E-Book Overview
Truth Matters is the first full-length introduction to response-dependence, a topic that has lately become a main focus of interest for philosophers across a wide range of disciplines and subject areas. Setting out the issues clearly and concisely, Norris also provides relevant background history of the current debate, including a discussion of its sources and analogues in Plato, Locke, Kant, and Wittgenstein.
E-Book Content
Truth Matters: Realism, anti-realism and response-dependence
Christopher Norris
Edinburgh University Press
Truth Matters
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Truth Matters Realism, anti-realism and response-dependence
Christopher Norris
Edinburgh University Press
For Carol and Daniele, Anselmo and Tomaso
#
Christopher Norris, 2002
Edinburgh University Press Ltd 22 George Square, Edinburgh
Typeset in 10 on 12 point Linotype Sabon by Hewer Text Limited, Edinburgh, and printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall
A CIP Record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 0 7486 1599 7 (hardback)
The right of Christopher Norris to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Contents
Acknowledgements
Introduction
vii
1
Chapter 1
Anti-realism, Scepticism, `Constructive Empiricism'
23
Chapter 2
Response-Dependence: the current debate in review
58
Chapter 3
Green Thoughts in a Moral Shade: anti-realism, ethics and response-dependence
Chapter 4
Morals, Mathematics and Best Opinion: the Euthyphronist debate revisited
Chapter 5
130
Constitutional Powers: can `best judgement' ever go wrong?
Chapter 6
98
165
Showing you Know: on Wright's `Manifestation Principle'
195
Index of Names
225
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Acknowledgements
I should like to thank various colleagues and friends for encouraging my interest in the topics here discussed and for helping me to bring this work to completion over the past two years. Alex Miller and Duncan McFarland (in the Philosophy Section at Cardiff) have an expert knowledge of the Response-Dependence literature which has often pointed me in new directions and saved me from ignoring some important contribution that either forced me to re-think certain claims or provided welcome argumentative support. Robin Attfield, through his published work and many conversations, helped to focus my mind on the relevant issues in moral philosophy and meta-ethics while Alessandra Tanesini set me thinking again about Wittgenstein, Kripke and the rule-following considerations. That neither she nor Alex has managed to convince me that this debate amounts to more than a large red herring is probably my fault rather than theirs. Michael Durrant's long-awaited book Sortals and the SubjectPredicate Distinction appeared shortly after his retirement from Cardiff
and too late for discussion here although it is hard to know just how deeply my ideas have been influenced by his philosophic counsel and authoritative knowledge of debates within the analytic tradition. Andrew Belsey, Pat Clark, Andrew Edgar, Stephen Moller, Kathryn Plant, Peter Sedgwick, and (especially) Barry Wilkins have each of them helped to provide a friendly, supportive, and above all non-competitive working environment. Such conditions are all too rare in a context of ceaseless research `productivity' monitoring, bureaucratic interference and qualitycontrol mechanisms which offer something like an object lesson in how to damage