Justifying oneself as a foundation of morality

Abstract

In this thesis, I aim to expose a common pattern in Meta-ethics. It consists in comparing ethics and science in order to understand the nature of ethics. I believe that this pattern makes more harm than good, and should be replaced with a better approach for the sake of meta-ethical studies. To this end, I devote this thesis to a close analysis of an instance of that pattern, namely Gilbert Harman’s argument in The Nature of Morality: An Introduction to Ethics. Harman argues that unlike science, morality does not have a certain explanatory power, and that, accordingly, it does not need to be postulated. I try to show that even though morality might not need to be postulated for the reason why science needs to be postulated, it might need to be postulated for other reasons. I argue that this other reason is the justificatory power of morality.