MACKIE'S CHALLENGE: NO OBJECTIVE NORMATIVITY

G.E. Moore and the Supervenience of Normative/Evaluative Truth

on Purely Descriptive, Naturalistic Truth

Two Forms Of Ethical Naturalism:

(1) MEANING NATURALISM: Normative/evaluative terms can be defined using only purely descriptive, naturalistic terms. This is the form of ethical naturalism that Moore is usually thought to have argued against.

(2) METAPHYSICAL NATURALISM:

A purely descriptive, naturalistic statement can imply a normative/evaluative statement. This is the form of ethical naturalism that Moore intended to be arguing against.

Note that Meaning Naturalism implies Metaphysical Naturalism, but Metaphysical Naturalism does not imply Meaning Naturalism.

Note also that there is no agreement that what is called the ‘Naturalistic Fallacy” is really a fallacy! That will be one of the questions that we will critically evaluate in this course.

According to Moore, what kind of definition of good does not exist?

"definitions which describe the real nature of the object or notion denoted by a word" (466)

Moore's "Open Question" Argument

Consider a proposed naturalistic definition of "good"—for example:

(ND) Good for X = what X desires to desire (469).

Ask the following question: Is what X desires to desire what X desires to desire? This is a closed question.

Now ask the following question: Is what X desires to desire good for X.

If (ND) were a definition of "good for X", this would also be a closed question. But it is not. It is an open question, because we can wonder whether it is true.

Moore claims that any substitution of a naturalistic predicate for "good" will produce an open question, thus there can be non purely descriptive, naturalistic definition of "good".

The analogy with "yellow".

Moore's uses his argument to support a

supervenience account of the relation between normative/evaluative statements and purely descriptive, naturalistic statements: Fixing all the naturalistic truths also fixes the normative/evaluative truths, but there are no logically necessary and sufficient conditions for normative/evaluative terms in purely descriptive terms.

Note the analogy with consciousness (e.g., the perception of yellow), which seems to supervene on naturalistic truths about non-conscious processes and events.

What is the disanalogy with "yellow"?

Normative/evaluative judgments are not pure perceptual judgments. The judgments are affected by purely descriptive, naturalistic background information.

MACKIE'S CHALLENGE: NO OBJECTIVE NORMATIVITY

Mackie's moral skepticism is a second order moral skepticism, not a first order moral skepticism. What is the difference? (Is Mackie correct that the two levels are "completely independent"(90)?)

The challenge has two parts:

I. Our ordinary moral judgments make a claim to objective values: "objective, intrinsic prescriptivity"(94)

A. Both ethical non-cognitivism and ethical naturalism are inadequate. Why?

B. Moore was right about the commitments of ethical language. Why?

II. There are no objective values ("Error Theory")—or at least, we have no way of knowing anything about them.

Two arguments:

A. The Argument from Relativity. Not the important one.

B. The Argument from Queerness. This is the argument that has been most influential.

The argument has two parts:

(A) Metaphysical. Objective values would be "entities or qualities of a very strange sort, utterly different from anything else in the universe"(95).

Plato's Form of the Good: the end has "to-be-pursuedness somehow built into it"(97).

Objective principles of wrongness: a wrong act "would have not-to-be-doneness somehow built into it"(97).

How could they supervene on the purely descriptive?

(B) Epistemological. For us to be aware of them, "it would have to be by some special faculty of moral perception or intuition, utterly different from our ordinary ways off knowing everything else"(96).

Intuitionism

THE OBJECTIVIST RESPONSE:

"COMPANIONS IN GUILT"

(1) Richard Price's list: "essence, number, identity, diversity, solidity, inertia, substance, the necessary existence and infinite extension of time and space, necessity and possibility in general, power, and causation"(505).

(2) Anything else to add? Non-moral normativity:

Rationality of belief and of action in non-moral contexts.

Compare Mackie's discussion of hypothetical imperatives on p. 507. Do they have objective normativity?

NAGEL ON OBJECTIVE VALUES:

THE METHOD OF OBJECTIVE REFLECTION

I. The Difference Between the Personal and the Impersonal Point of View.

II. Issue: Not are there objective normative entities (Plato's Forms), but are there objective normative reasons?

"What is there reason to do or want, considered from this impersonal standpoint?"(140)

III. Nagel's Epistemology: Not Proof or Refutation, but Normative Explanation and Consideration of What is Most Plausible (i.e., What It Makes the Most Sense to Believe).

Objective Values and Objective Reasons

The key idea: To believe in objective values is not to believe in a weird kind of entity, but to believe in objective reasons for action.

Two Kinds of Objective Reason

Agent-neutral reason: "If a reason can be given in a general form which does not include an essential reference to the person to whom it applies, it is an agent-neutral reason"(171).

Agent-relative reason: "If on the other hand the general form of a reason does include an essential reference to the person to whom it applies, it is an agent-relative reason"(171).

Example of a headache or other pain.

1. Is pain at least an agent-relative (dis)value?

2. Is pain an agent-neutral (dis)value? Why does Nagel think it is self-evident[WJT1] ? What does Nagel think is crazy[WJT2] ?

The commitment to objectivity: In reasoning, whether theoretical, practical, or moral, we typically assume there is a correct answer that we can be mistaken about. To vindicate objectivity, we must try to understand what it is that we might be mistaken about.