Speaker Series: Russ Shafer-Landau

Russ Shafer-Landau, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Wisconsin/Madison, works in metaethics and moral theory. He is the author of The Fundamentals of Ethics (Oxford, 2012) and its companion volume,  The Ethical Life (Oxford, 2012) written to introduce people to moral theory. Other publications include Moral Realism — A Defense  (Oxford, 2005), and Whatever Happened to Good and Evil? (Oxford, 2004). He is also the editor of the widely used Reason & Responsibility  (Cengage, 2010),  Ethical Theory  (Blackwell, 2007) and co-editor, with Terence Cuneo, of The Foundations of Ethics (Blackwell, 2006).

“Moral Intuitions and Disagreement”

After explaining what I take moral intuitions to be, I present a few arguments designed to show that an intuition-based moral epistemology cannot succeed. Most of these are based on considerations of pervasive or apparently intractable moral disagreement. Since I’m a fan of moral intuitionism, I hope that these arguments are unsound. I’ll try to make clear what is appealing about these critical arguments and then do my best to reveal their weaknesses. My aim isn’t to vindicate moral intuitionism so much as to insulate it from a series of powerful skeptical arguments.