I just read Michael Smith’s The Moral Problem, which I thought was great. In particular, the book’s first chapter is, I think, the best “articulate the problem space by summarising the literature” chapter I’ve ever read. Smith’s ultimate solution to the ‘moral problem’ – the right thing to do is whatever a counterfactual perfectly rational […]| Negative Catallactics
Again, it’s early days in my attempt to get to grips with metaethics; I’m posting to try to get things slightly better ordered in my own head. Some quick points. First: my general intellectual approach here is as follows. The strong programme’s four methodological principles – causality, impartiality, symmetry, and reflexivity – guide my thinking. […]| Negative Catallactics
Continuing to do basic reading in metaethics, since I’ve decided this is a subfield I ought to actually know something about. In this post I want to note a few comments that Michael Smith mak…| Negative Catallactics
I have a new peer-reviewed publication in philosophy: “Objective Moral Facts Exist in All Possible Universes,” Religions 16.8 (2025). This consolidates my previous peer-reviewed work on metaethics (“Moral Facts Naturally Exist (and Science Could Find Them,” in The End of Christianity, ed. John Loftus, Prometheus 2011) and subsequent blogging and debates into a new peer-reviewed […] The post New Publication: Objective Moral Facts Exist in All Possible Universes appeared first on Rich...| Richard Carrier Blogs
As I said in this post, I’m belatedly recognising that a lot of what I’m trying to think about here is really metaethics, and therefore I need to actually do some reading in the subfield of metaeth…| Negative Catallactics
Introduction If you have ever been confused trying to figure out what someone means by “objective morality,” or got mixed up between moral subjectivism and relativism, you are not alone. Here, I will first define is meant by “objective morality” (or moral realism as it is known to ethicists), as well as subjectivism, relativism, absolute […]| What the Gospel Demands
