META-ETHICAL DISAGREEMENTS
META-ETHICAL DISAGREEMENTS

Summary/Abstract: In “Objectivity and truth: you’d better believe it” (1996) Ronald Dworkin attacked what he calls Archimedean scepticism about morality. His central argument, however, brings into question both such scepticism and the views which oppose it, concluding that many meta-ethical disagreements are purely verbal or, really, first-order moral ones. In this article I illustrate the scope of Dworkin’s argument, examine (and reject) some responses to Dworkin, and finally show that many genuine meta-ethical disagreements can be rescued from Dworkin’s argument, by being understood as neither purely verbal nor narrowly moral disagreements, but rather as normative debates about what is appropriate to do when engaged in moral argument.

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