Constructivism in moral philosophy is a metaethical thesis about the production and defense of moral principles. While constructivisms in general give some account of the objectivity of moral judgments, this thesis opposes the realist thesis, which holds that the correctness of moral judgments depends on their correspondence, in some way, with an independent order of moral facts or values. Instead, for the constructivist, the correctness of moral principles depends on whether they were “constructed” via an appropriate procedure of practical reason that incorporates the relevant elements of proper reasoning. In this way, constructivism marks out a middle ground between moral skepticism and realism by retaining a conception of objectivity while rejecting the claim that moral facts or values exist independently of moral agents. Different forms of constructivism incorporate different procedures, and may stem from differing conceptions of practical reason. Constructivist accounts have been...
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Murray, P. (2011). Political Constructivism. In: Chatterjee, D.K. (eds) Encyclopedia of Global Justice. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-9160-5_55
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