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Moral Value, Response-Dependence, and Rigid Designation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Brad Thompson*
Affiliation:
Southern Methodist University Dallas, TX 75275-0142 USA

Extract

It is part of our notion of moral properties (certain forms of relativism to the contrary) that they are in some sense independent of our moral beliefs. A murderer cannot make his action moral simply by believing that it is so. Slavery was immoral even if a large number of people once believed that it was permissible, and it would remain so in the future even if every person came to believe that it was morally acceptable. But views that take moral properties to be objective and thoroughly mind-independent constituents of reality face familiar metaphysical and epistemological obstacles.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright ©The Authors 2006

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