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,
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.
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?