Value and Context: the Nature of Moral and Political Knowledge

The importance of this monograph study is that it is the first to use epistemological contextualism to defend moral cognitivism, the claim that a central core of moral judgements is truth-apt and can constitute genuine knowledge. It develops the epistemological theory known as inferential contextualism and compares and contrasts it with pragmatism. The argument is also extended into political philosophy in a novel way. The two final readers for the Press described the book as ‘innovative…a work of great ambition and imagination’, ‘an original and significant contribution to the subject’ with ‘scholarship of extremely high quality’ and presenting arguments of ‘detail and sophistication’.