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Notes
This book discusses meta-ethics. She also plans a companion work of normative theory.
It has seemed to me that one sometimes has to decide whether to believe something and that is something one can do (Harman 1999, p. 95). But perhaps this is a misleading way to describe such a case.
I expect that this can be reformulated so as not to imply that something can be S’s reasons for ϕ-ing state only if S has the concepts of a fact and an objective reason.
A topic Thomson and I have debated in Harman and Thomson (1996).
Davidson (1970) argues persuasively that there is such a distinction, so that the first sort of “ought” is a two-place conditional relation in the way in which there is a two place conditional probability function.
References
Davidson, D. (1970). How is weakness of the will possible? In J. Feinberg (Ed.), Moral concepts. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Harman, G. (1977). The nature of morality. New York: Oxford University Press.
Harman, G. (1986). Change in view. Cambridge, MA: MIT.
Harman, G. (1999). Pragmatism and reasons for belief. In Reasoning, meaning, and mind (pp. 93–116). Oxford: Clarendon Press.
Harman, G., & Thomson, J. J. (1996). Moral relativism and moral objectivity. Cambridge, MA: Blackwell.
Thomson, J. J. (2008). Normativity. Chicago: Open Court.
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Harman, G. Judith Jarvis Thomson’s Normativity . Philos Stud 154, 435–441 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9737-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-011-9737-y