Ok. I want to set up shop in the ‘ideal observer theory’ literature. ‘Ideal observer theory’ is the idea that we should judge what’s morally good by considering what an ‘ideal observer’ would judge to be morally good. I think there are narrower and broader ways of understanding this idea. The narrow way insists on […]| Negative Catallactics
Ok. I’m not sure exactly how crackpot this is, but I’m going to propose a concept/framework: ‘regimes of incompatibility’. The post will come in two parts. I’ll start by outlining a cra…| Negative Catallactics
Again, I feel like I am still trying to get to grips with very basic concepts in philosophy – but so it goes. In this very simple post I want to distinguish three different, very broad approaches to objectivity. First approach: ‘full realism’. The idea here is that there is something fully attitude-independent, out there […]| Negative Catallactics
The more reading I do in philosophy, the more basic my views get – apologies for the incredibly rudimentary level of posting here. Still, it’s my approach and I’m sticking with it. In t…| Negative Catallactics
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
[Another rambling ‘meta’ post about the blog’s overall project or orientation.] I just read Andrew Fisher’s ‘Metaethics: an introduction’. This is a very basic introductory overview text, but…| Negative Catallactics
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
6 posts published by duncan during August 2025| Negative Catallactics
Ok – yet another bite at articulating the ways in which I now differ from Brandom. I think these go into several boxes. ~~ The first is a rejection of the Kantian concept of autonomy. …| Negative Catallactics
Ok. So in terms of my personal sense of the philosophical trajectory of the blog (and to repeat myself yet again): I came into this enterprise as some kind of Derridean, with the belief that …| Negative Catallactics
10 posts published by duncan during July 2025| Negative Catallactics
Ok. As I’ve said in previous posts, the official position of the blog is now that we can derive everything we might want from Brandomian inferentialism within a Humean/Smithian apparatus that has the following core commitments: 1) a sentimentalist theory of normative conferralism (norms are made real by adopting normative attitudes of approbation and disapprobation […]| Negative Catallactics
Just going over ideas I already covered a week ago, and trying to concretise the reading task slightly more – I want to talk about three philosophical (or more broadly theoretical) traditions…| Negative Catallactics
institutional political economy, social ontology, neopragmatism, critical theory| Negative Catallactics
I recently read Don Lavoie’s ‘Rivalry and central planning’ – an account of the ‘socialist calculation debate’ which I can’t recommend highly enough. Lavoie is a partisan – his go…| Negative Catallactics
