A Theory of Moral Fictionalism

Abstract

Abstract Having accepted moral error theory, moral fictionalists claim that we nevertheless should retain our moral discourse but stripped it of erroneous ontological commitments, which can be achieved by adopting a nondoxastic and nonassertoric stance toward moral judgments. This chapter defends an ambitious version of moral fictionalism. One of the principal uses of moral judgments is to function as “conversation-stoppers”: considerations that brook no further discussion and require no further justification. But how could a moral judgment continue to serve this function if it is no longer believed? The answer models moral fictionalism on Coleridge’s notion of the “suspension of disbelief” and on Mill’s solution to the paradox of happiness. Nondoxastic acceptance allows for a degree of flexibility and recalibration of one’s moral commitments in a way that belief does not, and thus the former attitude is a practically better one to adopt toward conversation-stoppers than the latter.