Abstract
In a series of influential essays, Sharon Street has argued, on the basis of Darwinian considerations, that normative realism leads to skepticism about moral knowledge. I argue that if we begin with the account of moral knowledge provided by Aristotelian naturalism, then we can offer a satisfactory realist response to Street’s argument, and that Aristotelian naturalism can avoid challenges facing other realist responses. I first explain Street’s evolutionary argument and three of the most prominent realist responses, and I identify challenges to each of those responses. I then develop an Aristotelian response to Street. My core claim is this: Given Aristotelian naturalism’s account of moral truth and our knowledge of it, we can accept the influence of evolutionary processes on our moral beliefs, while also providing a principled, non-question-begging reason for thinking that those basic evaluative tendencies that evolution has left us with will push us toward, rather than away from, realist moral truths, so that our reliably getting things right does not require an unexplained and implausible coincidence.
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Notes
For a helpful recent overview, see Wielenberg (2016).
For ease of exposition, I will treat Aristotelian naturalism (AN) as synonymous with Aristotelianism.
For instance, Foot (2001) interprets Nietzsche as accepting the formal framework of natural goodness, while developing a substantive conception of human good that differs from her own.
An exception to this is Setiya (2012), but my appeal to AN is very different from his.
Street sometimes refers to “evaluative realism” rather than normative realism, but I take it that these are same position.
There is a further twist, since a Kantian antirealist denies that an ideally coherent Caligula is possible. But Street’s own view is “Humean antirealism,” and the distinction between Humean and Kantian antirealism will not be crucial to my essay.
See e.g. Shafer-Landau (2012, 33).
I take this label from Cuneo (2014).
As Street says, “Given the odds we can reasonably suppose to be in play in this ‘normative lottery’ case, we should conclude that in all probability we didn’t win” (Street 2016, 315).
I offer my own analysis of what is wrong with no content in Sect. 5.
It is not enough, Vavova argues, for Street to establish the weaker claim that we have no good reason to think that our beliefs are true.
Or at least it would be a derivative and non-paradigm instance of good action. The claims in this paragraph apply to adult human action, which I take to be “acting well” in the fullest sense.
See Foot (2001, 12–13).
See Thompson (2008, part I).
Certain cases might seem to stand in the way of connecting the good of and good for in this way. Isn’t it good for a tiger to be given nutritious food in a zoo, rather than to face the difficult task of hunting as the naturally good tiger does? Wouldn’t it be good for a tiger if it could run 150mph, although that is certainly not required for being good as a tiger? What if a tiger was given the capacity to philosophize or to enjoy literature? Wouldn’t that be good for the tiger, even though such things are clearly not part of the naturally good life-cycle of “the tiger”? For a response to such examples on behalf of AN, see Groll and Lott (2015).
In saying this, we need not suppose that humans first acquire a “blueprint” for living well and then implement that blueprint as the “Grand End” of all their deliberations.
As Michael Thompson says, “Of course we have no way of judging what practical thoughts and what range of upbringings might be characteristic of the human, and sound in a human, except through application of our fundamental practical judgments—judgments about what makes sense and what might count as a reason and so forth.” Thompson (2004, 73). See also Lott (2012).
Cf. MacIntyre: “[F]or us human beings it is because we do have reasons for action prior to any reflection, the kinds of reasons that we share with dolphins and chimpanzees, that we have an initial matter for reflection, a starting point for the transition to rationality which a mastery of some of the complexities of language can provide” (1999, 56).
In his response to Street, Enoch (2010) concedes that his view requires a “small miracle.” I thank an anonymous reviewer for Philosophical Studies for pressing me to consider whether Aristotelian naturalism requires a miracle of its own.
See the second epigram to this paper.
AN holds that the normative authority of moral considerations does not derive from an individual’s particular commitments, and indifference or hostility toward morality implies a rational defect. In this respect, AN is different from the “society-centered” moral naturalism of David Copp. See Copp (2007) and Copp (2008). In the context of Street’s argument, this difference is important. It means that AN is not vulnerable to the same rejoinder that Street makes to Copp. Rather, AN is an “uncompromising normative realism” in Street’s sense. See Street (2008).
See the first epigram to this paper.
I owe this phrase to Joshua McBee.
This does not mean that every moral truth is about what will directly benefit the agent. On the contrary, it might well belong to humans to act directly for the benefit of others.
In some of her early essays, Philippa Foot begins by reflecting on moral belief and moral argument, and she observes that the content of moral concepts is systematically related to the good of human beings. Then, noting that not just anything can count as harm and benefit for human beings, she points out that not just anything can count as a moral concept or moral consideration. Rather than begin, as I have done, with an account that stipulates the realm of moral truth as that of human good, Foot works her way toward that idea, by considering moral belief and argument. But with respect to ruling out no content, the upshot is the same.
For another argument against no content, see Cuneo and Shafer-Landau (2014).
I take this phrase from Street (2008).
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Acknowledgements
For helpful feedback on earlier versions of this paper, I thank: Anne Baril, Talbot Brewer, Jorge Garcia, Daniel Groll, John Hacker-Wright, Rosalind Hursthouse, Richard Kim, Mark LeBar, Matthew Lockerman, Joshua McBee, Daniel McKaughan, and Roger Teichmann. I am also grateful to audiences at University of Oslo, The Catholic University of America, and University of Virginia.
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Lott, M. Must realists be skeptics? An Aristotelian reply to a Darwinian Dilemma. Philos Stud 175, 71–96 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0856-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-017-0856-y