Abstract

In Chapter One, I present an argument for ethical anti-realism premised on the rational intractability of some important moral disputes. I do not claim conclusively to establish that any moral dispute is rationally intractable; but I provide evidence that for a pair of important examples the standard absolutist strategies for resolving such disputes are not promising. I then ask how this rational intractability might be explained. I suggest that the explanation requires both an account of the common project of morality, and the hypothesis that there are essentially different ways to realize this common project. ;In Chapter Two, I begin by articulating the theory for which I shall argue, "Naturalistic Indexical Appraiser Relativism" . I argue that moral terms can properly be treated as indexical, and provide reasons to prefer "appraiser" to "agent" versions of moral relativism. Then I give reasons to believe NIAREL more plausible than alternative nihilist and partial denotation accounts of moral semantics. ;In Chapter Three, I raise ten important objections to moral relativism. I show how NIAREL can be developed so as to allow plausible responses to each of these objections. Then I focus on relativist proposals quite similar to NIAREL, offered by David Wong and by James Dreier, and argue that NIAREL is the superior view. Finally, I argue that NIAREL is incompatible with moral realism. ;Chapter Four focusses on the most important anti-realist alternatives to moral relativism: sophisticated versions of noncognitivism of the sort recently developed by Allan Gibbard and Simon Blackburn. I argue that these writers do not succeed in establishing their views as against sophisticated versions of relativism. I then argue that more traditional noncognitivist arguments, to the effect that noncognitivism alone provides a plausible account of moral disagreement or that noncognitivism alone is supported by the truth of moral internalism, are no more successful. Finally, I argue that relativism is more plausible than noncognitivism because it faces no analogue of the problem of unasserted contexts which plagues noncognitivist theories, and to which, I try to show, no noncognitivist has offered a satisfactory solution