Does Anything Really Matter? : Essays on Parfit on Objectivity

Cover
Does Anything Really Matter? Essays on Parfit on Objectivity
Copyright
Contents
Preface
Acknowledgements
Contributors
1. Has Parfit’s Life Been Wasted? Some Reflections on Part Six of On What Matters
	1. Introduction
	2. On the Causal Efficacy of Normative Reasons
	3. Reducing the Distance between Internalism and Externalism
	4. Has Parfit’s Life Been Wasted?
	5. Conclusion
2. Two Sides of the Meta-Ethical Mountain?
	1. Introduction
	2. The “Decisive Battlefield”
	3. Concepts and Properties: The Soft Naturalist’s Dilemma
	4. Types of Naturalism
	5. Concepts and Properties, Second Pass
	6. Normative Concepts and Normative Roles
	7. “Undeniably in Different Categories”—The Normativity Objection
	References
3. Parfit on Normative Concepts and Disagreement
	1. Parfit’s Non-Naturalism
		1.1. Reasons and Mathematics
		1.2. Evolutionary Forces and Rational Judgments
	2. If We Don’t Take Responding Non-Causally as Basic to Explanation
		2.1. Non-Minimal Truth
		2.2. Disagreeing with Preferences and Acts
		2.3. What to Do
		2.4. The Point of Tracking Disagreement
	3. Concepts and Properties
	4. Mattering
	References
4. All Souls’ Night
	1. An Analogy
	2. Applying the Analogy
	3. What Went Wrong
	4. For Their Own Sake
	5. A Misreading and a Log-Jam
5. Parfit’s Mistaken Meta-Ethics
	1. Reasons Fundamentalism and Reasons for Belief
	2. Reasons for Action
	3. Reasons for Desires, Aims, and Other Attitudes
	4. The Analysis of Value
	5. Conclusion
	References
6. Nothing “Really” Matters, but That’s Not What Matters
	1. Introduction
	2. We Can All Agree That the Concept of a Reason in the Standard Normative Sense Is Primitive and Irreducible
	3. The Concept of a Reason in the Standard Normative Sense Is Not the Concept of an External Reason
	4. Analytical Externalism?
	5. We Can All Agree That There Are Reasons in the Standard Normative Sense
	6. A Brief Return to Williams and Transition to Epistemological Worries
	7. Why Parfit’s Reply to the Evolutionary Debunking Argument Fails
		7.1. First Objection
		7.2. Reply to First Objection
		7.3. Second Objection
		7.4. Reply to Second Objection
		7.5. Third Objection
		7.6. Reply to Third Objection
	8. Realism, Theism, and Nihilism as a Causal Threat
7. Knowing What Matters
	1. Causal Origins-based Skepticism
		1.1. The Naturalist Argument for Normative Skepticism
		1.2. Parfit’s Response
		1.3. The Moral Lottery
	2. A Positive View
		2.1. Explication
		2.2. Defense
	3. Actual and Possible Disagreement
		3.1. Parfit on Disagreement
		3.2. When Actual Disagreement Matters
	4. Conclusion
	References
8. Nietzsche and the Hope of Normative Convergence
	1. Introduction
	2. The Rules of the Game
	3. The Question of the Nachlaß
	4. Nietzsche on the Value of Suffering
	5. Nietzsche on Egalitarianism
	6. Nietzsche’s Critique of Morality
	7. Meta-Ethics and Meta-Axiology
	8. Conclusion
9. In Defence Of Reductionism In Ethics
	1. Common Ground
	2. The Argument for Necessary Co-Extension
	3. Leibniz Law Trouble?
	4. The Significance of the Necessary Co-Extension of Ethical and Natural Properties
	5. Parfit’s Triviality Argument
	6. The Argument from Real Disagreement
	References
10. What Matters about Meta-Ethics?
	1. Why Parfit’s Life Has Not Been Wasted
	2. Conservative Reductive Realism
	3. The Triviality Objection
	4. Orogeny of the Mountain
	References
11. A Defense of Moral Intuitionism
	1. Intuitions in Epistemology and in the Practical Realm
	2. The Non-Cognitivists’ View of Intuitions and Their Role
	3. Disagreement
	4. Naturalism
	References
12. Morality, Blame, and Internal Reasons
	1. Moral Demands and Accountability
	2. Blame, Second-Personal Competence, and Motivation
	3. Morality and Objectivity
13. Parfit on Objectivity and “The Profoundest Problem of Ethics”
	1. Introduction
	2. The Dualism of Practical Reason
	3. Street’s Darwinian Dilemma
	4. Which Moral Beliefs Survive the Evolutionary Critique?
	5. The Dualism Resolved
	6. Conclusion
Index