Other proponents of moral supervenience
Since the previous entry, I have hit upon a strategy. In Section 3.2 I clearly delineate how it is that I feel that moral properties supervene over natural properties, but at the end of the section the problem of universals can be raised. However, on closer examination of the problem, it seems as though it is really unnecessary for me to put in my two cents' worth about universals. Whether they are real, concepts or simply names, they will still be able to do what I want from them in this essay. However, under those circumstances, I will still want to outline exactly what I require from universals, so that it will be clear what kind of universals it is with which my theory will be consistent.
Nevertheless, a question of conceptual priority will now be to consider the works of other authors who have advocated moral supervenience. If you are going to write yet another theory of supervenience, then you had better have something to contribute. That means getting to know other people's work in that area.
To this end, my old supervisor suggested that I read Blackburn, as he was the main exponent of moral supervenience. That is fair enough, but of course, there have been many other philosophers who have advocated moral supervenience as well that I should also read. While I was at the library today to get that metaphysical anthology, I observed that it contained a paper by Blackburn as well, on morals and modals. I thought that that would be good enough for my purposes, so I borrowed only that book from the library. Reading the essay, though, I can see that it does not go into enough detail and I will have to go back to the library again tomorrow.
In this respect, I was looking for a good list of philosophers to examine. Fortunately, the anthology lists four philosophers at which I can have a look: Moore, Hare, Blackburn and Post. Yet I was very surprised to find Moore's name in that list, because I have read in many other places that he did not believe in moral supervenience on the grounds of the "Open Question" argument. But it makes sense that he would have at least initially believed in supervenience if he invented the concept of it. So I decided to perform a Google search on "Moore Moral Supervenience" and ended up with a paper called "Moral Supervenience and Moral Thinking" by Dalia Drai. What is valuable about her paper is that she lists five philosophers at the start of her essay who advocated moral supervenience, all of whom had very different philosophical approaches and for all of whom she provided the copyright dates of their respective works:
Post, listed in the Blackwell anthology, is an objectivist as well, but he wrote in 1984, so I think I'll go with the more recent Price work of 1986. Furthermore, I note that Drai's article still comes up as ranked first in a web search for "moral supervenience". I therefore tend to hold that her list of philosophers to cover is definitive.
I therefore have the following items to look up in the library tomorrow:
Nevertheless, a question of conceptual priority will now be to consider the works of other authors who have advocated moral supervenience. If you are going to write yet another theory of supervenience, then you had better have something to contribute. That means getting to know other people's work in that area.
To this end, my old supervisor suggested that I read Blackburn, as he was the main exponent of moral supervenience. That is fair enough, but of course, there have been many other philosophers who have advocated moral supervenience as well that I should also read. While I was at the library today to get that metaphysical anthology, I observed that it contained a paper by Blackburn as well, on morals and modals. I thought that that would be good enough for my purposes, so I borrowed only that book from the library. Reading the essay, though, I can see that it does not go into enough detail and I will have to go back to the library again tomorrow.
In this respect, I was looking for a good list of philosophers to examine. Fortunately, the anthology lists four philosophers at which I can have a look: Moore, Hare, Blackburn and Post. Yet I was very surprised to find Moore's name in that list, because I have read in many other places that he did not believe in moral supervenience on the grounds of the "Open Question" argument. But it makes sense that he would have at least initially believed in supervenience if he invented the concept of it. So I decided to perform a Google search on "Moore Moral Supervenience" and ended up with a paper called "Moral Supervenience and Moral Thinking" by Dalia Drai. What is valuable about her paper is that she lists five philosophers at the start of her essay who advocated moral supervenience, all of whom had very different philosophical approaches and for all of whom she provided the copyright dates of their respective works:
- Moore (1922) the intuitionist
- Hare (1952) the presciptivist
- Mackie (1977) the subjectivist
- Blackburn (1985) the projectivist
- Price (1986) the objectivist
Post, listed in the Blackwell anthology, is an objectivist as well, but he wrote in 1984, so I think I'll go with the more recent Price work of 1986. Furthermore, I note that Drai's article still comes up as ranked first in a web search for "moral supervenience". I therefore tend to hold that her list of philosophers to cover is definitive.
I therefore have the following items to look up in the library tomorrow:
- Moore, G.E., Philosophical Studies, New York: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1922.
- Hare, R.M., The Language of Morals, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952.
- Mackie, J. Ethics: Inventing Right and Wrong, Harmonsworth: Pelican Books, 1977.
- Blackburn, S., "Supervenience Revisited" in I. Hacking (ed. ) Exercises in Analysis, Cambridge University Press, 1985.
- Price, A.W., "Doubts about Projectivism", Philosophy, 61, 1986, pp. 215-226.
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