Metaethics

Mark van Roojen is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Nebraska—Lincoln. He works primarily in ethics and metaethics but remains interested in the rest of philosophy. His most widely read papers are on moral rationalism, expressivism, moral psychology, and the semantics of moral terms.

• 1. A Brief Introduction 2. A Subject Matter for Ethics? 3. Moral Epistemology and the Empirical Underdetermination of Ethical Theory 4 . The Practicality of Morality and the Humean Conception of Reason and Motivation 5. Error Theory 6. Simple Subjectivism 7. The Cognitivist Heirs of Simple Subjectivism: Ideal Observers and Ideal Agents 8. Noncognitivist Heirs of Simple Subjectivism 9. Fictionalism 10. Externalist Backlash 11. Scientific Naturalism I: Cornell Realism 12. Scientific Naturalism II: Moral Functionalism and Network Analyses 13. Nonnaturalism and Antireductionism 14. Supernaturalism 15. Odds, Ends, and Morals

Praise for the First Edition:"The contemporary landscape of metaethics is a topsy-turvy field of complex contributions, new twists on old views, and fundamental disputes about how, even, to describe the basic questions under dispute. In Metaethics: A Contemporary Introduction, one of the masters of the craft cuts through this complexity in order to put readers in a position to see the compelling philosophical problems that lead to these different comprehensive theories." — Mark Schroeder, University of Southern California, USA"Mark van Roojen's new work is now the finest book of its kind. It is focused on the right questions, it sympathetically reconstructs and fairly criticizes the major arguments offered for the major metaethical positions, and it is informed throughout by a deep familiarity with the philosophical terrain. This will be a huge help for those seeking to acquaint themselves with the history of metaethics over the past two generations. This is a terrific book."— Russ Shafer-Landau, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA