Diana Heney, “Toward a Pragmatist Metaethics” (Routledge, 2016)
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What is the pragmatic background and why does meta‑ethics matter for pragmatists?
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Welcome to the New Books and Philosophy channel of the New Books Network. My name is Robert Talese. I'm professor of philosophy at Vanderbilt University. I co-host the channel with Carrie Figder. Carrie is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of Iowa. Today, my guest is Professor Diana Heaney. Her new book is titled Toward a Pragmatist Metaethics. It has just been published with Routledge. Heaney is Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Fordham University. The pragmatist tradition in philosophy tends to focus around the pioneering work of its founding trio, Charles Peirce, William James, and John Dewey, who together proposed and developed a distinctive kind of naturalist empiricism. Though they disagreed sharply over central issues concerning truth and meaning, the original pragmatists shared a commitment to
to the primacy of practice and human experience, and a corresponding distaste for abstract philosophical theorizing. It comes as no surprise, then, that pragmatist work in value theory tends to focus on normative and applied ethics. There's very little in classical pragmatism that one would count as metaethics. But philosophical landscapes change, and the area of metaethics is at present vibrant with philosophical debates that matter for moral practice, despite their being abstract. It turns out that getting a workable and attractive conception of moral life requires one to address the technical questions asked by metaethicists. Accordingly, contemporary pragmatists need to work out a pragmatist metaethics.
In Toward a Pragmatist Metaethics, Diana Heaney gathers crucial philosophical resources from the classical pragmatist tradition in providing a distinctively pragmatist defense of moral cognitivism and metaethical generalism. Her book combines a nuanced reading of the history of pragmatism with a sophisticated intervention in contemporary metaethical theory. There's a lot to talk about, so let's turn to the interview. Hello, Diana Heaney. Hello,
Bob. How
are you doing today?
Good, and you?
Oh, I'm doing fine. Thanks for joining us on New Books and Philosophy.
Thank you for having me.
And thank you, listeners, for downloading our podcast. My guest today is Diana Heaney of Fordham University. She's just published a fantastic book titled Toward a Pragmatist Metaethics. As the title indicates, this book draws upon the lineage. of pragmatist philosophy to develop a distinctive approach to some central metaethical questions. And metaethics is an area of philosophy that, at least among the classical pragmatists, didn't really receive a whole lot of attention. And it should also be added that a lot's happened in metaethics in the past decade or so. And so this is a book that attempts to interject some pragmatist themes into those contemporary metaethical debates.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What is the pragmatic background and why does meta‑ethics matter for pragmatists?
0:00–10:38
2
How does Diana Heney’s personal academic journey shape her view of pragmatist meta‑ethics?
10:38–25:48
3
What historical insights does the book draw from Peirce, James, and Dewey?
25:48–40:57
4
How do Peirce’s and James’s competing accounts of truth influence modern pragmatist meta‑ethics?
40:57–1:02:00
5
Why can a pragmatist be a moral cognitivist and how is truth‑likeness defended?
1:02:00–1:05:38
Speakers
2 identifiedMore from New Books in Philosophy
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