Naturalism and the Projectability Challenge

Journal of Moral Philosophy 20 (1-2):31-46 (2022)
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Abstract

In a recent paper in this journal, Bengson, Cuneo and Reiser (hereafter bcr) present a novel epistemic challenge to naturalist moral realism, which they call the Projectability Challenge. The Projectability Challenge aims to show that there is an important epistemic phenomenon, projectability, that naturalists are unable to explain, but which non-naturalists can explain. This flips a familiar dynamic on its head, since it is typically argued that the moral naturalist has epistemic advantages over the moral non-naturalist (see, e.g., Joyce 2006, Ch. 6; Bedke 2009). In this response, I argue that bcr dramatically underestimate the theoretical resources available to naturalists to explain the phenomenon of projectability. While bcr argue that no variety of moral naturalism can explain projectability, I contend that all varieties of moral naturalism can explain projectability. There is no projectability problem for any kind of naturalist realism.

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References found in this work

Moral realism.Peter Railton - 1986 - Philosophical Review 95 (2):163-207.
Intuitive non-naturalism meets cosmic coincidence.Matthew S. Bedke - 2009 - Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 90 (2):188-209.

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