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- Title
MILL'S ANTIREALISM.
- Authors
MACLEOD, CHRISTOPHER
- Abstract
One of Mill's primary targets, throughout his work, is intuitionism. In this paper, I distinguish two strands of intuitionism, against which Mill offers separate arguments. The first strand, a priorism, makes an epistemic claim about how we come to know norms. The second strand, 'first principle pluralism', makes a structural claim about how many fundamental norms there are. In this paper, I suggest that one natural reading of Mill's argument against first principle pluralism is incompatible with the naturalism that drives his argument against a priorism. It must, therefore, be discarded. Such a reading, however, covertly attributes Mill realist commitments about the normative. These commitments are unnecessary. To the extent that Mill's argument against first principle pluralism is taken seriously, I suggest, it is an argument that points towards Mill as having an antirealist approach to the normative.
- Subjects
ANTI-realism; ETHICAL intuitionism; PLURALISM; NATURALISM; MILL, David
- Publication
Philosophical Quarterly, 2016, Vol 66, Issue 263, p261
- ISSN
0031-8094
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/pq/pqv072