Online research in philosophy

I discuss a strategy for grounding ethical naturalism propounded by Frank Jackson and more recently by Allan Gibbard: that the undisputed supervenience of the moral upon the natural (or descriptive) entails that moral properties are natural (or descriptive) properties. I show that this strategy falls foul of certain indubitable constraints governing natural kinds; and I then rebut some objections. The upshot is that no viable strategy for supporting ethical naturalism is to be found along these lines. This result has additional consequences, both for Jackson's attempt to accommodate ethical discourse into the natural world, and for Gibbard's purported 'meta-ethical synthesis'.

More than a century ago, G. E. Moore famously offered an extended inference to reject what are in effect two substantially different types of ethical naturalism. Although some naturalistic doctrines targeted by that inference make semantic claims that, if true, would entail certain metaphysical claims, it is also possible that those semantic doctrines could be false and the metaphysical ones true at the same time. For if semantic naturalism is true, then moral terms and sentences are reducible, by an analysis of what they mean, into some purely descriptive terms and sentences. But, if metaphysical naturalism is true, then the moral properties and propositions expressed by moral terms and sentences are reducible to purely natural properties and propositions. By conflating claims about meaning with claims about reference, Moore‟s original inference proved vulnerable to a number of well known objections. But we believe there is a revised Moorean inference that can succeed, and we offer that argument here. Its scope is restricted to semantic reductivist forms of ethical naturalism: those that rest on theses claiming the reducibility of expressions in the moral vocabulary to expressions in a non-moral one. A not uncommon philosophical view in Moore‟s day, such theses remain live options in metaethics (as we‟ll presently show). Although our inference is run for some putative equivalences between moral and purely descriptive terms, it could easily be adapted against ethical naturalist theses 1 involving moral concepts and thoughts as well as sentences. Like Moore, we take the successful inference to consist in an open question argument („OQA’) followed by the naturalistic-fallacy charge („NFC‟). But, unlike Moore, we identify semantic naturalism as the only naturalistic doctrine vulnerable to the inference, and we offer adequate support for the inference‟s premises. Naturalism in ethics is thus undermined, though not refuted in all its forms: semantical naturalism comes out false, but metaphysical naturalism might still be true..

Naturalism and the Human Condition is a compelling account of why naturalism, or the "scientific world-view" cannot provide a full account of who and what we are as human beings. Drawing on sources including Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Husserl and Sartre, Olafson exposes the limits of naturalism and stresses the importance of serious philosophical investigation of human nature.

I argue that Mencius puts forth a defensible form of ethical naturalism, according to which moral properties, moral motivation, and moral deliberation can be accounted for within the parameters of a naturalistic worldview. On this position, moral properties are the subjectively real properties which acts have in virtue of their corresponding to our most coherent set of shared desires. I give a naturalistic definition of 'right' which, I argue, is implicit in Mencius' philosophy. I address the objection that some of the contemporary-sounding views which I attribute to Mencius are positions which are alien to the ancient thinker, and I argue that the version of Mencius given here is not only quite faithful to Mencius but also a true metaethical theory.

There may be as much philosophical controversy about how to distinguish naturalism from non-naturalism as there is about which view is correct. In spite of this widespread disagreement about the content of naturalism and non-naturalism there is considerable agreement about the status of certain historically influential philosophical accounts as non-naturalist. In particular, there is widespread agreement that G.E. Moore's account of goodness in..

My goal in this paper is to explain what ethical naturalism is, to locate the pivotal issue between naturalists and non-naturalists, and to motivate taking naturalism seriously. I do not aim to establish the truth of naturalism nor to answer the various familiar objections to it. But I do aim to motivate naturalism sufficiently that the attempt to deal with the objections will seem worthwhile. I propose that naturalism is best understood as the view that the moral properties are natural in the sense that they are empirical. I pursue certain issues in the understanding of the empirical. The crux of the matter is whether any synthetic proposition about the instantiation of a moral property is strongly a priori in that it does not admit of empirical evidence against it. I propose an argument from epistemic defeaters that, I believe, undermines the plausibility of a priorism in ethics and supports the plausibility of naturalism.

This paper concerns the relation between two metaethical theses: moral naturalism and moral skepticism. It is important that we distinguish both from a couple of methodological principles with which they might be confused. Let us give the label “Cartesian skepticism” to the method of subjecting to doubt everything for which it is possible to do so—usually by introducing alternative hypotheses that are consistent with all available evidence (e.g., brains in vats). Let us give the label “global naturalism” to the principle that requires of any item which we admit into our ontology that it “fits” (in some manner or cluster of manners to be specified) with our naturalistic scientific worldview. One might be both a Cartesian skeptic and a global naturalist, if the latter principle is something that has survived the former test procedure. Alternatively, one might have adopted global naturalism for some other reason, while having little patience for the Cartesian method of doubt. Moral naturalism is the metaethical view that moral entities (e.g., properties like goodness and evil) fit within the scientific image of the world. The moral naturalist will probably be a global naturalist, but need not be: It is consistent with allowing non-natural entities into one’s ontology that one happens to think that moral properties are of the natural variety. Moral skepticism denies that moral entities fit within our scientific worldview. One way of denying moral naturalism is to be a moral error theorist: to hold that our moral discourse attempts to make reference to moral properties, but these properties do not exist.1 Another way of denying moral naturalism is to be a noncognitivist: to hold that our moral discourse was never really in the business of referring to moral facts or properties in the first place, and ipso facto such facts or properties are not naturalistic. In this paper, the label “moral skepticism” denotes the disjunction of these two theses. Neither the error theorist nor the noncognitivist must be committed to global naturalism, but usually will be; indeed, this commitment will often be a motivating factor of their metaethical views..

Take naturalism to be the idea that there is no such person as God or anything like God. Many philosophers hold that naturalism can accommodate serious moral realism. Many philosophers (and many of the same philosophers) also believe that moral properties supervene on non-moral properties, and even on naturalistic properties (where a naturalistic property is one such that its exemplification is compatible with naturalism). I agree that they do thus supervene, and argue that this makes trouble for anyone hoping to argue that naturalism can accommodate morality.

While "moral naturalism" is sometimes used to refer to any approach to metaethics intended to cohere with naturalism in metaphysics more generally, the label is more usually reserved for naturalistic forms of moral realism according to which there are objective moral facts and properties and these moral facts and properties are natural facts and properties. Views of this kind appeal to many as combining the advantages of naturalism and realism but have seemed to many others to do inadequate justice to central dimensions of our practice with our moral concepts. This entry examines some of these concerns and some ways in which moral naturalists have responded to them. It also profiles central aspects of the more particular views of some leading contemporary advocates of moral naturalism.

More than a century ago, G. E. Moore famously attempted to refute all versions of moral naturalism by offering the open question argument (OQA) followed by the “naturalistic fallacy” charge (NF).1 Although there is consensus that this extended inference fails to undermine all varieties of moral naturalism, OQA is often vindicated as an argument against analytical moral naturalism. By contrast, NF usually finds no takers at all. ln this paper we argue that analytical naturalism of the sort recently proposed by Frank Jackson and Michael Smith does after all rest on a mistake — though perhaps not the NF. Analytical moral naturalism is roughly the doctrine that some moral predicates and sentences are a priori equivalent to predicates and sentences framed in non-moral terms (Jackson 2003: 558). Given moral naturalism, it is at least possible that there are some such a priori or conceptual equivalences. But a properly construed OQA challenges this reductive strategy by showing that it is open to doubt on a priori grounds. We further contend that, in the dialectical context created by our OQA, a "digging in the heeis" defense of the strategy would beg the question. ll..