Väyrynen, P orcid.org/0000-0003-4066-8577 (2018) A Simple Escape from Moral Twin Earth. Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, 7 (2). pp. 109-118. ISSN 2161-2234
Abstract
This paper offers a simple response to the Moral Twin Earth (MTE) objection to naturalist moral realism (NMR). NMR typically relies on an externalist metasemantics such as a causal theory of reference. The MTE objection is that such a theory predicts that terms like ‘good’ and ‘right’ have a different reference in certain twin communities where it's intuitively clear that the twins are talking about the same thing when using ‘good’. I argue that Boyd's causal regulation theory, the original target of the MTE objection, was never vulnerable to this objection. The theory contains an epistemic constraint on reference which implies that either the property that causally regulates uses of ‘good’ isn't different for the twin communities or, in scenarios where the reference is different, the communities diverge in ways where it's not intuitively clear that ‘good’ has the same reference for them.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2018 The Thought Trust and Wiley Periodicals, Inc. This is the peer reviewed version of the following article: Vayrynen, P (2018) A Simple Escape from Moral Twin Earth. Thought: A Journal of Philosophy, which has been published in final form at https://doi.org/10.1002/tht3.375. This article may be used for non-commercial purposes in accordance with Wiley Terms and Conditions for Use of Self-Archived Versions. |
Keywords: | Naturalist Moral Realism; Moral Twin Earth; Moral Semantics; Causal Theory of Reference; Metasemantics |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Cultures (Leeds) > School of Philosophy, Religion and History of Science (Leeds) > School of Philosophy (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 10 Apr 2018 09:48 |
Last Modified: | 26 Apr 2020 00:38 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Wiley |
Identification Number: | 10.1002/tht3.375 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:129464 |