Modern Moral Philosophy: Lecture One (week 13)

Introduction, IMR, Moore and Ethical Naturalism

1. Introduction

                  (a) Blurb on course.  See course booklet.  Essays, lectures, seminars.

                  (b) Metaethics is hard.  Alex Miller An Introduction to Contemporary Metaethics (Polity, 2003).

                  (c) The point of my lectures vis-‡-vis reading and seminars.

2. Metaethics and Normative Ethics

(d) What is metaethics?  The question åWhat is it that makes x good or right?π (where x is an action, a situation, a character trait, a whatever) is ambiguous.   In normative ethics one focuses on the various types of feature that go to åmakeπ x (such as its consequences, or the type of action it is) and ask whether it is that that makes it good or right.  So, for example, consequentialists think that only the consequences of an action are morally significant; it is only this type of feature that one should consider when deciding whether an action is right or wrong.  Principles then follow, for example åRight actions are those and only those that maximize good consequencesπ or åDo not killπ).    

Metaethics is also concerned with the question åWhat is it that makes x good or right (or compassionate, or cruel, or selfish, or...)?π, but here we are thinking about the conditions, if you like, that ground why something has the value it has in the first place.  For example, is something good because she says it is, or because they say it is, or is it good åmind-independentlyπ?  And what do such claims amount to?  

Additionally, in normative ethics one simply assumes that there are ethical properties, so as to get a debate started about what the features are that åmakeπ the value.  In contrast, the question of whether there are ethical values or properties in the first place is the prime question of metaethics.  Many people deny that there are ethical properties, although everyone agrees that it appears at first glance as if there are.  Look at the name.  Metaethics is concerned with metaphysics and ontology.  More specifically, thinking about the first question again, one is trying to explain a three-way relationship that exists between human valuers or judges, the natural, nonethical world and values that seemingly exist.   

Metaethics can also be thought of in terms of philosophy of language.  When one makes an ethical judgement such as åThat stabbing was cruelπ how is that judgement functioning?  Is it best read as an attempt to describe some ethical property of an action (and the judgement might then be true or false)?  Or is it functioning in some other way?  This latter option obviously becomes important if one denies that there are ethical properties, that there are things that one is trying to describe or represent by words such as åcruelπ. Lastly, in week 17 we will think about moral motivation.   

3.  More on Metaethics

(e) Terminology.  A situation, action, person, etc. might be thought to have ethical significance, i.e. it will have a certain ethical value such as goodness, rightness, cruelty, etc.  For the most part, in this module we shall speak of situations (understood broadly) having ethical properties.  And, Iπll use ethical judgement as a (philosophically) neutral term for any sort of ethical utterance or thought.  åEthicalπ and åmoralπ are contrasted with ånonethicalπ and ånaturalπ (and, in the literature, sometimes ådescriptiveπ).  The latter type of term picks out those properties that can be picked out and studied by the natural sciences and cognate disciplines.    

(f) There are two questions with which we shall focus on to begin: (i) What is the nature of ethical properties?  (Today and later.)  (ii) Are there any ethical properties?  (Weeks 14 and 15.)

(g) Four important positions:

(i) Nonnatural moral realism (see also åSensibility Theoryπ)  

(ii) Naturalism (also a type of moral realism). 

(iii) Error theory

(iv) Expressivism or Noncognitivism

I will introduce all of these positions by thinking about (v) åIndependent Moral Realismπ (IMR).

                  A word on åobjectivityπ and åsubjectivityπ.  More on this in week 16. 

4. IMR: What is it?

(h) Often called åmoral objectivismπ or åmoral realismπ in the literature.  IMR is my term; you wonπt find it anywhere else.  Supporters are åIMRealistsπ.

(i) One is an IMRealists iff one accepts Thesis IMR, which is a metaphysical thesis:

Thesis IMR: There are ethical properties, which are mind-independent.  That is, no matter what anyone believed, desired, aimed at, had interests in, etc., then the world would still have the ethical properties that it has. 

Weπll cover IMRealist epistemology in week 14.  Suffice it to say, IMRealists think that ethical metaphysics and ethical epistemology are separate in this important sense: what people believe ethically has no effect on what exists ethically.

(j) Mind-independent?  Important that we home in on what this means.  Apart from ådeers-dying-in-earthquakesπ type examples, most ethical situations involve humans.  That is, there are certain natural features that involve humans (their relations, their emotions) and ethical properties supervene on such natural features.  (Weπll return to superv. below.) IMR is a thesis that says that the ethical significance that such human things have (if they have such significance) is a mind-independent matter. 

Examples: (i) Jewel (ii) Feeling slighted because of my cutting remark.

5. IMR: Why believe it?

(k) Often you see IMRealists say that IMR is the ånatural positionπ which people get argued out of when they have more philosophical arguments thrown at them.  It is up to other theorists to show that IMR is wrong.  (David Brink thinks this.)  I think this is wrong: people have a number of conflicting åpre-philosophical metaethical intuitionsπ.  But anyway....  

(l) Main argument in favour of IMR (I think) is the åobjective pullπ (again, this is my term).  Analogy with ice-cream.  We might debate but we donπt think that it matters too much.  Ethics is different.  There are right and wrong answers.  Ethical judgements can be true and false.  So, how to preserve ethicsπ distinctive character?  The danger with saying that the correctness (or truth) and incorrectness (or falsity) of ethical judgements depends on whether they fit with what we believe, say, is that we might be accepting something as true only because it is what we are familiar and comfortable with, not because it is true.  And, of course, other people might be familiar and comfortable with opposing views.  The only way that the distinctive nature of ethical truth can be preserved is by making ethical truth a mind-independent matter. Hence, ethical properties should be thought to be mind-independent.

6. Moore and Ethical Naturalism

(m) IMR is a position that provides an answer to the question åHow is it that ethical stuff gets into the worldπ? Letπs ignore IMR for the moment. A different question: What sort of property is an ethical property? Is it metaphysically sui generis or can it be thought to be another sort of property altogether?    Moore and the Open Question Argument.  Imagine I ask you, of any particular claim you make, why you think that action is good.  You reply, åIt is good because it is pleasurableπ, say.  Letπs assume that (i) åpleasurableπ picks out a natural feature of the world; and (ii) that we find a number of such actions, in fact very many. Can we conclude that goodness just is åbeing pleasurableπ and that we have found a natural characterization of goodness?  Moore thinks not.  Of any pleasurable action, it would still make sense to ask åBut is it good?π. That is such a question has an open feel to it, in a way that åBut are bachelors unmarried males?π does not.  Hence, we cannot have found the nature of goodness, for goodness and pleasure must be distinct if the question is still open. Hence, Moore was an ethical nonnaturalist: ethical properties exist but they are metaphysically sui generis. (There is more to say about nonnaturalism; see week 16.)   

(n) Cornell Realism, a type of ethical naturalism, was a response to this in the 1980s.  (Names: Brink, Boyd and Sturgeon. See also Railton.)  There is a crucial distinction between concepts and properties.  Sure, the concepts of goodness and pleasure are different.  They have different connotations and associations; the terms ågoodnessπ and åpleasurableπ have different meanings.  But this does not rule out the possibility that both terms might pick out the same stuff or property. As it happens, goodness might be very complex, but there is nothing in the OQ argument that says that we can rule out, in theory, that goodness might not be a very complex natural - and wholly natural - property.    

(o) To see this, think about water and H2O.

(p) So, ethical naturalists believe that what makes the claim åThat action is goodπ true (if it is), is the natural part of the action that is to be identified as goodness. This interpretation of Cornell Realism, and ethical naturalism generally, is controversial. It seems to say that an essential part of the position is reductionism (åidentification leads to reductionismπ), which at least Sturgeon and Brink deny. However, I think that they have to be reductionists.  Why?ä.

(q)ä.most of the metaethicists whom we will study (i.e. everyone bar Moore) are minimal ethical naturalists. I.e. three-way choice between saying that ethical properties are constituted by natural features, or supernatural properties/features or are sui generis.  (This even includes noncogs. although they donπt talk of ethical properties.)  So, to be distinctive, ethical naturalism has to go beyond this.

                  (i) water = H2O                                                                                                                          What is it that åfixesπ the equivalence relation? 

                  (ii) (EN): E = (N1 & N2 & N3...Nn)                                       Same question.  Explanation in lecture.  Back to IMR

Ethical naturalism: ethical properties are really nonethical features (we use ethical terms only for convenienceπs sake); and (I think) they are IMRealists.  Moore was an IMRealists, but a nonnaturalist.