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CONTENTS
ListofContributors
Introduction
I. ABOUT MORAL REALISM AND ITS VARIETIES
Defining Moral Realism
JENNIFER FOSTER AND MARK SCHROEDER
Metaphysical Structure for Moral Realists
TRISTRAM MCPHERSON
Moral Realism and Objectivity
SIGRÚN SVAVARSDÓTTIR
Epistemology for Realists
SARAH MCGRATH
The Bearing of Moral Rationalism on Moral Realism
MICHAEL SMITH
Does Anything We Care about Distinguish the Non-Natural from the Natural?
MARK VAN ROOJEN
Ethical Naturalism, Non-Naturalism, and In-Between
RALPH WEDGWOOD
Can a Moral Judgment Be Moorean?
WILLIAM G. LYCAN
Real Ethics
II. NATURALISM
Ethical Naturalism: Problems and Prospects
LOUISE ANTONY AND ERNESTO V. GARCIA
Ethical Realism and Robust Normativity
DAVID COPP
Moral Functionalism
FRANK JACKSON AND PHILIP PETTIT
Function, Fitness, Flourishing
PAUL BLOOMFIELD
Realism about the Good For Human Beings
L. NANDI THEUNISSEN
III. NON-NATURALISM
Moral Conceptual Truths
JOHN BENGSON, TERENCE CUNEO, AND RUSS SHAFER-LANDAU
Five Kinds of Epistemic Arguments against Robust Moral Realism
JOSHUA SCHECHTER
The Explanatory Roles of Moral Facts and the Case for Moral Realism
ROBERT AUDI
Derek Parfit’s Non-Naturalist Cognitivism
ROGER CRISP
Ardent Moral Realism and the Value-Laden World
WILLIAM J. FITZPATRICK
Oh, All the Wrongs I Could Have Performed! Or: Why Care about Morality, Robustly Realistically Understood
DAVID ENOCH AND ITAMAR WEINSHTOCK SAADON
IV. NEITHER NATURALISM NOR NON-NATURALISM
Response-Dependent Realism
MARK LEBAR
Deflationary Metaethics
PAUL HORWICH
On the Properties of Quietism and Robustness
MATTHEW H. KRAMER
Prospects for a Quietist Moral Realism
MARK D. WARREN AND AMIE L. THOMASSON
Moral Anti-Exceptionalism
TIMOTHY WILLIAMSON
Index
CONTRIBUTORS
Louise Antony, Professor Emerita, University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Robert Audi, John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame
John Bengson, Associate Professor, University of Texas at Austin
Simon Blackburn, formerly Professor of Philosophy at the University of Cambridge, and Edna J. Koury Distinguished Professor of Philosophy at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Paul Bloomfield, Professor, University of Connecticut
David Copp, Distinguished Professor, Emeritus, University of California, Davis
Roger Crisp, Director, Oxford Uehiro Centre for Practical Ethics; Professor of Moral Philosophy, University of Oxford; Uehiro Fellow and Tutor in Philosophy, St. Anne’s College, Oxford
Terence Cuneo, Professor and Marsh Chair of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, University of Vermont
David Enoch, Professor, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem
William J. FitzPatrick, Gideon Webster Burbank Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, University of Rochester
Jennifer Foster, PhD Candidate, University of Southern California
Ernesto V. Garcia, Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Paul Horwich, Professor, New York University
Frank Jackson, Emeritus Professor, Australian National University
Matthew H. Kramer, Professor of Legal and Political Philosophy, Cambridge University
Mark LeBar, Professor, Florida State University
William G. Lycan, William Rand Kenan, Jr. Professor Emeritus, University of North Carolina
Sarah McGrath, Professor, Princeton University
Tristram McPherson, Professor, The Ohio State University
Philip Pettit, L. S. Rockefeller University Professor of Human Values, Princeton University, and Distinguished Professor of Philosophy, Australian National University
Mark van Roojen, Professor, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Joshua Schechter, Professor, Brown University
Mark Schroeder, Professor, University of Southern California
Russ Shafer-Landau, Professor, University of Wisconsin-Madison
Michael Smith, McCosh Professor of Philosophy, Princeton University
Sigrún Svavarsdóttir, Associate Professor, Tufts University
L. Nandi Theunissen, Associate Professor, University of Pittsburgh
Amie L. Thomasson, Daniel P. Stone Professor of Intellectual and Moral Philosophy, Dartmouth College
Mark D. Warren, Associate Professor, Daemen University
Ralph Wedgwood, Professor of Philosophy and Director of the School of Philosophy, University of Southern California
Itamar Weinshtock Saadon, PhD Candidate, Rutgers University
Timothy Williamson, Wykeham Professor of Logic, University of Oxford
INTRODUCTION
DAVID COPP AND PAUL BLOOMFIELD
WHAT is moral realism? And why does it matter whether moral realism is true? These are the questions we will address in this brief introduction. We will also explain the organization of the volume. We begin intuitively, with what we take to be the basic idea that underlies moral realism, and with several considerations that we think motivate it. The basic realist idea requires elaboration and articulation, and we will turn to this task later in the introduction. We conclude with a brief overview of the volume.
The fundamental thought underlying moral realism, we think, can be expressed as a parity thesis.1 There are many kinds of facts, including physical, psychological, mathematical, temporal, and moral facts. In thattheyare facts, they have the same basic metaphysical status, whatever that is. There are many kinds of properties, including physical, psychological, mathematical, temporal, and moral properties. In that they are properties, they have the same basic metaphysical status, whatever thatis. There are also many kinds of judgments, including moral judgments and judgments of the other kinds just listed. In being judgments, they have the same basic metaphysical status, whatever that is. These judgments are all beliefs, and some of our moral beliefs are true. Inthattheyaretrue, they have the same basic metaphysical status as truths about other matters, whatever that is. The parity thesis does not rule out there being a variety of differences among facts and properties of different kinds. It only says that they are facts and properties, and that in this respect they are on a par.
Of course, there are obvious differences between a moral judgment and a judgment about ordinary non-moral matters. Moral judgments are normative and they have a bearing on what to do or
what to choose or how to feel, whereas judgments about ordinary non-moral matters are non-normative. Furthermore, there are obvious differences between moral facts and properties and ordinary, non-moral ones. Many philosophers, including many who are moral realists, would claim in particular that moral facts and properties are too different from ordinary empirical or naturalistic ones for it to be possible that they are empirical or naturalistic ones (Enoch 2011: 4; also Parfit 2011, vol. 2: 325). These ideas and claims are, however, compatible with the realist’s parity thesis. The parity thesis claims only a minimal parity. It says only that there are moral beliefs, just as there are beliefs about other subject matters, and moral facts, and properties, just as there are facts and properties in other domains, and it says that, in being beliefs, facts, and properties, these have the same basic metaphysical status. Realists agree with this, but why? Why would one accept the parity thesis?
There is a great deal that can be said, and that has been said, for and against moral realism. In this introduction, we will be content if we can at least motivate the realist position. We will not be able to consider objections to it in any serious way.
The first thing to be said in favor of the parity thesis is that, at first look, it seems obviously true, and it seems to be something that all of us with moral views are committed to accepting. Presumably all of us would agree that torture is at least pro tanto wrong. This is to say that we believe this, and that we take it to be true, just as we believe that torture is widespread, and we take that to be true. There is the obvious difference here that one of these beliefs is about a moral matter and the other is about an ordinary non-moral empirical matter, but on the face of things, there being this difference does not conflict with the parity thesis. It does not mean that the moral belief is different quabelieffrom the empirical one, or that the moral fact we are committed to is different (or would be different) qua fact from the empirical one that we are also committed to, or that the moral property of wrongness is different quaproperty from the empirical one. On the face of things, there is a parity of the minimal kind that the parity thesis claims. Why think otherwise? Why not accept that there is the parity that seems to be
there, especially since accepting that there is this parity seems to be the simplest way to understand the appearance of parity?
A second point is closely related to the first. When people disagree about a moral issue, such as whether capital punishment is morally acceptable, each side thinks that the other side’s belief is mistaken. This is on a par with how people think when they disagree about something in mathematics or astronomy. Each thinks that the other one has a mistaken belief. There is an apparent parity here. Indeed, it would be hard to make sense of disagreements in belief without the presumption that the disagreeing parties each assumed they believe the truth and that the other person believes falsely, and this is no less true in the case of moral disagreement than in the case of disagreement about other matters. The simplest way to explain the appearance of parity in the nature of disagreement is to think the parity is real.
The third point concerns moral error. We know that we disagree with other people about moral matters. And when we disagree, we think the other person is in error. Sometimes we change our minds, and when we do, we think that we used to be in error. So we think that moral error is possible. Indeed, we think that everyone can be wrong about some moral facts, and perhaps even that “global moral error” is possible. Women have always been the moral equals of men, even long ago when (practically) everyone believed otherwise. We can imagine an entire world of people committed to a “caste system” that erroneously denies the basic equality of people. We can each concede that we might even now have certain erroneous moral beliefs that we have never learned about and never will learn about. We can imagine moral errors that all of us are currently making that we have not yet discovered. So, we recognize that moral error is possible, and we think that there actually are cases of moral error, just as we recognize error in other fields. This supports the parity thesis. It seems that if moral error is possible, then morality is not “up to us,” and the moral facts are “out there” to be discovered, just as in other fields of thought. The parity thesis captures this idea, as well as the idea that our moral judgments can either be, or fail to
be, responsive to the moral facts, just in the way that other beliefs can either be, or fail to be, responsive to the facts.
The fourth thing to be said in favor of the parity thesis is that, unless it is true, it would be difficult to make sense of our taking morality as seriously as we do, in the way that we do. Those of us who take morality seriously believe that the moral facts appropriately regulate our behavior and our interpersonal relations in a way that mere matters of preference or taste do not. If our moral judgments were non-cognitive attitudes, preferences, or feelings, such as a feeling of abhorrence at the thought of torture, they would be akin to a taste for chocolate or an abhorrence of licorice. There would be no issue whether they are true in any robust sense, and it would be optional whether to take them into account in our decision-making. We do take our tastes seriously, of course. We aim to have a supply of chocolate on hand, and there is a worldwide trade in chocolate because so many people enjoy it. But the tastiness of the chocolate is basically a matter of our response to the chocolate, a response that might have been different, and we would not have been at fault in any way if we had not liked chocolate. But we take our moral beliefs seriously in a different manner. We take it that the wrongness of torture is a feature of torture that we would be at fault not to recognize and that we oughtto take into account, when appropriate, in our thinking and in our decisions.
Fifth, in his argument about “objectivity’s implications” (Enoch 2011: chap. 2), David Enoch contends that, although there is room for moral disagreement, there is no room for negotiationabout what is morally required, or about what to do in light of what is required. But there is room to negotiate about what to do when people have different preferences or tastes. Should we have fish or beef for dinner? If the choice is merely a matter of preference or taste, we can negotiate, if we differ. But if it is a moral matter, and if it is wrong to eat meat, then if we take morality seriously, we will see that there is no room for negotiation about what we ought to do. (There might be a need to negotiate what we will do, but that’s a different matter.) The truth of realism would explain this difference between moral facts and facts about preferences or taste.
A sixth point was made by Christine Korsgaard. She pointed out that morality can require us to make major sacrifices, and we need to explain why anyone would be willing to make such sacrifices (1996: 10–16).2 This would be hard to explain if morality were simply a matter of preference or taste. If there weren’t moral facts “out there”—facts that are not in one’s control—and facts that purport to regulate our behavior in a way that is not optional, people would surely exercise the option not to make a major sacrifice even if morality required it.
A seventh point is that those of us who take morality seriously refer to what we take to be the moral facts, and treat them as facts, in deliberating about what to do and how to live. It would be difficult to make sense of this if moral realism were not true. This idea is again due to Enoch, or, at least, it is one way to understand his argument about “deliberative indispensability” (Enoch 2011: chap. 3). Again, those who take morality seriously take it that the fundamental moral facts are “out there,” out of one’s control, and take it that these facts are such as to appropriately regulate our behavior in a way that is not optional. So, in deliberating about whether to have fish or beef for dinner, if we think it is a moral matter, we will refer, say, to the wrongness of eating meat and take this as a premise in our reasoning. But if the choice were merely a matter of preference or taste, we might or might not treat our preference in the same way. It would be optional whether to do this, whereas, if we take morality seriously, we do not think it is optional whether to treat our moral beliefs as setting constraints on our deliberation. Again, the truth of realism would explain this difference between moral facts and facts about preferences or taste.
To be clear, these are not by any means decisive arguments in favor of moral realism. For example, not every version of moral antirealism construes morality as simply a matter of preference or taste. Nevertheless, we think that our arguments do make a strong prima facie case for realism. They are of the form: If one has moral beliefs, and if one takes morality seriously, then one is committed to certain further beliefs, and one will tend to have certain attitudes. And the
simplest account of morality that entails the truth of these beliefs and the appropriateness of these attitudes is the moral realists’ account. Other accounts might be available, however. And some moral skeptics would deny that it is appropriate to take morality seriously for one reason or another—that is, they would deny the appropriateness of the attitudes that we take to be involved in taking morality seriously, perhaps on the ground that, they think, morality is not authoritative in the way we take it to be. In any case, we hope we have made clear some of the reasons that might lead one to opt for a realist metaethics.
As we understand matters, moral realism involves certain doctrines that might not obviously follow from, or even be suggested by, the parity thesis. For this reason, and because it might be useful to spell out and emphasize certain aspects of the parity thesis, we will say more. We will first outline five main tenets of a minimal or “basic” moral realism. We will then consider the doctrine that distinguishes “mind-independent” realism from the basic form.3
The first doctrine characteristic of moral realism is the thesis that some basic substantive moral claims are true—with “true” understood literally, and in the sense in which an ordinary non-moral claim might be true. Geoff Sayre-McCord defined moral realism as the view that some moral claims, when construed literally, are literally true (1988: 5). But this is too weak to capture a disagreement between realists and anti-realists, because even antirealists should agree that some moral claims are logical truths, some are analytic, and some are conceptual truths. For instance, it is true that any wrong action is wrong. We describe such claims as “nonsubstantive,” so we say that the realist holds that some substantive moral claims are true. But this also is too weak to capture a disagreement between realists and anti-realists, because there are some apparently substantive moral claims that even an anti-realist should agree to be true. Consider, for instance, the claim that either Davis is in California or lying is morally permissible. This is true since Davis is in California. Let us say that such claims are not “basic” moral claims, where a “basic” moral claim is a logically simple claim
that ascribes (or at least purports to ascribe) a moral property to something. The claim that lying is wrong is basic, for example, and it is also substantive in our sense.4 A realist holds that some such claims are true, with “true” understood literally, and in the sense in which an ordinary nonmoral claim might be true.
But even this is not enough to distinguish moral realism from every form of moral anti-realism. For some anti-realist “expressivists” have a deflationary theory of the meaning of “true,” according to which some substantive basic moral claims can be true. Simon Blackburn’s “quasi-realist expressivism” illustrates this idea (Blackburn 2006; see also his chapter in this volume). Blackburn and other anti-realists would, however, deny one or more of the following realist doctrines.
The second realist doctrine is that there are moral properties in the sense of “property” in which there are ordinary non-moral properties. There are many theories about the metaphysics of properties, and moral realists do not need to commit themselves on the question of which of these theories is preferable. But, as the parity thesis says, realists hold that, in being properties, moral properties have the same basic nature as non-moral properties. On one view, the “commonality view,” to share a property is, roughly, to have something in common. On the commonality view, to claim that lying has the property of being widespread is to claim that it has something in common with other things that are widespread. To claim that lying has the property of being wrong, at least pro tanto, is to claim that lying has something in common with other actions that are pro tanto wrong. Accordingly, a realist might hold, actions that are wrong have something in common in virtue of which they are wrong. They share the property of being wrong. The second doctrine characteristic of moral realism is, then, that there are moral properties in whatever sense there are non-moral properties. Perhaps, for example, there are the properties of moral wrongness, of being a virtue, and so on.
Third, a moral realist holds that some moral properties are instantiated. Perhaps, for example, some kinds of action are wrong
and some traits of character are virtues. The actual world includes persons, events, and states of affairs that have moral characteristics, such as that of being wrong or of being vicious or unjust.
Fourth, realists hold that the primary semantic role of moral predicates is to ascribe moral properties. The predicate “wrong” is used to ascribe wrongness; the predicate “just” is used to ascribe justice. And so on. Moral predicates ascribe moral properties just as ordinary non-moral predicates ascribe properties. On the commonality view, for instance, the sentence “Torture is wrong” ascribes to torture a similarity to other wrong kinds of action just as the sentence, “Torture is widespread,” ascribes to torture a similarity to other kinds of action that are widespread. Moral language does not work in any special way that distinguishes its semantics fundamentally from the semantics of ordinary non-moral language.
Realists can take a hybrid view. They can hold, for example, that to call an action wrong is to express disapproval of the action, or of actions of its kind, as well as to ascribe wrongness. They can say that at least some moral predicates are used both to express noncognitive states of mind and to ascribe moral properties. Slurs illustrate this idea. There are linguistic conventions governing the use of slurs, such as “frog,” such that to call someone by such a term both categorizes her as belonging to a certain group and expresses contempt or some other pejorative attitude toward the person and others who belong to the group. A realist might think there are similar linguistic conventions governing the use of moral predicates. But, the realist insists, this does not gainsay the point that the primary semantic role of the moral predicates is to ascribe moral properties (see Copp 2007: chap. 5).
Fifth, moral assertions express beliefs—representational states that have propositional contents, and that are true just in case their propositional contents are true. For example, the assertion that certain kinds of action are wrong expresses the belief that certain kinds of action are wrong, and this belief is true just in case certain kinds of action are wrong. The fifth point is simply that moral assertions do not express states of mind that are different in any fundamental way from the states of mind expressed by ordinary
assertions. Ordinary assertions express ordinary beliefs. And, the realist holds, if I assert that torture is wrong, I express the belief that torture is wrong, which is an ordinary belief even though it is normative. Moral realists hold that moral beliefs have the same basic metaphysical nature as other beliefs.
We can call the position that accepts the five doctrines we have been articulating, “basic moral realism” or “minimal realism.”
There are additional distinctions that can be drawn among kinds of moral realism. Most important, perhaps, is the distinction between theories that accept and those that deny the thesis that moral facts and properties are “mind-independent.” An example of a theory that denies this thesis, and views moral facts as mind-dependent, is the “caricaturized subjectivism” that Enoch criticizes (2011: 24–27). According to this view, “[m]oral judgments report simple preferences, ones that are exactly on a par with a preference for playing tennis or for catching a movie” (Enoch 2011: 25). On this view, the assertion that lying is wrong reports that the speaker prefers that people not lie. This view treats the moral facts (indexed to a particular person) as facts about the preferences of that person, so it treats the moral facts as mind-dependent. It perhaps qualifies as an example of basic moral realism, but, despite this, many and perhaps most philosophers would insist that it should not be considered to be genuinely realist.
The rationale for the idea that caricaturized subjectivism is not a form of moral realism can be made clear if we think back to the seven considerations that we used to motivate realism. Several of these considerations distinguished moral facts from facts about preferences or taste. A few of them relied on the idea that the moral facts are “out there,” out of one’s control, and that they are such as to appropriately regulate our behavior in a way that is not optional. But it is optional whether to regulate our behavior by our preferences. For example, I might prefer to see one movie but happily go to a different movie on a whim. In any event, caricaturized subjectivism is highly implausible, and, further, the seven-part case we made in support of moral realism rules it out, as not a form of realism. But it is one thing to hold that this theory is
incompatible with the basic motivation for moral realism. It is another thing to claim that any theory that treats the moral facts as mind-dependent is incompatible with the basic motivation for moral realism. Part of the problem is that it is unclear what exactly is meant by “mind-dependence” when philosophers propose that a realist theory must not treat the moral facts as mind-dependent.
Roderick Firth proposed a theory, for example, according to which, very roughly, the nature of the moral facts is determined by the reactions of an “ideal observer,” someone who has all the relevant non-moral facts clearly to mind, who makes no logical mistakes in reasoning, who is appropriately impartial, and so on (Firth 1952). A theory of this kind would seem to treat the moral facts as minddependent. Whether lying is wrong, on this theory, depends on the hypothetical state of mind of an hypothetical being who had all the relevant non-moral facts clearly to mind, made no logical mistakes, was appropriately impartial, and so on. But, on this theory, at least on a plausible interpretation, the moral facts are “out there,” out of anyone’s control. No-one controls how an ideal observer would react. Further, a simple divine command theory treats the moral facts as dependent on the commands of God, which are out of the control of any human being even though they are dependent on what God chooses to command. It is not clear that the motivation we offered for moral realism should be taken to rule out alltheories that treat the moral facts as mind-dependent.
To avoid becoming embroiled in this issue here, in explicating moral realism, we will say that there are kinds of basic moral realism that reject the mind-independence thesis as well as kinds of basic moral realism that accept the mind-independence thesis. This volume includes chapters that defend basic moral realism—such as Michael Smith’s chapter as well as those that defend forms of mindindependent realism—such as David Enoch’s chapter.
The final distinction that is relevant here is between naturalistic and non-naturalistic forms of moral realism. Moral naturalism holds, and non-naturalism denies, that the moral facts are natural ones. Further, the naturalist thinks, moral properties are natural ones; they have the same basic metaphysical status as ordinary natural
properties such as solidity, deciduousness, and the property of being a railroad car. There is room to debate exactly what these claims come to, of course, and the issue is debated in some of the chapters in this volume. The volume includes chapters that are aimed at supporting moral naturalism—such as, again, Michael Smith’s chapter—as well as those that aim to support non-naturalism—such as, again, David Enoch’s chapter.
The volume is organized into four parts. The first, “About Moral Realism and Its Varieties,” includes chapters that work at a metalevel. For example, an essay might discuss the distinctions we have drawn in this introduction, challenging them, or contending that they are not exhaustive. There is, for example, the article by Simon Blackburn contending that a kind of “quasi-realist expressivism” has all the intuitive advantages that we allege moral realism has. The second part of the volume includes chapters that develop one or another form of moral naturalism. The third includes expositions and defenses of moral non-naturalism. And the fourth, “Neither Naturalism nor Non-Naturalism,” includes chapters that develop and argue for versions of moral realism that appear to be neither naturalistic nor non-naturalistic. Timothy Williamson argues vigorously against anti-realist positions, but without taking a position on the debate about naturalism. Also in the fourth section are chapters advocating or discussing so-called quietism and deflationary positions.
REFERENCES
Blackburn, Simon. 2006. “Anti-Realist Expressivism and Quasi-Realism.” In The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, edited by David Copp, 146–162. New York: Oxford University Press.
Copp, David. 2006. “Introduction.” In The Oxford Handbook of Ethical Theory, edited by David Copp, 3–35. New York: Oxford University Press.
Copp, David. 2007. Morality in a Natural World. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Copp, David. Forthcoming. EthicalNaturalism andthe Problem ofNormativity. New York: Oxford University Press.
Enoch, David. 2011. Taking Morality Seriously. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Firth, Roderick. 1952. “Ethical Absolutism and the Ideal Observer.” Philosophy and PhenomenologicalResearch12: 317–345.
Korsgaard, Christine M. 1996. The Sources of Normativity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Parfit, Derek. 2011. On What Matters. Vols. 1 and 2. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sayre-McCord, Geoffrey, ed. 1988. Essays on Moral Realism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.
1 This idea is in Copp, forthcoming.
2 She argues, however, that realism which she called “substantive realism” cannot provide an adequate account of the normativity of morality (Korsgaard 1996: 35–40). We won’t go into her argument.
3 This approach to explicating the realist view was taken in Copp 2006. It is elaborated further in Copp, forthcoming.
4 It is surprisingly difficult to define the idea of a “basic” moral claim. One issue is how to classify claims about permissibility. We think that permissibility consists in not being wrong. If this is right, then, on our definition, the claim that lying is permissible is not basic because it is logically complex, and it does not ascribe a moral property.
I ABOUT MORAL REALISM AND ITS VARIETIES
CHAPTER 1
DEFINING MORAL REALISM
JENNIFER FOSTER AND MARK SCHROEDER
Andas imagination bodies forth The forms ofthings unknown, thepoet’spen Turns them to shapes andgives to airy nothing
Alocalhabitation anda name.
—William Shakespeare, AMidsummer Night’s Dream
WHEREVER philosophers disagree, one of the things at issue is likely to be what they disagree about, itself. So also with moral realism, or metanormative realism more broadly. In addition to asking whether moral realism is true, and which forms of moral realism are more likely to be true than others, we can also ask what it would meanfor some form of moral realism to be true—we can try to define “moral realism” and each of its standard variants, “naturalism,” “nonnaturalism,” and so on. The usual aspiration of such inquiry is to find definitions that all can agree on, so that we can use terms in an unambiguous and uniform way. But we doubt that this aspiration is always possible, or even necessarily desirable. It will be our goal in this essay to sketch out some of our reasons for such skepticism, and to lay out a picture of what philosophical inquiry can look like in metaethics and beyond, even when it is impossible to reach uniform agreement on the terms of the debate.
1. FIXING VOCABULARY
We all know how important it is to fix the meanings of terms in order to have a clear topic for conversation. If we are having a conversation and Jen insists, “moral realism is not true,” while Mark insists “moral realism is true,” we may take ourselves to be in genuine disagreement — especially, say, if we have already agreed that “wrong” is synonymous with “fails to maximize happiness.” But, in fact, we are having no disagreement at all, if Mark thinks that “wrong” being with synonymous with “fails to maximize happiness” is sufficientfor realism being true, while Jen, following Nagel, Parfit, and others, prefers to use “realism” in a stingier way. Perhaps she thinks, along with Nagel, that
If values are objective, they must be so in their own right, and not through reducibility to some other kind of objective fact. They have to be objective values, not objective anything else.1
So in order to fix what we are in disagreement about, we—Jen and Mark—need to fix our terms. In particular, we need to decide whether to use “moral realism” in a way that includes Benthamite analytic utilitarianism or not. So far, so trivial—all of this, we believe, should be uncontroversial.
But when philosophers look for the right definitions to use for classificatory terms like “moral realism,” “reduction,” “naturalism,” “noncognitivism,” “expressivism,” “constructivism,” “constitutivism,” and many more, they are generalizing on this uncontroversial observation far beyond the purposes of one conversation or another. They are looking for definitions that will fix these terms onceandfor all—for all conversations that different people have about this topic, and for all conversations that we may come in the future to have about it. The metaphor of philosophical inquiry as a kind of ongoing conversation—a metaphor of which we are both fond, for many purposes—encourages the sense that this must be an important thing to do. After all, if it is important for Jen and Mark to fix their terms in debating moral realism, and their conversation is just a
small part of a much bigger conversation, then surely that much bigger conversation can likewise only be productive if we can first fix terms for it, as well.
But we doubt that this is such a good idea. Indeed, we doubt that it is even possible. The core reason for our doubts is simple. It is that there is a key disanalogy between ordinary conversations, which have a limited number of participants and happen at a particular time and place, and the metaphorical “grand conversation” about philosophy to which we all aspire to contribute. The disanalogy is that precisely because ordinary conversations happen at a particular time and place, with a limited number of participants, the conversational participants can draw on features that they have in common in order to fix their terms adequately for the purposes of the conversation. The larger the conversation, however, and the less fixed in time and place, the less the conversational participants will have in common—and the harder it will be to adequately fix terms in a single meaningful way. We should expect, then, that in the “grand conversation” of philosophical inquiry as a whole, this task will be hardest of all: for such a (metaphorical) conversation is limited neither in time nor space, nor in who may join in, nor in which background assumptions those participants bring with them. For the purposes of that conversation, fixing terms once and for all in a single, meaningful way will be challenging, indeed.
So how is it, in more ordinary cases, that the common features of the conversational participants make it easier to fix terms? The answer is that it gives them a common ground—both a set of assumptions that can be held fixed for the purposes of their conversation and a range of imaginative possibilities beyond which they do not need to plan in advance.2 Assumptions can be held fixed for the purposes of a conversation either because they are taken for granted by all parties, or because they are accepted for the purposes of the conversation by the conversational parties in order to keep things simple. Or they can be held fixed even because one of the conversational participants takes the assumptions for granted and the others go along with it because disputing the assumptions would
be a conversational distraction—as when an atheist engages in “God” talk to use the Euthyphro dilemma (the presuppositions of which she does not herself endorse) to challenge a theist interlocutor’s unreflective endorsement of the divine command theory.
When conversational participants can avail themselves of a fixed set of background assumptions, they can have fruitful and meaningful engagements even if they have not fully fixed the meanings of their terms, and even if they would choose to fix them differently, were they to engage with interlocutors who accept a different set of background assumptions. It is possible to have meaningful engagements—even quite precise engagements—without converging on a single meaning, because sometimes different meanings have the same conversational upshot, holding the common ground fixed. Even when two definitions of a term are not equivalent, they can be conditionally equivalent, given some assumptions. And so when those assumptions are part of the common ground, it will not matter for the purposes of the conversation that the speakers have not converged on a single “once and for all” meaning for their terms. Likewise, it can make perfect sense for a single speaker to latch onto different definitions for different conversations—and to do so, even, without equivocating in what they care about, because each of their definitions can each be conditionally equivalent to what they care about, conditional on what is held fixed as part of the common ground in each of their different conversations.
In addition to such various fixed assumptions, conversational participants also bring to the table a common set of imagined possibilities. Pace some naïve construals of the Stalnaker-Lewis picture of inquiry as “locating” ourselves in possible world space, we do not start with a fixed understanding of all of the possible ways that things can be and then gradually narrow down.3 Rather, we start with some clear distinctions that make sense to us, sharpened against some clear foils that we want to deny. The processof inquiry then proceeds, dynamically, from there—and as it does, tends to
reveal to us theoretical possibilities that we had not yet considered, yielding in turn the need for finer-grained distinctions. Conversational participants could get along very well without deciding, once and for all, whether a spork is a fork but not a spoon, or a spoon but not a fork, or both, or neither, so long as none of them have ever imagined a spork.
Finally, disagreement is pervasive in philosophy—both actual, and potential. Wherever we use a common vocabulary to define our terms, that vocabulary becomes an object of philosophical study, and its properties will become controversial. It is a consequence of this that sometimes what is at issue between two philosophers is in part a matter of what each of them is committed to in virtue of the theory that they accept. If these philosophers can appeal to at least some common ground assumptions that they both share (or are willing to countenance for the purposes of the conversation), then they can try to use those shared assumptions to triangulate on what is really at stake between them. Even philosophers who disagree on a lotcan make progress this way, if they are sufficiently willing—for the time being—to grant, bracket, or otherwise “gloss over” orthogonal points of dispute. Triangulating via common ground thus requires a kind of pro temflexibility or provisionality of framing: the more rigid we are at the outset of inquiry, and the more necessary we take it to be that our dispute be cast, now, in terms which will survive any controversy later, the less in common we will have to triangulate with in the meantime.
In the next three sections we will survey how each of these ways in which the common features of a limited number of conversational participants facilitates successful engagement with ideas have played out in debates—both substantive and terminological—about moral realism.
2. CONVERSATIONAL COMMON GROUND
Moral realism seems like it should be easy to define. However we end up ironing out the details, surely the gist is clear enough: that some moral claims are objectively true, that there are moral properties out there, that those properties ground moral facts, and that those moral facts are true independently of what we think or feel about them. Indeed, this is essentially everyone’s first pass— here are just a few representative examples:
MichaelRea
Moral realism is the view that there are objective moral facts. There are objective moral facts only if the following two conditions are met: (i) there are moral properties e.g., properties like being a right action, being a wrong action, being praiseworthy, being depraved, and so on—at least some of which are exemplified by actual objects or events, and (ii) the exemplification of a moral property p does not entail that anyone has beliefs about what exemplifies p, about whether p is exemplified at all, or about the conditions under which p is exemplified. Condition (ii) is meant to express part, but only part, of what many philosophers aim to express by phrases like “moral properties are not mind-dependent” or “moral facts are not theory-dependent”.4
DavidEnoch
Robust Realism is an objectivist, response-independence view of normativity. [ ] Whether or not a given normative statement applies (for instance) to a given action does not depend on what attitudes regarding it cognitive or otherwise are entertained by those judging that it is (or is not) or by anyone in their environment, nor does it depend on the attitudes, desires, and the like of the agent whose action it is or of anyone in her environment.5
Schroeter andSchroeter
What is crucial to the realist position whether Moorean or naturalist is the claim that normative terms have a determinate reference and signify a specific property. […] Call this the Univocity thesis. It’s also distinctive of the realist position that speakers’ opinions about what falls into the extension of normative terms are fallible. One’s judging an action to be right does not make it so: there is an independent standard of correctness for normative judgments to which speakers are answerable. Call this the Objectivity thesis. Moorean and naturalist realists accept both the Univocity and Objectivity theses and take them to be constraints on an adequate realist account of the signification of normative terms.6
And why not start here? We have to start the conversation somewhere, after all, and this seems as natural and unproblematic a place as any—right?
