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    The McMaster Department of Philosophy has now put together the following notice commemorating Barry: Barry Allen: A Philosophical Life Barry…

Most important contributors to metaethics 1945-2000?

Brian Leiter

An undergraduate writes:

Hello! I'm an undergraduate at [SLAC name omitted] and a long-time reader of your blog. I'm wondering whether you could possibly do a poll on the most important Anglo-American metaethicists after 1945. Your other polls on subjects like this have helped me navigate me various philosophical sub-fields, and I'd be delighted to see who the readership of your blog thinks are the most important figures working in metaethics. 

As I explained to this student, in recent polls various  malicious jerks without actual lives have gone to a great deal of trouble to screw up the results with strategic or just irrational voting, so polling is currently on hold.   However, I did indicate I'd open this for comments from readers; signed comments only (full name, valid e-mail address).

I think it's fairly easy to name the major figures, say, 1945-2000:  Charles Stevenson, R.M. Hare, J.L. Mackie, Gilbert Harman, Richard Boyd, Allan Gibbard, Simon Blackburn, Peter Railton, John McDowell; maybe also David Wiggins, Nicholas Sturgeon, David Brink, among others.   Since 2000, others would be added (e.g., Derek Parfit, T.M. Scanlon, Sharon Street, David Enoch), but let's focus on 1945-2000 in the comments:  you can either add to the list, above, or express a view about the relative importance/influence of the philosophers mentioned above.

UPDATE:  Two signifciant omissions brought to my attention:  Michael Smith's The Moral Problem (1995) and Christine Korsgaard's Sources of Normativity (1996).  Just ot be clear, by metaethics, I mean contributions to questions about the metaphysics, epistemology, and semantics of value and value judgments.

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33 responses to “Most important contributors to metaethics 1945-2000?”

  1. Adam Omelianchuk

    I'd have to nominate Philippa Foot for her contributions to the idea of ethical naturalism, but perhaps her major book on the subject falls outside of the time constraint?

    BL: That book was post-2000. But her early articles critical of emotivism were from the 1950s.

    Reply
  2. Pablo Magaña

    I would add Frank Jackson on the list.

    BL: Why Jackson, and not Pettit, since the work in metaethics I can think of was co-authored. Am I missing something?

    Reply
  3. Bradley Loveall

    In addition to your list, the student might want to check out Roderick Firth’s work on ideal observer theory, as well as some of Michael Smith’s work, e.g., The Moral Problem.

    Reply
  4. James C. Klagge

    Foot, Anscombe–anti-emotivism.

    Reply
  5. Matt Lutz

    Good list! I'd add Geach for his work on the Frege-Geach problem and attribute semantics for 'good.'

    Reply
  6. Daniel Kaufman

    I think Elizabeth Anscombe's "Modern Moral Philosophy" is one of the most important papers in this area, from that period.

    Reply
  7. Phil Edwards

    Michael Moore's work on fallibilist moral realism and natural law deserves a look. (At least, I hope it does, as I've spent most of this week immersed in it.)

    Reply
  8. Jeff Wisdom

    Bernard Williams and W.D. Ross should be on the list.

    Reply
  9. Jeff Wisdom

    Bernard Williams and W.D. Ross should be on the list.

    Reply
  10. Nicolas Delon

    Jackson published his book 'From Metaphysics to Ethics: A Defence of Conceptual Analysis' in 1998. I think it counts as metaethics; it includes an interesting analysis of supervenience.

    I might add Terrence Horgan and Mark Timmons for their work on moral twin earth.

    Since 'What We Owe to Each Other' was published in 1998, and it partly drew on earlier work, I think Scanlon counts.

    William Frankena?

    BL: Scanlon's 1998 book is a work of normative, not meta-, ethics it seems to me.

    Reply
  11. Nicolas Delon

    Mostly normative ethics, sure, but the chapters on reasons and value, including Scanlon's defence of a buck-passing account, are influential enough.

    Reply
  12. Brian Leiter

    Ross's most important papers were before 1945, weren't they? I'm curious what people think are Williams's contributions to the metaphysics, epistemology, and semantics of value, i.e., metaethics, as distinct from other parts of ethics. Of course, the boundaries are debatable, but it would be good if someone could state the case clearly.

    Reply
  13. Brad Cokelet

    Since debates about reasons and rationality are a part of metaethics, I would think Williams gets on the list for “internal and external reasons,” and related papers from that period. Also his challenges to the rational authority of morality. His views on both fronts have live descendants today & that speaks in favor of adding him given the question.

    Reply
  14. Alex Parrish

    I would have thought that the later chapters of Ethics and the Limits Of Philosophy would secured it a place on any list of important writings in meta-ethics. Particularly the Knowledge, Science, Convergence chapter which contrasts the idea of scientific knowledge w/ ethical knowledge.
    I may hold this book in higher esteem than others since it helped disabuse me of Nagel/Parfitian sympathies. Parfit seems to take Williams as one of his main rivals in vol2 of On What Matters. If the book isn’t meta ethics, I’m not sure what it is. It definitely ain’t ethical theory.

    Reply
  15. Jake Wojtowicz

    In addition to what Brad mentions, there's also the material in Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy about thin and thick concepts, what it means to take an internal view on an ethical concept, whether these are relativist etc., and this might count as metaethics. I'm in no place to judge the significance of this, though.

    Reply
  16. David DeMatteo

    Hello! I'm the undergraduate in question. Thanks for the suggestions, everyone. They've been very helpful in putting together my summer reading on metaethics.

    Reply
  17. Anthony Skelton

    I'd add David Copp. He has lots of papers in meta-ethics and a book, Morality, Normativity, and Society. W. D. Falk might be worth a mention, too.

    Reply
  18. Pablo Magaña

    I had in mind Jackson’s In Defense of Conceptual Analysis, but his paper with Pettit on moral functionalism is probably worth mentioning too.

    Reply
  19. Daniel Kaufman

    I would also put Alasdair MacIntyre's "After Virtue" very high on the list. And I think Jonathan Dancy's work on moral particularism has been quite important too.

    Reply
  20. Brian Leiter

    Perhaps folks might express a view about the ten most important contributors to metaethics in the period 1945-2000. No doubt many of the philosophers mentioned contributed to the metaethics literature, but I wouldn't put that many of them in my top ten. So who is your "top ten"?

    Reply
  21. Matt Lister

    I'd think that Rawls's essays "The Independence of Moral Theory" and "Kantian Constructivism in Moral Theory" would count. Both have been pretty influential. (I also tend to think they are close to right, but leave that aside.)

    Somewhat idiosyncratically, perhaps, I think that large parts of David Gauthier's _Morals by Agreement_ can be read as meta-ethics, showing how a Hobbesian constructivism can be done, rather than reading it as a less plausible positive moral philosophy.

    I'd also list chapter 11 of Philip Kitcher's Vaulting Ambition, which is perhaps not read much by people doing meta-ethics (I'm not sure) but is very good for its demolition of certain socio-biology inspired skeptical arguments about ethics and in favor of emotivism. (There may be other good arguments, but Kitcher does a very good job of showing why certain sorts don't work. It's well worth reading.)

    Reply
  22. robert muhlnickel

    little read today is Paul Edwards work on dual use theories in metaethics

    Reply
  23. Daniel Moerner

    No one has yet mentioned that there is a 75 page review article that covers, more or less, this very topic:

    "Toward Fin de siècle Ethics: Some Trends", by Stephen Darwall, Allan Gibbard and Peter Railton, The Philosophical Review Vol. 101, No. 1, Philosophy in Review: Essays on Contemporary Philosophy (Jan., 1992), pp. 115-189

    https://www.jstor.org/stable/2185045

    Reply
  24. V. Alan White

    Of all these figures, Stevenson in my mind is not just pivotal in providing a metaethical alternative to realism, but in anticipating how metaethical stances, deliberately or accidentally held, influence large-scale societal behavior. In other blogs I have argued (or, really sketched in broad brush) that if one were to theoretically deconstruct the Trumpian phenomenon metaethically, only emotivism well-explains the behavior of MAGA types with respect to moral stances. Trump does not argue in the rational sense, but in Stevenson's sense of "arguing" to achieve agreement in attitude, he seems to have moved enough people motivated by emotional agreement to make the entire Republican party fall into behavioral line. This line of explanation at least achieves insight as to why logic, contradiction, and the usual norms of rational discourse have no bearing in understanding what happens on that political side. As I have said elsewhere, I do not believe that Trump or his ilk have deliberately adhered to emotivism; it is an accidental discovery of a metaethics that forwards more pedestrian personal ambitions of the 1%. No doubt Trump or his cohort has no idea what "metaethics" means.

    Reply
  25. Jeff Wisdom

    Ross was actively publishing between 1945 and 2000, and he made important contributions to metaethics, so I thought he should make the cut. But, as you point out, his major contributions to metaethics (viz., The Right and the Good, and Foundations of Ethics) came out in the 1930s. Regarding Williams, I had in mind the works that Brad Cokelet and others mentioned. Several essays from the 1990s and 2000s interact in some way or other with Williams's work on normative reasons, as do books like Michael Smith's, The Moral Problem and Setiya and Paakkunainen's anthology, Internal Reasons.

    Reply
  26. Jim Sias

    I think Robert Adams' Finite and Infinite Goods (1999) deserves mention as perhaps the most rigorous of theistic approaches to metaethics produced during that time period.

    Reply
  27. Jackie Taylor

    Two works from which I've profited are Sabina Lovibond, Realism and Imagination in Ethics, and Cheryl Noble, "Normative Ethical Theories" (Monist, 1979; and reprinted in Stanley G. Clarke and Evan Simpson, eds. Anti-Theory in Ethics and Moral Conservatism).
    I also think works by Foot, Wiggins (Needs, Values, Truth) and Frankena deserve renewed attention.

    Reply
  28. Phil Edwards

    I thought of _After Virtue_ (which I rate very highly), but mentally disqualified it as ethics rather than meta-ethics. I think you're right, though – if "everyone since Aquinas has been asking the wrong questions" isn't a meta-ethical claim, I'm not sure what would be.

    Reply
  29. William J Rapaport

    I would nominate Hector-Neri Castañeda, for The Structure of Morality (1974) and Thinking and Doing (1975).

    Reply
  30. Brian Leiter

    After Virtue presupposes the correctness of the Ayer/Stevenson diagnosis of ethical discourse, and then asks how we got there and what it would take to get out. I wouldn't have viewed it as a contribution to metaethics.

    Reply
  31. Tom Carson

    I am surprised that that no one has mentioned Richard Brandt who has done some of the best and most influential work in metaethics. The following people also deserve mention

    Warnock — The Object of Morality

    Ewing — The Definition of Good

    Linda Zagzebski — Divine Motivation Theory and Exemplarist Moral Theory

    Reply
  32. Christopher Faille

    I would include Amartya Sen.

    Reply
  33. Jimmy Lenman

    Richard Hare
    Stuart Hampshire
    Bernard Williams
    Richard Brandt
    John Rawls
    Susan Hurley
    Judy Thomson
    Peter Railton
    Allan Gibbard
    Christine Korsgaard

    Runners-up: many including Alasdair MacIntyre (emphatically), Simon Blackburn, Philippa Foot, Jean Hampton, Derek Parfit, Michael Walzer, Philip Kitcher, John Mackie, Patrick Nowell-Smith, Ronald Dworkin, Valerie Tiberius, Charles Taylor, Thomas Scanlon, Crispin Wright, Frank Jackson, Kurt Baier, Stephen Darwall, Gerald Gaus.

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