The Nature of Morality: Introduction to the Subjectivist Perspective(Avebury Series in Philosophy)

The book gives an account of the subjectivist view of morality. Most thinking about morality assumes that moral laws exist in addition to or irrespective of what humans prefer or what consequences result. This objectivist view holds that whether or not an action is morally right is as much a fact of nature as whether or not a thing is metallic. It either is in fact metallic or it is not regardless of what humans might think or prefer.

Table of Contents:
Part 1 Introduction and overview. Part 2 The dominant objectivist or moral law assumption: summary of elements; arguments for the objectivist position - the intuitionist claim, the argument from authority, the transcendentalist claim, the naturalistic fallacy argument; conclusions. Part 3 The subjectivist account of morality: the entirely subjectivist nature of value; what is morality about?; corollaries - there can be no guarantee for any rule, the motivation of moral action, the desired vs the desirable, the significance of altruism, rightness, wrongness and the impossibility of praise or condemnation, the parity between values, but doesn't this concept of morality reduce to utter nihilism?, the nature of moral argument, the conditional nature of all ought statements, the absence of important distinctions between morality and expedience or prudence, the homogeneous nature of all rules, the scientific approach to moral problems, moral freedom, responsibilities can only be taken on they can't be recognized, recapitulation. Part 4 An account of some central moral concepts and issues: moral principles; duty, obligation and conscience; good; rationality and morality; justice and justification; the problem of justice for the utilitarian; the is/ought relationship; rights; do desires differ only in strength?; the universalizability principle; moral education; recommendation - abandon all moral terms.Part 5 Wider implications and connections: the synthesis of emotivism, existentialism and instrumentalism; criticisms of contemporary literature on ethics; social responsibility - wider implications; the difficulties in living with a subjectivist view; the sociology of morality; the moral law and social order; cultural autonomy.