Title: After Metaethics, by Tristram McPherson (Ohio State) and David Plunkett (Dartmouth)
Abstract: Recently, several philosophers have begun to explicitly reflect on the conceptual ethics of normativity as a distinctive part of normative theory. Put roughly, the conceptual ethics of normativity aims to assess the normative words and concepts that we use, as well as salient possible alternative ones. This paper explores the relationship between this project and more familiar forms of metaethical and metanormative inquiry. To do so, we begin with an entry point that we take both to be illuminating and to be comparatively familiar for those working in metaethics: metaethical error theory and the “after error” question it prompts. We use this entry point to motivate a general (and, we argue, explanatorily powerful) framework for understanding important ways that work in metaethics and conceptual ethics can interact, which we call the After Metaethics model. We use this model to show that a range of prominent arguments in the metaethics literature, about positions other than error theory, can also be used to motivate projects in the conceptual ethics of normativity. We argue that this model helps illuminate how to understand and defend a range of important existing claims in the foundations of ethics, as well as helping to identify important unexplored positions. We conclude the paper by discussing another important kind of interaction between metanormative inquiry and conceptual ethics. This interaction stems from the fact that, as we argue, there are strong motivations to appeal to “authoritative” norms in conceptual ethics inquiry. The truth of a standard kind of error theory about such norms would thus raise difficult questions about the interpretation and viability of conceptual ethics inquiry.