Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 December 2009
In the last two decades, the rise of substantive ethics and, through this, the renewed development of normative ethical theories have become prominent concerns in moral philosophy. In turn, however, the development of such theories has raised to prominence issues in value theory and the epistemology of morals, and resolution of these issues has come to be regarded as vital to progress in the renewed search for an adequate normative ethical theory. In these regards, what is the relation between value and desire or preference? Do desires and preferences alone provide reasons for action? Indeed, do they provide reasons for action at all? Are judgments of value “subjective” in some way, and are they “projected onto the world”? Or are such judgments “objective,” either in the sense of having truth-values independent of their conditions of verification or in the sense of representing something inherent in the world? What is the relationship between claims of “objectivity” in either of these senses and the natural properties of things in the world? What exactly is supervenience, and what supervenes on what? Is there a viable distinction to be drawn between agent-relative and agent-neutral value? Are there any agent-neutral values, and how do we tell whether there are? Are there agent-independent values as well? The growing conviction that we are unlikely to make further progress in the development of an adequate normative ethical theory or even in substantive ethics without resolving a number of these issues, has given them an air of urgency as well as prominence.
To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure no-reply@cambridge.org is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.
Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.
Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.
To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.