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Naturalism and Moral Reasons
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 January 2020
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Why are traditional ‘objectivist’ theories of morality, such as those put forward by Aristotle, or Kant, or even Bentham, commonly thought not to pass ‘scientific muster’ insofar as they are not ‘naturalist’? My interest in this question is based on my being a moral objectivist, but answering this question is one that moral skeptics should be as interested in as I. The view that the commitments of science preclude us from accepting such theories is the basis of the moral skeptic's position. Yet showing what is wrong with a moral objectivist position is surprisingly difficult. It involves reflecting on what ‘scientific muster’ is supposed to be, and on why a theory is commonly thought to be disreputable unless it passes it. It also involves locating the ‘queer’ element in objectivist moral theory that makes it scientifically disreputable. Yet, as I hope to show in this article, there is no commonly accepted statement of what makes a theory scientifically acceptable or unacceptable, and (perhaps even more surprisingly) no rigorous account of what the queer component of objectivist moral theory is that makes any such theory scientifically unacceptable.
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References
1 Harman, Gilbert “Is There a Single True Morality?” in Copp, David and Zimmerman, David eds., Morality, Reason and Truth (Totowa, NJ: Roman and Allanheld, 1985) 29Google Scholar
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5 The phrase ‘allowed by’ here is ambiguous: naturalists could make it precise in a number of ways. At one extreme, they could argue that it means merely ‘consistent with,’ which would yield a very broad conception of the natural; at the other extreme, they could argue that it means ‘explicable in terms of,’ which would yield a very narrow conception of the natural.
6 I am following Harman in wishing to include moral nihilism among the possible naturalist positions in ethics. See Harman, “Is There a Single True Morality?“ loe. cit. Contrast Nicholas Sturgeon's use of the term, which would recognize only those positions that believe reduction or analysis of moral terms into scientifically acceptable statements count as naturalist theories. See Sturgeon, “Moral Explanations,” in Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey ed., Essays on Moral Realism (Ithaca: Cornell University Press 1988) 229-55Google Scholar.
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21 Ibid., 10.
22 Ibid.
23 Sturgeon, “Moral Explanations“
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31 It may be that some of those who adopt the first definition are implicitly doing so because they have a substantive conception of what counts as natural, and insofar as they assume that scientific theories will always describe what is natural in this sense, they take it that these theories are a reliable guide to what actually exists.
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43 Ibid., 20
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50 Putnam argues against Williams by attacking the metaphysical realism inherent in the view. But the quarrel between metaphysical realists and (what Putnam calls) ‘internal’ realists (or idealists, broadly understood) is irrelevant to the debate about the relationship between science and ethics. One can be an internal realist, or an idealist, and still deny that there are ethical truths (imagine a Kantian who disavows the Second Critique), or one can be an internal realist and accept such truths. Defending a certain metaphysics does not by itself save the idea that there can be ethical truths if there is something about the world - understood either in a realist, or an idealist way - that disqualifies ethical statements from being true or false.
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53 This article is, in a way, an introduction to my own attempt to articulate what, from a scientific point of view, is ‘wrong’ with objectivist moral theories. See Hampton, A Theory of Reasons (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, forthcoming)Google Scholar. Now I am a moral objectivist, and moral skeptics may be dubious about the attempts of an objectivist to explain what is unnatural about objectivist moral theory. However, my aim in this book is to agree with them that objectivist moral theories contain occult, nonnatural elements, but I go on to show that the same occult, nonnatural elements occur, and must occur, in scientific theories. My thanks go to Richard Healey, James Bogen, Ernan McMullin, and the graduate students in my seminars at the University of Arizona for discussion of the ideas in this article. I am also very grateful to the Pew Charitable Trusts, for their grant support (through their Evangelical Scholars Program) during much of the time this article was written.