ABSTRACT
In trying to clear the ground for a cognitivist account of morality by challenging the widespread assumption that, at some level, it must be what people want that is the bedrock of any possible justification of morality, I have addressed what I claim are the three central elements of the empirico-liberal tradition. First, I have offered a critique of the liberal conception of the individual, of the ‘wanting thing’ that it takes us to be, and said something about the philosophical influence of that conception, on opponents of liberalism no less than on liberals themselves. Second, I have argued that our wants are neither ‘our own’ in the way that this tradition takes them to be, nor capable anyway of justifying moral action. And finally I have argued that wanting something is not a necessary condition of being motivated to bring it about, so that it does not have to figure in an account of moral action.
