Objectivity, Realism and Inescapability

Abstract

In the preceding pages I have examined a number of the most prominent companions in guilt arguments in contemporary meta-ethics. Each argument has its own distinctive strengths and weaknesses. Nevertheless, there are some issues where the arguments I have examined are jointly suggestive of more general conclusions about the scope and limits of this kind of argumentative strategy. In these concluding pages, I summarize what I take these main lessons to be. I also give a brief sketch of the scope and limits of ethical objectivity that they suggest. Central to this picture is a notion of ethical indeterminacy. I then go on to locate the suggested picture of ethical objectivity with reference to two recent historicist critiques of moral philosophy, namely those of Richard Rorty and Alasdair Macintyre (Maclntyre 1985; Rorty 1989). I conclude the inquiry by briefly comparing the question of indeterminacy as it arises in ethics with the question as it arises in epistemology, law and the study of history.