How a moral cognitivist can accept the Moral Twin Earth thought experiment without accepting Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons’s Non-descriptivist cognitivism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.21680/1983-2109.2023v30n62ID29152Keywords:
Moral semantics, Naturalist moral realism, Moral Twin Earth, Non-realist cognitivismAbstract
The article aims to answer how a moral cognitivist can accept the Moral Twin Earth thought experiment without accepting Terence Horgan and Mark Timmons’s Non-descriptivist cognitivism. In order to offer the aimed answer, the semantic conclusions that these philosophers draw from the version of this thought experiment that applies to Peter Railton’s naturalist moral realism will be exposed. It will be proposed that even if a supporter of descriptivist moral cognitivism, such as Railton, accepts Horgan and Timmons’s objection, and abandons naturalist moral realism, he doesn’t need to adhere to the metaethical theory of Non-descriptivist cognitivism, and its anti-realist moral ontology. He has a way out by adhering to Derek Parfit’s Non-realist cognitivism, which, as will be argued, is possibly a superior metaethical theory to Non-descriptivist cognitivism.
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