The Is/Ought Gap: It’s real but doesn’t pose a problem for “scientific moralists”

In the past two weeks I’ve stumbled upon blog entries that argued for a “scientific morality”, and in doing so challenged the “is/ought thesis”, which seems to be a rite of passage to be a naturalist these days. Unfortunately, the writers misunderstand the “is/ought” thesis, and so their arguments against it fail (but both entries […]

Ralph Wedgwood on The Metaphysics of Normative Facts

Part Two: The Metaphysics of Normative Facts In part two of The Nature of Normativity, Wedgwood delves into the messy metaphysics of normativity, and takes some pretty remarkable positions, which include, that “the intentional is normative”, that normative facts are causally efficacious, and that though normative facts and mental states are irreducible, his view is […]

Notes on Robert Audi’s Moral Knowledge and Ethical Character, pt II: Ethical Concepts and Moral Realism

Section II: Ethical Concepts and Moral Realism “Moral Epistemology and the Supervenience of Ethical Concepts” This essay focuses on the epistemological status of moral principles by attending to whether empiricism or rationalism is better suited for moral knowledge in light of the supervenience of moral properties on non-moral properties; Audi, unsurprisingly, concludes in favor of […]

House of Cards’ Frank Underwood (and virtue ethics, moral explanations, and counterfactuals)

I tend to be skeptical of virtue ethics, on a metaethical level, due to the implausibility of attributing moral properties to persons – for me, moral properties seem like the sort of entity that might only obtain for actions and states of affairs – but Kevin Spacey’s Frank Underwood in House of Cards seems to […]