Acceso usuarios
Pierluigi Chiassoni
As in the duel recounted by Joseph Conrad in The Point of Honor: A Military Tale, supporters and critics of moral objectivism keep arguing with each another, without realising that they really have different purposes. On the one hand, objectivists aim to work out a meta-ethical theory capable of granting objectivity to the moral values they cherish. On the other hand, and contrariwise, non-objectivists aim to build a meta-ethical theory along the principles of analytical empiricism, come what may. As a consequence, their dispute should have been dismissed long ago as one founded on error. This is not the case, however. Among the causes explaining such a situation there are, in my view, the workings of a few terms -such as "meta-ethics", "ethical disagreement", "objectivism", "rationalism", "relativism ", etc.� bringing with them toxic concepts which prevent clear and rigorous thinking in ethics and meta-ethics alike. The objectivist theory of ethical disagreement is considered and dismissed in turn, by appealing to three conspiring arguments: first, an argument from charitable interpretation (the objectivist theory is uncharitable towards non-objectivist theories of ethical disagreements); second, an argument from indeterminacy (the objectivist theory is indeterminate on the basic notion of ideal conditions for moral reasoning); third, an argument from inconsistency (the objectivist theory does not meet its own methodological requirement of taking "our" pre-theoretical intuitions seriously). While criticising the objectivist theory, a non-objectivist one is set forth which is philosophically more plausible.
