Truthmaking, Metaethics, and Creeping Minimalism

Philosophical Studies 163 (1):213-232 (2013)
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Abstract

Creeping minimalism threatens to cloud the distinction between realist and anti-realist metaethical views. When anti-realist views equip themselves with minimalist theories of truth and other semantic notions, they are able to take on more and more of the doctrines of realism (such as the existence of moral truths, facts, and beliefs). But then they start to look suspiciously like realist views. I suggest that creeping minimalism is a problem only if moral realism is understood primarily as a semantic doctrine. I argue that moral realism is better understood instead as a metaphysical doctrine. As a result, we can usefully regiment the metaethical debate into one about moral truthmakers: in virtue of what are moral judgments true? I show how the notion of truthmaking has been simmering just below the surface of the metaethical debate, and how it reveals one metaethical view (quasi-realism) to be a stronger contender than the others.

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Jamin Asay
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Citations of this work

Expressivism and Realist Explanations.Camil Golub - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (6):1385-1409.
Putting Pluralism in its Place.Jamin Asay - 2018 - Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 96 (1):175–191.
We don’t need no explanation.Jamin Asay - 2018 - Philosophical Studies 175 (4):903-921.
Run Aground: Kit Fine’s Critique of Truthmaker Theory.Jamin Asay - 2017 - Philosophical Quarterly 67 (268):443-463.
A Truthmaking Account of Realism and Anti-Realism.Jamin Asay - 2012 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 93 (3):373-394.

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References found in this work

Principia ethica.George Edward Moore - 1903 - Mineola, N.Y.: Dover Publications. Edited by Thomas Baldwin.
A World of States of Affairs.D. M. Armstrong - 1997 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Language, truth and logic.Alfred Jules Ayer - 1936 - London,: V. Gollancz.

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