Some Metaphilosophical Issues
This chapter discusses three metaphilosophical issues. First, the themes that have been the focus of the discussion relate to the trend of considering conceptual engineering, or conceptual ethics: how can we improve on the concepts we currently have? In fact, consideration of thin normative concepts presents distinctive theoretical questions: what do or can we mean when we ask whether some possible thin normative concept is better than another? Second, much contemporary metaethics focuses on accounting for our actual normative terms and concepts and is a kind of applied philosophy of language: but what is the broader philosophical upshot of such discussions? Third, the book’s main themes parallel the discussion of quantifier variance in metaontology. The similarities between these parallels are explored.