Abstract
Metaethicists of all stripes should read and learn from Richard Joyce’s book The Evolution of Morality. This includes moral realists, despite Joyce’s own nihilism. Joyce thinks that moral obligations, prohibitions, and the like are myths. But that is just a bit of a rich, broad account of moral attitudes and practices, the bulk of which can comfortably be accepted by realists. In fact, other than nihilism itself, there’s only one claim of Joyce’s which realists must reject. I argue that that claim ought to be rejected, and reply to Joyce’s argument to the contrary. The result is that—aside from nihilism and one rejectable claim—realists are free to take from Joyce whatever they like.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Throughout, unless otherwise noted, page numbers reference this.
Though Joyce defends nihilism in The Myth of Morality (2001), in The Evolution of Morality he claims merely to be defending moral skepticism (p. 223). However, if his argument succeeds, it doesn’t just show that we aren’t justified in believing that moral properties are instantiated, it shows that they couldn’t be.
When I use “target” I mean “intrinsic target”: what the myth is about, and not just because it is about something else to which the first item bears a relation. For instance, the USA is the target of a myth of divine favor. But there’s a sense in which that myth is also about the Earth, and the Milky Way: that they contain a divinely favored nation.
I say that the targets of the myth of wrongness “tend to be” behaviors of the cited sorts because the targets vary from person to person.
Wrongishness so defined is of course vague, but there are clear cases. For instance, brutally betraying an erstwhile friend to facilitate hedonistic enjoyment of their hard-earned stuff is clearly wrongish, whereas ordinary finger-snapping clearly isn’t. Note that the disjuncts of wrongishness come in degrees, so it does as well: the more coercive, brutal, negligent, etc. behavior is, the more wrongish.
For instance, part of the myth of wrongness is that, necessarily, if x is wrong, we have reason to oppose x. Practically rational agents who accept this myth will thereby be more inclined to oppose wrongish behaviors. Since another part of the myth of wrongness is its inescapability, it evidently does not entail those reasons by virtue of its relation to the agent’s goals. Those who accept the myth think that we have reason to avoid robbing banks—not just because it would ruin our lives, and those of others we care about—but simply because it is wrong.
Since my aim isn’t to give a general defence or a detailed account of Joycean realism I won’t try to further specify which property wrongness is. All the Joycean realist is committed to, so far as this paper goes, is that it is instantiated, natural, inescapable, the target of a myth of clout, and, at least roughly, wrongishness. By “at least roughly” I mean that in at least a great range of cases, x is wrong iff x is wrongish, and when x exemplifies wrongishness to a greater extent than y, x exemplifies wrongness to a greater extent than y. Joyce agrees there are such properties; he just doesn’t think any of them is wrongness. For ease, I drop the “at least roughly” and speak as if, for Joycean realists, wrongness is wrongishness.
A wrinkle must be noted, regarding the claim that Joycean realists and Joyce agree about the targets of the myth of clout. Their metaethical disagreement implies two (potential) differences in their views about those targets. The first is due to the fact that our myths are, sometimes, explicitly about moral properties: we don’t just take this-or-that behavior to have a property with clout, we take those properties to have clout. Joycean realists and Joyce have different views about what we are thereby doing. Realists say that when we affirm “wrongness has clout” we are affirming a myth about an instantiated behavioral property. Joyce says we are merely affirming a conceptual truth about nothing real, like “witches have supernatural powers”. Thus, there is an instantiated behavioral property, taken as real by both parties, which realists say is the target of a myth of clout, but which Joyce does not (or at least need not—he might, coincidently). The second possible disagreement is due to the fact that, sometimes, we take behaviors to have a property with clout because we take them to be wrong. In such cases, Joyce affirms and realists deny that those behaviors are targets of the myth of clout. For the realists, although the myth is about those behaviors, it is about them because of their relation to something else real it is about (wrongness), and thus it does not target them (see footnote 3). For Joyce, the myth does target those behaviors, since taking them to be wrong is taking them to have a mythical property. Note that Joycean realists needn’t, and shouldn’t, think that behaviors taken to have a property with clout are always so taken because they are taken to be wrong (or to have some other moral status). The thought that x has a property with clout and the thought that x is wrong may occur independently, just as the thought that x is hated by God and the thought that x is wrong may occur independently, even if one also thinks that wrongness is hated by God. (Although the differences between Joyce and Joycean realists just cited are about a contingent, empirical matter—the targets of the myth of clout—it would necessarily beg the question to cite the empirical facts in favor of one’s view. For the metaethical facts determine these empirical facts.).
Following Joyce, I use “authority” to name the claim that moral properties have authority, i.e., entail reasons.
Joyce never denies that moral claims like that Trawick is obligated are prima facie credible. In both (2001) and (2006) he considers defenses of moral knowledge which cite epistemic conservativism (negative coherentism): that the default status of beliefs is to be justified (see Geoffrey Sayre-McCord’s (1996) for a vigorous defense of negative coherentism in moral epistemology). Joyce says he has “no bone to pick” with the principle but suggests that his arguments overcome that default in the case of moral beliefs (2001, p. 170; see also 2006, p. 216).
To be precise, the plausibility of the claim that Trawick is obligated suggests that if descriptivism is true, realism is true.
I’m happy to say that authority is itself a moral claim, as much as are the utilitarian claim and the claims about legal and epistemic conditions on obligatoriness. A reviewer has pointed out that taking the form of the claim (obligatoriness entails X) to suffice for being moral has the counterintuitive implication that nonnaturalism itself entails certain moral claims; for instance, the claim that obligatoriness entails the instantiation of a certain nonnatural property is by that criterion moral. I would suggest that that is a moral claim, and that moral counterexamples to nonnaturalism can thus be cited, such as that Nazi atrocities were wrong despite not having instantiated any nonnatural properties (of course these counterexamples have only prima facie weight). What makes it seem so odd to label this implication of nonnaturalism a “moral claim”, I suggest, is three things. First, the condition it places on obligatoriness is far more abstract than that typically cited by moral claims. Second, the methods by which it is typically supported are radically different than those typically employed to support moral claims. Nonnaturalists tend not to rely on moral intuition, but on a variety of other considerations (as the metaethical literature attests). Third, the purposes served by asserting it are very different than those typically served by asserting a moral claim; for instance, not to guide action, but to reveal the nature of moral properties. In any event, what’s crucial is not whether authority is properly categorized as moral, but whether moral claims are relevant to our assessment of it.
I suggested in the prior note that in affirming authority, Joyce is affirming a moral claim. Even if that’s true, however, his affirmation doesn’t conflict with his nihilism. Authority is a modal conditional, which doesn’t entail that there are, or even could be, obligations. Joyce can thus affirm it, as atheists can affirm that if God wants us to x, we thereby have a reason to x.
Of course, it may be that philosophers dislike the argument against authority because they accept internalism but want authority to be true. To this, one can hardly do better than cite the last sentence of Joyce’s book: “If uncomfortable truths are out there, we should seek them and face them like intellectual adults, rather than eschewing open-minded inquiry or fabricating philosophical theories whose only virtue is the promise of providing the soothing news that all our heartfelt beliefs are true” (p. 231).
This section amounts to a defense of Foot’s (1972) suggestion that “we should be less troubled than we are by fear of defection from the moral cause” in the event of widespread rejection of the authority (in Foot’s terms, the categoricity) of morality (p. 315).
At one point Joyce does seem to deny non-myth-based concern. On pp. 114ff. he considers David Lahti’s (2003) challenge to explain “why natural selection did not simply make humans with stronger desires that directly favor cooperation” rather than giving us a myth of clout. Instead of saying it did both, Joyce seems to suggest that, on his view, the way natural selection made us care about cooperation was by giving us the myth of clout. But this is in tension with what he says elsewhere.
This is presumably one reason Joyce agrees that “most of us, in most circumstances, … have firm and entrenched reasons to avoid acting in the ways that are generally thought of as “morally wrong” …” (pp. 206–207). However, he does not say to what extent he takes these reasons to stem from non-myth-based concern.
Of course not all of our motives for making moral judgments stem from our estimate of our reasons to care about the targets of the myth of clout. We might, for instance, want to ingratiate ourselves with others by displaying our moral attitudes about those targets. Insofar as our motives aren’t due to our estimates of our reasons, demythologization wouldn’t undermine them at all—at least so far as Joyce shows—since internalism undercuts only motives derived from those estimates.
Joyce’s discusses the three throughout Chaps. 1–4; but see, especially, Sects. 2.6 and 3.4 (for the first), 4.2 (for the second), and 4.3 (for the third). Obviously I can give only the most partial sketch here.
See Joyce’s discussion of Robin Dunbar’s ‘gossip hypothesis’ about the origin of language (pp. 88ff).
Note that the certainty and stringency of wrong-judgments can help them perform the first and third functions as well as the second. Ceteris paribus, the more certain Mary is that x is wrong, and the more wrong she takes x to be, the more others will expect x to be wrongish, and the more wrongish they will expect x to be. Also, the more they will suppose that she dislikes x, and the stronger the dislike they will suppose her to have.
See footnote 17.
The problem is that the argument he relies on to establish the distinctive “institution-transcendence” of reasons is in a single, obscure paragraph (p. 195). Three things are clear about that argument. First, Joyce thinks we have a reason to x iff correct reasoning would result in our having the relevant pro-attitude to x. Second, he thinks that there is a certain skeptical challenge (“what is that to me?”) which makes sense about moral facts as naturalism without clout conceives them but doesn’t make sense about facts about what we would have the relevant pro-attitude to if we reasoned correctly. Reasons are thus immune to the skeptical challenge. Third, Joyce takes that immunity to be what establishes their institution-transcendence. However, there are many unclarities about how the argument is supposed to go. First, it’s not clear whether the correct reasoning Joyce means is theoretical or practical. He claims that “doubting or questioning in general”—i.e., not just about normative matters—“evinces certain commitments to [the relevant] standards of correct reasoning” (p. 195). This suggests he means theoretical reasoning. However, elsewhere he explicitly refers to “correct practical reasoning” being at issue (p. 196). Second, it’s not clear whether the relevant pro-attitude is desire-like or belief-like. At times he speaks of it as desire-like: “were I to reason correctly I would want to Φ” (p. 195). At other times he speaks of it as belief-like: “if he reasoned correctly he would come to the conclusion that it is acceptable to…” (p. 196). Third, the nature of the skeptical challenge is unclear. It has to do with whether the relevant facts necessarily “carry deliberative weight”, or represent “genuine deliberative consideration[s]”, or “practical consideration[s]” (p. 195). This makes it sound as if the challenge is to show that the facts are necessarily reason-giving. If so, then morality’s failure to meet the challenge—and thus its ‘institution-dependence’—would amount to nothing more than its lack of authority. It may be that the challenge is to show that we necessarily care about the facts in question; i.e., to establish a kind of motivational internalism. But motivational externalism does not entail any kind of institution-dependence. Although I do not here have the space to consider all possible construals of Joyce’s argument, I cannot see that any interesting kind of institution-dependence is in the offing. Moreover, even if it were, the claim that moral facts are institution-dependent itself seems to conflict with realism. If so, then supporting the practical debunking argument by citing morality’s institution-dependence would be superfluous, as realism would already have been dispatched.
Another problem with the argument is that it may not be true that naturalists can’t say that moral discourse “adds something substantial” beyond the picking out of natural properties. One may adopt a view like Copp’s (2001) realist-expressivism, according to which moral discourse facilitates the expression of attitudes as well as talk of natural properties. Joyce himself suggests such a view (pp. 53ff.).
Joyce suggests that naturalism without clout implies that “moral discourse could be replaced by a language simply of wants and needs” (p. 244). Not so. For instance, replacing “wrong” with nonmoral words would require words for wrongishness, if Joycean realism is true.
See also his suggestion that the impact of demythologization on our system of (currently) moral judgments would give us “grounds for doubting that such a framework counts as a “moral” system at all” (p. 202).
For more on this kind of motivational internalism see my (2009).
Indeed, he makes no explicit mention of judgment internalism at all in his presentation of the argument, which is one reason why it’s not clear that this is the correct interpretation. Joyce seems to have had more than one argument in mind.
If an assassin made a map of Los Angeles with homes of celebrities marked with big stars—to guide her killing spree—her map might have the very same content as a tourist map, but it still wouldn’t be a tourist map. Contrast “tourist map” with “world map”, which is a purely content-based characterization. For further discussion, see my (2009).
References
Copp, D. (2001). Realist-expressivism: A neglected option for moral realists. Social Philosophy & Policy, 18, 1–43. doi:10.1017/S0265052500002880.
Foot, P. (1972). Morality as a system of hypothetical imperatives. The Philosophical Review, 81(3), 305–316. doi:10.2307/2184328.
Joyce, R. (2001). The myth of morality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Joyce, R. (2006). The evolution of morality. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
Lahti, D. C. (2003). Parting with illusions in evolutionary ethics. Biology and Philosophy, 18, 639–651. doi:10.1023/A:1026356412003.
Sayre-McCord, G. (1996). Coherentist epistemology and moral theory. In W. Sinnott-Armstrong & M. Timmons (Eds.), Moral knowledge? New readings in moral epistemology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Tresan, J. (2009). The challenge of communal internalism. The Journal of Value Inquiry (forthcoming).
Acknowledgements
So many people have contributed to this paper by giving me feedback on it, or discussing the ideas therein, that I despair of thanking them all. Special thanks go to David Copp, Andrew Johnson, Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Gene Witmer, and a reviewer for Philosophical Studies.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Tresan, J. Question authority: in defense of moral naturalism without clout. Philos Stud 150, 221–238 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9382-x
Received:
Accepted:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-009-9382-x