
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Front Matter
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1
Has Parfit’s Life Been Wasted? Some Reflections on Part Six of On What Matters
Larry S. Temkin
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2
Two Sides of the Meta-Ethical Mountain?
Railton Peter
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3
Parfit on Normative Concepts and Disagreement
Allan Gibbard
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4
All Souls’ Night
Simon Blackburn
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5
Parfit’s Mistaken Meta-Ethics
Michael Smith
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6
Nothing “Really” Matters, but That’s Not What Matters
Sharon Street
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7
Knowing What Matters
Richard Yetter Chappell
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8
Nietzsche and the Hope of Normative Convergence
Andrew Huddleston
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9
In Defence Of Reductionism In Ethics
Frank Jackson
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10
What Matters about Meta-Ethics?
Mark Schroeder
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11
A Defense of Moral Intuitionism
Bruce Russell
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12
Morality, Blame, and Internal Reasons
Stephen Darwall
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13
Parfit on Objectivity and “The Profoundest Problem of Ethics”
Katarzyna de Lazari-Radek andPeter Singer
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End Matter
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