PHIL 760.001 – Advanced Studies in Moral Theory

Instructor: Russ Shafer-Landau. This course meets M 4:00 – 6:30 p.m. in CW 208.

This seminar will introduce students to the major positions and problems within metaethics. The first half of the course will cover readings that represent realist, constructivist, expressivist and error-theoretic positions. The second half will focus on problems that have garnered a lot of attention in the metaethics literature, and that have inclined many theorists towards or away from the positions we’ll have discussed in the first half. These problems include ones associated with moral disagreement, supervenience, categorical practical reasons, moral motivation and moral epistemology. Students will be asked to write a one-page precis each week that reconstructs and analyzes a major argument from within the week’s readings.