Antirealist views about morality claim that moral facts or truths do not exist. Do these views imply that other types of normative facts, such as epistemic ones, do not exist? The Normative Web develops a positive answer to this question. Terence Cuneo argues that the similarities between moral and epistemic facts provide excellent reason to believe that, if moral facts do not exist, then epistemic facts do not exist. But epistemic facts, it is argued, do exist:
to deny their existence would commit us to an extreme version of epistemological skepticism. Therefore, Cuneo concludes, moral facts exist. And if moral facts exist, then moral realism is true.
In so arguing, Cuneo provides not simply a defense of moral realism, but a positive argument for it. Moreover, this argument engages with a wide range of antirealist positions in epistemology such as error theories, expressivist views, and reductionist views of epistemic reasons. If the central argument of The Normative Web is correct, antirealist positions of these varieties come at a very high cost. Given their cost, Cuneo contends, we should find realism about both epistemic and moral
facts highly attractive.
- ISBN10 0199218838
- ISBN13 9780199218837
- Publish Date 6 September 2007 (first published 1 January 2007)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Oxford University Press
- Imprint Clarendon Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 272
- Language English