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Rehabilitating Warranted Assertibility: Moral Inquiry and the Pragmatic Basis of Objectivity
Author(s) -
Frega Roberto
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
the southern journal of philosophy
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.281
H-Index - 21
eISSN - 2041-6962
pISSN - 0038-4283
DOI - 10.1111/sjp.12006
Subject(s) - objectivity (philosophy) , assertion , epistemology , normative , argument (complex analysis) , philosophy , computer science , medicine , programming language
This article defends a pragmatic conception of objectivity for the moral domain. I begin by contextualizing pragmatic approaches to objectivity and discuss at some length one of the most interesting proposals in this area, C heryl M isak's conception of pragmatic objectivity. My general argument is that in order to defend a pragmatic approach to objectivity, the pragmatic stance should be interpreted in more radical terms than most contemporary proposals do. I suggest in particular that we should disentangle objectivity from truth, and I claim that moral inquiry is in most cases responsive to a normative standard that is closer to warranted assertibility than to truth. Using an argument that relies partly on H uw P rice's account of forms of normative assertion, I will show that a practice‐based account of warranted assertibility does the epistemic work required to defend objectivity while avoiding exposure to the criticisms that are usually addressed against this notion.