Keynote 7, Michael Smith

Michael Smith

http://www.princeton.edu/~msmith/

Saturday 30th June, 5-6.30pm Grimond Lecture Theatre 2

From a Constitutivist Account of Moral Reasons to a Comprehensive Moral Doctrine

Constitutivism promises to provide us with two things: an account of the distinction between moral and non-moral reasons, and a story about how we move from an account of that distinction to an account of what it is for acts to be morally obligatory, morally permissible, and morally forbidden. But what is the relationship between these various definitions and a comprehensive moral doctrine? My aim in the talk is to answer this question. If what I say is along the right lines, then it turns out that we need to radically rethink the nature of normative ethics and the way we teach the subject to our students.