Review of "Oxford Studies in Metaethics: Volume 9"

Philosophical Studies, 2005

Journal of Moral Philosophy, 2014

Philosophical Studies, 2005

2004

Philosophical Studies

This paper responds to a recently popular objection to non-naturalist, robust moral realism. The objection is that moral realism is morally objectionable, because realists are committed to taking evidence about the distribution (or non-existence) of non-natural properties to be relevant to their first-order moral commitments. I argue that such objections fail. The moral realist is indeed committed to conditionals such as “If there are no non-natural properties, then no action is wrong.” But the realist is not committed using this conditional in a modus-ponens inference upon coming to believe its antecedent. Placing the discussion in a wider epistemological discussion – here, that of “junk-knowledge”, and of how background knowledge determines the relevance of purported evidence – shows that this objection does not exert a price from the realist.

The realist belief in robustly attitude-independent evaluative truths – more specifically, moral truths – is challenged by Sharon Street’s essay “A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value”. We know the content of human normative beliefs and attitudes has been profoundly influenced by a Darwinian natural selection process that favors adaptivity. But if simple adaptivity can explain the content of our evaluative beliefs, any connection they might have with abstract moral truth would seem to be purely coincidental. She continues the skeptical attack in “Objectivity and Truth: You’d Better Rethink It”, concentrating on the intuitionist realism of Ronald Dworkin. The latter sees the issue fundamentally as a holistic choice between moral objectivity and the genocide-countenancing consequences of abandoning objective standards. Street counters that, because of realism’s skeptical difficulties, Dworkin’s Choice (as I call it) actually works in favor of her Euthyphronic antirealism. I will argue that she misrepresents the realist’s skeptical challenge, and that clarifying the character of that challenge renders the case for normative realism much more appealing. Indeed, I claim that Street fails to exclude the genuine possibility of a rational basis for moral truth.

However, not all attitudes are so easily classifiable. In many cases we might find ourselves unable to tell whether someone's attitude is approvable or condemnable from the moral standpoint. Does this imply that, in such situations, our moral judgement is neither true nor false in a determinate way? The projectivist may handle this case by advising us to keep on doing what we often do, namely to argue about the undecidable moral judgement as if it would be either true or false, and not both. The principle of bivalence would still figure as part of the logic of moral discourse, although it would be justified as a regulative principle. 12 The above considerations show that ethical antirealism is not incompatible with the adoption of the principle of bivalence. The semantic definition of realism alleges that this principle is acceptable only by ethical realists. It seems, therefore, that the purely semantic approach to the debate over realism in ethics is wrong. In general, I would argue that the issue between ethical realists and their opponents is not whether some semantic or logical principle applies in moral discourse, but why it does so. In order to answer this question we need to take a closer look at the ontological and epistemological theses of the participants in the moral realism debate. 1.4 Ontology Whatever else it involves, realism is a claim about the reality of something. Ethical realism, at its minimum, is the claim that ethical qualities are real. The notion of 'reality' is part of the conceptual armour of ontological inquiry. Therefore, ethical realism is an ontological position. 12 Cf. Blackburn's discussion of the pragmatic considerations that may justify the adoption of the principle of bivalence in legal contexts-(1980): 23-27, (1984) sec. 6.4. The above paragraph provides a simple, intuitive way to understand realism in ethics. However, the very simplicity of the ontological definition might leave us unsatisfied, perhaps on the ground that it does not suffice to state that according to ethical realism ethical qualities are real: it should also be explained what it is for an ethical quality to be real. More accurately, we need an account of the reality of ethical qualities that would help us demarcate the doctrine of ethical realism from its rivals. A first way to clarify the claim that ethical qualities are real would be to present it as equivalent to the claim that these qualities exist. 13 The correspondent attack on the doctrine of ethical realism would be to argue that ethical qualities do not exist. 14 However, many contemporary antirealists do not dispute that, in a certain sense, ethical properties indeed exist. Therefore, the thesis that ethical properties or facts exist is not the distinguishing mark of the realist position. I shall support this claim by illustrating how prescriptivists and projectivists can argue for the existence of ethical properties without committing themselves to the ontological doctrine of ethical realism. Prescriptivists suggest that a moral property, like 'goodness' may be said to exist if it fulfils any of the following criteria: (i) we can meaningfully say of something that it is good; (ii) we can truly say of something that it is good; or (iii) 'goodness' can be referred to, i.e. it can take the subject-place in a true or false statement. 15 Prescriptivists accept (i) because they assert that judgements including ethical predicates are meaningful. They can also accept (ii) and (iii) because, as we saw earlier in this chapter, they can hold that the notion of truth is applicable in moral discourse. Therefore, prescriptivists can be happy to embrace the view that 13 Platts (1980a), Brink (1984), Dancy (1993) ch. 5. 14 Mackie (1977): 19. Note, however, that Mackie asserts that only objective values do not exist; cf. below sec. 2.2. 15 Hare (1985a): 41-43. The above considerations show that antirealists need not object to the claim that, in a certain sense, ethical properties exist. Therefore, the realist position in ethics has to involve something more than the claim that these properties exist. Dummett's account of realism seems to indicate what this 'more' could be. He claims that realism entails that the referents of statements in a given class exist independently of our knowledge of them. 19 This claim combines an ontological with an epistemological assertion. More precisely, it qualifies the ontological doctrine of the existence of certain things with an epistemological clause about the relation of those things to human knowledge. I call the latter clause 'epistemological' with some reservations, since it does not directly concern either the nature or the possibility of human knowledge. 20 However, I admit that it might be useful to think of this claim as epistemological for two reasons. From a systematic standpoint, the claim that certain objects exist independently of human knowledge reveals something of importance about the limits of human knowledge and, hence, about its nature. From a historical standpoint, the above claim is a product of the succession of ontology by epistemology in the throne of first philosophy. As we shall see in the next section the role of knowledge in a proper definition of realism was first underlined by one of the best epistemologists of all times. 1.5 Epistemology Declarations of independence from knowledge figure predominantly in the modern discussions of metaphysical realism. Kant was probably the first to define realism as the claim that the world 19 Dummett (1982): 230. 20 For an unreserved adoption of the label, as well as of the doctrine that it expresses, see Grayling (1992). exists independently of the cognitive aspects of human mind. 21 His approach has influenced the work of several philosophers who endorse realism in ethics. 22 It may be useful, therefore, to consider some of the elements of the Kantian theory that bear directly on the problem of the definition of realism in ethics. Kant asserts that we perceive objects as existing independently of our perception of them. He calls this position "empirical realism". 23 The question he set himself to answer is how we could justify this position. There are two ways to approach this issue. One is to adopt the doctrine of "transcendental realism" according to which space, time and the things that appear in them exist independently of our cognition. 24 The other is to adopt the doctrine of "transcendental idealism" according to which things appear necessarily in ways determined by the a priori categories of human mind. 25 Kant, of course, favours the latter of the above options. Transcendental idealism states that the objects of our perception are not things "in themselves" but things in their relation to "us and [to] our sensibility". 26 Kant calls things of the former type "noumena" and of the latter type "phenomena". 27 He asserts that 21 Kant (1781/87, henceforth KrV) A 439. 22 See, for instance, Nagel (1980), McDowell (1981b), Putnam (1987). In what follows I refer only to this school of ethical realism and, in particular, to the work of John McDowell and of his realist allies. See below, secs 3.4-3.6, for a discussion of the ontological doctrines of 'Cornell' realists, and Hatzimoysis (1993) for a critical account of their epistemological doctrines. 23 KrV A 369. 24 KrV A491/B519, A543/B571. 25 KrV A26/B42-A28/B44. 26 KrV A369. 27 KrV B307-309. the dependence of phenomena on our sensibility explains how human subjects may form representations of objects, that seem to correspond to real items in the world. According to Kant, the transcendental idealist's account of the objects of our perceptions explains and, in that sense, justifies the empirical realist's claim that we perceive phenomena as existing independently of us. 28 It might help our understanding of Kant's position if we consider it in the light of the distinction between ontological and phenomenological claims. Transcendental idealism is an ontological claim about how certain objects exist : it asserts that the objects of our experience exist only in relation to our cognitive apparatus. Empirical realism is a phenomenological claim about how we experience these objects: it states that we experience spatiotemporal objects as existing 'outside us', independently of our cognition. Contemporary ethical realists employ a revised version of the above Kantian distinction in claiming that we experience the world of natural and moral facts as existing independently of us. They argue also that this claim is best supported by the hypothesis that the realm of appearances is metaphysically dependent on human mind. However, they disagree with Kant on a crucial point: whereas Kant believed that the dependence of appearances on our conceptual apparatus entails some form of idealist ontology, most contemporary ethical realists contend that such a dependence deducts nothing from the reality of ethical properties or facts. I shall now reconstruct, in outline, the main argument offered in support of their contention. The distinction between reality and appearances can be drawn only from a human standpoint, by employing the tools offered by our language or 'conceptual scheme'. We can place an object on either side of this distinction only if we can talk or reflect about that object in a 28 An examination of Kant's arguments in support of this claim is, needless to say, beyond the scope of this introduction. I have discussed some of the methodological aspects of Kant's defence of transcendental idealism in (1991): 2-9. coherent, meaningful way. However noumena are, by definition, inaccessible by means of our conceptual apparatus. Hence, noumena cannot figure in either part of the reality-appearances distinction. Therefore, this ontological distinction concerns only the realm of phenomena or, in Kant's terms, the realm of things that exist dependently on us and our sensibility. Ethical qualities are dependent on the...

I will try to show that there exists an initiatory theological-philosophical tradition, the acknowledgement of which entails a set of considerations that I believe can shed light on

Taking Morality Seriously is David Enoch’s book-length defense of meta-ethical and meta-normative non-naturalist realism. After describing Enoch’s position and outlining the argumentative strategy of the book, we engage in a critical discussion of what we take to be particularly problematic central passages. We focus on Enoch’s two original positive arguments for non-naturalist realism: one argument building on first order moral implications of different meta-ethical positions, the other attending to the rational commitment to normative facts inherent in practical deliberation. We also pay special attention to Enoch’s handling of two types of objections to non-naturalist realism, objections having to do with the possibility of moral knowledge and with moral disagreement.