The Practice of Ethics Book

This is a very thoroughly argued book, probably on its way to becoming a classic. I have two observations:

1) Cuneo's argument against epistemological expressivism seems a little weak, because it consists to a large extent in pointing out that this position means our ordinary epistemic discourse is in error as it misapplies epistemic concepts. Avoiding the consequence that everyday epistemic discourse is in error is, according to Cuneo, a major motivation for expressivism, and so failure in this objective should count against expressivism. It is unclear to me though, that the expressivists would accept Cuneo's broadening of the category of unacceptable errors to include more than strict falsity. Arguably, it is the point of expressivism, that our epistemic discourse is indeed mistaken, but importantly not false. Admittedly though, I might need to reread this part of the book to understand Cuneo's argument better.

2) Although Cuneo claims that his argument will work for many different types of moral realism, and does not specifically depend on any particular formulation thereof, nor does it favour any particular theory of normative ethics, it appears to me, that some crucial steps in his argument for the Parity Premise work more smoothly if one endorses virtue ethics and virtue epistemology. Whether these parts of the argument can work even if one does not wish to subscribe to these views I am not best placed to judge.