Rights statement: This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in The Philosophical Quartley following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Christopher Macleod Mill's Antirealism The Philosophical Quarterly 2016 66: 261-279 is available online at: http://pq.oxfordjournals.org/content/66/263/261
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Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
}
TY - JOUR
T1 - Mill's Antirealism
AU - Macleod, Christopher
N1 - This is a pre-copy-editing, author-produced PDF of an article accepted for publication in The Philosophical Quartley following peer review. The definitive publisher-authenticated version Christopher Macleod Mill's Antirealism The Philosophical Quarterly 2016 66: 261-279 is available online at: http://pq.oxfordjournals.org/content/66/263/261
PY - 2016/4
Y1 - 2016/4
N2 - One of Mill’s primary targets, throughout his work, is intuitionism. In this paper, I distinguish two strands of intuitionism, against which Mill offers separate arguments. The first strand, ‘a priorism’ makes an epistemic claim about how we come to know norms. The second strand, ‘first principle pluralism’, makes a structural claim about how many fundamental norms there are. In this paper, I suggest that one natural reading of Mill’s argument against first principle pluralism is incompatible with the naturalism that drives his argument against a priorism. It must, therefore, be discarded. Such a reading, however, covertly attributes Mill realist commitments about the normative. These commitments are unnecessary. To the extent that Mill’s argument against first principle pluralism is taken seriously, I suggest, it is an argument that points towards Mill as having an antirealist approach to the normative.
AB - One of Mill’s primary targets, throughout his work, is intuitionism. In this paper, I distinguish two strands of intuitionism, against which Mill offers separate arguments. The first strand, ‘a priorism’ makes an epistemic claim about how we come to know norms. The second strand, ‘first principle pluralism’, makes a structural claim about how many fundamental norms there are. In this paper, I suggest that one natural reading of Mill’s argument against first principle pluralism is incompatible with the naturalism that drives his argument against a priorism. It must, therefore, be discarded. Such a reading, however, covertly attributes Mill realist commitments about the normative. These commitments are unnecessary. To the extent that Mill’s argument against first principle pluralism is taken seriously, I suggest, it is an argument that points towards Mill as having an antirealist approach to the normative.
KW - John Stuart Mill
KW - utilitarianism
KW - metaethics
KW - realism
KW - antirealism
U2 - 10.1093/pq/pqv072
DO - 10.1093/pq/pqv072
M3 - Journal article
VL - 66
SP - 261
EP - 279
JO - The Philosophical Quarterly
JF - The Philosophical Quarterly
SN - 0031-8094
IS - 263
ER -