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The Death of Morality

Moral Fictionalism

Richard Joyce on what happens when falsehoods are too useful to throw out.

The history of moral philosophy can seem a disappointing spectacle. Large tracts of it can be interpreted as thinkers taking their own moral preferences and trying desperately to prove them correct. The most ambitious among them aspire to objective absolute necessary truth for their moral claims. Failing this (as fail it does), various softer projects are countenanced: Perhaps objectivity is asking too much; maybe we can allow that moral truths are in some manner constituted by human practices. Or perhaps absolutism can be dropped; maybe we can be satisfied with one moral truth forus and another moral truth for them.

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