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Objectivity and reliability

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Justin Clarke-Doane
Justin Clarke-Doane*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Columbia University, New York, NY, USA
*
E-mail: [email protected]
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Abstract

Scanlon’s Being Realistic about Reasons is a beautiful book – sleek, sophisticated, and programmatic. One of its key aims is to demystify knowledge of normative and mathematical truths, realistically construed – i.e. construed, roughly, as being true relevantly independent of minds and languages, when interpreted at face-value. In this article, I develop an epistemological problem that Scanlon fails to explicitly address. I argue that his ‘metaphysical pluralism’ can be understood as a response to that problem. However, it resolves the problem only if it undercuts the objectivity of normative and mathematical inquiry.

Keywords

ScanlonobjectivitynormativerealismBenacerrafsafetysensensitivity
Type
Tim Scanlon's Being Realistic about Reasons; author meets critics
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 47 , Issue 6 , 2017 , pp. 841 - 855
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2017

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