In the current issue of Neuroethics:
Appiah and the Autonomy of Ethics
Since this article has no abstract, I've pasted the first paragraph below the fold.
Kwame Anthony Appiah’s Experiments in Ethics is
an impressive and admirable book. It offers an
interpretation of the history of philosophy that makes
the current trend toward empirically informed ethics
seem part of a grand tradition rather than a foolish
move by cheeky upstarts. It also conveys effectively
what is grand about the history of philosophical ethics
in a way that makes it seem deep and meaningful
rather than stuffy and old. On the whole, the book
made me hopeful about the long term future of ethics
and excited to see how it will develop in response to
its own experiments in method. The book is also
written in an engaging and accessible style that will
appeal to a broad audience, which is appropriate
given the author’s views about the real importance of
philosophy. The downside of accessibility is that the
details of the particular philosophical positions
Appiah is defending are not always as clear as they
might be. My comments focus on his views on the
autonomy of ethics; my aim is to raise some questions
about his claim that ethics is not autonomous and to
argue that despite the relevance of empirical sciences
to ethics there is still a gap between ought and is. At
the end I turn to the implications of this question for
the role of philosophers in ethics.
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