Moral Psychology, Ethical Relativism, and Blackburn's Metaethics

Rudo Kemper

Date of Award

2008

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Bachelors

Department

Humanities

First Advisor

Edidin, Aron

Keywords

Moral Psychology, Ethical Relativism, Metaethics

Area of Concentration

Philosophy

Abstract

The central question guiding my thesis is whether moral psychology bears implications for metaethical theories. Specifically, I investigate whether Simon Blackburn's neo-Humean sentimentalist moral psychology impacts the capacity of his metaethical expressivism to have an answer for various worries of ethical relativism. To prepare for this task, I first spend some time teasing out and elaborating different varieties of ethical relativism, laying out Blackburn's metaethical view of quasi-realistic expressivism, and explaining Blackburn's own response to ethical relativism from the perspective of his view. I then spend a substantial amount of time on the sentimentalist moral psychology that undergirds his metaethics, exploring in detail several of his notions and arguing that his moral psychology is insufficient without an account of identity-formation, an account which I then supply. I utilize my proposed revisions to Blackburn's moral psychology to argue that his response to relativism has important dialectical limitations, but that these limitations are beneficial, rather than problematic, for his metaethical theory.

Rights

This bibliographic record is available under the Creative Commons CC0 public domain dedication. The New College of Florida, as creator of this bibliographic record, has waived all rights to it worldwide under copyright law, including all related and neighboring rights, to the extent allowed by law.

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