Error theory turns on a particular presupposition about the conceptual commitments of moral realism, namely that the moral facts posited by realists need to be categorical. True moral propositions are said to have an absolute authority in their prescriptions in the sense that an agent, regardless of her own ends, needs or desires, is categorically obligated and has reason to act in accordance with their prescriptions. But, nothing in the world has such a queer property as categoricity, and therefore we (...) ought to be suspect of the enterprise of moral discourse. Some philosophers, like Stephen Finlay, have argued that this categoricity is not a necessary feature of moral language, and in so doing hope to have shown that the error theoretic critique is thus refuted. In this article I offer a survey of the literature on this topic and then contribute independent motivations for siding with those who think moral facts need not be categorical. (shrink)

In “Justice as Fairness: Political not Metaphysical,” John Rawls suggests an approach to a public conception of justice that eschews any dependence on metaphysical conceptions of justice in favor of a political conception of justice. This means that if there is a metaphysical conception of justice that actually obtains, then Rawls’ theory would not be sensitive to it. Rawls himself admitted in Political Liberalism that “the political conception does without the truth.” Similarly, in Law of Peoples, Rawls endorses a political (...) conception of justice to govern the society of peoples that is not concerned with truth, but instead concerned with being sufficiently neutral so as to avoid conflict with any reasonable comprehensive doctrines. The odd result is that this neutrality excludes any conception of truth at all. Therefore, in times of crisis that demand incisive decision making based on scientific, economic or moral considerations, public reason will stall because it can contain no coherent conception of truth. (shrink)