A Deflationary Metaphysics of Morality

Authors: Fritz J McDonald

Publish Date: 2009/10/27

Volume: 25, Issue: 3, Pages: 285-298

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Abstract

The metaphysical dispute between moral realists and antirealists is cast in terms of properties the realist holds that moral properties exist the antirealist denies this claim There is a longstanding philosophical dispute over the nature of properties and the obscurity of properties may make the realist/antirealist dispute even more obscure In the spirit of deflationary theories of truth we can turn to a deflationary theory of properties in order to clarify this issue One might reasonably worry that such an account of properties would not be capable of properly characterizing disputes regarding the existence or nonexistence of genuine moral properties In this paper I will show that within this framework the traditional disputes over the existence of moral properties can be characterized in a far clearer fashion than is usually the case A deflationary account of properties along with an explanatory hierarchy of properties makes the dispute in ontology clearI am grateful to my fellow graduate students at the CUNY Graduate Center and colleagues at SUNY New Paltz and Oakland University for encouragement and discussion of this work Special thanks are due to Michael Devitt James Dreier Keota Fields Virginia Held Paul Horwich Steve Ross Catherine Wilson and an anonymous referee for Acta Analytica for comments on earlier versions of the article I am most grateful to Susan J Cronin for her support of my work and for her critiques of several drafts of the article

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