Abstract
Some versions of moral naturalism are faulted for implausibly denying that moral obligations and prescriptions entail categorical reasons for action. Categorical reasons for action are normative reasons that exist and apply to agents independently of whatever desires they have. I argue that several defenses of moral naturalism against this charge are unsuccessful. To be a tenable meta-ethical theory, moral naturalism must accommodate the proposition that, necessarily, if anyone morally ought to do something, then s/he has a categorical reason to do it. Versions of moral naturalism that deny this claim would, if widely believed, disable some crucial practical uses of moral concepts. In particular, if the existence of normative reasons for action is taken to be dependent on agents’ desires, it would breed profound skepticism about the legitimacy of evaluating others’ actions from a moral point of view. Also, it would raise doubts about whether people ought to correct their own behavior in light of moral considerations. Following Richard Joyce, I take these consequences to indicate that the concept of a categorical reason is a “non-negotiable” part of moral concepts.
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Notes
The term “moral naturalism” is often used to refer to a broader set of views than moral realism. That set may include non-realist views committed to a naturalistic approach to the study of morality. Versions of meta-ethical constructivism (e.g., Wong 2006) and expressivism (e.g., Gibbard 1990) may fall into this family. Some readers may reasonably consider the term “naturalistic moral realism” to be a more precise name for the view I discuss in this paper. Still, as James Lenman notes in the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, the “moral naturalism” label is “more usually reserved for naturalistic forms of moral realism according to which there are objective moral facts and properties and these moral facts and properties are natural facts and properties” (Lenman 2006). I use the “moral naturalism” label in the same way.
However, there are also quite a few moral naturalists who deny the Humean theory of reasons, and allow for the existence of categorical reasons for action (e.g., Foot 2001). The views of these naturalists are not threatened by the criticisms I develop here.
A pro tanto normative reason for action is a normative reason that may be outweighed in rational deliberation by another, stronger normative reason favoring a different action.
In this construal of the authority of morality, I leave unspecified the type of necessary connection that is supposed to hold between an action that one morally ought to do and a normative reason one has to do the action. Many philosophers take it to be a conceptually necessary connection: i.e., as a matter of conceptual necessity, if an agent morally ought to do φ, then that agent has a normative reason to do φ. However, I will consider interpretations of the authority of morality that don’t take it to be a conceptually necessary truth that an agent has a normative reason to do what he or she morally ought to do. Mark Schroeder’s idea of the “strong modal status” of reasons to act morally is a less stringent understanding of the necessary connection between moral “oughts” and normative reasons. In Sect. 6, I argue that the Humean theory of reasons is incompatible even with this weaker interpretation of the authority of morality.
In Sect. 6, however, I will consider—and reject—Mark Schroeder’s view that moral “oughts” do not entail categorical reasons, even though moral “oughts” are authoritative and inescapable.
Brink is a moral naturalist, but he is not a proponent of the Humean theory of reasons. In fact, he’s a critic of the HTR (cf. Brink 1989: 64–66). Here I discuss some passages in Brink’s work as an objection to the “non-negotiability” argument. The “non-negotiability” argument claims that moral concepts could not perform their characteristic uses, unless moral obligations and prescriptions were believed to be both authoritative and inescapable. But Brink suggests there might be a way that moral concepts can perform their characteristic uses, even if morality was not believed to be authoritative. In Sect. 5, I argue that this suggestion is implausible.
I thank Andrew Forcehimes for advising me to discuss this more recent development in Schroeder’s thinking.
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This article was written with the support of a Start-Up Grant funded by the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.
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Luco, A.C. Non-negotiable: Why moral naturalism cannot do away with categorical reasons. Philos Stud 173, 2511–2528 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0626-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-016-0626-2