Taking Morality Seriously: A Defense of Robust Realism. By David Enoch. (Oxford UP, 2011. Pp. Xii + 295. Price £40.00.)

This volume features ten papers in political philosophy, addressing a range of central topics and represent cutting-edge work in the field. Papers in the first part look at equality and justice: Keith Hyams examines the contribution of ex ante equality to ex post fairness; Elizabeth Anderson looks at equality from a political economy perspective; Serena Olsaretti’s paper studies liberal equality and the moral status of parent–child relationships; and George Sher investigates doing justice to desert. In the second part, papers address questions of state legitimacy: Ralf Bader explores counterfactual justifications of the state; David Enoch examines political philosophy and epistemology; and Seth Lazar and Laura Valentini look at proxy battles in just war theory. The final three papers cover social issues that are not easily understood in terms of personal morality, yet which need not centrally involve the state: the moral neglect of negligence (Seana Valentine Shiffrin), the case for collective pensions (Michael Otsuka); and authority and harm (Jonathan Parry).

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Wishful Thinking in Moral Theorizing: Comment on Enoch

Utilitas ◽

10.1017/s0953820811000288 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 23 (4) ◽

pp. 447-450 ◽

Cited By ~ 3

Author(s):

ROB VAN SOMEREN GREVE

Keyword(s):

Possible Worlds ◽

Wishful Thinking ◽

Absurd Conclusion ◽

Moral Theorizing ◽

David Enoch

David Enoch recently defended the idea that there are valid inferences of the form ‘it would be good if p, therefore, p’. I argue that Enoch's proposal allows us to infer the absurd conclusion that ours is the best of all possible worlds.

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Robust Realism Rejected

Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism ◽

10.2307/429712 ◽

1984 ◽

Vol 42 (3) ◽

pp. 317

Author(s):

Thomas Leddy

Keyword(s):

Robust Realism

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Précis: The Morality and Law of War

Israel Law Review ◽

10.1017/s0021223700013492 ◽

2007 ◽

Vol 40 (3) ◽

pp. 670-683 ◽

Cited By ~ 2

Author(s):

Jeff McMahan

Keyword(s):

Law School ◽

Law Of War ◽

Oxford University ◽

Hebrew University ◽

University Of Buffalo ◽

The Law ◽

The University ◽

David Enoch ◽

Oxford University Press

The following commentaries are responses to the rough drafts of six lectures—the Hourani Lectures—that I delivered at the University of Buffalo in November of 2006. This draft manuscript is being extensively revised and expanded for publication by Oxford University Press as a book provisionally called The Morality and Law of War. Even though in January 2007 the book was still both unpolished and incomplete, David Enoch at that time generously organized a workshop at the Law School of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem to discuss its ideas and arguments. George Fletcher chaired the meeting and Re'em Segev, Yuval Shany, and Noam Zohar all presented superb commentaries. The following papers have all grown out of that memorable occasion.

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OUR RELIABILITY IS IN PRINCIPLE EXPLAINABLE

Episteme ◽

10.1017/epi.2016.5 ◽

2016 ◽

Vol 14 (2) ◽

pp. 197-211 ◽

Cited By ~ 11

Author(s):

Dan Baras

Keyword(s):

Robust Realism ◽

Hartry Field

AbstractNon-skeptical robust realists about normativity, mathematics, or any other domain of non-causal truths are committed to a correlation between their beliefs and non-causal, mind-independent facts. Hartry Field and others have argued that if realists cannot explain this striking correlation, that is a strong reason to reject their theory. Some consider this argument, known as the Benacerraf–Field argument, as the strongest challenge to robust realism about mathematics (Field 1989, 2001), normativity (Enoch 2011), and even logic (Schechter 2010). In this article I offer two closely related accounts for the type of explanation needed in order to address Field's challenge. I then argue that both accounts imply that the striking correlation to which robust realists are committed is explainable, thereby discharging Field's challenge. Finally, I respond to some objections and end with a few unresolved worries.

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Considering Dispositional Moral Realism

Perspectives ◽

10.2478/pipjp-2018-0002 ◽

2018 ◽

Vol 8 (1) ◽

pp. 14-22

Author(s):

Prabhpal Singh

Keyword(s):

Moral Realism ◽

Secondary Qualities ◽

Dispositional Account ◽

Affective Attitudes ◽

Simon Blackburn ◽

Moral Properties ◽

The Difference ◽

The Relationship ◽

David Enoch

AbstractMy aim in this paper is to consider a series of arguments against Dispositional Moral Realism and argue that these objections are unsuccessful. I will consider arguments that try to either establish a dis-analogy between moral properties and secondary qualities or try to show that a dispositional account of moral properties fails to account for what a defensible species of moral realism must account for. I also consider criticisms from Simon Blackburn (1993), who argues that there could not be a corresponding perceptual faculty for moral properties, and David Enoch (2011), who argues that Dispositional Moral Realism does not most plausibly explain the difference between moral disagreements and disagreements of mere preference. Finally, I examine a novel criticism concerning the relationship between the diverse variety of moral properties and the range of our normative affective attitudes, arguing that the view has no problem accounting for this diversity.

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Bruteness and Supervenience

10.1093/oso/9780198758600.003.0004 ◽

2018 ◽

Author(s):

Joseph Levine

Keyword(s):

Body Problem ◽

The Other ◽

Robust Realism ◽

Mind Body Problem ◽

The One ◽

The Mind ◽

The Way

This chapter first presents a framework, one that the author has defended elsewhere (Levine 2001), for understanding the notion of bruteness, its relation to modality, and the way this framework applies to the mind–body problem. Second, the chapter then turns to a problem in meta-ethics and attempts to address this problem within the framework already established. The problem is how to reconcile two views that many philosophers, including the author, are inclined to hold: on the one hand, “robust realism” or “non-naturalism” about the ethical and, on the other, the supervenience of the ethical on the non-ethical. The chapter speculates about how one might reasonably reconcile these two views.

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