Morality Without Foundations

Timmons defends an original metaethical view, arguing that semantic descriptivism in metaethics should be rejected, and defending what he calls "assertoric non-descriptivism". His view exploits semantic contextualism in giving an account of moral discourse, which like traditional non-descriptivist views stresses the practical, action-guiding function of moral thought and discourse, but which also allows that moral sentences, as typically used, make genuine assertions. Timmons argues that his view best satisfies the main requirements imposed on any meta-ethical theory.