Metaethical Subjectivism ? Richard Double

In this short and lucid book, Richard Double defends what he calls ‘meta‐ethical subjectivism’. Put very generally, Double's case for this view is that since our moral views and normative theories conflict in a number of ways and to a very large extent, there can be no normative truths, or at least no objective normative truths. As can be assumed from this short outline, Double does not understand subjectivism as it is commonly construed in meta‐ethics, namely, as a cognitivist view according to which the meanings of moral judgements are to be characterized in terms of subjective attitudes. Rather, he conceives of it as a metaphysical position which comes close to J.L. Mackie's error theory; indeed, at some points he gives his view this label. In the introductory chapter where Double sets out to characterize subjectivism, he generally defines it in negative terms as the denial of meta‐ethical objectivism. Objectivism, in turn, is understood as the view that actions, persons and other objects have the moral features they have independently of what we believe about their moral features. Hence on this understanding, subjectivism is the view that there are no objective moral truths – no moral truths independent of our moral beliefs. When Mackie argued for his error theory, he famously started with an account of what our moral language commits us to in terms of moral properties, and he argued that since there can be no such properties, there are no moral truths of the relevant kind. Double, by contrast, contends that subjectivism is a purely metaphysical view which does not need to commit itself to any analysis of moral language. One difficulty with this approach is, I think, that it becomes unclear whether the proper analysis of moral language allows for the existence of ‘subjective’ moral truths – genuine moral truths which are not independent of our moral beliefs. As a consequence, it is unclear to what extent subjectivism is at variance with our moral thinking, or is in any substantial sense an error theory. In fact, throughout the book the reader may doubt whether Double takes subjectivism to deny the existence of moral truths in general, or merely objective moral truths. He alternates between formulations that support either interpretation, although his overall argument seems to suggest the first

Epistemology · Foundationalism · Metaphysics · Moral psychology · Normative · Normative ethics · Objectivism · Objectivity (philosophy) · Subjectivism · Ethics in medical practice · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Philosophy · War, Ethics, and Justification