What is the difference between a moral realist and a moral anti-realist?

This paper addresses the question of how to distinguish moral realism from moral anti-realism. An influential view, prevalent primarily due to the work of Michael Dummett, appeals to semantic features of realism such as truth, bivalence, and surface form. However, minimalist accounts enable an anti-...

詳細記述

書誌詳細
主要な著者: Clark, W, William Clark
その他の著者: Parsons, J
フォーマット: 学位論文
言語:English
出版事項: 2013
主題:
その他の書誌記述
要約:This paper addresses the question of how to distinguish moral realism from moral anti-realism. An influential view, prevalent primarily due to the work of Michael Dummett, appeals to semantic features of realism such as truth, bivalence, and surface form. However, minimalist accounts enable an anti-realist to appropriate any such semantic feature. The semantic characterisation is thus unable to distinguish adequately between moral realists and moral anti-realists. This is the problem of Creeping Minimalism. An alternative characterisation of the debate is proposed, making use of the distinctively metaphysical criteria of ontological inclusion/exclusion. Semantic minimalism is not an issue here, and the possibility of minimalism about ontology is shown to be incompatible with both realism and anti-realism, thus preventing the recurrence of Creeping Minimalism.