Companions in Guilt: Arguments for Ethical Objectivity

230 Pages·2007·13.08 MB·English

by  Hallvard Lillehammer (auth.)

Companions in Guilt

Companions in Guilt
Arguments for Ethical Objectivity
Hallvard Lillehammer
Cambridge University
* © Hallvard Lillehammer 2007
50ftcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2007 978-0-230-52754-6
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Contents
Acknowledgements viii
1 Companionship in Guilt 1
2 Value, Normativity and the Mind 19
3 The Normativity of Practical Reason 41
4 Fact, Value and Truth 65
5 Values and Secondary Qualities 89
6 Ethics, Science and the Absolute Conception 111
7 Ethical Objectivity and Rule Following 133
8 Objectivity, Realism and Inescapability 154
Notes 175
Bibliography 209
Index 216
vii
Acknowledgements
Most of this book was written in Cambridge during a period of
sabbatical leave awarded by the University of Cambridge and
by King's College, for the Lent and Easter terms of 200S. I am
grateful to my colleagues at these institutions for providing an
intellectual environment in which it was possible to initiate
this project without undue external disturbance or interfer
ence during this time. The rest of the book was completed dur
ing subsequent periods free of teaching duties in various parts
of Spain and the United Kingdom in 200S and 2006. I am
grateful to my wife for suffering my pleas for patience during
these hectic times.
Parts of Chapter 2 are closely based on the article 'Davidson
on Value and Objectivity', published in the journal Dialectica,
Vol. 61 (2007). I am grateful to the Editorial Board of Dialectica
and to Blackwell Publishing for their permission to reproduce
this material here. The remainder of the material in this book is
previously unpublished. With the exception of Chapters 1 and
8, each of the chapters in the book has been written so as to be
more or less free-standing. This should make it possible to read
each of Chapters 2-7 on its own, and without too much cross
referencing. It also accounts for a certain amount of repetition
across some of the chapters, for which I apologize.
I am also grateful to a large number of colleagues (some of
them anonymous) who have commented on parts of this proj
ect in draft form, and to audiences at Bristol, Cambridge,
Edinburgh, Stirling and York, who have patiently sat through
parts of the material during live performance. In particular, I
am grateful to Simon Blackburn, with whom I have had the
pleasure of regularly discussing questiOns in meta-ethics since
his arrival in Cambridge in 2001. It is in large part due to
Simon's presence, and to the joint seminars on meta-ethics we
viii
Acknowledgements ix
have run together since then, that Cambridge is a good place
to work in moral philosophy.
Finally, I am grateful to a number of individuals whose gen
erosity and friendship have by far exceeded anything it would
be reasonable to expect since I turned up in London in 1989
with the bright idea that university was not for me.