Gunnar Björnsson

The overall strategy of Lycan’s paper is to distinguish three kinds of conditional assertion theories, and then to show, in order, how they are variously afflicted by a set of problems. The three kinds of theory were the Quine-Rhinelander theory (or the Simple Illocutionary theory), The Semanticized Quine-Rhinelander, and the No Truth Value theory (or NTV). This strategy offers considerable clarity, but it comes at a cost, for what I take to be the best version of a conditional assertion theory contains core parts of all three theories. In what follows, I will suggest that many of the objections offered by Lycan can be dealt when all the pieces are taken into consideration at the same time. But I will also suggest that a refined version of what Lycan called the Immediate Implausibility objection does show us that the conditional assertion theory is false.

Motivational internalism—the thesis that there is an intrinsic or necessary connection between moral judgment and moral motivation—is a central thesis in a number of metaethical debates. In conjunction with a Humean picture of motivation, it has provided a challenge for cognitivist theories that take moral judgments to concern objective aspects of reality, and versions of internalism have been seen as having implications for moral absolutism, realism, non-naturalism, and rationalism. Being a constraint on theories of moral motivation and moral judgment, it is also directly relevant to wider issues in moral psychology. But internalism is a controversial thesis, and the apparent possibility of amoralists and the rejection of strong forms of internalism have also been seen as a problem for non-cognitivists. This volume is meant to help people appreciate the state of the art of research on internalism, to see connections between various aspects of the debate, and to deepen the discussion of a number of central aspects. The introductory chapter provides a structured overview of the debate with a focus on the last two decades or so, distinguishing several important threads and trends in recent developments. The 13 chapters of original research are divided into three parts. The essays in the first part focus on what evidence there is for or against various versions of internalism, those in the second on the relevance of versions of internalism for wider metaethical issues, and those in the third develop different ways of accommodating both internalist and externalist aspects of moral practice.