Title: "Finite Valuers and Vulnerability to Unmitigated Loss"

In my view, our best hope for vindicating a strong form of ethical objectivity, while avoiding metaphysical and epistemological mystery, is what I call the “generic metaethical constructivist strategy.” We may think of this strategy as consisting of three steps. The first is to explain what is constitutively involved in being a valuer. The second is to try to identify a universal problem that every valuer faces, by her own lights, simply in virtue of being a valuer at all. The third step is to try to show that the best, and perhaps only, solution to the relevant problem is to adopt an ethical principle or standpoint. In this talk, I briefly summarize a larger project in which I am seeking to implement each of these three steps, in part by appealing to insights from meditative traditions such as Buddhism and Advaita Vedanta. After this brief summary, I focus on my attempt to implement the second step. I argue that a universal problem faced by every finite valuer is what I call the “problem of vulnerability to unmitigated loss.” I close by comparing the problem I have in mind with the problem that the Buddha focused on, namely the problem of suffering.

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