The chapter outlines a mentalist theory of ethics and law. It clarifies its background in the cognitive revolution of the twentieth century. It discusses mayor conceptual elements like the distinction of competence/performance, performance errors and experimental design and the poverty of stimulus argument. It outlines a detailed descriptive account of principles of moral cognition generating richly structured moral judgments. The content of justice, duties to care for others and respect for human beings are specified. New findings from child psychology indicate that children in early, preverbal states of development operate with normative principles. Approaches like the social intuitionist model and recent theories of moral ontogeny are considered, including models of statistical learning. The epistemology of ethics is a central concern of this chapter, particularly the epistemological merits of universalist accounts of human rights. The argument shows that epistemological universalism does not exclude the possibility of a legitimate pluralism of concrete attempts to bring to life the imperfectly understood (at least by this author) meaning of justice, solidarity and dignity.

I make the case that neo-Aristotelian virtue ethicists need to address the question of the meaning of life (i.e., the question of how our lives fit into the grand scheme of things and whether there is a cosmic or ultimate source of meaning to which we must align our lives). I examine Bernard Williams’ forceful challenge that evolutionary science has done away with the sort of teleological worldview that is needed in order to make sense of an Aristotelian ethical perspective. I consider Hursthouse’s response to Williams’ challenge and argue that it is not sufficient. I also argue against McDowell’s quietism according to which we should remain content with the strong evaluative meanings that arise for us within a particular acquired ethical outlook (e.g., our sense of the noble) and not seek to provide any ontological grounding or justification for them beyond appealing to our second nature. I contend that what we need is in fact a teleological worldview. Against Williams, I argue that there is no necessary incompatibility between evolutionary science and a teleological worldview, and indeed there is some good reason to affirm such a worldview.