Author Description

The Word 'ought' Is One Of The Core Normative Terms, But It Is Also A Modal Word. In This Book Matthew Chrisman Develops A Careful Account Of The Semantics Of 'ought' As A Modal Operator, And Uses This To Motivate A Novel Inferentialist Account Of Why Ought-sentences Have The Meaning That They Have. This Is A Metanormative Account That Agrees With Traditional Descriptivist Theories In Metaethics That Specifying The Truth-conditions Of Normative Sentences Is A Central Part Of The Explanation Of Their Meaning. But Chrisman Argues That This Leaves Important Metasemantic Questions About What It Is In Virtue Of Which Ought-sentences Have The Meanings That They Have Unanswered. His Appeal To Inferentialism Aims To Provide A Viable Anti-descriptivist But Also Anti-expressivist Answer To These Questions. This Is A Remarkably Bold And Interesting Book. Chrisman Challenges Nothing Less Than The Entire Conceptual Framework Within Which Most Previous Metaethics (and Indeed, Much Other Contemporary Philosophy) Has Been Done, And Advances A Very Ambitious Rethinking Of The Theoretical Space. It's Not Only Ambitious, But Also Extremely Imaginative And Smart, And Chrisman's Scholarship Is At A Rare Level, As He Has Assimilated A Literature That Is Unusually Broad Both In Terms Of Field And Historical Scope.-stephen Finlay, Professor Of Philosophy, University Of Southern California