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Against reductive ethical naturalism

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Abstract

This paper raises an objection to two important arguments for reductive ethical naturalism. Reductive ethical naturalism is the view that ethical properties reduce to the properties countenanced by the natural and social sciences. The main arguments for reductionism in the literature hold that ethical properties reduce to natural properties by supervening on them, either because supervenience is alleged to guarantee identity via mutual entailment, or because non-reductive supervenience relations render the supervenient properties superfluous. After carefully characterizing naturalism and reductionism, we will present, explain, and raise objections against each of the main reductionist arguments: (a) that supervenience does not support the claim that ethical properties and their subvenient natural properties are mutually entailing; (b) that reductive views undermine the claim that ethical properties yield resemblance; and (c) that supervenience does not entail that non-descriptive ethical properties are superfluous in the most fundamental sense.

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Notes

  1. See, for example, Boyd (1988), Brink (1984), Brink (1989), Copp (2003), Jackson (1998), Lycan (1988), Putnam (1981), Railton (1989), Smith (1994), Sturgeon (1985), Sturgeon (2003), and Sturgeon (2006).

  2. See Moore (1903, §25; pp. 90–91), Brandt (1959, p. 152), Brink (1989, pp. 9, 22), Enoch (2011, pp. 134–135), Parfit (2011, p. 265 ff.), Railton (1989, p. 156), Sturgeon (2006, p. 92) (although Sturgeon expresses worries about its cogency).

  3. Shafer-Landau (2003, pp. 59–60). See also pp. 90–94. David Copp and Frank Jackson are notable exceptions to this trend, although ultimately the differences are not terribly significant. According to Copp, ethical naturalism is best understood as the view that knowledge of synthetic ethical propositions is a posteriori. (Copp (2003, p. 181). See also Griffin (1986, p. 3).) Although Copp sees this as an alternative to the received view, it is not out of line with Moore’s idea that the natural properties are those that are possibly subject to investigation in the manner of the natural, empirical sciences. Jackson defends a view he calls “descriptivism,” according to which ethical properties can be defined in terms of predicates (not necessarily properties) that are appropriately descriptive, and according to which descriptiveness is not obviously connected with the results of the natural sciences or a posteriori justification. Jackson is hesitant to describe his view as a version of naturalism but this distinction is more terminological than ontological. (Jackson (1998, pp. 113, 118–123).) In a similar vein, Moore’s later writings contain the suggestion that the difference between ethical properties and natural properties is that natural properties can be deployed in the course of describing their instances in a way that ethical properties cannot. (Moore (1922, p. 274), Moore (1942, pp. 581–592).) Jackson claims that his principal ontological thesis is the same as that of the Cornell Realists, (Jackson (1998, pp. 144–145)), and is the view discussed in Smith (1994) under the name “definitional naturalism,” which Smith characterizes as the view that ethical properties can be defined in terms suitable for describing the subject matter of the natural and social sciences. (Jackson (1998, p. 146) and Smith (1994, pp. 35–39).)

  4. This account of naturalism is potentially problematic for a variety of reasons. It suggests that naturalism is an offshoot of empiricism; it suggests that certain versions of the divine command theory should be classified as non-naturalist, because of the central reference to a supernatural being; that various versions of the ideal observer theory in ethics are instances of non-naturalism, because the criteria for an observer’s counting as ideal, as well as this hypothetical observer’s views and attitudes, are immune to scientific study; and that naturalists should not countenance logical or mathematical properties, which are, presumably, not subject to empirical study. However, it seems to me that, whatever problems there may be with this way of drawing the distinction, the fact that this is how naturalists and non-naturalists alike have agreed to draw it is what is most important. My purpose here is to enter into the dispute between naturalists and non-naturalists as it actually exists, not to propose a shift to a new way of understanding that debate.

  5. Anscombe (1958), Foot (1978), Foot (2001), Geach (1956), Thomson (1997), and Thomson (2001).

  6. See Jackson (1998, p. 141), Sturgeon (2003, pp. 528–529), and Viggiano (2008, p. 214).

  7. See Nagel (1961). This way of conceiving reduction is based on positivist metaphysical and epistemological assumptions, and is not currently popular.

  8. See, for example, Jackson (1998, pp. 122 ff).

  9. See, for example, Fodor (1974, pp. 98–100), Kim (1998, pp. 25–26), and Brink (1989, pp. 157–158). Brink is a non-reductionist who argues that bridge laws are necessary for reduction and that such laws are unavailable.

  10. See Darwall et al. (1992, pp. 171–172) and Brink (1989, pp. 156–157), Brown (2011), and Jackson (1998).

  11. See, for example, Kim (1984, p. 166). See also Kim (1987) and Kim (1990) (reprinted in Kim (1993)).

  12. See Ross (1933, pp. 134–135), Brown (2011), and Jackson (1998, p. 119). See also Kim (1984, p. 168). There is controversy concerning how best to formulate global supervenience so as to capture the intended dependence relation. See, for example, Paull and Sider (1992) and Bennett (2004). These issues are beyond the scope of this paper.

  13. See Jackson (1998, pp. 122–123). See also Smith (1994, p. 36 ff).

  14. Brown (2011).

  15. Jackson (1998, p. 123). Jackson formulates the argument in terms of property identity in Jackson (2001).

  16. See Jackson (1998, pp. 119–123).

  17. Jackson (1998, p. 123).

  18. See Jackson (1998, pp. 123). Jackson acknowledges that ethical vocabulary might nevertheless be indispensable in practice. Brink suggests an argument similar to Jackson’s in Brink (1989, p. 165 fn), and Streumer presents detailed versions of the argument in Streumer (2008, pp. 539–541) and Streumer (2017, pp. 44–47).

  19. Jackson (1998, p. 123).

  20. This proposal mirrors a discussion of these issues as they apply to the multiple realizability of mental properties in Kim (1992, pp. 316–322).

  21. This is not to suggest that a predicate ascribes a property only if it reveals what instances of the property have in common. For example, it is clear that the predicate ‘is water’ successfully expresses the property being water without revealing its nature, and people successfully used that and similar predicates to ascribe being water to various samples of water for thousands of years before we understood that the nature of water is its chemical composition. Rather, the point is that whether a predicate or property is natural depends on whether its instances have anything in common, and if so, whether what they have in common is countenanced by completed, perfected versions of the natural and social sciences. I thank an anonymous referee for pressing for clarity on this issue.

  22. Just to be clear, the Fibonacci sequence is a sequence of integers beginning with 1 and 1, after which each member of the sequence is the sum of the prior two members.

  23. Of course it is controversial whether ethical properties are themselves natural properties. But it would be question-begging in this context for the naturalist to insist that they are.

  24. Streumer (2008, p. 546). Though similar, the argument Streumer discusses there is not identical to the one I am advancing. The argument he discusses is based on the idea that disjunctive properties are not genuine; my argument is based on the view that some, but not all, disjunctive properties are fundamentally non-natural. He also mentions an example involving the Noble Gasses similar to the one I discuss above.

  25. Jackson (1998, p. 124).

  26. Shafer-Landau, Jussi Suikkanen, and Ralph Wedgwood advance similar arguments. See Shafer-Landau (2003, p. 94), Suikkanen (2010, pp. 96–97) and Wedgwood (1999, pp. 208–209).

  27. See Brown (2011, p. 210). Brown doesn’t explain what he means by ‘descriptive,’ but he is explicit that his version of the argument is deeply indebted to Jackson’s discussion, and that he sees his argument as beginning and ending “in the same place as Jackson’s,” though it arrives via a different path. It seems reasonable, therefore, to regard Brown’s “ethical descriptivism” as another name for ethical naturalism, in the same vein as Jackson.

  28. Brown (2011, pp. 210–213).

  29. At the end of Moore (1922), Moore admits that he does not understand what type of necessity this is, although he is convinced that it is not logical necessity.

  30. See Shafer-Landau (2003, pp. 84–89); Brink (1989, p. 160); Enoch (2011, p. 146).

  31. Jackson asserts that something like GES is a priori and necessary, but does not argue for this claim or specify the kind of necessity he has in mind. That GES is a priori is consistent with its being merely metaphysically necessary. Jackson (1998, p.119)

  32. See Mackie (1977, p. 41). For a recent and more detailed example of this kind of argument, see McPherson (2012).

  33. Of course, philosophers have occasionally attempted to deny it. For example, see Sturgeon (2009).

  34. McPherson seems to accept this point. See McPherson (2012, p. 218).

  35. Scanlon makes a similar point in Scanlon (2014, pp. 40–41). I thank an anonymous referee for drawing this to my attention.

  36. Suikkanen makes a similar point in Suikkanen (2010, p. 107), as does McPherson in McPherson (2012, p. 215).

  37. I am grateful to Torin Alter, Tim Cleveland, Mylan Engel, Fred Feldman, Charlie Kurth, Kris McDaniel, Jason Raibley, Michael Rubin, Erik Wielenberg, Chase Wrenn, and the attendees at the poster session at the 5\(^{th}\) annual Rocky Mountain Ethics Congress on August 10, 2012 for valuable discussion of this material.

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Klocksiem, J. Against reductive ethical naturalism. Philos Stud 176, 1991–2010 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-018-1107-6

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