Richard Joyce (philosopher)

Richard Joyce
Born	1966
Education	University of Auckland (BA, 1989; MA, 1991) Princeton University (PhD, 1998)
Era	Contemporary philosophy
Region	Western philosophy
School	Analytic
Main interests	Meta-ethics Moral psychology

Richard Joyce (born 1966) is a British-Australian-New Zealand philosopher, known for his contributions to the fields of meta-ethics and moral psychology. He is Professor of Philosophy at Victoria University of Wellington.

Joyce was born in England and raised in New Zealand (and is an Australian citizen). After an initial education at the University of Auckland, he received his PhD from Princeton University in 1998 (studying under Gilbert Harman). After Princeton, he was a lecturer at the University of Sheffield for a few years, and then held research fellowships at the Australian National University and the University of Sydney. He took up his professorship at Victoria University of Wellington in 2010.

To hold an error theory about morality is to endorse a kind of radical moral skepticism--a skepticism analogous to atheism in the religious domain. The atheist thinks that religious utterances, such as “God loves you,” really are truth-evaluable assertions (as opposed to being veiled commands or expressions of hope, etc.), but that the world just doesn’t contain the items (e.g., God) necessary to render such assertions true. Similarly, the moral error theorist maintains that moral judgments are truth-evaluable assertions (thus contrasting with noncognitivism) but that the world doesn’t contain the properties (e.g., moral goodness, evil, moral obligation) needed to render moral judgments true. In other words, moral discourse aims at the truth but systematically fails to secure it. This view was argued for by J.L. Mackie in his 1977 book, and Mackie’s position and arguments have been developed by Joyce in many publications, most notably his 2001 book The Myth of Morality.

...
Wikipedia