Title: How to Be an Analytic Naturalist about Ought
Lecturer: Stephen Finlay (Professor of Philosophy at the University of SouthernCalifornia in Los Angeles)
Chairperson:Feng Yu (Associate Professor of Philosophy at East China Normal University)
Date: 3 pm, May13th, 2019 (Monday)
Venue: Room 3102, Building of School of Humanities, Minhang Campus, ECNU
Sponsor: Si-mian Institute for Advanced Studies in Humanities, ECNU
Abstract of the Lecture:
This talk will first explain what it means to be an analytic naturalist about normative terms like “ought”, and why Western moral philosophers have been skeptical about such theories, from David Hume’s principle of “No ought from is”, to G.E. Moore’s Open Question Argument. Then, drawing on empirical observations from languages as diverse as English and Chinese, I will explain how we should be analytic naturalists about “ought”. With the right theory of the descriptive meaning of “ought”, together with a sensitivity to the conversational pragmatics of practical speech, we can solve the central puzzles of metaethics.
Brief Introduction of the Lecturer:
Stephen Finlay is Professor of Philosophy at the University of SouthernCalifornia (USC) in Los Angeles, where he has taught since 2002.Originally from New Zealand, he received his PhD from the University ofIllinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2001. He is the author of many articleson metaethics and moral psychology, and a book titled CONFUSION OFTONGUES: A THEORY OF NORMATIVE LANGUAGE (2014).
