Volume 25, Number 2
August 2023
ARTICLE

Ethics and the Question of What to Do

Volume 25, Number 2, August 2023, Pages 376–412
https://doi.org/10.26556/jesp.v25i2.1117
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Abstract

In this paper I present an account of a distinctive form of “practical” or “deliberative” uncertainty that has been central in debates in both ethics and metaethics. Many writers have assumed that such uncertainty concerns a special normative question, such as what we ought to do “all things considered.” I argue against this assumption and instead endorse an alternative view of such uncertainty, which combines elements of both metaethical cognitivism and non-cognitivism. A notable consequence of this view is that even if there are objective and irreducible truths about how we ought to act, all things considered, the “central deliberative question,” as it’s sometimes called, doesn’t concern such truths. Instead, that question doesn’t have a true answer.
Copyright © 2023 Olle Risberg
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license.
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