Seminars in Moral Philosophy Week 4 TT11
| Event Name | Seminars in Moral Philosophy Week 4 TT11 |
| Start Date | 23rd May 2011 4:30pm |
| End Date | 23rd May 2011 6:30pm |
| Duration | 2 hours |
| Description | Tristam MacPherson (Daluth) 'Reference Magnets on Normative Twin Earth' to be held in the Lecture Room, 10 Merton Street, Oxford - Seminars in Moral Philosophy webpage Abstract ‘Twin Earth’ thought experiments constitute one of the most serious challenges to the semantic program of naturalistic realism in metaethics. This paper develops and defends a response to this challenge that appeals to David Lewis’ theory of reference magnetism: the view that the joints of nature play a distinctive role in determining the reference of our thought and talk. I argue that a moral semantic theory that includes reference magnets is capable of explaining the Twin Earth intuitions in a way that is compatible with a wide range of other commitments in metaphysics and semantics that a normative realist might adopt. |
