Ethical Phenomenology and Metaethics

In this piece I try to nail a train of thought that is offered, typically by realists against anti-realists, as a reason for thinking that our raw moral phenomenology provides a reason to prefer moral realism. This idea is referred to often, but is rarely detailed. I argue that various arguments that one can devise which are in keeping with this train of thought fail. I conclude by saying, controversially, that moral phenomenology is fairly irrelevant when thinking about metaethics. This paper has been cited by a number of people in their recent work (for example, Horgan and Timmons, Loeb).