Philosophy 640: Seminar in Ethics.

The seminar will be devoted to recent writings in metaethics, broadly conceived. Metaethics centrally treats the meaning of ethical statements and the nature of ethical judgment. More broadly construed, it treats normative statements and judgments in general (perhaps characterizable as those in which the notion of ought or of a reason to φ figure), as in normative epistemology and the theory of rationality in action, and it includes the theory of correct normative reasoning. The readings we will study in the seminar are not yet determined (and nominations are welcome). We will start with T.M. Scanlon’s new book Moral Dimensions: Permissibility, Meaning, Blame. (Scanlon’s book isn’t paradigm metaethics, but it works to clarify ethical concepts that are often conflated, and its treatment of blame interacts with questions concerning specifically moral concepts.) Students who take the seminar for credit will do a long seminar paper, due at the end of the writing period. Preliminary work toward part of the paper will be due earlier (2000–3000 words), and the student will make a presentation of this preliminary work to the seminar toward the end of the term