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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 January 2009
The purpose of this paper is to examine some contentions advanced by B. A. O. Williams in his books Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry and Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy. In particular I shall be concerned with the claims he makes about the nature of ethics—namely that it cannot be ‘objective’ or ‘realistic’ and that we may not hope for rational convergence in ethical judgments. My claims will be that Williams's case on these matters is importantly unclear and incomplete and that we lack cogent reasons to accept the conclusions he offers us. But a good deal of scene-setting is necessary before we can pose the questions I wish to address.
1 Williams, B. A. O., Descartes: The Project of Pure Enquiry (Harmondsworth, Middlesex: Penguin Books, 1978)Google Scholar—hereafter Descartes; Ethics and the Limits of Philosophy (London: Fontana Press/;Collins, 1985)Google Scholar—hereafter ELP).
2 Descartes, 64–5Google Scholar; ELP, 138–9.Google Scholar
3 ELP, 138–9.Google Scholar
4 ELP, 139–40.Google Scholar
5 ELP, 135.Google Scholar
6 e.g. ELP, 150–5.Google Scholar
7 One such which I have ignored is that between the real and the objective. For Williams some judgments might be objective, in that there was defensible hope of rational convergence on a verdict about them, even if they were not about the real, i.e. not about something that exists ‘out there’ and has causal effects on us. See Williams, B. A. O., ‘Ethics and the Fabric of the World’ in Objectivity and Value, Honderich, T. (ed.) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1985)Google Scholar. In so far as the distinction is of importance, it is the objectivity of the ethical which is at issue in this paper.
8 Blackburn, S., Spreading the Word (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984) esp. Chapter 6Google Scholar. See also ‘Opinions and Chances’ in Prospects for Pragmatism, Mellor, D. H. (ed.), (Cambridge University Press, 1980)Google Scholar and ‘Truth, Realism, and the Regulation of Theory’, in Midwest Studies in Philosophy V, Franch, P. A., Uehling, T. and Wettstein, H. (eds) (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980).Google Scholar
9 ‘Opinions and Chances’ (cited above), 180.Google Scholar
10 ‘Opinions and Chances’, 180.Google Scholar
11 McDowell, J., ‘Are Moral Requirements Hypothetical Imperatives?’, Aristotelian Society Supplementary Volume (1978)Google Scholar, and ‘Non-Cognitivism and Rule Following’ in Wittgenstein: to Follow a Rule, Holzman, Steven H. and Leich, Christopher M. (eds.) (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981).Google Scholar
12 See Williams's reply to Blackburn, Simon in Philosophical Books (1986)Google Scholar and see also Descartes, 243–4.Google Scholar
13 ELP, 141–2.Google Scholar
14 Descartes, 298–300Google ScholarELP, 140.Google Scholar
15 Descartes, 64.Google Scholar
16 ELP, 151.Google Scholar
17 ELP, 152.Google Scholar
18 ELP, 151–2.Google Scholar
19 ELP, 153.Google Scholar
