Russ Shafer-Landau > Quotes

“One salutary development in recent ethical theorizing is the widespread recognition that no short argument will serve to eliminate any of the major metaethical positions. Such theories have to weave together views in semantics, epistemology, moral psychology and metaphysics. The comprehensive, holistic character of much recent theorizing suggests the futility of fastening on just a single sort of argument to refute a developed version of realism or antirealism. No one any longer thinks that ethical naturalism can be undermined in a single stroke by the open question argument, or that appeal to the descriptive semantics of moral discourse is sufficient to refute noncognitivism.”
― Russ Shafer-Landau

“The fact that we can't agree about which ethical views are true and which false is sometimes disheartening. But it shouldn't sap our confidence that some such views really are true, regardless of what we (or others) think about them.”
― Russ Shafer-Landau, Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?

“Morality may lack an author without being eternal.”
― Russ Shafer-Landau, Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?

“The fact that we can't agree about which ethical views are true and which false is sometimes disheartening. But it shouldn't sap our confidence that such views really are true, regardless of what we (or others) think about them.”
― Russ Shafer-Landau, Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?

“From the fact that everyone sees things through different lenses, it does not follow that all truth is relative to these lenses.”
― Russ Shafer-Landau, Whatever Happened to Good and Evil?