Moral Realism Flashcards

Question

how does Sturgeon (2009) define ethical naturalism?

Answer 1

ethical naturalism holds that (a) ethical properties ... are natural properties of the same general sort as properties investigated by the sciences, and (b) they are to be investigated in the same general way that we investigate those properties (Sturgeon, 2009)

Answer 2

conjunction of three (sometimes four) claims (Lutz & Lenman, 2021): - moral realism: there are objective, mind-independent moral facts - metaphysical naturalism: moral facts are natural facts (most central doctrine) - epistemic naturalism: we know moral claims are true in the same way that we know about claims in the natural sciences - (analytic naturalism: our moral claims are synonymous with certain (highly complex) claims in the natural sciences)

Answer 3

utilitarianism is perhaps the most obvious example of naturalist ethical theory. It says that ‘good’ can be reduced to pleasure, and ‘bad’ can be reduced to pain pain & pleasure are natural properties of the mind & so utilitarianism is a naturalist theory

Answer 4

analytic naturalism: moral terms can be defined in terms of natural properties, this is part of the meaning of those terms synthetic naturalism: moral values are metaphysically identical to natural properties, but there is no analytic equivalence, this is not part of the meaning of the terms

Answer 5

argument from normative supervenience arguments from anti-scepticism

Answer 6

‘supervenience’ is the technical name for a relation of necessary covariance among properties. A set of properties A supervenes on a set of properties B just in case, necessarily, no objects can differ with respect to A unless they differ with respect to B as well (Sturgeon, 2006) the normative supervenes on the natural; in all metaphysically possible worlds in which the natural facts are the same as they are in the actual world, the moral facts are the same as well

Answer 7

direct argument (Jackson, 1998) - supervenience: there are no two metaphysically possible worlds where the natural facts are the same but the moral facts are different - any two worlds that are identical with respect to the moral facts are identical with respect to both moral principles and instantiations of moral properties - so supervenience entails the related claim that no two metaphysically possible worlds have the same distribution of natural properties and a different distribution of moral properties - intensionalism: if it is metaphysically necessary that something has property F if and only if it has property G, then F and G are the same property - intensionalism and supervenience together entail naturalism

Answer 8

Jackson, 1998

Answer 9

reject intensionalism

Answer 10

according to the Explanatory Argument, supervenience is a striking phenomenon that must be explained naturalists are well-positioned to explain supervenience: if moral facts are natural facts, then, trivially, there can be no difference in the moral facts without a difference in the natural facts - for naturalists, the moral facts just are natural facts, so when we consider worlds that are naturally the same as the actual world, we will ipso facto be considering worlds that are morally the same as the actual world more difficult for non-naturalists to explain supervenience - an inability to explain supervenience counts strongly against a view

Answer 11

McPherson, 2011

Answer 12

most obvious way to respond to the explanatory argument is to offer an explanation of supervenience that doesn’t trade on naturalist assumptions - Shafer-Landau (2003) and Enoch (2011) have argued that supervenience can be explained by the fact that there are moral laws

Answer 13

supervenience alone isn’t enough to claim naturalism because that’s not a dividing line between naturalist and non-naturalists - fairly weak dependence relation if add to supervenience that can fully explain moral facts with reference to natural facts then can have non-reductive naturalism

Answer 14

scientific methods are very powerful tools for coming to have knowledge of the world so, if moral facts are the kinds of facts that we can know about by scientific methods, then we have powerful tools for obtaining moral knowledge non-naturalists, by contrast, say that we know about moral facts via non-empirical methods - intuition - seems like a much less firm footing for our moral knowledge than the scientific method

Answer 15

controversial as intuitionist moral epistemology is popular

Answer 16

think of non-natural properties as non-physical properties these non-natural moral properties cannot be reduced to anything simpler - they are basic

Answer 17

Moore’s Principia Ethica (1903) claimed to have refuted all forms of ethical naturalism, primarily by attacking what he took to be ethical naturalism’s epistemological & semantic implications Moore uses the term naturalistic fallacy to describe the fallacy of equating goodness with some natural property (such as pleasure or pain) - e.g. fallacy to conclude that drinking beer is good from the fact that drinking beer is pleasurable because they are two completely different kinds of properties - one moral, one natural

Answer 18

Hume argues that moral ought statements are a completely different kind of thing to factual is statements can’t logically derive ought statements like ‘you ought not to torture’ from statements about what is, such as ‘that is an act of torture’ - reason is that the former type of statement is non-cognitive while the latter is cognitive Hume would say ‘is’ statements like “Smith murdered Jones” are capable of being true or false, whereas ‘ought’ statements like “Smith shouldn’t have done that” are expressions of emotion that are not capable of being true or false

Answer 19

Moore’s argument that you can't logically jump from natural to moral is similar to Hume’s is/ought gap

Answer 20

a closed question is a question whose answer is decided by the meanings of the concepts involved in the question - e.g. is good good? an open question is a question whose answer cannot be decided in this way - e.g. is pleasure good?

Answer 21

suppose that M (‘the good’) is analytically equivalent to N (‘pleasure’) then the question: “X is pleasant, but is it good?” should not not be an open question (subject to doubt, not immediately obvious) but it is an open question - so any analytic identity proposed between moral & natural terms cannot be right so, if “good” meant the same as “pleasant”, the sentence “what is good is pleasant” would have to say the same thing, express the same thought, as the sentence “what is pleasant is pleasant” (Sturgeon, 2009) it is an “open question” whether what is good is pleasant, in that we can at least understand what it would mean for someone to doubt it, but it is not in a similar way an open question whether what is pleasant is pleasant (Sturgeon, 2009)

Answer 22

argument generalizes: for any natural property N and any moral property M, “granted that x is N, is x M?” will be an open question. Therefore, no moral property M is identical to any natural property N

Answer 23

moral properties cannot be fully reduced to natural properties because moral questions always remain open, suggesting a gap between descriptive and normative aspects

Answer 24

Moore failed to notice the possibility that they might denote the very same property even though they are not equivalent in meaning doesn’t seem to follow that because “is pleasure good?” is an open question, pleasure & good cannot be the same thing e.g. ‘water’ and ‘H2O’ refer to the same thing, but it is still an open question to ask “is water H2O?” - the two things are the same thing - to be water is to be H2O BUT it wouldn’t pass Moore’s synonymy / substitution test

Answer 25

OQA cannot refute metaphysical naturalism - at most, the OQA gives us reason to be synthetic, rather than analytic, naturalists Moore’s challenge to naturalism is based on a fallacious test

Answer 26

OQA seems to prove too much (Smith) the practice of conceptual analysis aspires to provide real philosophical illumination; however, if all analytic truths have to be as obvious as “a bachelor is an unmarried male”, then all pieces of conceptual analysis must be either false or trivial

Answer 27

one way of responding to Moore’s argument is by asserting that ethical naturalism is non-reductive in nature by adopting a non-reductive stance, ethical naturalism can address Moore’s OQA by recognising that the open questions between naturalism & moral properties arise precisely because moral properties possess a distinct normative dimension that cannot be straightforwardly reduced to natural facts

Answer 28

reductive/non-reductive distinction alone may not fully resolve Moore's OQA the argument raises broader epistemological & metaphysical challenges regarding the relationship between natural & moral properties while the non-reductive approach can offer some response to Moore's objection, additional philosophical considerations and alternative perspectives, such as Cornell realism, may be needed to provide a more comprehensive analysis of the OQA

Answer 29

morality has practical authority, it gives us reasons, sometimes very forceful reasons to act, even when we don’t (otherwise) want to natural properties don’t have any (essential) reason-giving force sidesteps questions about the cognitive significance of moral & descriptive terminology & appeals to considerations regarding the natures of natural & normative facts - moral facts tell us what is good in the world & what we have reasons or obligations to do - natural facts are facts about the innate physical structure of the universe and the causal principles that govern the interaction of matter - these are obviously just two different kinds of fact

Answer 30

Scanlon, 2014

Answer 31

two ways for a naturalist to respond to this objection: 1. moral facts aren’t essentially normative; it may be the case that we typically have reasons to act morally, but reason-giving force is not part of the essence of moral facts 2. moral facts are both natural & normative, in virtue of the fact that normativity itself is a natural phenomenon - first, show that all normative concepts can be analyzed in terms of one, fundamental normative concept - second, show that that fundamental normative concept picks out a natural property

Answer 32

prem1: if moral naturalism is true, then it will be possible to make moral claims & natural claims and have those two claims be about the same fact prem2: if the two claims are about the same fact, then those two claims must contain all the same information prem3: a statement of equivalence between any two claims that contain the same information must be trivial prem4: but moral claims that describe the relationships between moral facts and natural facts are not trivial at all - they are highly substantive conc: therefore, ethical naturalism cannot be true

Answer 33

Moore argued that moral properties are not natural properties; but he thought that the very same pattern of argument that he used against naturalism also showed that ethical properties could not be “metaphysical” (supernatural) properties either (Sturgeon, 2009) he held that ethical properties are neither natural nor supernatural, and so have to fall in a category of their own & we would know them only by a form of intuition about which little could be said intuitionism is a response to question: if moral properties are both non-natural & non-supernatural properties as Moore suggests, how do we know about them?

Answer 34

response to question: if moral properties are both non-natural & non-supernatural properties as Moore suggests, how do we know about them?

Answer 35

Moore argues that, via the faculty of rational intuition, we can directly reflect on the truth of moral judgements such as “murder is wrong”. The truth / falsehood of such moral judgements is said to be self-evident

Answer 36

Boyd, Brink, Sturgeon & Railton - all working / studying at Cornell at the time

Answer 37

moral facts are the kinds of facts that can be investigated in a broadly scientific way - driven by a commitment to mirroring scientific methodology in ethics as closely as possible believe moral properties are highly complex natural properties, individuated by their casual profiles (homeostatic cluster properties (Boyd, 1988))

Answer 38

argues that we can know things about morality using scientific methodology (observation)

Answer 39

scientific methods are all, ultimately, grounded in an epistemology of observation obvious how we can have empirical knowledge of natural properties such as redness or roundness; they are directly observable but goodness doesn’t seem to be directly observable, and that looks like an important disanalogy between moral properties & natural properties

Answer 40

use complex causal profiles / homeostatic cluster properties (Boyd, 1988) to know things about morality - moral properties can be causally efficacious (Sturgeon) not all natural properties are directly observable. Some kinds of natural properties are highly complex, and knowable only through the functional role they occupy (Lutz & Lenman, 2021) - e.g. healthiness: complex natural property, there may be some characteristic visual signs of healthiness - rosy cheeks, a spring in one’s step - but these visual signs are neither necessary nor sufficient for healthiness, these are indications of healthiness because these are properties that are, typically, caused by health Cornell realists hold that goodness is like healthiness in all of these ways - goodness is a complex natural property that is not directly observable, but nonetheless has a robust causal profile - because goodness is a natural property with a complex causal profile, the property of goodness can enter into explanatory relations. Thus, contra Harman, it is possible for goodness to explain our observations (Sturgeon, 1985)

Answer 41

1. it continues their foundational commitment to treating moral properties as a kind of causally-individuated natural property 2. it helps Cornell realists evade the OQA - by accepting a causal theory of reference, they thereby reject a description theory of reference

Answer 42

start with a person’s subjective interests cleanse & supplement these desires by asking what she would want were she to be fully informed, to understand the situation well, and to fully exercise her imagination (counterfactual - “objectified subjective interests”) from here Railton proposes to get to moral norms, such as norms constituting a kind of definition of moral rightness

Answer 43

a planet pretty much like Earth except that the oceans, lakes, and streams are filled with a liquid whose outward, easily observable, properties are just like those of water and people call “water”, but whose underlying physical-chemical nature is not H2O, but some other molecular structure XYZ (Horgan & Timmons, 1990)

Answer 44

Putnam; Horgan & Timmons, 1990

Answer 45

Twin-English term ‘water’ is not translatable by our orthographically identical term - on Earth, it means H2O, on Twin Earth XYW as those are the properties that play the causal / functional role of “water” on Twin Earth there are people who praise and blame action and call actions right and wrong. But they do so differently from people on Earth (e.g. people on Earth are utilitarians, people on Twin Earth are Kantians) so a different natural property is playing the role of “moral goodness” on Earth and Twin Earth, and if Cornell Realism is right (especially the causal theory of reference), “moral goodness” has a different meaning on Earth and Twin Earth but clearly “moral goodness” doesn’t have a different meaning on Earth and Twin Earth, rather these people disagree about what is morally right and wrong

Answer 46

Cornell Realists can keep their naturalist theory & accept a different theory of reference (i.e. not causal) but this would weaken analogy with natural properties & would make it hard to see how we could learn about moral properties or the natural properties they are (supposedly) identical to

Moral Realism Flashcards

(70 cards)