The Epistemological Challenge to Metanormative Realism

Erkenntnis, 2019

Debates in metaethics about metanormative realism, quasi-realism, anti-realism, and nihilism mostly focus on epistemic reasons for beliefs about values. Very little has been said about our practical reasons for metaethical beliefs, and even less is said about practical reasons for other attitudes we might take toward metaethical views. This paper shows why a recent argument bucking that trend fails to show that we have practical reasons to believe realism over nihilism, but that for many of us, we do have practical reason to hope that what I call Optimistic Realism is true.

2021

There is a common perception that the very idea of a science of ethics is a hopeless chimera—that the doors of ethical truth are eternally locked to the investigative methods of science. In this dissertation, I defend a metanormative view which I believe could provide the key to a future science of ethics. According to this view, which I call “Robust Metanormative Naturalism,” there are mind-independent, irreducibly normative facts and properties, which are distinct from all descriptive facts and properties and which sometimes secure the truth of our normative judgements. But these irreducibly normative facts and properties are nonetheless perfectly continuous with science: knowledge of them can be acquired through a combination of observation and inference to the best explanation, and they are thus of the same kind as other irreducible posits of natural science, like subatomic particles and forces of nature. In defence of this view, I develop an argument for the existence of mind￾independent normative truths which is essentially a refined version of Pascal’s Wager. I argue that we have Pascalian reasons, given to us not by our contingent desires, but by the normative content of certain epistemically possible worlds, to engage in the project of normative deliberation—which is the project of seeking determinate answers to normative questions—and that this implies the existence of mind-independent normative truths. I then argue that the truthmakers for these truths are facts and properties which are irreducibly normative, rather than descriptive, but which are also involved in correct causal explanations for non￾normative, empirical facts, and that fundamental normative truths can therefore be known on a genuinely empirical basis. In particular, I make the case that we cannot adequately explain why conscious beings universally respond in certain ways to certain of their conscious experiences (such as by wanting to avoid agony) without positing that these experiences have normative properties. And finally I suggest that, if we combine this (non-reductionist) metanormative view with a reductionist view of personal identity and the self, we can potentially arrive at a robust from of ethical objectivity in a fully naturalistic manner.

Epistemology is widely seen as a normative discipline like ethics. Just like moral facts, epistemic facts – i.e. facts about our beliefs’ epistemic justification, rationality, reasonableness, correctness, warrant, and the like – are standardly viewed as normative facts. Yet, whereas many philosophers have rejected the existence of moral facts, few have raised similar doubts about the existence of epistemic facts. In recent years however, several metaethicists and epistemologists have rejected this Janus-faced or dual stance towards the existence of moral and epistemic facts. As recent developments in metaethics and normativity theory have made clear, objections to the existence of moral facts really are metanormative objections that target the existence of normative facts more generally. But since epistemic facts are no less normative than moral facts, the argument goes, the existence of the former is equally threatened by metaethical objections. In this thesis, I argue that this rejection of the dual stance fails because epistemic facts are not normative facts. Although they imply norms, they do not imply genuine normativity since the epistemic norms of belief that they imply lack necessary normative authority or force. Unlike moral norms and just like e.g. norms of etiquette and the law, there is not automatically a normative reason to conform to epistemic norms. Therefore, even if metaethical objections target all normative facts, it does not follow that they also target epistemic facts. I offer a two-part abductive argument in favour of that conclusion. First, I argue that epistemic facts lack five commonly cited features of normative facts (but not of merely norm-implying facts). Then, I argue that this is best explained by the thesis that epistemic facts are merely norm-implying and not genuinely normative. I end by exploring the potential consequences of this conclusion for epistemology and metaethics.

Philosophical Perspectives, 2004

According to normative judgment internalism (NJI), normative judgmentsthat is, mental states of the sort that are typically expressed by normative statements (statements of the form 'A ought to ' and the like)-are ''essentially practical'', in the sense that they are in some way essentially connected to practical reasoning, or to motivation for action. According to a robustly realist (RR) conception of the normative, there are objective normative truths or facts. Many metaethicists believe that NJI and RR are incompatible, or at least extremely hard to reconcile with each other. These metaethicists are mistaken. This mistake about the relations between NJI and RR seems to be due to hasty and undefended assumptions about the nature of belief. According to most philosophical conceptions of belief, there is no special difficulty in reconciling NJI with RR with respect to normative judgments.

Journal of Moral Philosophy, 2013

Mackie drew attention to the distinct semantic and metaphysical claims made by metaethical realists, arguing that although our evaluative discourse is cognitive and objective, there are no objective evaluative facts. This distinction, however, also opens up a reverse possibility: that our evaluative discourse is antirealist, yet objective values do exist. I suggest that this seemingly far-fetched possibility merits serious attention; realism seems committed to its intelligibility, and, despite appearances, it isn’t incoherent, ineffable, inherently implausible or impossible to defend. I argue that reflection on this possibility should lead us to revise our understanding of the debate between realists and antirealists. It is not only that the realist’s semantic claim is insufficient for realism to be true, as Mackie argued; it’s not even necessary. Robust metaethical realism is best understood as making a purely metaphysical claim. It is thus not enough for antirealists to show that our discourse is antirealist. They must directly attack the realist’s metaphysical claim.

Journal of Religious Ethics, 2006

John Hare has proposed "prescriptive realism" in an attempt to stake out a middle-ground position in the twentieth century Anglo-American debates concerning metaethics between substantive moral realists and antirealistexpressivists. The account is supposed to preserve both the normativity and objectivity of moral judgments. Hare defends a version of divine command theory. The proposal succeeds in establishing the middle-ground position Hare intended. However, I argue that prescriptive realism can be strengthened in an interesting way.

2007

Broadly and somewhat roughly speaking, metanormative theorists who maintain that there is normative truth fall into one of three camps: non-naturalist, naturalist and expressivist. I am interested in the prospects for normative truth, and thus in which, if any, of these positions offers hope for the discovery of such truth. In each of three chapters, I address one of these views. I conclude that our best hope is a view most closely related to naturalism (though I reject this classification for one that I believe better captures what is at stake in the literature I focus on).

CONSTRUCTIVISM IN PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY, edited by J. Lenman and Y. Shemmer, 180-194. Oxford: Oxford University Press., 2012

We can distinguish between ambitious metanormative constructivism and a variety of other constructivist projects in ethics and metaethics. Ambitious metanormative constructivism is the project of either developing a type of new metanormative theory, worthy of the label “constructivism”, that is distinct from the existing types of metaethical, or metanormative, theories already on the table—various realisms, non-cognitivisms, error-theories and so on—or showing that the questions that lead to these existing types of theories are somehow fundamentally confused. Natural ways of pursuing the project of ambitious metanormative constructivism lead to certain obvious, and related, worries about whether the ambitions are really being achieved—that is whether we really are being given a distinctive theory. I will argue that responding to these initial worries pushes ambitious metanormative constructivism towards adopting a kind of position that I will call “constructivism all the way down”. Such a position does see off most of the above initial worries. Drawing on the work of Ralph Walker and Crispin Wright, I argue, however, that it faces a distinct objection that is a descendent of Bertrand Russell’s Bishop Stubbs objection against coherentist theories of truth. I grant that the constructivist need not be a coherentist about truth. I argue, however, that despite this the constructivist cannot escape my version of the objection. I also distinguish between this objection and various traditional charges of circularity, regress, relativism, or psychologistic reductionism.

2007

Scientific realism is the view that our best scientific theories give approximately true descriptions of both observable and unobservable aspects of a mind-independent world. Debates between realists and their critics are at the very heart of the philosophy of science. Anjan Chakravartty traces the contemporary evolution of realism by examining the most promising strategies adopted by its proponents in response to the forceful challenges of antirealist sceptics, resulting in a positive proposal for scientific realism today. He examines the core principles of the realist position, and sheds light on topics including the varieties of metaphysical commitment required, and the nature of the conflict between realism and its empiricist rivals. By illuminating the connections between realist interpretations of scientific knowledge and the metaphysical foundations supporting them, his book offers a compelling vision of how realism can provide an internally consistent and coherent account of...