PHIL 440A ETHICS

Talbott, 5 credits

Moral claims have normative force.   They purport to tell us what we may or may not do.  What explains their normative force?  One answer appeals to objective normative truths, but objective normativity seems strange.  Another answer appeals to subjective factors about us, but subjective normativity seems unable to account for the authority that moral claims are usually thought to have.  In this course, we will consider a variety of attempts to explain the normativity of the moral.  The first half of the course will focus on Christine Korsgaard's The Sources of Normativity, to prepare the class for her visit to campus on April 25.  The second half of the course will consider a variety of the most influential answers to the normative question, including Boyd's realism, Blackburn's projectivism, McDowell's Aristotelianism, Rawls's constructivism, Scanlon's contractualism, and Jabermas's discourse ethics. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The course will provide students with an opportunity to develop their ability to explain difficult philosophical readings and issues, to argue for their own views, and to take seriously the views of those with whom they disagree.  Students will develop their philosophical writing with regular short answers to end-of-class questions, one long paper, and a final exam.

 

No prerequisites, but PHIL 240 or at least one other course in philosophy is recommended.  Meets I&S Requirement.

 

Texts:  Korsgaard, The Sources of Normativity, and Darwall, Gibbard, and Railton, Moral Discourse and Practice. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IMPORTANT TERMINOLOGY

 

NORMATIVE TERMS are terms that have ACTION-GUIDING [PRESCRIPTIVE/ PROSCRIPTIVE] force. 

 

Some common normative terms are:  ought; duty; obligation; permissible; and forbidden.  When applied to actions, appropriate and inappropriate are normative terms.  [Note that not all NORMATIVE terms are MORAL terms.  For example, ought can be used in a NON-MORAL, PRUDENTIAL sense, as in:  One ought to eat nutritious foods.]

 

NORMATIVE MORAL TERMS are NORMATIVE TERMS with MORAL ACTION-GUIDING force. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

EVALUATIVE TERMS are terms that express approval or disapproval. 

 

Some common evaluative terms are:  good; bad; excellent; and awful.  EVALUATIVE TERMS can express moral approval or disapproval, but can also express other types of non-moral approval or disapproval (e.g., The statement that apples taste good is a non-moral evaluative statement).

 

 

PURELY DESCRIPTIVE TERMS are terms that are NOT NORMATIVE and NOT EVALUATIVE.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

PURELY DESCRIPTIVE STATEMENTS are statements that contain only PURELY DESCRIPTIVE terms (no NORMATIVE or EVALUATIVE terms). 

 

NORMATIVE/EVALUATIVE STATEMENTS are statements that include at least one normative/evaluative term. For example, moral statements about what one ought or ought not to do (e.g., the statement that one ought not to steal or the statement that one ought to tell the truth) are NORMATIVE, because they contain the NORMATIVE term ought.  [Note that not all normative statements are moral.  See above, for an example of a normative prudential statement.]

 

[Note that Normative/Evaluative statements can contain SOME Purely Descriptive terms, but Purely Descriptive statements cannot contain ANY Normative/Evaluative terms.]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

METAPHYSICS AND EPISTEMOLOGY

 

Metaphysics Deals With The Nature Of Reality--How Things Really Are.

 

Epistemology Addresses How We Can Have Knowledge Or Justified Beliefs. 

 

Questions of Moral Metaphysics:  Are there objective moral values?  Are there universal moral truths?

 

Questions of Moral Epistemology:  If there are objective moral values or universal moral truths, can we ever have moral knowledge or justified moral beliefs?  If so, how?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

A QUESTION OF MORAL METAPHYSICS

 

Can there be purely descriptive necessary and sufficient or even only sufficient conditions for moral wrongness (or rightness)?

 

Question:  W ó [PD] ?

 

       [PD] ŕ W?                             W ŕ [PD]

 

 

Hume and Moore's answer:  No.

 

Utilitarians' Answer:  Yes

 

        -(Maximizes Overall Utility) ó W

 

       Maximizes Overall Utility ó R.

 

       The failure of utilitarianism has reinforced the view that there is no logical analysis of MORAL—or more generally, NORMATIVE—TERMS in purely descriptive terms.

 

 

 

 

 

MORAL EPISTEMOLOGY:  TWO PARADIGMS FOR MORAL REASONING

 

1.  TOP-DOWN REASONING: 

 

       Reasoning from Moral Norms or Principles and other Acceptable Premises to a Moral Judgment about a Particular Case (a Particular Moral Judgment). 

       For religious traditions with an infallible moral authority, all moral reasoning is Top-Down.  Enlightenment philosophers assumed that all reasoning was Top-Down, from infallible premises.  I refer to this model of reasoning as the Proof Paradigm. 

 

2.  BOTTOM-UP REASONING: 

 

       Begin with judgments about particular cases.  Find the moral norms or principles that best EXPLAIN our particular moral judgments about actual and hypothetical cases.  We don't prove anything, but rather try to figure out what it makes the most sense to believe.

 

 

 

 

EXPLAINING NORMATIVE JUDGMENT

 

       On the Proof Paradigm, to justify belief in objective values or objective norms, we would have to be able to derive propositions asserting them from self-evident premises.  That is not what we do in this course.

       In this course we will reason primarily bottom-up from particular cases of making normative judgments, both moral and non-moral, to try to explain what we are doing when we make normative judgments.  If there are reasons to believe in objective values or objective norms, they will be explanatory reasons—that is, reasons of the form that, all things considered, it makes more sense to think that our ordinary normative practices reflect some kind of sensitivity to objective values or norms than to think that it does not.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

KINDS OF REASONS

 

1.  Reasons for belief

       a. deductive (top-down)

       b. non-deductive (bottom-up)

 

2.  Reasons for action

       a. instrumental

       b. moral

 

3.  Reasons for desires?

 

4.  Reasons for other attitudes?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.  This is the argument that Korsgaard is replying to.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

       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"(96).

 

(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. 99.  Why do they have normative force?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

IV.  Response to Mackie

 

Applies to prudential reasons as well as moral reasons.  (He could have added:  reasons for belief).

 

Example of a headache or other pain.

 

"Not only do I dislike it, but I think I have a reason to try to get rid of it"(145).  AN IMPERSONAL REASON.

 

Key idea:  In reasoning, we typically assume there is a correct answer that we can be mistaken about.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

V.  The Positive View

 

A.  Agent-neutral vs. agent-relative reasons.  Both are objective reasons.

 

1.  Is pain at least an agent-relative (dis)value?  What does Nagel think seems insane?

 

2.  Is pain an agent-neutral (dis)value?  Why does Nagel think it is self-evident?