Methodology and Moral Philosophy

<p>Many ethicists either accept the reflective equilibrium method or think that anything goes in ethical theorizing as long as the results are plausible. The aim of this book is to advance methodological thinking in ethics beyond these common attitudes and to raise new methodological questions about how moral philosophy should be done.</p><p>What are we entitled to assume as the starting-point of our ethical inquiry? What is the role of empirical sciences in ethics? Is there just one general method for doing moral philosophy or should different questions in moral philosophy be answered in different ways? Are there argumentative structures and strategies that we should be encouraged to use or typical argumentative patterns that we should avoid?</p><p>This volume brings together leading moral philosophers to consider these questions. The chapters investigate the prospects of empirical ethics, outline new methods of ethics, evaluate recent methodological advances, and explore whether different areas of moral philosophy are methodologically continuous or independent of one another. The aim of <i>Methodology and Moral Philosophy </i>is to make moral philosophers more self-aware and reflective of the way in which they do moral philosophy and also to encourage them to take part in methodological debates.</p> <p>1. Introduction</p><p><i>Jussi Suikkanen</i></p><p><b>Part I: The Prospects of Empirical Ethics</b></p><p>2. How to Debunk Moral Beliefs</p><p><i>Victor Kumar and Joshua May</i></p><p>3. Who’s Afraid of Trolleys?</p><p><i>Antti Kauppinen</i></p><p>4. Learnability and Moral Nativism: Exploring Wilde Rules</p><p><i>Tyler Millhouse, Alisabeth Ayars and Shaun Nichols</i></p><p><b>Part II: New Methods</b></p><p>5. Metaethics from a First-Person Standpoint</p><p><i>Catherine Wilson</i></p><p>6. Consequentialism and the Evaluation of Action <i>qua </i>Action</p><p><i>Andrew Sepielli</i></p><p><b>Part III: Evaluations of Recent Methods</b></p><p>7. The Similarity Hypothesis in Metaethics</p><p><i>Christopher Cowie</i></p><p>8. The That</p><p><i>James Lenman</i></p><p>9. Footing the Cost (of Normative Subjectivism)</p><p><i>Jack Woods</i></p><p><b>Part IV: Metaethics and Normative Ethics</b></p><p>10. Normative Commitments in Metanormative Theory</p><p><i>Pekka Väyrynen</i></p><p>11. Revisionist Metaethics</p><p><i>Matthew Silverstein</i></p>