Abstract
The aim of this paper is to assess the relationship between anti-physicalist arguments in the philosophy of mind and anti-naturalist arguments in metaethics, and to show how the literature on the mind-body problem can inform metaethics. Among the questions we will consider are: (1) whether a moral parallel of the knowledge argument can be constructed to create trouble for naturalists, (2) the relationship between such a “Moral Knowledge Argument” and the familiar Open Question Argument, and (3) how naturalists can respond to the Moral Twin Earth argument. We will give particular attention to recent arguments in the philosophy of mind that aim to show that anti-physicalist arguments can be defused by acknowledging a distinctive kind of conceptual dualism between the phenomenal and the physical. This tactic for evading anti-physicalist arguments has come to be known as the Phenomenal Concept Strategy. We will propose a metaethical version of this strategy, which we shall call the ‘Moral Concept Strategy’. We suggest that the Moral Concept Strategy offers the most promising way out of these anti-naturalist arguments, though significant challenges remain.
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Notes
Synthetic naturalists, who are the target of this paper, accept this. They hold that knowing how everything in the world functions won’t enable one to settle the moral facts. By contrast, complete information of how the world functions enables one to work out the referents of ‘water’ and other functional role terms. One could deny this asymmetry—see, e.g., Jackson and Pettit (1995); Jackson (2000)—but since we are assuming that the epistemic and explanatory gaps should be taken seriously, such views are not the target of our paper. (Note also that while Jackson and Pettit (1995, p. 28) seek to address the Open Question Argument by pointing out that on their view it’s an a posteriori matter what physical properties fill the various moral functional roles, the Open Question Argument could be reapplied to their specifications of the functional roles themselves.)
In a play on C-fibers, we’re taking the firing of “R-fibers” to stand in for whatever actually goes on in our brains when we have red experiences.
This same analogy to standard a posteriori identities has been—and continues to be—used by metaethicists in responding to the Open Question Argument. For example, Schroeder (2007, p. 72) writes:
Moore’s Open Question argument \(\ldots\) is hard to take seriously, once we clarify that reduction is a metaphysical thesis, rather than one about our normative concepts. \(\ldots\) All of the Open Question tests for cognitive significance distinguish between Hesperus and Phosphorus \(\ldots\) But no one concludes that Hesperus is not Phosphorus.
The thought is that goodness just is desire satisfaction (say), even though we can only come to know this identity fact a posteriori, just as in the case of water-H2O and Hesperus-Phosphorus.
Note that Mary is only understood to have general physical knowledge. Her background knowledge does not include specific facts like the reflectance properties of the particular piece of paper we brought into her room.
As, e.g., when someone with the concept Barack Obama and the perceptual concept That Guy realizes that that guy is Barack Obama. See Perry (2003). (Though the knowledge that Mary acquires is general knowledge about what red looks like, rather than merely particular knowledge about the object in question. She isn’t just attributing a property to a particular object, rather, she’s merging her perceptual and descriptive-scientific ways of knowing about redness.)
Even if you think that the Knowledge Argument succeeds in demonstrating the stronger conclusion of ontological dualism, it presumably still requires a conceptual dualism between the phenomenal and the physical.
This isn’t quite right. Even if Moral-Mary would be competent in applying her moral concepts from the moment she woke after the operation, she will not yet be able to identify her moral concepts with non-moral concepts. This is in common with the case of phenomenal-physical identifications, and in contrast with cases like the identification of water and H2O. If someone knew all the H2O facts, but lacked a concept of water, all we would need to do was give them a concept of water to enable them to derive that water = H2O.
Note that this is compatible with Copp (2003)’s rejection of empirically indefeasible or “strongly a priori” moral knowledge.
This substantively rational agent will thus be one who has the substantively correct rational intuitions.
Again, in the sense of being substantive truths that can be justifiably believed in the absence of empirical evidence.
It’s interesting to note that because the moral truths are not “rationally isolated” from the natural truths (as the phenomenal truths are from the physical truths), we cannot construct a moral parallel of the conceivability argument. This is particularly interesting because in the philosophy of mind, the Knowledge Argument and Conceivability Arguments are taken to be closely related. The fact that they do not similarly go together in metaethics highlights the importance of the distinction between rational and conceptual isolation. (A related contrast: metaethical non-naturalists agree that the moral facts supervene on the natural facts, whereas mind-body dualists deny that the phenomenal metaphysically supervenes on the physical.) According to the conceivability argument:
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A fully rational agent with complete physical (i.e. non-phenomenal) information can conceive of a world physically just like ours, but with no conscious experiences.
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Ideal conceivability entails metaphysical possibility.
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So such a world is metaphysically possible.
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But then it’s metaphysically possible for a world to be physically just like ours, but lack phenomenal experiences.
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So physicalism is false: the physical facts do not exhaust the facts.
Consider a straightforward moral adaptation. Could a fully rational agent, with complete non-moral information conceive of a world that’s just like ours in all non-moral respects, but differs from ours morally (perhaps in which nothing is right/wrong/ good/bad/etc.)? The answer seems to be ‘no’. For this to be conceivable, moral concepts would need to be rationally isolated. And they are not. So the “Moral Conceivability Argument” doesn’t get off the ground.
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Acknowledgments
Thanks to Tristram McPherson, David Faraci, Frank Jackson, Philip Pettit, and Michael Smith, for helpful comments and discussion.
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Yetter-Chappell, H., Chappell, R.Y. Mind-body meets metaethics: a moral concept strategy. Philos Stud 165, 865–878 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9984-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11098-012-9984-6