Lillehammer, H. orcid.org/0000-0003-3775-1396 (2026) How (not) to speak of morality as a social construction. Journal of Value Inquiry. ISSN: 0022-5363
Abstract
The aim of this paper is to articulate a distinctive version of the view that morality is a social construction. The social constructivist view is critically located with respect to other metaethical views, including expressivism; error theory; robust moral realism, and other forms of constructivism. During this discussion, several potential misunderstandings which would stand in the way of a fair evaluation of the social constructivist view are identified and diagnosed.
Metadata
| Item Type: | Article |
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| Authors/Creators: |
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| Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2026, The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
| Keywords: | Constructivism; Error Theory; Expressivism; Moral Relativism; Pragmatism; Robust Moral Realism; Social Construction |
| Dates: |
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| Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
| Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Arts and Humanities (Sheffield) > School of History, Philosophy and Digital Humanities |
| Date Deposited: | 03 Jun 2026 08:38 |
| Last Modified: | 15 Jun 2026 11:04 |
| Status: | Published online |
| Publisher: | Springer |
| Refereed: | Yes |
| Identification Number: | 10.1007/s10790-026-10103-x |
| Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:241422 |
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