Abstract
Many normative nonnaturalists find normative naturalism to be completely implausible. Naturalists and nonnaturalists agree, provided they are realists, that there are normative properties, such as moral ones. Naturalists hold that these properties are similar in all metaphysically important respects to properties that all would agree to be natural ones, such as such as meteorological or economic ones. It is this view that the nonnaturalists I have in mind find to be hopeless. They hold that normative properties are just too different from natural properties for it to be possible they are natural properties. I aim to defuse this intuition. “Non-analytic naturalism” has made progress in defusing the intution. According to non-analytic naturalists, normative properties can be represented in thought in two ways, by an ordinary normative concept and by a naturalistic concept, where, the non-analytic naturalist concedes, normative concepts are not, and are not analyzable in terms of, naturalistic concepts. Non-analytic naturalism seems to avoid many of the standard objections to naturalism, but the Just Too Different intuition is resilient in the face of non-analytic naturalism, for even if one thinks that normative concepts are not analyzable at all, one might think that clarity about the concepts can show that naturalism is hopeless. I therefore think it is important for naturalists to address the intuition directly. In this paper, I argue that the intuition plausibly rests on certain characteristic pre-theoretical ways of thinking of the normative properties that we acquire in the ordinary course of moral learning, together with a drive to vindicate these ways of thinking, something of which people may be unaware. This drive to vindicate our ways of thinking is pervasive, and it is characteristic of rational agents. It explains our tendency to think well of those we love, for example, and to think ill of those with whom we are angry. It also explains a strong inclination to form beliefs that, if true, would seemingly vindicate our ways of thinking of normative properties. A result of this, I contend, is the intuition that normative naturalism cannot be true. Yet, as I further argue, the vindication process does not track the truth and the drive to vindicate our states of mind cannot be relied on as a guide to the metaphysics of normativity.
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Notes
I proposed these ideas in an earlier paper (Copp 2018), but I here develop them in a somewhat more sophisticated way.
I was helped here by Speaks (2014).
On a neo-Fregean view, the utilitarian naturalist could maintain that the belief that lying fails to maximize the general welfare is distinct from the belief that lying is wrong even though wrongness is identical to the property of failing to maximize the general welfare. Fine-grained views of belief-individuation are controversial, however, so I set this aside.
I am here thinking of reference broadly so that, for example, we can say that predicates “refer” to properties.
I might add that forms of reductive normative naturalism, such as UNN, are committed to there also being a naturalistic WOT of wrongness. Different versions of moral naturalism disagree as to which naturalistic WOT represents wrongness.
The philosophical view that normative requirements are a source of “categorical reasons”—reasons that are, roughly, binding on a person regardless of her preferences—aims, I think, to articulate this WOT.
On my view, the property of being a (relevantly) authoritative standard is the property (roughly) of being a standard the currency of which in society would do most to enable the society to meet its needs (Copp 1995, 2007). But as a nonanalytic naturalist, I do not hold that this claim about the property is underwritten by a philosophical analysis of the concept of an authoritative moral standard.
Bratman seems to accept the possibility of an agent who has a policy without knowing this about herself (2007, 191–194). I here set aside this complication.
Julia Telles de Menezes reminded me (in discussion) that Michael Smith views a desire to do what one believes to be right as fetishistic (Smith 1994: 75). Perhaps he would also view a policy of avoiding wrongdoing as fetishistic. A discussion of this issue would take me too far afield.
A WOT of wrongness is a WOT of a property that actions have if and only if they are cases of wrongdoing. For simplicity, I will often blur the distinction between a WOT of wrongness and a WOT of wrongdoing.
I am grateful to Peter Railton for helping me to think about how best to characterize the internal normative WOTs and for pointing out problems with earlier characterizations.
Moreover, we do not begin by attempting to teach children a theory about the metaethics of wrongness, such as the utilitarian naturalist’s view about the property of wrongness. To teach that wrongness is the property of undermining the general welfare—rather than merely teaching our pupils to use “wrong” to mean “undermines the general welfare”—we need first to be sure that our pupils have the basic WOT of wrongness.
Of course, a person with the internal WOT of wrongness may believe both that lying is wrong and that lying is a kind of action that deserves to be avoided in the way she herself is motivated to avoid wrong actions due to her policy of so acting, because actions of that kind are wrong. Obviously the latter belief has a different propositional content than the belief that lying is wrong.
See Al Mele’s discussion of the similar example of Wilma (Mele 1993: 23–24).
I am grateful to Zoe Drayson for this reference.
The example is based on one developed by Smith (1994: 106).
Awareness of the operation of the vindication process often would undermine belief in a rational person, but not always, and in any case I take it that a bigot is not rational in the relevant way.
I thank an anonymous referee for urging me to discuss this idea here and for offering this formulation. Parfit suggests that, just as the concept of heat rules out as impossible the idea that heat is a cabbage, so the normative concepts rule out as impossible the idea that normative properties are natural ones (Parfit 2011, vol II: 325). Of course it is hard to take seriously the idea that naturalists are guilty of a gross conceptual error akin to confusing heat with a vegetable.
One might conjecture that Parfit’s suggestion is itself a product of the drive for vindication. It might seemingly vindicate the Just Too Different intuition.
The account in Laskowski (2017), complements the account I have given.
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Acknowledgements
Versions of the paper were presented to the Tenth Symposium on Ethics and Political Philosophy, Center for Ethics and Philosophy of Mind, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Itatiaia National Park, Brazil; to the Rio-2015 Metaethics Conference; and to the Departments of Philosophy at York University, the University of Calgary, the University of Texas at Arlington, and Stanford University. I am grateful to members of these audiences for helpful discussion, and especially to Ali Kazmi, Adam Sennet, Teemu Toppinen, and several anonymous referees for their detailed comments. In addition, I would like to thank Paul Bloomfield, Christian Coons, Zoe Drayson, Simon Kirchin, Nicholas Laskowski, David McNaughton, Wilson Mendonça, Claudia Passos, David Plunkett, Peter Railton, Julia Telles de Menezes, Fabio Shecaira, Paul Teller, and members of the Davis discussion group in ethics, for helpful suggestions and comments.
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Copp, D. Just too different: normative properties and natural properties. Philos Stud 177, 263–286 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1189-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1189-1