Author Description

When The Editors Of The Oxford Handbook Of Moral Realism, Paul Bloomfield And David Copp, Invited Me To Contribute A Chapter, I Hesitated. Although I Had Occasionally Dabbled In Metaethics And Metanormativity, As Several Chapters Of The Present Volume Show, I Have Certainly Never Claimed To Be A Metaethicist. Not That I Lack Metaethical Views Or Instincts: I Have Long Had An Outsider's Impression That Objections To Moral Realism Are Much Weaker Than They Are Usually Taken To Be. That Impression Comes Not From Any Special Attachment To Morality, But From An Attachment To Rigour In Logic And Semantics. Correspondingly, I Have Long Had Some Methodological Views About Metanormativity: In Particular, That The Philosophy Of Normative Language Is Best Done As Part Of General Philosophy Of Language, That The Epistemology Of Normative Knowledge Is Best Done As Part Of General Epistemology, And That The Metaphysics Of Normativity Is Best Done As Part Of General Metaphysics. In Each Case, The Application To Normativity Should Be Up To Date With Recent Theoretical Developments In The More General Field, And Meet Similar Standards Of Rigour, Systematicity, And Explicitnes