The Moral Problem

1. What is the Moral Problem?.
2. The Expressivist Challenge.

3. The Externalist Challenge.

4. The Humean Theory of Motivation.

5. An Anti-Humean Theory of Normative Reasons.

6. How to Solve the Moral Problem.

On The Author, By The Author
I started writing very early in life, weaving short stories, and creating a virtual army of signature characters. If there was one particular activity that contributed the most to my writing and desire to become a weaver of tales, it would have to be good old-fashioned Dungeons and Dragons. I spent a large portion of my adolescence crafting collaborative stories with my friends and family, often finding myself in the Game Master's chair. It cannot be overstated how essential the skills I learned while Role-Playing are to my author's journey.
The first ideas for A World Gone Wrong surfaced over twenty years ago when I was starting High School. For years I developed the story in my spare time, creating a world, its villain, and its various heroes. At first, it was a fantasy but slowly meandered its way into the Sci-Fi Epic that it is today. Despite the changes, there was always a protagonist named John, an antagonist called Xavier Ronyn, and an Illuminati style organization known as the CORPS. Eventually, the story found some coherency, and I began to build a world. The World Gone Wrong itself is truly massive, with a large amount of fleshed out details that will produce stories for years to come.
Unfortunately for all of us, life can make achieving our dreams difficult. I became a father of a beautiful girl and a handsome boy. Like most blue-collar Americans, much of my time was spent working, being a dad, and generally not writing. Unfortunately, in March 2017, my ability to work would come screeching to a halt when a construction-site accident left me physically mangled; nine months later, I would lose my lower-right leg. Suddenly faced with a large amount of free time spent relegated to a bed or chair, I began to write again. Within a year, the first draft of A World Gone Wrong was nearly complete, and I was suddenly faced with the realization of a dream: to become a published author.
Now I study computer science and continue to

"Vigorous, engaging, and marvelously sophisticated, Michael Smith's The Moral Problem faces head-on the challenge of reconciling morality's motivational relevance with its claims to objectivity and categorical force - without abandoning a Humean account of human action and without metaphysical extravagance." Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, University of North Carolina "Extraordinarily clear and well organised. Reading this book takes you right into the centre of the intense contemporary debate on moral theory. Smith knows exactly what he is doing, and slowly puts together a redoubtable argument for the broadly realist position he favours." Jonathan Dancy, University of Reading "An intelligent, clear, and engaging book" Times Literary Supplement "An outstanding and ambitious work, it serves at once as a lucid introduction to metaethics and a wide-ranging inquiry into some of its hardest problems." Brad Hooker, University of Reading "A marvelous volume: it is not only an important contribution to philosophical ethics, but also an exciting introduction to the subject. The book is an excellent model of how to do philosophy, a model I hope students (and their teachers) will adopt for themselves." Gilbert Harman, Princeton University