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Comment on Hajdin on Sanctions and Morals

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Jan Narveson
Affiliation:
University of Waterloo

Extract

Mane Hajdin advances a not unfamiliar criticism of a certain type of analysis of the notion of morals, namely, one holding that “it is part of the notion of morality that moral norms are backed up by sanctions of some special sort,” and he lists a work of my own as exemplifying this type of analysis. Since I am accustomed to applying a generally similar criticism to various theories, most notably to unreconstructed Stevensonian emotivism, I should like to think that my own theory is not subject to it. Though not altogether new, it is an important criticism, and Hajdin advances it in a particularly clear and elegant way. If we cannot answer him acceptably, things look bleak for proponents of the general line in question. So let's see.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1993

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References

Notes

1 Hajdin, Mane, “Sanctions and the Notion of Morality,” Dialogue, 32, 4 (1993, this issue): 757.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Mill, J. S., Utilitarianism, Everyman edition (New York: Dutton, 1968), chap. 5, p. 45.Google Scholar

4 Hajdin, “Sanctions,” p. 758.