Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:40 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 48 3 C3 Who's on First? Daniel Wodak C3.P1 A!!"##: Strange as it may seem, they give ball players nowadays very peculiar names. C3.P2 C"$#%&&": Funny names? C3.P3 A!!"##: Nicknames, nicknames. Now, on the St. Louis team we have Who's on !rst, What's on second, I Don't Know is on third- C3.P4 C"$#%&&": That's what I want to !nd out. I want you to tell me the names of the fellows on the St. Louis team. C3.P5 A!!"##: I'm telling you. Who's on !rst, What's on second, I Don't Know is on third- C3.P6 C"$#%&&": You know the fellows' names? C3.P7 A!!"##: Yes. C3.P8 C"$#%&&": Well, then who's playing !rst? C3.P9 A!!"##: Yes. C3.P10 C"$#%&&": I mean the fellow's name on !rst base. C3.P11 A!!"##: Who. C3.P12 (From Abbott and Costello's skit, "Who's on First.") C3.P13 "X-Firsters" hold that some normative feature is fundamental to all others. This is a common view. As Mark Schroeder wrote in Slaves of the Passions, C3.P14 for centuries [metaethicists] have characterized their subject matter as being everything which ultimately involved claims about what was good, or . . . what was right, or . . . what someone ought to do. All of these views claim that what it is for a property or concept to be normative, is for it to be ultimately analyzable in terms of some basic normative property or relation or concept. They merely disagree about what this basic property or concept is. (2007: 81) C3.P15 Much ink has been spilled in the "mere" disagreements about what this basic property is. This is the internecine debate between X-Firsters, especially between Reasons Firsters (e.g. Par!t 2011; Scanlon 1998), Values Firsters OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi Oxford Studies in Metaethics Volume 15. Russ Shafer-Landau, Oxford University Press (2020). © the several contributors. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198859512.001.0001 Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:40 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 49 (e.g. Moore 1903; Maguire 2016), and Fittingness Firsters (e.g. Chappell 2012; McHugh and Way 2016). C3.P16 To some, this internecine debate resembles an Abbott and Costello skit. In saying this I do not intend to cast aspersions on interesting, insightful work that has developed problems and solutions for speci!c X-First views. Rather, I intend to draw attention to something about the debate itself. It takes as a starting point that some normative feature is fundamental to all others. Little to nothing is said about whether or why we should think that. C3.P17 That said, to my knowledge there has been no clear argument against the X-First program,! and no clear articulation of an alternative to it either. Hence my two main goals in this chapter. First, I provide a fairly simple argument that one shouldn't be an X-Firster about the normative domain. The central move is to show that X-First theories have dubious merits when applied to a range of analogous domains. Second, I offer an alternative to X-First views. I develop an approach-taking normativity to be a determinable-that provides a stark contrast with X-First views, especially in how it treats the structure and unity of normativity. C 3 . S 1 3.1. WHAT IS IT FOR SOMETHING TO BE "ON FIRST" ? C3.P18 Before we proceed to these two main goals, it's worth covering our bases. What exactly are X-Firsters committed to? I'll start with Reasons First, zoom out to characterize X-First itself, then offer two clari!cations. C3.P19 Reasons First is, roughly, the view that reasons are "the only fundamental elements of the normative domain, other normative notions such as good and ought being analyzable in terms of reasons" (Scanlon 2014: 2). Selim Berker argues that this "widely popular" approach is most aptly framed in terms of two theses about grounding: that "reasons are !rst," or all other normative "facts are grounded in facts about reasons, that it is in virtue of the facts about reasons that these other normative facts obtain"; and that "reasons are not tied for !rst," or "it is not because of any facts about other normative categories that facts about reasons obtain" (2017: 15-16). C3.P20 Generalizing, the X-First program takes some X, and declares it to be prior to all Ys. What's X? A paradigmatic normative property (or relation or concept or . . . ). The three most common candidates are reasons, !ttingness, and value. But others are possible-e.g. ought." ! Though skepticism has been aired: see e.g. Cuneo (2007: 64–5; Väyrynen (2011: 203). " See also Wodak (forthcoming) on views like Broome's (2013)-which may just answer a local question in the sense described below. It's also noteworthy here that XOUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi Who's on First? 49 Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:40 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 50 C3.P21 What are all the Ys? All of the other normative properties (or relations or concepts or . . . ). Here we obviously need a demarcation of the normative. I suspect X-Firsters have a narrow demarcation in mind,# but since little is typically said on this score I won't discuss it further. C3.P22 Note also that X can be prior to all the Ys even if some Z is prior to X. Reasons Firsters can allow that all facts about reasons are fully grounded, so long as they are fully grounded in non-normative facts (as Berker notes 2017: 16). More generally, X-First is compatible with both naturalism and nonnaturalism.Modulo questions about what terms like "priority" mean here- it's compatible with expressivism. Consider Gibbard: "W'((')# I regard as the basic normative concept, the conceptual atom that renders molecular concepts like (%*(%+%)$,!&% normative" (2006: 196–7). C3.P23 Two further theses are sometimes classed with X-First. The !rst concerns local questions of explanatory priority, such as: Is the good prior to the right, or vice versa? The good can be prior to the right (or vice versa) without being prior to all other normative properties. X-Firsters sometimes count as allies historical !gures who only answer local questions, but those !gures seem to be playing a different ballgame. C3.P24 Gibbard's quote above points to the second thesis. For Gibbard, -'((')# is not just the atomic normative concept out of which other normative concepts are constructed; it is what renders those other concepts normative. More generally, X-Firsters might be committed to there being some X that other normative properties have in common, in virtue of which they are normative. Call this the thesis that some X is "the mark of the normative."! C3.P25 Like others," the Schroeder quote that we started with entangles both issues ("what it is for a property or concept to be normative, is for it to be ultimately analyzable in terms of some basic normative property"). But they should be separated. For instance, Raz has endorsed the view that "the normativity of all that is normative consists in the way it is, or provides, or is Firsters standardly take a commonsensical (rather than some recherché) normative notion to be what's on !rst. Thanks to Francois Schroeter for discussion. # X-Firsters focus on what we can call "authoritative" normative properties; they're silent on how we explain "merely formal normativity" (McPherson 2011; Wodak 2019). ! To accommodate views like Raz's (discussed later), the "mark of the normative" thesis needs to be framed somewhat broadly: for all Y, Y is normative iff Y is related in "the right way" to X. It's unclear how to cash this out. (What does Raz mean by "otherwise related to reasons"?) Thanks to Selim Berker and Gabriel Shapiro for helpful discussions here. " Consider Snedegar (2016: 156): a central "appeal of the reasons !rst program is that it promises to explain what it is that makes the normative normative"; but this "really only motivate[s] taking some single notion to be normatively basic." This assumes a great deal: that we can explain what it is that makes the normative normative only by taking there to be a mark of the normative, and that the mark of the normative must be on !rst. OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi 50 Daniel Wodak Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:40 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 51 otherwise related to reasons" (1999: 67); but he has also endorsed the view that facts about practical reasons are explained in terms of facts about value.# These commitments don't seem inconsistent. So while Raz is often classed with Reasons Firsters, this is a mistake. The commitments about explanatory priority are de!nitive of the X-First program, I think. That said, there's no use !ghting over terminology. The crucial point is the distinction between the claim that some normative X is on !rst and the claim that some normative X is the mark of the normative, so de!ned. I'll discuss both claims, but mostly focus on the !rst. C 3 . S 2 3.2. IS SOMETHING "ON FIRST" ? C3.S3 3.2.1. The Goal C3.P26 My !rst goal is to argue that one shouldn't be X-Firsters. But that's ambiguous between two claims. C3.P27 X-F,($# ,$)'# F'."(%/: We should not assume that there's some X that's "on !rst" for normativity. C3.P28 X-F,($# ,$ F'&$%: It's false that there's some X that's "on !rst" for normativity. C3.P29 I am somewhat sympathetic to the second claim, and some of what I'll say can be marshalled in its defense. My case for the !rst claim is stronger. C3.P30 Some may think the !rst claim is a weak target. But it's dialectically signi!cant if I can provide a good case that X-F,($# ,$)'# F'."(%/ is true. The X-First debate takes as a starting point that some normative feature is fundamental to all others. More speci!cally: the X-First debate proceeds via arguments for preferred X-First views (e.g. Reasons First) that are just arguments against rival X-First views (e.g. Values First). These arguments obviously rely on the assumption that some X is on !rst. If we shouldn't assume that, the whole debate is built on sand. C3.P31 Some X-Firsters might !nd this characterization of the debate to be unfair. Some X-Firsters explicitly say they aren't assuming that some X is on !rst.$ And some may say that they are defending that claim, not assuming it. # For discussion and references, see Heuer (2004), especially at 133: for Raz, "we have reasons to act in certain ways because so acting is an appropriate response to value." $ See e.g. McHugh and Way (2016: 577): "Why expect that there will be some basic normative or evaluative property from which the rest of the normative and evaluative domain is constructed? We do not assume from the outset that this is so." (I discuss the "signi!cant attractions" they attribute to this "hypothesis" in n. 20.) Cf. Rowland (2017: OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi Who's on First? 51 Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:40 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 52 C3.P32 Two responses. One, X-Firsters sometimes hedge, but that doesn't !t with the conclusions they draw. Consider Howard (2019). Howard argues for Fittingness First by arguing that Reasons First and Values First are unacceptable. If Howard grants that we have no good reason from the onset to think that some X is on !rst-or, more speci!cally, that reasons or values or !ttingness is on !rst-his argument can't be for The Fundamentality of Fit (which is his title). It can only be for the less interesting conditional claim: if reasons or values or !ttingness is fundamental then !ttingness is fundamental. Either the antecedent of that conditional is assumed to get to a stronger conclusion, or X-Firsters' conclusions aren't as interesting as their titles suggest. Pick your poison. C3.P33 My second response may initially seem like a curve ball, but bear with me. Alonzo Church once considered a view he called "ontological misogyny." One form of this view would explain all facts about women in terms of facts about men plus the being a father of relation. As Church noted, this view may give us adequate resources to express all facts about women, but if so that doesn't seem like a good argument for the doctrine.%Now compare this to X-Firsters' arguments views for their preferred views. Chappell's main argument for taking !ttingness to be "primitive" is that this provides "adequate conceptual resources for us to express any expressible normative truth" (2012: 686). Does that really show that !ttingness is "The Sole Normative Primitive"? Or that there is any "Sole Normative Primitive"? No. The point here is simple. X-Firsters often aim to show that we can put some X on !rst for normativity (without losing expressive power or extensional adequacy). But so what? That we can does not mean that we should. If ontological misogyny lets us express any expressible truth about gender, that does not mean that men are "on !rst" with respect to gender, or indeed that there is any Sole Gender Primitive. (If Church's example is too out of left !eld, we could make similar points concerning e.g. logical concepts. See McSweeney (2019) on this issue: we can take '!', '&', and '~' to be the sole logical primitives without losing expressive power or extensional adequacy; that doesn't mean we should ! ) C3.P34 Let me put the preceding points differently. The stronger conclusion X-F,($# ,$ F'&$% rejects every X-First view. The weaker conclusion X-F,($# ,$)'# F'."(%/ rejects the X-First debate. As Schroeder put it, everyone in the debate agrees that that there's some basic normative property and "merely disagrees" about what it is; so that starting point is some X is on 213, emphasis mine), who assumes that "We should accept an account of the basic normative property that enables us to analyze the evaluative in terms of the normative." % For references for Church's 1958 talk, see Inwagen (2004: 123). OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi 52 Daniel Wodak Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:41 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 53 !rst, and we argue from there to work out whether X is reasons or values or whatever. If X-F,($# ,$)'# F'."(%/, X-Firsters owe us much more. C3.S4 3.2.2. The Argumentative Strategy C3.P35 There are domains where X-First views seem plausible. Take rectangles. For any shape, if it's a rectangle, this is in virtue of its being equiangular-andquadrilateral. That conjunctive property is "on !rst" for rectangles. C3.P36 Perhaps normativity is like rectangles. But many domains that are analogous to normativity don't look like rectangles in this respect. This is the basis for my master argument against X-Firsters: C3.P37 P1. We should not have an X-First debate for Z. C3.P38 P2. If P1, we should not have an X-First debate about normativity. C3.P39 C. So, we should not have an X-First debate about normativity. C3.P40 There are different instances of this argument, depending on which domain we focus on-i.e. what candidate for Z we consider.& I'll consider a few different candidates below. I don't need each of them to succeed, obviously; if one version of the argument is sound, that'd suf!ce. But it's valuable to consider a range of candidates to see how much the X-First debate in metaethics seems like an aberration in philosophy. This sociological observation will do some work in the argument below. C3.P41 Here's the !rst candidate for Z: the mental. Considering P1 helps us elucidate a curious feature of X-First theories. You might think they are simply monistic theories: they just require a single property to be fundamental to normativity. But that's not right. They require a single normative entity to be fundamental to normativity. The equivalent view in philosophy of mind is that there's a single mental property that's fundamental to the mental. This involves something like a Beliefs First theory of the mental. There are theories in this ballpark. Maybe ideas or intentionality are "on !rst." But there are well-known and widely accepted theories, like functionalism, which don't have this structure.!' We have theoretical resources- like Ramsey sentences-to explicate the intuitive idea that the most basic mental concepts like !%&,%0 and /%$,(% might be interdependent, such that no mental X is "on !rst." It would be a mistake to set aside all views like & I'm using "domains" roughly in the way that Scanlon (2014) does, but nothing hangs on the term. It may be more apt to speak of normativity as a category. (Interestingly, for "the highest kinds" in Aristotle's Categories, like qualities, no X is "on !rst"-or so I'm told.) !' One way of thinking about functionalism is that to be a mental property is to be a realizer of a certain functional role that's speci!ed via a Ramsey sentence. But the single entity "on !rst" (a) isn't mental, and (b) is a recherché second-order property. Cf. n. 15. Thanks to Jan Dowell and Laura Schroeter for helpful discussion here. OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi Who's on First? 53 Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:41 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 54 functionalism and construct a central debate in philosophy of mind to only be between theories like Beliefs First. C3.P42 Now consider P2. One point in its favor: if we need not be X-Firsters about the mental, why must the normative be so different from the mental? X-Firsters have an explanatory debt here. (I'll expand on this below.) Here's another point in its favor. Considering views like functionalism helps us set aside a wide set of considerations that might seem like putative advantages of being an X-Firster about normativity: that such views are simpler, or more conducive to a naturalistic reduction (e.g. Schroeder 2007: 81). Is functionalism less simple, or less reductionist-friendly, than views like "Intentionality First"? If so, is that a good ground to reject functionalism and agree from the onset to only consider views like Intentionality First? Once we attend to theoretical positions that don't !t the strictures of an X-First program, it's hard to see why general theoretical virtues (or an appetite for reduction) should be a good motivation for that program. C3.P43 Let's turn to a more obvious candidate for Z: descriptivity. By this I mean the facts, properties, etc. that fall on the "is" side of Hume's is/ought gap. This is a motley crew. Numbers and narwhals, sensations and supernatural beings, photons and pharmacies, Germany and gravity: if they all exist, they are all descriptive. Must there be some descriptive property, X, that is prior to all other descriptive properties (that some descriptive X is "on !rst"), and that all other descriptive entities have in virtue of which they are descriptive (that there's a "mark of the descriptive")? If so, what would X be? What is the equivalent of being equiangular-and-quadrilateral for numbers, narwhals, photons, and so on? C3.P44 Any candidate for X would be highly contentious. Consider dualism: the mental and the physical are plausibly both descriptive, but dualists say they're fundamentally different. Can an X-Firster about descriptivity respect that commitment? If the mental and the physical are like isosceles and oblique triangles, are they really fundamentally different? A similar concern arises for abstracta and concreta (Rosen 2017; Thomasson 1999).!! C3.P45 Say I'm right about P1. Why believe P2? Because normativity and descriptivity are meant to carve an important joint in reality. If the heterogeneous stuff on one side, descriptivity, does not !t the mold of an X-First theory, why should the heterogeneous stuff on the other? Even if we could entertain some X-First theories for descriptivity, we shouldn't construct a debate comparing them and taking the best of the bunch to be the true theory of descriptivity. So why have that debate for normativity? !! Consider e.g. the view that the essential descriptive feature is having causal powers. Adopting such an Eleatic Principle is hard to square with abstracta and dualist views. OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi 54 Daniel Wodak Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:41 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 55 C3.P46 I suspect that most objections to this argument will target P2. You may think, for instance, that it's a mistake to posit a descriptive property that's "on !rst," but only because being descriptive is primarily a feature of sentences or propositions, rather than of properties or relations. But similar motivations for taking descriptivity to be primarily a feature of sentences or propositions can be marshalled in favor of taking normativity to be primarily a feature of (uses of) sentences or propositions. Why should X-Firsters treat normativity and descriptivity so differently? C3.P47 A better way to reject P2 is to argue that "descriptivity" is just the grabbag of whatever is not normative. If this is so, of course P2 will be false! It's like saying rectangles need not have any essential feature because there is no essential feature for the heterogenous collection of non-rectangles. C3.P48 But is it so? I'm not sure. Something can be rectangular or nonrectangular, but not both. But it's at least coherent to take something to be normative and descriptive. So the distinction between the descriptive and the normative doesn't seem akin to the distinction between rectangles and non-rectangles: "descriptive" means something other than "not normative." C3.P49 Even if one sympathizes with such objections, however, the X-Firster isn't home. The objections only target one version of the argument. They don't help with the mental. Nor do they help with our !nal candidate for Z: the physical. Being physical is clearly not a feature of sentences or propositions in the way that being descriptive might be. And the domain or category of the physical is, it's safe to say, not some grab-bag of leftovers. C3.P50 So, should we have an X-First debate about the category of the physical? Is there some physical X that's prior to all other physical properties and relations (some physical X that's "on !rst")? There's some precedent for this view. Thales of Miletus-perhaps the !rst philosopher-held that everything is water. On this Water First view, water is a "primary principle" of all things like the sun, the stars, and the cosmos. But this Water First theory is false. And it's not just false because water itself is not fundamental to physics-that is, we didn't just learn it was false when we discovered that water is H(O. One way to see this is to think of some more contemporary counterparts to Thales' view about physics. A Photons First ontology for the physical may not be threatened by a discovery like Lavoisier's, but we still know that it's a non-starter. Why? For one thing, physical entities include material things like molecules and non-material things like forces. If there are "fundamental physical forces," the prospects for anything like a Photons First ontology are dim.!" (This is part of what led materialists to become !" Some may endorse a Particles First or Fields First ontology of the physical. But the correspondence to an X-First theory here is super!cial. Being committed to a plurality of fundamental particles (photons, bosons, whatever) or a plurality of fundamental !elds OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi Who's on First? 55 Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:41 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 56 physicalists in philosophy.) A similar point applies to the view that there some X that all physical entities have in virtue of which they are physical (i.e. some X that's "the mark of the physical"). There's a debate about what makes entities physical (see Stoljar 2017: §§11–12). But it does not resemble the X-First debate-there's no agreement from the onset that some X is "the mark of the physical." C3.P51 This is why the case for P1 here is strong: X-First theories about the physical are implausible, and we certainly shouldn't assume that one is right. The case for P2 is just as strong as before. The distinction between the normative and the descriptive is often used because of a taxonomical consideration in the naturalism vs. non-naturalism debate. One way of denying the fundamentality of the normative is to claim that normativity is ultimately explained in terms of the supernatural, which is descriptive but not physical. But much of what drives naturalism about normativity drives one towards physicalism (at least, ceteris paribus); a distinct realm of sui generis normative stuff raises similar concerns to a distinct realm of sui generis supernatural or mathematical or mental stuff. If so, the normative and the physical are playing similar roles as philosophical domains. C3.S5 3.2.3. The Sociological Observation C3.P52 These three candidates-the descriptive, physical, and mental-hardly exhaust the categories which are similar to the normative, but don't have anything resembling the X-First debate in metaethics. (For instance: once vitalism was rejected, it has become unclear if there's any essential feature that all animate beings have in virtue of which they're animate.) In this sense, the X-First debate in metaethics is something of an aberration in philosophy.!# And this sociological observation warrants an explanation: why does the X-First debate have pride of place in metaethics if there aren't analogous debates about these analogous philosophical categories? C3.P53 Here are three possible explanations for this sociological observation: C3.P54 (i) Pessimism about X-First Views: The X-First debate is built on sand. C3.P55 (ii) Normative Exceptionalism: We have to be X-Firsters about normativity, but not about these other philosophical categories. (electromagnetism, maybe gravity, some poorly named ones) is being committed to the kind of fundamentally disjunctive account that X-Firsters want to reject. See section 3.3. !# It's not quite an anomaly. Attempts to reduce all mathematical entities to sets or categories are arguably similar to X-First theories about normativity. (Though I do not think sets were thought to be "the mark of the mathematical" in this literature.) That said, there was no assumption in this literature that some view like Sets First must be true. OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi 56 Daniel Wodak Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:41 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 57 C3.P56 (iii) Revisionism about the Non-normative: We need, and sorely lack, X-First debates about these other philosophical categories. C3.P57 I think the best explanation is the !rst: we should think either that X-First views are false, or (more modestly) that the X-First debate is misguided. Just as there may be an essential mental feature, there may be an essential normative feature. But there's no cause to agree from the onset that there is an essential normative feature and merely disagree about what it is. C3.P58 X-Firsters may wish to take the second option. But if so, they really need to step up to the plate and give us arguments that explain what makes the normative exceptional. This requires more than throwaway remarks. We need an explanation for why whatever motivates being an X-Firster about normativity doesn't motivate being an X-Firster across the board. If we baldly declare that X-First theories are always preferred on grounds like simplicity, we take on odd commitments about e.g. functionalism. C3.P59 I !nd the third option to be the least appealing. If it's the right way to go, my argumentative strategy won't have yielded the fruit that I expected, but it will have led to something surprising and signi!cant nonetheless: there's an enormous amount of new work to be done in almost every !eld. C3.P60 This observation, then, poses a simple challenge for X-Firsters. Note that it's not a direct challenge to the arguments that preoccupy the literature (whether Fittingness First is a better view than Reasons First or Values First, and so on). It's a challenge to an inference from such arguments to the conclusion that the preferred X-First theory about normativity is true. Unless more is said, it's unclear if those arguments show us much more than the argument that Photons First is a better theory than Water First, or that Intentionality First is a better theory than Berkeleyan idealism. C 3 . S 6 3.3. WHAT IF NOTHING IS "ON FIRST" ? C3.P61 If I'm right about the X-First debate, how should we theorize about normativity instead? Currently we lack any systematic work on what alternatives to X-First views about normativity can and should look like. C3.P62 There's plenty of space for many different rivals to X-First views. The alternative I present below is by no means the only way to go, or indeed the way we should go about all philosophically interesting categories. I'm going to go in to bat for it because it provides a particularly sharp contrast with XFirst research programs, and in doing so offers an interesting, fruitful way to think about some of the considerations that I suspect are driving metaethicists towards embracing X-First theories. I'll initially present a clearer, albeit more committed, version of this view, then show how we might be able to water down some of its commitments. OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi Who's on First? 57 Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:41 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 58 C3.S7 3.3.1. Two Kinds of Categories C3.P63 Let's start by contrasting two kinds of categories. Some are genera. Following Rosen (2010: 124–7), it is de!nitive of genera and species that: C3.P64 For all x, that x is a member of species y is fully explained in terms of x having the genus's essential feature(s) and species's differentia. C3.P65 Recall the example of rectangles: they all have one essential feature in common, namely being equiangular-and-quadrilateral. ABCD is member of a species of this genus, a square, in virtue of having this essential feature plus the requisite differentia (being equilateral). C3.P66 But not all categories are genera. Some, for instance, are determinables. C3.P67 Here's how Rosen (2010: 127) contrasts genera and determinables: C3.P68 [D]espite the similarities between the determinable–determinate relation on the one hand and the genus–species relation on the other, there is this difference: the determinate grounds the determinable, but the species does not ground the genus. C3.P69 Take a scarlet letter. Scarlet is a determinate of red, which is in turn a determinate of color. So the letter is red in virtue of being scarlet, and colored in virtue of being red. It is not scarlet in virtue of having some essential feature that colored things share, plus some differentia. On a common-though by no means universal-approach, the facts about a determinable are fully explained in terms of the facts about the disjunction of its determinates (see Wilson 2017: §3.4.1).!! So on this approach, we can have fundamentally disjunctive accounts of determinables such as color. C3.P70 Three quick asides. First, I'm going to assume this common approach to determinables, though little hangs on it; the main alternative doesn't help X-Firsters.!" Second, I'm going to play fast and loose with talk of explaining F (e.g. explaining the determinable color) and explaining the facts about F (e.g. explaining the facts about color); you'll live. And third, I'm going to speak of taking normativity to be a determinable below; take such talk as a !! I should note that Wilson rejects this view (2012, 2014: 557); though cf. Bennett (2017: 23–4), who notes that Wilson most plausibly points out that it is not universally true that determinables are explained in terms of the disjunction of their determinates. !" On the most salient alternative, "each determinable property F of ordinary individuals is associated with a second-order property of properties: the property of being an Fdeterminate" (Rosen 2010: 129). If normativity is a determinate, for x to be normative would be for x to instantiate the second-order property of being a normativity determinate. This !ts the letter but not the spirit of an X-First theory: there is a single second-order property that's "on !rst," but it's not a paradigmatic normative property like being valuable; it's highly recherché. So doesn't really vindicate the aims of X-Firsters. OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi 58 Daniel Wodak Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:41 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 59 convenient shorthand for taking some more precise property-e.g. being normatively valanced-to be a determinable.!# C3.S8 3.3.2. The Stark Alternative C3.P71 Genera and determinables don't exhaust the kinds of categories. But they provide a stark contrast that's useful for our purposes (though accepting an X-First view isn't identical to accepting that normativity is a genus).!$ My proposal is that normativity is a determinable, and it reduces to the disjunction of its determinates. On this view, no single normative feature is "on !rst" (red and blue are explained in terms of different more speci!c colors), and no X is "the mark of the normative" (explanations of why something is normative, like explanations of why something is colored, will bottom out in different speci!c determinates of the determinable). C3.P72 Call this Stark Alternative. Views in the ballpark have been endorsed by Tappolet (2004) and Oddie (2005), and suggested by Jessica Wilson (2014: 547), who noted that we could formulate normative naturalism as the view that "normative state types and/or tokens stand in something like the determinable/determinate relation to naturalistic goings-on." This brings out that the determinates of normativity could be naturalistic. But they could also be other normative state types and/or tokens. In order for the view to be compatible with naturalism or non-naturalism, Stark Alternative- like X-First-must remain somewhat schematic. C3.P73 To put some "esh on the bones of this schema, here's a version of the view. It's inspired by Susan Hurley's discussion of "centralism": C3.P74 A feature common to many philosophical accounts of ethical concepts is that the general concepts, right and ought, are taken to be logically prior to and independent of the speci!c concepts, such as just and unkind. According to such accounts, the general concepts carry a core meaning . . . that also provides the speci!c concepts with reason-giving status. . . . I shall refer to accounts that take the general concepts in some category to be logically prior to and independent of the speci!c as centralist. (Hurley 1985: 56) !# When someone says color is a determinable, they don't mean that a ball is color in virtue of being red. Likewise, when I say normativity is a determinable, I don't mean that an act is normativity in virtue of being morally right. That said, being normatively valanced may not be the best candidate for the determinable here. Inter alia, there's a thorny issue of whether being permitted should be among the relevant class of determinates. (This issue is thorny because of the role it plays in a preposterous argument against error theory.) !$ For one, there could be an essential non-normative property or relation that is essential to normativity: that could vindicate the view that normativity is a genus, but could not vindicate X-Firsters. For another, the relevant essential feature and differentia could both be normative, which would mean that no single normative notion is "on !rst." OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi Who's on First? 59 Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:41 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 60 C3.P75 Hurley suggests that instead of being centralists we should take "discrete particular values as a starting point" (1985: 56). Following her use of examples like justice and kindness, we could take speci!c virtues as determinates of normativity. This gives us a Virtues First account. Hurley's remarks only touch on moral normativity, but one could generalize: the view dovetails nicely with virtue-theoretic approaches to epistemology, for instance. This may seem to resemble Reasons First, but the resemblance is super!cial. Virtues First is disjunctive: Hurley's whole point is that we do not take a "general concept" like .,(#1% to be what's "on !rst"; rather normativity will bottom out in a list of "speci!c concepts" like 21$# and 1)3,)/.!% C3.P76 I don't know whether Virtues First is the best option to take for those who are attracted to Stark Alternative. I'm just using it to illustrate the kind of options that become available on this schematic approach. According to Virtues First, the explanation for why something is normative will resemble the explanation for why something is colored. Being courageous is a speci!c way of being practically virtuous and being conscientious is a speci!c way of being epistemically virtuous, just as being scarlet is a speci!c way of being red and being azure is a speci!c way of being blue. C3.S9 3.3.3. Why Accept Stark Alternative? C3.P77 Good question, subheading. Here's your answer. Stark Alternative better accounts for what motivates X-Firsters in how it explains how normativity is both structured and uni!ed.!& C3.P78 One motivation for X-Firsters is that normativity is structured: relations of explanatory priority or relative fundamentality obtain between reasons and oughts and values and so on."' Of course, X-Firsters disagree about the direction of those relations of explanatory priority. But they agree that these !% Interestingly, the Virtues First view is neither Aristotelian nor neo-Aristotelian. See Hirji (forthcoming) on the structure of each of those views: neither puts the aretaic "on !rst." It is also not Hurley's view. Hurley embraces a kind of Rawlsian coherentism. !& There are also some off-the-shelf arguments that I could appeal to in motivating Stark Alternative, e.g. Armstrong (1997: 50) about asymmetric necessitation; see also Wilson (2012: 8). I won't appeal to those arguments. I don't like them. "' That consideration is clear in Schroeder (2018)'s reconstruction of the motivation behind Reasons First: since Ross (1930), many thought that reasons explain oughts, then generalized from the "core case" of ought: reasons are prior to the rest of normativity. The same consideration crops up with Fittingness Firsters like McHugh andWay (2016: 577): since "the normative and evaluative domain seems highly interconnected, the hypothesis that there is one basic normative property has signi!cant explanatory promise." They say nothing about why it is attractive to explain these interconnections by taking one X to be on !rst; they don't seem to countenance that interconnectedness is otherwise explicable. OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi 60 Daniel Wodak Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:41 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 61 explanations all bottom out in the same place: some highly general feature like reasons or !ttingness or value. However, Stark Alternative also accepts that normativity is structured. By analogy: color is a determinable which is explained in terms of its determinates like red and blue, which are themselves determinables that are explained in terms of their determinates like crimson and cerulean. So according to Stark Alternative, normative explanations bottom out in different highly speci!c places-e.g. on the Virtues First view, in courage and conscientiousness. C3.P79 So far this only shows that a motivation for X-First is neutralized, and in a way that further supports a point I made earlier: the good can be prior to the right without having to be prior to every other normative property. Further, I want to argue that Stark Alternative is a more plausible account of the structure of normativity than X-First. Our views about how normativity is structured should be in sync with our views about the pattern of normative explanations. If some X is "on !rst," the pattern of the explanation for why x is morally right or aesthetically good is like the pattern of explaining why ABC is an isosceles triangle or an oblique triangle: we start with one general property (being trilateral) then build to the speci!c properties. By contrast, if normativity is a determinable, the pattern of normative explanations is like the pattern of explaining color facts: we move from the speci!c to general. The latter seems much more promising. That is: an act is normatively valanced (colored) in virtue of being prima facie wrong (red), and prima facie wrong (red) in virtue of being unjust (scarlet) or being harmful to others (crimson) or whatever. And an act can also be normatively valanced (colored) in virtue of being prudentially good (blue), and prudentially good (blue) in virtue of being an achievement (teal) or being pleasurable (aqua). These explanations start with the speci!c properties, and they don't all start in the same place. C3.P80 Another motivation for X-First is that normativity is uni!ed. Concerns about whether a category is uni!ed are often run together with concerns about whether it is a genus. This occurs in the literatures on causation and grounding (see Schaffer 2015, 2016: 152–3). And it occurs in metaethics."! The thought seems to be: Unless there is a single essential feature of normativity, how can normativity be one thing? Since the essential feature of normativity is presumably normative (i.e. a feature like reasons or values or !ttingness), X-Firsters are home free. Or so it may seem. "! Here's Kearns and Star (2009: 215): "Philosophers have distinguished between species of reasons in a number of ways (moral/prudential/aesthetic, practical/theoretical etc.), but it is commonly thought that no uni!ed and informative analysis of the genus is possible." Why must reasons be a genus? Why must its varieties be species of reasons? OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi Who's on First? 61 Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:41 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 62 C3.P81 It may also seem that Stark Alternative is hopeless on this front. After all, the view holds that normativity is fundamentally disjunctive. A common, recurring line of thought in metaethics has been that this entails disunity: C3.P82 If what it is to be a reason were fundamentally disjunctive, then reasons would have about as much in common as pieces of jade, which, beyond being called "jade", have no more distinctively in common than do moons of Jupiter and natural numbers smaller than 17. (Schroeder 2007: 69; see also 60)"" C3.P83 Two points here. First, I'll play defense. Arguments like Schroeder's are meant to show that any fundamentally disjunctive analysis is disuni!ed. But consider the rhetorical use of gruesome, gerrymandered disjunctions like jadeite-or-nephrite or, to use an example from Michael Smith (2017: 102), "numbers-or-dogs." The problem with jadeite-or-nephrite-that is, NaAlSi(O6-or-Ca((Mg,Fe))Si*O(((OH)(-and numbers-or-dogs is what gets disjoined, not the mere presence of "or." (Indeed, X-Firsters can't say the disjunction is gruesome just because of the "or"; in a crucial sense that's often ignored, their views are disjunctive too."#) Intuitively, an analysis of color in terms of red-or-blue-or- . . . , and of red in terms of crimsonor-scarlet-or- . . . , does not look at all like an analysis of anything in terms of jadeite-or-nephrite or numbers-or-dogs. C3.P84 This idea is common ground among those who think that determinables are explained in terms of the disjunction of their determinates. As Rosen (2010: 128) notes, not "any old disjunction of properties suf!ces to de!ne a determinable with the disjuncts as determinates." What makes the disjunction of determinates different from any old disjunction is that they exhibit suf!cient objective yet inexact similarity: "objective" because the similarity in question is not just located in something about us (e.g. we call distinct minerals "jade"), but "inexact" because the similarity is not explained in terms sharing a single more fundamental property. C3.P85 This might sound opaque, but there are ways of cashing it out. Determinates are more speci!c than determinables. But that's not all that they are. Red and square is not a determinate of red, even though it is more speci!c than red: "For an object to have a determinate property is for that object to have the determinable properties the determinate falls under in a speci!c "" I point to some recurrences of this line of thought below. A kind referee noted another: Schroeder (2015: 381) on analyzing practical and epistemic normativity. "# Why? Consider Fittingness First. It can't hold that to be normative is to be explained in terms of !ttingness: after all, !ttingness is normative, and can't explain itself. So the view must be that for x to be normative is for x to be !ttingness or for x explained in terms of !ttingness. The same holds for Reasons First and Values First. Thanks to Daniel Fogal and Chris Howard for helpful discussion of this point. See Shapiro (n.d.) for an independent (and better) argument that X-First accounts must be disjunctive. OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi 62 Daniel Wodak Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:41 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 63 way" (Funkhouser 2006: 548). One way of being red (e.g. scarlet) will always differ from another (e.g. crimson), but it will differ along certain dimensions: hue, brightness, saturation. Squareness has nothing to do with these dimensions, so being red and square isn't a way of being red."! This talk of determination dimensions is central to how Funkhouser uni!es determinables. The dimensions that can determine a determinable generate regions of "property space," and that gives us an account of objective but inexact similarity (proximity in property space), as well as conditions under which a disjunction is a determinable (2006: 554–6; Fine (2011) takes a similar approach in terms of regions of "state space"). C3.P86 Applied to normativity, the task would be to specify the relevant determination dimensions, which would help us pick out the relevant determinates. (We'd also need to specify the levels of determination."") The Virtues First view sketched above is one option for proponents of Stark Alternative. I've already implicitly suggested another (in terms of normative valences). There are more. But I want to stick to the big picture of how Stark Alternative accounts for the unity of normativity, which is via appealing to how the determinates that are disjoined exhibit objective yet inexact similarity, and thereby form a region of property space. C3.P87 Even if you reject this appeal to "objective yet inexact similarity," you should acknowledge that metaphysicians are con!dent that some view can be plugged into its place. As Wilson notes, "determinables clearly terminologically, metaphysically and formally unify their determinates," and this is a consensus point in the literature even though "philosophers very commonly assume that determinables are reducible to disjunctions of determinates" (2014: 568). This suggests that the view that disjunctiveness entails disunity is, at least, highly metaphysically contentious. It's not something that metaethicists should take for granted, or defend via rhetorical appeals to gerrymandered disjunctions like numbers-or-dogs. C3.P88 So Stark Alternative can account for the unity of normativity and thereby neutralize this motivation for being an X-Firster. But it can also do more: it can offer a more satisfying account of the unity of normativity. C3.P89 My case for this is similar to why some have proposed that other philosophically interesting categories are best understood in terms of determinables. For example, some suggest that taking the grounding relation to be a determinable could capture how it is both "unitary and variegated" "! That said, conjunctive properties like being red and square are still partly explained in terms of their conjuncts, and in that sense are still in a rough sense color properties. The same holds for conjunctive properties where one conjunct is normative and the other is non-normative. Thanks to Mark Schroeder for a very helpful discussion of this point. "" Thanks to a referee for noting this problem. I wish I knew how to solve it. OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi Who's on First? 63 Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:41 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 64 (Bliss and Trogdon 2016: §1). Stark Alternative similarly promises to account for how normativity is uni!ed while capturing the deep variegation in the varieties of the normativity. C3.P90 To tease this out, return to how X-Firsters unify normativity. Say we're Reasons Firsters, and we say normativity is uni!ed insofar as it is the "domain of reasons." That seems straightforward. But it isn't. The view doesn't unify normativity unless we can unify reasons-or, more aptly, unless we can unify the reasons relation."# And here challenges arise. C3.P91 Consider the arguments for the view that some reasons are internal (or desire-dependent) and for the view that some reasons are external (or desireindependent). Reasons Firsters claim that we cannot accept both: that'd make their account of normativity fundamentally disjunctive, and hence disuni!ed. It is in this context that we get Schroeder's rhetoric about jadeiteor-nephrite. Similarly, Sobel argues that, with respect to reasons internalism, "the reasons provided by desires in matters of mere taste are the thin end of the wedge." If reasons were internal-or-external we'd end up with a "fundamentally disunited" account (2016: 297)."$ C3.P92 There are other similar challenges. Smith's rhetoric about numbers-ordogs crops up in his discussion of putative differences between practical and epistemic reasons. An account on which the two turn out to be fundamentally different would, he says, make normativity a "ragbag." C3.P93 The general point is that there may be deep variegation in the varieties of reasons relations, or more broadly in the varieties of normativity. Internal and external reasons and practical and epistemic reasons aren't the only examples. Consider the deontic, the evaluative, and the aretaic; the moral, the prudential, the aesthetic, the rational; and subjective (beliefor evidencerelative) and objective (fact-relative) standards. They strike me as being signi!cantly and deeply distinct, in a way that the varieties of triangles (obtuse and acute; equilateral and isosceles) do not. X-Firsters struggle to explain such differences; that's why Schroeder and Sobel think that because they accept internal reasons, they must deny the existence of external reasons. But Stark Alternative makes space for such deep variegation in "# As I noted in my (2019), unifying causes (e.g.: they're all events) does not unify causation. The relatum is not the relation. Metaethicists sometimes focus on unifying reasons (e.g.: they're all propositions) but this uni!es a relatum, not the relation itself. "$ Some adopt such disjunctive accounts. On Chang's hyrid view, "there is no univocal answer to the question, What metaphysically makes a fact have the normativity of a reason?" (2013: 177). But even some defenders of this view concede that it is "metaphysically unsatisfying" because it is not a "uni!ed account" (Behrends 2015: 172). See also Cuneo (2007: 64) for a different disjunctive approach to key normative notions. OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi 64 Daniel Wodak Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:41 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 65 the varieties of normativity because it can explain how normativity is uni!ed while also being fundamentally disjunctive. C3.S10 3.3.4. Objections to Stark Alternative C3.P94 I've offered an alternative view that is schematic, but well-motivated: it better explains two central considerations that were thought to favor the XFirst program. There are, of course, objections to Stark Alternative. I won't discuss them all; some are technical issues that don't strike at the core of the view under consideration."% I'll focus on the two deepest problems. C3.P95 First, entailment. A common view is that determinates entail the relevant determinable."& If this is right, it poses problems for various ways of spelling out Stark Alternative. Take a view on which normativity is a determinable whose determinates are verdictive properties like rightness, and rightness is in turn a determinable whose determinates are right-making properties. The problem is that the presence of right-makers doesn't entail rightness; they can be defeated or disabled. (This mirrors a long-standing objection to Ought First views about reasons.#') One way to avoid this problem might be take all determinables and determinates to be either prima facie or pro tanto. But even then, problems could recur once we factor in how the absence of enablers and the presence of disablers can block entailments. It might be, then, that our model of the contributory properties must be holistic to preserve such entailments (à la Fogal 2016). C3.P96 Second, exclusion. A common view is that determinates at the same level of determination exclude each other. A ball can't be fully red and fully blue at the same time. But it can be both morally and aesthetically good for Peter Singer to gracefully scoop a drowning child out of a shallow pond: these properties don't exclude each other, even though they are putative determinates at the same level of determination. This strikes me as a harder "% For instance, a determinate property must be attributed to the same object as its determinable (see e.g. Berker 2017: n. 35), but reasons, !ttingness, and value are not attributed to the same objects. I think we can specify the relevant properties in such ways that they are attributable to the same objects, but I admit that this requires work. "& One could also have the view that complex determinables generate a reverse entailment: any object that instantiates the determinable (sound) must instantiate each determinate (pitch, volume, timbre) at least to some degree. (Thanks to Jan Dowell and Pekka Väyrynen here.) If so, this poses a similar problem. Perhaps some things can be normatively valanced by being to some degree right and good, without being to any degree virtuous or vicious. I think this problem might just arise from over-generalizing from the case of sound. Something can have a taste by being sweet and/or salty, without being to any degree sour or bitter. For examples, see most British culinary inventions. #' Cf. Toulmin (1950: ch. 11) and Schroeder (2007: 35–6), and for contemporary responses to the problem see Nebel (forthcoming); Alvarez (2010); Broome (2004). OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi Who's on First? 65 Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:41 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 66 challenge. But I'm not sure if it's ultimately a successful one. I suspect that the challenge arises only when we bring in totality facts: a ball can be red and blue, but it cannot be fully red and fully blue. (What does "fully" contribute beyond specifying that the ball is red, and that's it?) Once we add in totality facts in the normative case, the problem disappears. If it is aesthetically good for Singer to gracefully scoop up the drowning child and that's it, then it cannot also be morally good for him to do so. C3.P97 I'm not sure whether these responses to the problems above are adequate, And they only scratch the surface of the challenges that we face in taking normativity to be a determinable in the way that I've proposed. So let me offer three further points about the project at this incipient stage. C3.P98 First, these problems might beset some versions of Stark Alternative but not others, depending on how we specify the determination dimensions and so on. This is one reason why I've kept the account schematic. To get a sense of some of the variety of options here, consider a different example of a determinable: "Pitch, timbre, and loudness may be properties in their own right, but many think they also combine to form a unity-the property sound" (Funkhouser 2006: 553). One option for Stark Alternative would be to take deontic, evaluative, and aretaic valences to be properties in their own right which combine to form normativity. This is very different from the Virtues First account sketched earlier. Just as an objection to Ought First need not rule out X-First per se, an objection to (e.g.) Virtues First need not rule out Stark Alternative per se. C3.P99 Second, these problems might beset all versions of Stark Alternative, but not all views in the ballpark. Stark Alternative says normativity is a determinable. Certain commitments about the determinable–determinate relation may generate potential problems for the view. But perhaps we can water down those commitments while keeping its motivations intact. Consider, for instance, Bennett's discussion of how to explain the unity of the grounding relation by appealing to "resemblance classes": C3.P100 [R]esemblance classes are more straightforward and better understood than talk of determinables or genuses. Indeed, I'm not entirely sure what the difference is between a determinable property and the disjunctive property that is the result of disjoining the members of a reasonably natural resemblance class. (2017: 20) C3.P101 What would be an example of a reasonably natural resemblance class whose members are uni!ed when disjoined? You can probably guess: C3.P102 Consider the colors. Whatever we take colors to be, and whatever exact kind of unity is in play in this case, we can all agree that the colors form a uni!ed family. That's why we have the general label "the colors". But . . . [n]o one would say that the determinable property being colored is more fundamental than the more determinate OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi 66 Daniel Wodak Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:42 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 67 color properties like being red, being blue, and being green. Nor would anyone say that really there is just one property-Color with a capital "C"?-which is very general, can be had in different ways by quite different things, and whose pattern of instantiation makes true all color sentences, like "this mug is red" and "my shirt is black". (2017: 23–4) C3.P103 The colors form a resemblance class, even though there is no X-like being colored, or Color, or whatever-that is "on !rst." Given this, in virtue of what do the colors form a resemblance class? On her view, "a family of properties and relations are uni!ed" as a resemblance class when they are "objectively similar to each other"; or, more aptly, they are more or less uni!ed depending on whether they are more or less objectively similar (2017: 19). This relies on a notion of objective, inexact similarity, as before. But taking normativity to be a "natural resemblance class" may let us avoid commitments that are thought to be de!nitive of determinables, without putting just one property-or Normativity with a capital "N"-on !rst. C3.P104 Third, even if all views in the ballpark of Stark Alternative face decisive objections, I still don't think we should all just agree that there's some X "on !rst" and merely disagree about what it is. The challenge from the previous section remains: there seem to be many philosophically interesting categories that don't obviously allow for, let alone insist upon, an X-First approach. Taking normativity to be a determinable or a resemblance class is just one way to depart from the X-First program. C 3 . S 1 1 3.4. CONCLUSION C3.P105 The "Who's on !rst?" debate has pride of place in contemporary metaethics. It's high time we ask why. Why should we think that some normative property or relation or concept is "on !rst"? And if nothing is "on !rst," it's high time we provide alternatives to the X-First program. C3.P106 I've tried to make progress on both fronts. But I want to conclude with a methodological point about how the debate should proceed. The best path is to see what we want from a general theory of normativity, then see what models best !t those motivations. I've argued that we should want a model on which normativity is like color in two ways: normative explanations go from the more speci!c to the more general, and normativity can be uni!ed despite deep variegation between the varieties of normativity. I've argued that these motivations point towards Stark Alternative, or at least something like it. My main complaint about the X-First program is that it is Procrustean. It does not start by investigating the nature of the phenomenon we want to explain and looking at what models provide the best !t. It starts by OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi Who's on First? 67 Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:42 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 68 assuming that some X must be on !rst, then tries to chop and change normativity to !t the theory.#! References Alvarez, M. (2010). Kinds of Reasons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Armstrong, David M. (1997). A World of States of Affairs. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Behrends, Jeff (2015). "Problems and Solutions for a Hybrid Approach to Grounding Practical Normativity," Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 45(2): 159–78. Bennett, Karen (2017). Making Things Up. Oxford University Press. Berker, Selim (2017). "The Unity of Grounding," Mind 127(507): 729–77. Bliss, Ricki, and Kelly Trogdon (2016). "Metaphysical Grounding," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Broome, John (2004). "Reasons" in R. Jay Wallace (ed.), Reason and Value: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 28–55. Broome, John (2013). Rationality through Reasoning. Malden, MA: Wiley. Chang, Ruth (2013). "Grounding Practical Normativity: Going Hybrid," Philosophical Studies 164 (1): 163–87. Chappell, Richard Yetter (2012). "Fittingness: The Sole Normative Primitive," The Philosophical Quarterly 62(249): 684–704. Cuneo, Terence (2007). The Normative Web: An Argument for Moral Realism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Fine, Kit (2011). "An Abstract Characterization of the Determinate/Determinable Distinction," Philosophical Perspectives 25(1): 161–87. Fogal, Daniel (2016). "Reasons, Reason, and Context." in Errol Lord and Barry Maguire (eds), Weighing Reasons. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Funkhouser, Eric (2006). "The Determinable-Determinate Relation," Noûs 40 (3): 548–69. Gibbard, Allan (2006). "Moral Feelings and Moral Concepts," Oxford Studies in Metaethics 1: 195–215. Heuer, Ulrike (2004). 'Raz on Reasons and Values' in R. J. Wallace, P. Pettit, S. Schef"er, and M. Smith (eds), Reason and Value: Themes from the Moral Philosophy of Joseph Raz. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Hirji, Sukaina (forthcoming). "What's Aristotelian about NeoAristotelian Virtue Ethics?" Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. Howard, Christopher (2019). "The Fundamentality of Fit" in Russ Shafer-Landau (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaethics, 14. Oxford: Oxford University Press. #! Many thanks to Selim Berker, Jan Dowell, Daniel Drucker, David Faraci, Daniel Fogal, Sukaina Hirji, Chris Howard, Barry Maguire, Katy Meadows, Nala, Samuel Preston, Mark Schroeder, Laura and Francois Schroeter, Gabriel Shapiro, Jack Woods, Pekka Väyrynen, audiences at The Madison Metaethics Workshop and the University of Melbourne, two referees, and more people than I can name within the word count. OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi 68 Daniel Wodak Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:42 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 69 Hurley, Susan (1985). "Objectivity and Disagreement" in Ted Honderich (ed.), Morality and Objectivity: A Tribute to J. L. Mackie. New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul. Inwagen, Peter van (2004). "A Theory of Properties" in DeanW. Zimmerman (ed.), Oxford Studies in Metaphysics, 1. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 107–38. Kearns, Stephen, and Daniel Star (2009). "Reasons as Evidence," Oxford Studies in Metaethics 4: 215–42. McHugh, Conor, and Jonathan Way (2016). "Fittingness First." Ethics 126(3): 575–606. McPherson, Tristram (2011). "Against Quietist Normative Realism," Philosophical Studies 154: 223–40. McSweeney, Michaela Markham (2019). "Following Logical Realism Where it Leads," Philosophical Studies 176(1): 117–39. Maguire, Barry (2016). "The Value-Based Theory of Reasons," Ergo, an Open Access Journal of Philosophy 3. http://dx.doi.org/10.3998/ergo.12405314.0003.009. Moore, G. E. (1903). Principia Ethica. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nebel, Jacob M. (forthcoming). "Normative Reasons as Reasons Why We Ought," Mind. Oddie, Graham (2005). Value, Reality, and Desire. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Par!t, Derek (2011). On What Matters, vol. 1. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosen, Gideon (2010). "Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology" in Bob Hale and Aviv Hoffmann (eds), Modality: Metaphysics, Logic, and Epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rosen, Gideon (2017). "Abstract Objects," Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Ross, William David (1930). The Right and the Good. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rowland, Richard (2017). "Reasons or Fittingness First?" Ethics 128(1): 212–29. Scanlon, Thomas (1998). What We Owe to Each Other. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Scanlon, T.M. (2014). Being Realistic about Reasons. Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press. Schaffer, Jonathan (2015). "Grounding in the Image of Causation," Philosophical Studies, 173(1): 49–100. Schaffer, Jonathan (2016). "Ground Rules: Lessons fromWilson" in Kenneth Aizawa and Carl Gillett (eds), Scienti!c Composition and Metaphysical Ground. New Directions in the Philosophy of Science. London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 143–69. Schroeder, Mark (2007). Slaves of the Passions. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Schroeder, Mark (2015). "Is Knowledge Normative?" Philosophical Issues 25(1): 379–95. Schroeder, Mark (2018). "Getting Perspective on Objective Reasons," Ethics 128(2): 289–319. Smith, Michael (2017). "Par!t's Mistaken Metaethics," in Peter Singer (ed.), Does Anything Really Matter? Essays on Par!t on Objectivity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Snedegar, Justin (2016). "Reasons, Oughts, and Requirements," Oxford Studies in Metaethics 11: 155–81. OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi Who's on First? 69 Comp. by: E.Dharaniraj Stage : Proof ChapterID: 0004759885 Date:10/3/20 Time:17:00:42 Filepath:D:/BgPr/OUP_CAP/IN/Process1/0004759885.3d Dictionary : OUP_UKdictionary 70 Sobel, David (2016). From Valuing to Value: A Defense of Subjectivism. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Stoljar, Daniel (2017). "Physicalism." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Tappolet, Christine (2004), "Through Thick and Thin: Good and its Determinates" Dialectica 58: 207–21. Thomasson, Amie L. (1999). Fiction and Metaphysics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Toulmin, Stephen Edelston (1950). An Examination of the Place of Reason in Ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Väyrynen, Pekka (2011). "AWrong Turn to Reasons?" in Michael Brady (ed.), New Waves in Metaethics. Basingstoke: Palgrave-Macmillan. Wilson, Jessica (2017). "Determinables and Determinates." Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Wilson, Jessica M. (2012). "Fundamental Determinables," Philosophers' Imprint 12. Wilson, Jessica M. (2014). "NoWork for a Theory of Grounding." Inquiry 57(5–6): 535–79. Wodak, Daniel. (2019). "Mere Formalities: Normative Fictions and Normative Authority," Canadian Journal of Philosophy 49(6): 828–50. Wodak, Daniel (2019). "An Objectivist's Guide to Subjective Reasons," Res Philosophica 96(2): 229–44. Wodak, Daniel (Forthcoming). "Redundant Reasons," The Australasian Journal of Philosophy. OUP UNCORRECTED AUTOPAGE PROOFS – FIRST PROOF, 10/3/2020, SPi 70 Daniel Wodak