Background For non-disabled men, group cognitive-behaviour therapy is a successful

Moral predication can intelligibly occur in the explaining phrase of explanations. At least, this is an assumption of ordinary engagement of moral practice, exhibited in our tendency to understand (if not agree with) explanations such as:(1) The revolution of 1917 was a direct result of the injustices suffered by the working classes.

Abstract. Many philosophers argue that the face-value of moral practice provides presumptive support to moral realism. This paper analyses such arguments into three steps.(1) Moral practice has a certain face-value, (2) only realism can vindicate this face value, and (3) the face-value needs vindicating. Two potential problems with such arguments are discussed. The first is taking the relevant face-value to involve explicitly realist commitments; the second is underestimating the power of non-realist strategies to vindicate that face-value. Case studies of each of these errors are presented, drawn from the writings of Shafer-Landau, Brink and McNaughton, and from recent work experimental metaethics. The paper then considers weak presumptive arguments, according to which both realist and non-realist vindications of moral practice are possible, but the realist vindications are more natural. It is argued that there is no sense of ‗natural' available that can make these arguments work. The conclusion is that all extant presumptive arguments for moral realism fail. In closing remarks, the paper presents some further reason to be pessimistic about all possible presumptive arguments in metaethics and considers the effect on the shape of the meta-ethical dialectic were this conclusion to be accepted. This paper adopts the conservative aim of exposing a mistake that is increasingly prevalent in the metaethical literature. The mistake is supposing the ‗face-value', ‗appearance' or ‗pretensions' of moral practice to generate a dialectical presumption in favor of moral realism. I will argue that, as usually understood, the face-value fails to provide even defeasible evidence in favor of any metaethical theory, realist or otherwise.1 Recognizing this point leads to a radical rethink of the focus of metaethical debate and entails that many existing defences of realism (and its rivals) are inadequate.

The moral belief problem is that of reconciling expressivism in ethics with both minimalism in the philosophy of language and the syntactic discipline of moral sentences. It is argued that the problem can be solved by distinguishing minimal and robust senses of belief, where a minimal belief is any state of mind expressed by sincere assertoric use of a syntactically disciplined sentence and a robust belief is a minimal belief with some additional property R. Two attempts to specify R are discussed, both based on the thought that beliefs are states that aim at truth. According to the first, robust beliefs are criticisable to the extent that their content fails to match the state of the world. This sense fails to distinguish robust beliefs from minimal beliefs. According to the second, robust beliefs function to have their content match the state of the world. This sense succeeds in distinguishing robust beliefs from minimal beliefs. The conclusion is that the debate concerning the cognitive status of moral convictions needs to address the issue of the function of moral convictions. Evolutionary theorising may be relevant, but will not be decisive, to answering this question.-The Moral Belief Problem‖ by Neil Sinclair 2 An inconsistent triadThe following three propositions are apparently mutually inconsistent:(1) Moral sentences are syntactically disciplined. This claim has two components: (1a) Moral sentences are syntactically sophisticated, that is, they are capable of significant embedding in negations, conditionals, propositional attitude operators and other subsentential constructions.(1b) Moral sentences are disciplined, that is, they are subject to clear standards of appropriate and inappropriate usage.(2) There is a conceptually necessary connection between a sentence being syntactically disciplined and sincere assertoric use of that sentence serving to express a belief (whose content is captured by such usage). This claim has two components:(2a) There is a conceptually necessary connection between a sentence being syntactically disciplined and that sentence being truth-apt.(2b) There is a conceptually necessary connection between a sentence being truth-apt and sincere assertoric use of that sentence serving to express a belief (whose content is captured by such usage).(3) Moral sentences in their sincere assertoric uses do not serve to express beliefs (whose content is captured by such usage). Rather, they serve to express some affective attitude of the agent, such as an emotion, preference or practical stance.-The Moral Belief Problem‖ by Neil Sinclair 3The first claim -moral syntacticism -is supported by simple reflection on our actual use of moral sentences, which readily feature in negations, conditionals and other such constructions (syntactic sophistication) and are subject to clear standards of appropriate usage (discipline). In this, moral sentences contrast with sentences such as 'Ouch!', which are not syntactically sophisticated and sentences of a private language, which (if Wittgenstein...

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